CHAPTER IX.
The Secret of Strength.
Who was the strongest person who ever lived?
Surely there is no difficulty in answering that question, surely there has never been anyone to compare with Samson in wonderful feats of strength! Did he not alone and unaided rend a young lion in two, as easily as if it had been a kid?
Did he not lift the massive iron gates of Gaza from their hinges, carry them on his back for forty miles, and climb with them to the top of a high hill?
Did he not overthrow an enormous building by simply leaning on the huge stone pillars that held it up?
We see trials of strength and feats of strength nowadays, we may have seen a man who could with one blow of the sword cut a sheep in two, we may have seen another who, by the mere power of his fist, could snap an iron chain, yet what modern Samson, strong and powerful and mighty above his fellows though he may be, can equal or rival the old Samson of Bible story.
Yet after all are we right in calling Samson the strongest man?
It all depends upon the kind of strength of which we are speaking.

If we mean bodily strength, mere physical force, then undoubtedly Samson was the strongest man.
But is bodily strength the only kind of force or power a man can possess?
Is it the chief kind of strength?
What is one name that we give to physical power; do we not call it _brute force_?
Why do we call it this?
Because it is force which we have in common with the brutes, nay, it is strength in which the brutes can surpass us.

Take the strongest man who ever lived, give him the most powerful limbs, the strongest back, the greatest strength of muscle, what is that man compared with an elephant?
The mighty elephant has more power in one limb than the man has in his whole body.

Bodily strength is then, after all, a kind of strength that is worth comparatively little, and of which we have small cause to boast, for even an animal can easily surpass us in it.
A stronger man than Samson, where shall we find him?
Come to the Senate House in Cambridge, look at that man hard at work on the examination papers.

Look at him well, for you will see that man's name at the head of the list when it comes out.