Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/158

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"didn't you understand? I wouldn't have missed it for anything. That was the first game my father ever saw me play." Beneath the consciousness that for the first time his father's eyes were open and watching him the boy had discovered capacities of power that he hardly knew he possessed before. Beneath the eye of our Father, Who is looking upon the game that we are playing, where is the man that cannot play a better game, who cannot draw on the reservoirs of power untouched before, who cannot come out and do his work in the world and live his life with larger inspiration and strength, with more dominion and sovereignty, because he is living it before a God Who is alive? To such a man will compromise not seem a filial insult impossible except by a base degradation of the soul?

And not only did Elijah's principle determine his conduct and pour inspiration into it; it was this principle of a God Who is alive that made him absolutely fearless. He was not only unafraid of physical harm, but he had none of that subtler fear that every man knows—the fear that he himself will fail, the fear that he cannot carry himself safely through. What you and I are afraid of is not the things that are without; our enemy is inside. Treachery within the walls is all that we need to dread, and our deepest fear is of our own failure. That was the great thing