THE CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR. JULY, 1867. FIXED CONDITIONS, A PLEA FOR FAILURE. BY THE REV. MARK WILKS. Time and chance happeneth to them all.-Ecc. ix. 11. THIS little clause is an explanation of what goes before it, and of a good deal in human life, which without it would be very perplexing. We often hear the former part of this verse quoted without the latter. It is almost a religious proverb among us that "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." But, like most proverbs, it is true only with a reservation. As a rule, the swiftest runner wins the race; and, other things being equal, "Providence is on the side of big battalions." Certain means have been discovered to attain certain results: if these means are properly used the end sought will be attained. This is the teaching of experience, and on this rule we all act. If this is not the case, then are we the subjects of a capricious fate; an arbitrary judge tosses the garland to what competitor he chooses, and effort is as often fruitless as successful. The Hebrew preacher was not a fatalist, nor would he discourage wise work. He bids us labour, and labour with wisdom. He would have us choose the right means to accomplish right purposes; but he moderates our expectation of invariable success by the recollection that a wise man may lack bread and a man of understanding riches. He tells us that we must not think that in having discovered some of the means which tend to wise results we have discovered all; and he would have us know that those means which are at our disposal are always liable to be deranged or destroyed by the want of those over which we have no control. There are two things which man cannot command, time and chance. That is to say, there is a fitting time for every work, but he cannot always choose it, or if he could, he would most likely be too ignorant of what is the best time, and would therefore choose badly. Time is opportunity, and it is given, not made; and being given, it often slips away even from the most watchful. It is needful not only to know when the river will be at flood tide, but also to be ready for it, if we are to launch our ship. The limits of opportunity are very close together, but they seem wider than they are. The time for doing what we believe we can do seems always present, but it only seems, it is not really so. The time of our visitation passes, and comes not back. The importance of the right time for doing our work and accomplishing our wishes is seen in some of the common affairs of life, and, because it is known and is chosen, an additional means is placed at the disposal of the workman, and a more certain result is thereby attained. But this is not universally the case. The correspondence of periods in man's life to the seasons of nature is imaginary rather than real. The times that are fitting for various duties have not been discovered, and, when known, soon flee away. Chance is even less known than time; it covers a very world of its own. It is not within the scope of a man's powers to affect it. It is that which happens irregularly, unexpectedly, only once or occasionally. After it has happened it cannot be placed in order with other events, its causes cannot be determined. It is therefore that which cannot be foreseen by man, and cannot be provided for. It occurs without his cooperation, and is independent of his will; or, if it depends on his co-operation, it may still be a thing of chance, if it seems to him too trivial and unimportant to affect the result at which he aims. This is orten the case from our want of knowledge of the value and influence of what is common and contemned. We know so little of the seeds in which lie enfolded the issues of things. We These two, then, time and chance, influence all things and control all men. They are the limits that bound human action. Beyond them we cannot pass. Results are not wholly ours. This is the lesson that experience is ever teaching us. need to have had some years of life before we find this out to be true. The healthy man is an energetic, vigorous one: he forms his plans, he works on steadily to accomplish them. He orten succeeds, and when he fails he does not stay to notice failure, but goes on again. He acquires thus a self-reliant, self-dependent sense, and is apt to shut out the unseen and the incalculable from his thoughts, as though they were not. Mr. Froude says "If you see a man happy, as the world goescontented with himself and contented with what is around him --such a man may be, and probably is, decent and respectable; but the highest is not in him, and the highest will not come out of him." Such a man cannot be very or deeply religious. His confidence is too strong in himself; if he has faith, it is one which dwells at home. It never rises to an object higher or worthier than himself, and therefore does not purify and ennoble. There is very much that may be said on behalf of our failures where failure leads us out of ourselves and out of the present. Many a man is godless because he sees no necessity for God. He has always managed to succeed without Him in his temporal affairs. His business has flourished, his fortune has grown, his sons have risen to be wealthy men, and to imitate their father's activity; and he does not see how much of all this has been independent of his will, and of his skill and foresight. A few derangements of his plans, a breakdown in his health, or the failure of his banker, might have led him to see that "the way of man is not in himself." He would have gained something, though perhaps only a negative truth, by making that permanently The sense of dependence upon another, and that a higher power, is the elementary truth of all religion. True, by itself, it is as likely to be 'the source of misery as of hope; but connected with the trust which the soul reposes in the known wisdom and beneficence of its Maker, it is an element of a divine life. There is no religion in the mind that is without it; and anything-failure, penury, or sickness-that confers that upon us should be regarded as a benignant minister of good. his own. The We are all apt to grow conceited with our getting on. present age is certainly conceited. It has done so much, it thinks it can do everything. There is no necessity to recount here its achievements. They are well known, and have sufficiently often been "said or sung." Science is inflated, it is tyrannical. It occupies every throne, and invades every sphere. When it cannot rule it destroys, and denies that anything is that it cannot apprehend and measure. It seeks to abolish chance, and to conquer time. We think sometimes we shall grow independent of both, though now they happen to all. This surely is the dream of the present: it is not the lesson of the past. All things that have been preach to us humility; great things have been brought low; strong things have been made as tow, and often by the operation of that which the wise man could not foresee and the strong man could not control. The effect of failure is not necessarily beneficial. Like mental suffering and bodily pain, it is not good in itself. It may be a means of good. Where it arises from want of energy, prudence, and industry, it is the punishment of our sloth and folly, and is intended to awaken us from sluggishness. But even when failure results from causes of which we are ignorant, and from circumstances over which we have no control, the effects of it on the mind of him who has failed are very various. It sometimes unduly depresses the spirit, robs it of energy, by destroying hope, and leaves it a prey to melancholy repinings. This is usually the case where it does not lead up to God, and deepen the sense of His wise providence. It produces fear of the future, a dread of the unknown, and unduly exaggerates the influence exerted by the "time and chance" that happen to all. It is this feature of the case which renders chance and its concomitants so severe a test of character. Our Lord said it was "by chance" that the priest and the Levite went past the wounded man on the Jericho road. I forget who it was, who first suggested that the incident served to bring out the characters of all the persons connected with it, from the thieves to the Good Samaritan. It is, however, perfectly true, as it is very ingenious. The priest and the Levite might have passed to their dying day for very humane and benevolent men, but for the chance circumstance of their coming unexpectedly upon a wounded Jew. Indeed they might have thought themselves to be obedient sons of the law until they found themselves unequal to the demands of their situation. Many of us must have, unfortunately, had occasion to notice the same thing in the course of our lives. We have possibly seen men who, in prosperous circumstances, were distinguished for their piety and a certain nobleness of character, in calamity become disheartened, irritably impatient, and peevish grumblers; whimpering when they should strive, and complaining when they should submit. It is an almost sadder spectacle, that of a gentle and tender wife transformed into an irreligious and morose widow, angry with God for a dispensation that might have been the source of untold good to her, and neglecting, in the duties that fall to her, the surest means of acquiring the good that was designed. There is a passage in one of Mr. Helps' Essays which places an aspect of human life before us which could hardly have occurred to a man uniformly successful, or who had not very carefully observed the failures of others. The passage is as follows: Frequently it seems as if the faculties of man were not quite adequate, as yet, to his situation. This is perhaps more to be seen in contemplating individuals than in looking at mankind in general. The individual seems the sport of circumstance. When Napoleon invaded Russia (the proximate cause of his downfall), though doubtless there were very adverse and unfortunate circumstances attendant upon that invasion, yet, upon the whole, it gave a good opportunity for working out the errors of the man's mind and system. The circumstances were not Most prosperous men unfair, as we may say, against him. perhaps I should say most men-have, in the course of their lives, their campaign in Russia-when they strain their fortune to the uttermost, and often it breaks under them. I did not mean anything like this when I said that the individual seems the sport of circumstances. Neither did I mean that small continuous faults and misdoings have considerable effect upon a man-such as the errors and vices of youth, which are silently put down to a man from day to day, like his reckoning at an inn. But I alluded to those very unfortunate concurrences of circumstances, which most men's lives will tell them of, where a man, from some small error or omission, from some light carelessness or over-trust, in thoughtless innocence or inexperience, gets entangled in a web of adverse circumstances, which will be company for him on sleepless nights and anxious days throughout a large part of his life. Were success in life (morally or physically) the main object here, it certainly would seem as if a little more faculty in man were sadly needed. A similar thing occurs often to the body, when a man, from some small mischance or oversight, lays the beginning of a disease which shall depress and enfeeble him while he sojourns upon earth. And it seems, when he looks back, as if such a little thing could have saved him if he had not crossed the road, if he had not gone to see his friend on that particular day; if the dark had not been so unpleasant on that occasion, the whole course of his life would have been different. Living, as we do, in the midst of stern, gigantic laws which crush everything down that comes in their way, which know no excuses, admit of no small errors, never send a man back to learn his lesson and try him again, but are as inexorable as Fate-living, I say, with such powers about us (unseen, too, for the most part), it does seem as if the faculties of man were hardly as yet adequate to his situation here." So much depends on the meaning of the word success, that it might be rash to deny the truth of one statement in the above. But, assuredly, if "success in life (morally)" be taken as equivalent to the eternal life which Christ came to confer on those that believe in Him, then it is the main object here; and for this our faculties are adequate. Within the soul a faculty abides, That with interpositions, which would hide This faculty, which was imagination to Wordsworth, is faith to |