Fighting for God.
I. If we are to contend earnestly with evil, we must ourselves hate it. To hate evil is not so easy as it once was. As people become civilised, and lives become comfortable, evil is cunning enough to veil its ugliest features, and to call in the aid of many powerful allies, such as good-nature, common-sense, charity, and even philosophy, to say a word on its behalf. Between them they contrive to produce a very lenient portrait of evil, and to represent it as an amiable weakness, or an irresistible temptation, or a conventional slip, or even an imperfect and undeveloped good. And the more we look on such kindly but really godless caricatures of evil, the harder it becomes for us to hate it. St. Paul's words seem exaggerated, "Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good."
II. Note two of the main difficulties which are likely to damp our courage and make us only half-hearted in our contest with evil. There are, of course, many such, but I shall select only two. (1) We have read of that legendary "Knight of God," into whose lips the poet has put the noble words,
"My strength is as the strength often,
Because my heart is pure."
Alas! the sad reason why our strength is often little better than a coward's is because our heart is not pure. (2) The second obstacle is this: the fancy that we stand almost alone in our desire for a better state of things, and that the mass of those around us are either indifferent or hostile. Thus the enterprise will seem hopeless. Remember, God does not bid you succeed; He only bids you try. And all history tells us that all the best things that have ever been done in the way of moral reforms have been done by minorities, strength made perfect in weakness, the faith of a few triumphing over the stagnation or the opposition of numbers. This is the device, written in letters of gold, oftentimes in letters of blood, over the front of all great causes. "God loves," it has been said, "to build upon nothing."
H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 266.
References: Revelation 19:11-16. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxv., No. 1452; C. Kingsley, Westminster Sermons,p. 202.Revelation 19:12. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. v., No. 281; R. W. Dale, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 353.