THE WORD "IF."

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1327, 18 May 1872, Page 2

THE WORD "IF."

(from the queen.) As the smallest* causes oftentimes lead: to the most important results, so the potentialities of little- words- ai>e sometimes incalculable. Can there bo a. more insignificant, a more inglorious, a shabbier little word than Ift Two letters only, and.no variations.of. mood,, tense, or declension —no-root, even, of; respectable antiquity and doubtful origin, over which philosophers can. quarrel —just a mean, pert, absurd, littlobiliteral, which changes the whole- current of history and the action of every. man's life.

There are many of us who. pride ourselves on. an orderly and far-seeing kind; of life. We lay out our. plans and abide by them, working up to a point that we have distinctly set before us,. and for the attainment of which we bend all our energies. Yet not the most carefully-planned existence that can be named bin owes something, to. chance, and the changeful power of If. It lies at the root of all organisation ; is. itself the root from which springs up the goodly tree of accomplished facts.. There is not one human being that breathes the breath o c . heaven who does not every day pass along thai little word as across the bridge liner than, hair, which the souls of the Mussel men, faithful ti averse on their way to Paradise. Tf Csesar had remained within. doors on the Ides of March I if thebvdlet of that young assassin Blind had struck true, and Ton Bis mark had died at liisfeet? They were possibilities, that would have borne fruit in fact for centuries after —for all the world's, future history ; but they were possibilities that touched primarily the merelife of an individual. How many times, have men had cause to say, "If T had gone by that train, J should have been* in all probability killed ; " and " If that untrustworthy man, whose sloth ai.d want, of business faculty stv annoyed nxe,, had kept his word, I sli&uld ha-ve.

ffone out by that ship, and should have gone to the bottom with the rest." There was an If of this kind known to the writer of these lines, which is none the less striking because founded on very homely details. A certain bedroom bad been scoured out, and the day being wet it was not dry by night. The occupants, not liking to sleep in a damp room, moved into another. In the night a storm of wind arose; the stack of chimneys was blown down; they broke through the roof, and smashed to firewood the bed on which the couple would have been sleeping, if they had not had their room scoured out that day, and if, the day being wet, it had no!: remained damp up to bedtime. Here were two lives absolutely inclosed by an If. And not only their own lives, but the educ ation, and social htatus, and happiness of their six children. The six little rivulets that run aide by side with the parent streams would have been diverted into quite other channels, and through quite different lines of country; and all that i«, and all that will in the future spring from them and belong -o them, was atone time dependent on the chance whether a maid would take to-day in which to do a certain piece of domestic work or leave it till to-morrow. It was a grave If; and Heaven be thanked for the blindness with which it was met. Another If, as important in its way to all concerned, hang on the mere loan of a book. A book lent, an expression of the pleasure conveyed to the author, a letter of gratitude consequent; as a further consequence a meeting, an acquaintanee, a love affair, a marriage; and a lifelong sorrow ! All that hung upon the Tf: if doctor who lent the book had not brought it in his pocket that da} r ! In fact, the If incloses the whole theory of cause and effect, chances and results, which perplexes and governs human life. If is the embodiment of all action, and expresses in one small word the great mystery of fate and free will, pre-ordainment and chance, by which we are surrounded. If this had not been, then that would not have been; and so through all the consequences—consequences ever increasing, ramitica tions ever extending, dropping new roots like the Indian banian tree, in their turn to become the central stems ot future saplings. One grows bewildered and appalled when one thinks of all that depends on this little word ; and how it embraces, not only human action but human individuality a-* well, and with individuality an immortal soul and a life that will not die! And, turning to the side of religion, nothing is more strange than the history of the Ifs which have led men to sudden conversion and a change of life. The chance strolling into a church where a man, " going to scoff, remains to pray," has been struck by some word in the service that went right to his heart and conscience, and opened a new way to him for ever; the chance opening of the Bible where a text has, as it were, leaped out from the rest and met the want of the hour, and di\erted for ever the course of the life; the chance meeting with some belter man, of keener spiritual insight, of higher spiritual standing, who has made the daik things clear, and carried the wandering, weary soul straight to the long-sough I for haven; these are instances familiar to every reader of religious biography, and have occurred to most of us, in more or less important intensity, in our experience. But these solemn chances were only lis, v Inch, however, made the fork at which the two roads parted, the one leading to the right hand, the other to the left. But what if the chance was pre ordained 1 What if some unseen hand has led us steadily and gently to the unexpected fork, and has .set us to the east and the dawn 1 Some say that the world is ordered so, and that our Its are only ]fs to us, to higher powers fore-seen and fore-ordained decrees. Who can tell 1 Creatures of the dark as we are, humbly feeling our way towards the light, or more boldly walking in densest obscurity and calling it. mid-day, what do we know—what can we say ? Life may be all a fixed and settled plan, a puzzle to us, but definite and cleaily diawn as an algebraic equation to others : or it may be a mere lottery into which we plunge our hands,

ag it were, blindfold, knowing nothing of what we are to bring foith, and no one knowing better than ourselves—a mere jumble of blank* and prizes, of good things and bad, of which ihe sum is the only certainty, and the division to each a mere matter of If all through ? No one knows better than another, and the only duty lying before us is to seek, if haply we may tind, and utilise our Ifs to the best possible advantage.