PRIVATE HEROISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 July 1938, Page 9

PRIVATE HEROISM

CONQUEST OF TEMPTATION. It is an everyday commonplace to say of a man that “he cannot be driven,” writes a correspondent in the “London Evening News.” And that is probably true of most of us. But we can drive ourselves, and he who has not learned to drive himself, sometimes on the curb, sometimes to accept almost the limit of self-discipline, to choose the unpleasant when the easy and the pleasant are within his grasp, will certainly never reach the true goal of life.. Some men find it easy to choose the good and to turn their backs on the evil. Other men can only choose the good rather than the evil, with a great effort and with personal suffering. Theirs, it is safe to assume, will be the greater reward. Every man has his own special temptations, and it is in the conquest of temptation that the soul expands. But no man, whatever the nature of his temptation, can conquer by his own strength. But with the insistent desire to conquer, comes divine help. To live well men must be heroic. The great majority of us are tragically unheroic. We fear the good because it demands so much of us—more than the evil that is often attractive. Evil has to be paid for, but the payment may be postponed and is easily overlooked.