Page 17 - 聖母軍團員手冊（英文版，2014年5月-2022年1月更新版）

Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 16

16 LEGIONARY SERVICE CHAPTER 4
But not alone to the individual membership must the note
of permanence attach. Each and every item of the Legion’s
round of duty must be stamped with this selfsame seal of
persevering effort. Change, of course, there must necessarily
be. Different places and persons are visited; works are com -
pleted, and new works are taken on. But all this is the steady
alteration of life, not the fitful opera tion of instability and
novelty-seeking, which ends by breaking down the finest
discipline. Apprehensive of this spirit of change, the Legion
appeals unceasingly for a sterner temper, and from each
succeeding meeting sends its members to their tasks with the
un changing watchword, as it were, ringing in their ears:
“Hold firm.”
Real achievement is dependent upon sustained effort,
which in turn is the outcome of an unconquerable will to
win. Essential to the perseverance of such a will is that it bend
not often nor at all. Therefore, the Legion enjoins on its
branches and its members a universal attitude of refusal to
accept defeat, or to court it by a tendency to grade items of
work in terms of the “promising,” the “unpromising,” the
“hopeless,” etc. A readiness to brand as “hope less” proclaims
that, so far as the Legion is concerned, a priceless soul is free
to pursue unchecked its reckless course to hell. In addition, it
indicates that an unthinking desire for variety and signs of
progress tends to replace higher considerations as the motive
of the work. Then, unless the harvest springs up at the heels
of the sower, there is discouragement, and sooner or later the
work is abandoned.
Again, it is declared and insisted that the act of labelling any
one case as hopeless automatically weakens attitude towards
every other case. Consciously or unconsciously, approach to
all work will be in a spirit of doubt as to whether it is justifying
effort, and even a grain of doubt paralyses action.
And worst of all, faith would have ceased to play its due
part in Legion affairs, being allowed only a modest entrance
when deemed approvable to reason. With its faith so fettered
and its determina tion sapped, at once rush in the natural
timidities, the pettinesses, and the worldly prudence, which
had been kept at bay, and the Legion is found presenting a
casual or half-hearted service which forms a shameful offering
to heaven.