SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 November 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

'‘VIVAS TO THOSE WHO HAVE FAILED.” “These all died in faith, not having received the promises.” —Heb., XL, 13. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) All the world applauds success, though few stop to define it. If a man be valiant and overcome, he will not lack voices to hymn his praise or hands to twine laurels for his brow. When a man has amassed a fortune, won influence, and gained, distinction, there is no lack of friends to publish his fame in hope of sharing it. Countless volumes have been written to tell the story of victories on sea and land. Crowds throng the temple of “the Goddess Getting On, ’ and they make the wilkin ring with the shout. “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” But who will tell the more heroic story of those who have failed. Who will sing the praises of those who went down in the battle wounded and whelmed. When the fight is ended, and the victors come out of the smoke and the carnage to be greeted with ringing cheers, who will raise a cheer for the men who fell, on the eve of victory? Yet were the fallen one whit less brave than those who came out of the hurly-burly without a scratch? Nay, they may have been the bravest of the brave. When buildings strong and high are erected, the foundations must be deep and’‘broad, and there will be a good deal of costly stuff buried out of sight. These foundation stones are invisible to the eyes of men. but without them there could be no majestic pile greeting the bending skies and doing the service of the world.

THE FOUNDATIONS. So it is with many obscure lives that are written down a failure: they have been built into the foundations of the temples of fame, and without them thjese temples had never been reared. Many an inventor has toiled and treifibled on the verge of some great discovery, yet died in the wilderness of poverty and neglect, died of a broken heart and a hewildered brain. Then some other man arose who, profiting by the experience and experiments of his fellow, carried the project to -success, and lo! two continents ring with his far-sounding name!” "Other men labored, and ye have entered into their labors.” In the State of Arizona there is a remarkable natural bridge, spanning a canyon fifty feet wide. The bridge is composed of a groat agatised tree. Scientists say that In the long ago the tree was felled by some terrific storm and hurled across the gorge; then, under the influence of time and weather, the forest giant passed through various -tages of mineralisation until it came to be a trunk of solid agate. The tree seemed a failure where it fell, and yet it has provided a means of passage for countless feet for centuries. In some such way the fallen and failed in the forests, where the trees are men, supply a bridge over which others pass to successes and honors. WALKING THE WAY OF LIFE. We daily walk the ways of life', built out of the toils and tears and sacrifices of others. Not a comfort we enjoy, not a freedom we boast, not a hope we cherish, not a tool we use, but is ours because of the labors of mon who "died in faith, not having received the promise.” “All honor to him who wins the prize, The world has cried for a hundred years, But to him who tries, and fails, and dies, I give great honor and glory and tears.” So, then, with Walt Whitman, let us sing: “Vivas to those who have failed I” The world could have joggod along without the men who have -succeeded, but it would have gone desperately hard with us had it not been for those who 'ailed. Defeat was the precursor of victory. Mistakes and misdirection prepare the way for solid progress. “Vivas to those who have failed!” Let none insult their memory. Our present is built out of their past, and our future will be a prize recoiv d from their shadowy hand. They passed away like Moses on some lonely Nebo, "and no man knoweth the place of their sepulchre unto this day,' but they helped others to roach the Promised Land of fuller knowledge. fairer hopes and more fruitful service. They went down in the dark waters of defeat, but thoir brave souls shine like friendly beacons through the storms of history, and future generations steer their craft, in safer channels and across more prosperous seas. Hail to the ba Hied and beaten I Honor to the mon who, seeing the invisible, endured the “stings and arrows of misfortune!” Praise to the elect souls who remained true to high ideals of life and duty while others worshipped gods of

clay! Glory to the men who were mocked and traduced and beaten, yet“stood like iron pillars, strong and steadfast as a wall of brass.” AN EPIC OF FAILURE. This is the heroic strain of our text. It is an epic of failure, a poem in praise of the men who failed! Other poets have sung the conquests of their heroes who won, but it Was reserved for this prophet of the New Faith to chant an ode in honor of the defeated and scattered in. the wars of truth. This Eleventh Chapter of the Hebrews has been called the picture gallery of faith’s heroes. These patriots and martyrs won for us the first battles of liberty and religion. They wove the first threads in the flag of freedom and made it the banner of the morning, having died it crimson in their heart’s blood. They made nobleness epidemic. They were men of oak and rock. And this is the Bible w-ay. For this Book is the literary expression of a religion that glorifies the base and weak things of the world, exalts the humble, and blesses such as have been made a laughing stock to a blind and carnal age! Christianity is a religion whose beatitudes have been reserved for the

“meek,” the “poor in spirit,” “the hungry, and “the persecuted.” This it is that gives the Bible such unchallenged supremacy in a world where many have failed and all have sinned. V here, outside this volume, will you find such comfort for the weary, such inspiration for the hope-blighted and the heartbroken victims of lifes illusions? I say, then, this chapter is the epic of a failure. Its voice comes rolling across the centuries, telling the deeds of the faithful. "These all died, not having

received th© promise.” They -were disappointed and cheated of the lower and the temporary, but they received the higher and eternal fulfilment of ail they ever desired or dreamed. DID THEY FAIL? (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses, these men set out to conquer kingdoms and possess new lands, under the seal of God, and ended their -stormy career as aliens and vagabonds on the earth, with scarcely land enough in which to dig a grave! “Failed,” says the world. Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David and Samuel—these are the men who toiled and sweat great drops of blood to establish a kingdom of righteousness, and lo! at the end they saw a kingdom rent by faction and stained in all its pages by blood .and sin! “Failed,” says the world. Following these came “a great cloud of witnesses” who stood for God and right against a rabble host of timeservers, and these brave souls passed away leaving wrong triumphant, and God's Holy Name blasphemed I These all died. Died and failed! But did they fail? "Yea,” say the thoughtless. "Nay.” -said God. and “Nay” cry all the Holy Angels. The writer of this great letter erects an “Arc de Triom-phe” to their blessed memory with sculptured panel scenes such as these: “Subdued kingdoms,” “Stopped the mouths of lions,” “Quenched the violence of fire,” “Out of weakness made strong.” FAILURE AND SUCCESS. And in the light of these records it seems sun-dear that we need to revise our estimate of success and failure. I am not here to apologise for cowardice, and sloth, and wooden incapacity. Some men fail because they are sluggards; some because they waste time and energy on aims that are poor and paltry and perishing. Let all such know that not failure, but low aim, is crime. WHY DTD HE FAIL. But I speak in defence of a totally different class, and I say, before you condemn any man hr a “failure.” you should ask the question: “Why did he fail?” Were the conditions of success present or absent ? Had ho a. vision, some haunting dream, some far-shining goal ?” Consider, too, sqme of the Divine defeats of history. Socrates, with the hemlock cup, a failure! Dante, exiled from his loved Italy, a failure! Greatest of all. Jesus on the rood a failure! He who was greatest and noblest of our race came nearest the verge of absolute and awful disaster! Oh! the best men of our race have lived lives of suffering and want and died in sorrow and neglect. Statesmen hustled out of office by a recreant and besotted people to die alone amid the shattered fragments of a. just though defeated policy. Honest tradesmen, who died in honorable bankrupcty rather than batten on the miseries of the poor. Incorruptible paupers, who might have exchanged the poorhouse for a -palace could they only have smiled and been villains at heart. Preachers who elected to he “a voice crying in the wilderness’’ rather than speak to men’s passions and prejudices. Great souls who dared great things for God. and failed. “Vivas to those who have failed!”

BETTER FAIL. Am T speaking to one who has the crippling consciousness of having failed? Well, why have you failed? Is it that your aim was high. If so. I bid you be of good cheer. Better fail in a great cause than succeed in a. cause that is mean. When the courtly Sir Walter Raliegh -passed through the palace of Queen Bess he engraved with his diaemond on the window-pane: “Fain would I climb but that I fear to aIL” The haughty Queen saw the writing, and added this: “If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all.” Courtier and Queen were wrong. Better fall than fail to climb. Better bo a fanatic in some i good cause than to vegetate in moral indifference. Better brave the scorn and derision of your own age than be the sorrow and the lament of the age that is coining on. Better, like Saint Paul, "a fool for Christ’s sake” than Mr. Worldly Wiseman amid the smug complacency of modern society. “And for success I ask no more than this, To boar unflinching witness to the truth. All true men succeed: for what is worth Success’ name, unless it be the thought, The inward surety to have carried out A noble purpose to a noble end, 1 Although it be the gallows or the block ? ’Tis only falsehood that doth ever need These outward shows of gain to bolster her.” i Every sincere Christian knows the meaning of failure. "The life that is life indeed ’ begins in a sense of helplessness, which drives the soul to Christ for i deliverance. When we see nothing between us and Spiritual ruin, the message of the Christian Gospel is welcomed as a message of hope. In the sense of helplessness we die to self and find life in losing it. “How near the Chrysilis seems to come to the dust of death, and yet it is just there the sylph awakes I” The shining saint is born of the consciously lost sinner. The brink of failure become the starting point of heaven. God will make perfect our imperfect lives.