Once upon a time Jeremiah the prophet had asked for only one thing, that
he might get away from that strange cityful of perverse men to whom it
was his hard lot to be the mouthpiece of a God they were forgetting. He
was tired of them. "O that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of
wayfaring men that I might leave my people and go from them."
Well, time passed on. The people got no wiser, and Jeremiah's burden
certainly got no lighter. But the very chance he prayed for came. He
had a clear and honourable opportunity to go to the lodge in the
wilderness, or anywhere else he liked, away from the men who had
disowned his teaching. His work was done apparently, and he had failed.
Yet with the door standing invitingly open, see what Jeremiah did! He
"went and dwelt among the people that were left in the land." He had his
chance and he did not take it!
We all know something of this desire to get rid of a present hard duty,
or a difficult environment, or a perplexing problem. And yet I wonder,
if the way were similarly opened up for us, how many would seize the
opportunity? I believe that the feature of such a situation would just
be the large number of us who, when it came to the pinch, would choose
as Jeremiah did, to remain where we are! Something would hold us back.
Yet the desire itself is natural enough, and a man need neither be a
coward nor a weakling who confesses to it. The hours when the daily
round seems altogether flat and unprofitable, and when one would gladly
change places with almost anybody, are real hours in life, and it is no
shame to have known them. But between that knowledge and the actual
escape, the actual fleeing from one's post, there is a great gulf fixed
that, for very many with any high ideal of duty, is impassable. For,
though a man has known the state of mind that looks for some back door
out of a depressing situation, he has had the other experience also, the
joy of self-mastery, the keen sense of pleasure that comes to him when
he discovers that his surroundings do not count for so much as he
himself does. That experience, though it be only in memory, will stand
between a man and retreat. He has conquered before, and the thrill of
victory over material discouragements may be his again. And so, though
the way of escape be open, he will choose to remain and fight it out.
Sometimes the mere weight of his responsibility may tempt a man to wish
that he might escape. There is a fairly well-known symptom of nervous
disease whose name signifies the fear of being shut in, when the patient
dreads the experience of being in any closed place. Sometimes a moral
panic of that kind comes to a man when he realises that he is shut in
with some duty which must be gone through with. With something of the
instinct of the trapped animal he may look round for a way of escape.
Yet does that mean that he would take the chance deliberately, with eyes
full open to the consequences, if it were offered? I think not.
You can apply the test to yourself. Have you ever accepted some
responsibility, and then, when the occasion came nearer, backed out of
it for no other reason than that you were afraid? If you have, you will
perhaps remember whether you felt proud of yourself, whether, beneath
the undoubted relief, there was not a good deal of quiet shame and
self-scorn. If the same thing were to happen again, you might feel the
impulse to desert, but if you remembered your former experience, you
would hardly yield to it, I imagine.
The plain truth is that no proper man really likes a soft job. "In the
long run," says J. A. Symonds, "we really love the sternest things in
life best." And he speaks truth. There is a certain exhilaration in
the endurance of hardness. Responsibility braces most men like a shock
of cold water. What is arduous calls them as with a trumpet. And in
the general sense of quiet contempt for the person who in a panic flings
up his responsibility, we may recognise one of God's elementary checks
upon cowardice.
There are those who are reading these words who are enduring hardness
and making sacrifices from which they might easily escape. They do at
times desire relief. But the point is that they don't take it, when it
is possible. And I say there must be some reason for this. What is it
that holds men back from the easy way when it stands open before them?
For one thing, I think, the sense of the place that hardness and effort
and endurance play in every true life. For centuries men have climbed
up to strength of character, if at all, by ways uniformly arduous and
steep; and distrust of the primrose path, however alluring, has passed
as an instinct into our blood. In the small unheroic affairs of life we
have learned that a difficulty faced and overcome, or a duty doggedly
fulfilled, add a precious something to experience that there is no other
way of securing. The schoolboy on a hot summer day may look up from his
task, away out wistfully to the cool shade of the trees across the
playground, and wish that he were there, rather than where he is. Yet
even he knows, what we all come to learn, that that is not the road to
anything in life worth the gaining.
Another deterring impulse is the sense of a divine vocation. Our
calling and circumstances are ordained for us by God, and we must not
quit the field till the day is done. It is He who has chosen our lot in
life and summoned us to the sphere we fill.
We may succeed or fail as seems to Him best. Sometimes he places men,
for reasons of His own, in corners where success, as commonly measured,
is not possible. But one thing--success or failure--we must not do. We
must not shirk. We must not run away. God means us to stand fast and
do our best. For failure even, if it be honourable, He may have His
good word at the last. But to the man who has shirked life's hard
duties, not even God can say, "Well done!"