That is a threadbare metaphor for life. But threadbare as it is, its
significance is inexhaustible. But before I deal with it, note that very
significant 'but' with which my text begins. The Prophet has been asking
for a little more light to shine on the dark unknown that stretches
before him. And his request is negatived--'_But_ go thou thy way.' In
the connection that means, 'Do not waste your time in dreaming about, or
peering into, what you can never see, but fill the present with
strenuous service.' 'Go thou thy way.' Never mind the far-off issues;
the step before you is clear, and that is all that concerns you. Plod
along the path, and leave to-morrow to take care of itself. There is a
piece of plain practical wisdom, none the less necessary for us to lay
to heart because it is so obvious and commonplace.
And then, if we turn to the emblem with which the continuity of daily
life and daily work is set forth here, as the path along which we
travel, how much wells up in the shape of suggestion, familiar, it may
be, but very needful and wholesome for us all to lay to heart!
The figure implies perpetual change. The landscape glides past us, and
we travel on through it. How impossible it would be for us older people
to go back to the feelings, to the beliefs, to the tone and the temper
with which we used to look at life thirty or forty years ago! Strangely
and solemnly, like the silent motion of some gliding scene in a theatre,
bit by bit, inch by inch, change comes over all surroundings, and,
saddest of all, in some aspects, over ourselves.
'We all are changed, by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul.'
And it is foolish for us ever to forget that we live in a state of
things in which constant alteration is the law, as surely as, when the
train whizzes through the country, the same landscape never meets the
eye twice, as the traveller looks through the windows. Let us, then,
accept the fact that nothing abides with us, and so not be bewildered
nor swept away from our moorings, nor led to vain regrets and paralysing
retrospects when the changes that must come do come, sometimes slowly
and imperceptibly, sometimes with stunning suddenness, like a bolt out
of the blue. If life is truly represented under the figure of a journey,
nothing is more certain than that we sleep in a fresh hospice every
night, and leave behind us every day scenes that we shall never traverse
again. What madness, then, to be putting out eager and desperate hands
to clutch what must be left, and so to contradict the very law under
which we live!
Then another of the well-worn commonplaces which are so believed by us
all that we never think about them, and therefore need to be urged, as I
am trying, poorly enough, to do now--another of the commonplaces that
spring from this image is that life is continuous. Geologists used to be
divided into two schools, one of whom explained everything by invoking
great convulsions, the other by appealing to the uniform action of laws.
There are no convulsions in life. To-morrow is the child of to-day, and
yesterday was the father of this day. What we are, springs from what we
have been, and settles what we shall be. The road leads somewhither, and
we follow it step by step. As the old nursery rhyme has it--
'One foot up and one foot down,
That's the way to London town.'
We make our characters by the continual repetition of small actions. Let
no man think of his life as if it were a heap of unconnected points. It
is a chain of links that are forged together inseparably. Let no man
say, 'I do this thing, and there shall be no evil consequences impressed
upon my life as results of it.' It cannot be. 'To-morrow _shall be_ as
this day, and much more abundant.' We shall to-morrow be more of
everything that we are to-day, unless by some strong effort of
repentance and change we break the fatal continuity, and make a new
beginning by God's grace. But let us lay to heart this, as a very solemn
truth which lifts up into mystical and unspeakable importance the things
that men idly call trifles, that life is one continuous whole, a march
towards a definite end.
And therefore we ought to see to it that the direction in which our life
runs is one that conscience and God can approve. And, since the rapidity
with which a body falls increases as it falls, the more needful that we
give the right direction and impulses to the life. It will be a dreadful
thing if our downward course acquires strength as it travels, and being
slow at first, gains in celerity, and accrues to itself mass and weight,
like an avalanche started from an Alpine summit, which is but one or two
bits of snow and ice at first, and falls at last into the ravine, tons
of white destruction. The lives of many of us are like it.
Further, the metaphor suggests that no life takes its fitting course
unless there is continuous effort. There will be crises when we have to
run with panting breath and strained muscles. There will be long
stretches of level commonplace where speed is not needed, but 'pegging
away' is, and the one duty is persistent continuousness in a course. But
whether the task of the moment is to 'run and not be weary,' or to
'walk and not faint,' crises and commonplace stretches of land alike
require continuous effort, if we are to 'run with patience the race that
is set before us.'
Mark the emphasis of my text, 'Go thy way _till_ the end.' You, my
contemporaries, you older men! do not fancy that in the deepest aspect
any life has ever a period in it in which a man may 'take it easy.' You
may do that in regard to outward things, and it is the hope and the
reward of faithfulness in youth and middle age that, when the grey
hairs come to be upon us, we may slack off a little in regard to outward
activity. But in regard to all the deepest things of life, no man may
ever lessen his diligence until he has attained the goal.
Some of you will remember how, in a stormy October night, many years
ago, the _Royal Charter_ went down when three hours from Liverpool, and
the passengers had met in the saloon and voted a testimonial to the
captain because he had brought them across the ocean in safety. Until
the anchor is down and we are inside the harbour, we may be shipwrecked,
if we are careless in our navigation. 'Go thou thy way _until the end_.'
And remember, you older people, that until that end is reached you have
to use all your power, and to labour as earnestly, and guard yourself as
carefully, as at any period before.
And not only '_till_ the end,' but 'go thou thy way _to_ the end.' That
is to say, let the thought that the road has a termination be ever
present with us all. Now, there is a great deal of the so-called devout
contemplation of death which is anything but wholesome. People were
never meant to be always looking forward to that close. Men may think of
'the end' in a hundred different connections. One man may say, 'Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' Another man may say, 'I have only
a little while to master this science, to make a name for myself, to win
wealth. Let me bend all my efforts in a fierce determination--made the
fiercer because of the thought of the brevity of life--to win the end.'
The mere contemplation of the shortness of our days may be an ally of
immorality, of selfishness, of meanness, of earthly ambitions, or it may
lay a cooling hand on fevered brows, and lessen the pulsations of hearts
that throb for earth.
But whilst it is not wholesome to be always thinking of death, it is
more unwholesome still never to let the contemplation of that end come
into our calculations of the future, and to shape our lives in an
obstinate blindness to what is the one certain fact which rises up
through the whirling mists of the unknown future, like some black cliff
from the clouds that wreath around it. Is it not strange that the surest
thing is the thing that we forget most of all? It sometimes seems to me
as if the sky rained down opiates upon people, as if all mankind were in
a conspiracy of lunacy, because they, with one accord, ignore the most
prominent and forget the only certain fact about their future; and in
all their calculations do _not_' so number their days' as to 'apply'
their 'hearts unto wisdom.' 'Go thou thy way until the end,' and let thy
way be marked out with a constant eye towards the end.