Why is it then that the men who get there are often the emptiest, most frightened, prideful posers around? They are mercenaries, battling only to build their own kingdoms.

Battle your way to the top, says the world, and you are a man. Men should think of it as a corruption of their strength. The world is a carnival of counterfeits-counterfeit battles, counterfeit adventures, counterfeit beauties. Take all those posers out there, put them together in an office or a club or a church, and what you get is what the Scriptures mean by the world. “No, “the world” is not a place or a set of behaviors-it is any system built by our collective sin, all our false selves coming together to reward and destroy each other. Wild at Heart Revised and Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break” and yet a greater cause “comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistably on with all these chains to the battle field.” how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. “I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter.

He speaks tenderly to her of his undying love, of “the memories of blissful moments I have spent with you.” Ballou mourns the thought that he must give up “the hope of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood around us.” Yet in spite of his love the battle calls and he cannot turn from it. He writes to his wife on the eve of the Battle of Bull Run, a battle he senses will be his last. “I have in my files a copy of a letter written by Major Sullivan Ballou, a Union officer in the 2nd Rhode Island.

Lion wild at heart quote