The Christian will never be happy or content in a state of spiritual defeat. He will strive for the mastery. He will fight the good fight of faith.

I serve as Chancellor of Richmond College, and our Biology professor is Dr. Norman Martyn. He is also an Anglican rector of a parish near Peterborough where Joe Scriven, over a century ago, wrote the most familiar words ever written in Canada. Joe was a missionary from Ireland, working among our Iroquois Indians when he was joined by his Irish fiancee. Just before the wedding, she was killed in an ice accident. Joe buried her with his own hands and a broken heart. A year later, in a letter to his mother, he reflected:

What a friend we have in Jesus,

All our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry

Everything to God in prayer!

Have we trials and temptations?

Is there trouble anywhere?

We should never be discouraged.

Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Joe Scriven was on the road to triumph, even though for him, as for all, there were times when the road was rough.

Where else does the born-again experience lead? Into the strengthening of Christian marriages and Christ-centered homes. In Ephesians 5, St. Paul taught that in being "followers of God, as dear children ... as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it" (vv. 1, 24, 25), and "Children obey your parents in the Lord ... and, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (6:1, 4).

Here in Canada one in four marriages ends in divorce. Only one in twelve marriages ended in divorce when we entered our second century as a nation in 1967. In the United States, the divorce rate has gone up as much in the last four years as in the previous ten. And ten times as many couples register that they are living common-law now as a decade ago. This affects nearly everyone sooner or later, because everyone is born into a family, and sooner or later 97 percent of men and 96 percent of women marry. Nine out of ten of both sexes attach maximum priority in life to a happy marriage.

Many take marriage all too lightly: a television program is frivolously entitled: "How to Survive a Marriage!" A magazine cover story is entitled: "Hooked on a Married Man!", while a columnist cracks: "The trouble with marriage is that the whole thing has given divorce a bad name." In the name of women being liberated, judges are now beginning to grant the custody of children to adulterous wives, while 20 percent of single-parent families in North America are now headed up by the father -- up 300 percent.

Is divorce really as frivolous or glamorous as many in the media make out? Canadian TV star Michele Finney lamented recently over her "lousy marriage and the rotten divorce," which led to so many "frustrations" and "bitterness." Joane Carson goes public in relating how divorce from Johnny felt: "You both lose ... that's the strongest thing that comes through, the fact that you've both lost. There is the agony of picking up the pieces ... there is no way to go through divorce easily. I don't care who wants out, both people go through their own private hells. It touches every single part of your life from skin to gut level."