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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 30. The Greatest Battlefield
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The Greatest Battlefield
The greatest battlefield on which a man ever fought is within himself. The greatest victories are there. Victory there is the greatest victory possible in a man's life. All the great achievements of men outside of themselves are less than the achievement of getting mastery of themselves. Victory here means victory elsewhere.
All other problems of the personal sort are included in this. Their solution is included in its solution. There must be practical understanding about sin, and real power over it, before there can be self-mastery. For it was sin that first stole self-mastery away. Selfishness must be seen and gripped in its subtle as well as its coarse forms, before the sweets of the finest self-mastery can be tasted. Doubt must be mastered, at least far enough to give a steady footing and steady going, if the fragrance of self-mastery is to fill the life. Only he who sees clearly the highest ambition of life, and holds everything else strictly under, can climb the heights here.
A man's foes are those of his own household, the household of his own person and his own life. Victory here brings the strength that wins on every other field. And victory on any other field, or every other, is robbed of its sweets, if a man is whipped on this field of his own personality.
The man who can rule wisely and masterfully within his own spirit is greater than he who rules a state or a nation or a great corporation. It is true there must be some mastery of self before there can be mastery of others, but then we are not talking about partial mastery, except as it is a stepping-stone up to the highest.
The greatest mastery is self-mastery. The greatest man is he who has become master of himself, not in the limited sense of some who do notable things on other fields, but in the finest, fullest sense. This is the most fascinating of all problems. It is a continuous problem, ever yielding to solution, yet never fully solved. For every high level reached shows a higher beyond, so great is the possibility lying within one's self.
Man was made like God and to have dominion over all the lower creation. That is the Bible way of saying that he was to be master of his own self, and through that self-mastery to be master of all creation. The man eager to reach the highest mastery will study God, for here is the original plan for himself. He will keep in close contact with the Original. The closer that touch the nearer does he come to his own true self.