Contending with the globe, we are like Jacob wrestling with the angel. The fight is long and hard amid the mystery and the darkness, and the great Power seems reluctant to bless us; but the breaking of the day comes, and we find ourselves blest with corn, wine, oil, purple, feasts, flowers. Ah! and with gifts far beyond those of basket and store--ripened intelligence, self-reliance, courage, skill, manliness, virtue. Of course, man suffers in the conflict, as the patriarch did. When we see the farm laborer bent double with rheumatism, or the collier mutilated by the explosion in the mine, or the grinder with his lung gone, or the weaver with his enfeebled physique, or the seaman prematurely old through his battle with wind and wave, or any of the million workers who carry pathetic signs of the arduousness of toil, we see the limp of the victorious wrestler. In the South Seas the natives lie on their backs and the bread-fruit drops into their mouths. But these make a poor show in the grand procession of the ages.
The law of life is truly severe which enjoins that man shall eat bread in the sweat of his face, but in this struggle for life our great antagonist is our great helper; we are leaving barbarism behind us; we are undergoing a magnificent transformation; we are becoming princes of God and heirs of all things.-- W. L. Watkinson, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."
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