'The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger.' They are taken as the type
of violent effort and struggle, as well as of supreme strength, but for
all their teeth and claws, and lithe spring, 'they lack, and suffer
hunger.' The suggestion is, that the men whose lives are one long fight
to appropriate to themselves more and more of outward good, are living a
kind of life that is fitter for beasts than for men. A fierce struggle
for material good is the true description of the sort of life that hosts
of us live. What is the meaning of all this cry that we hear about the
murderous competition going on round us? What is the true character of
the lives of, I am afraid, the majority of people in a city like
Manchester, but a fight and a struggle, a desire to have, and a failure
to obtain? Let us remember that that sort of existence is for the
brutes, and that there is a better way of getting what is good; the only
fit way for man. Beasts of prey, naturalists tell us, are always lean.
It is the graminivorous order that meekly and peacefully crop the
pastures that are well fed and in good condition--'which things are an
allegory.'
'The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger'--and that, being
interpreted, just states the fact to which every man's experience, and
the observation of every man that has an eye in his head, distinctly
say, 'Amen, it is so.' For there is no satisfaction or success ever to
be won by this way of fighting and struggling and scheming and springing
at the prey. For if we do not utterly fail, which is the lot of so many
of us, still partial success has little power of bringing perfect
satisfaction to a human spirit. One loss counterbalances any number of
gains. No matter how soft is the mattress, if there is one tiny thorn
sticking up through it all the softness goes for nothing. There is
always a Mordecai sitting at the gate when Haman goes prancing through
it on his white horse; and the presence of the unsympathetic and
stiff-backed Jew, sitting stolid at the gate, takes the gilt off the
gingerbread, and embitters the enjoyment. So men count up their
disappointments, and forget all their fulfilled hopes, count up their
losses and forget their gains. They think less of the thousands that
they have gained than of the half-crown that they were cheated of.
In every way it is true that the little annoyances, like a grain of dust
in the sensitive eye, take all the sweetness out of mere material good,
and I suppose that there are no more bitterly disappointed men in this
world than the perfectly 'successful men,' as the world counts them.
They have been disillusionised in the process of acquisition. When they
were young and lusted after earthly good things, these seemed to be all
that they needed. When they are old, and have them, they find that they
are feeding on ashes, and the grit breaks their teeth, and irritates
their tongues. The 'young lions do lack' even when their roar and their
spring 'have secured the prey,' and 'they suffer hunger' even when they
have fed full. Ay! for if the utmost possible measure of success were
granted us, in any department in which the way of getting the thing is
this fighting and effort, we should be as far away from being at rest as
ever we were.
You remember the old story of the _Arabian Nights_, about the wonderful
palace that was built by magic, and all whose windows were set in
precious stones, but there was one window that remained unadorned, and
that spoiled all for the owner. His palace was full of treasures, but an
enemy looked on all the wealth and suggested a previously unnoticed
defect by saying, 'You have not a roc's egg.' He had never thought about
getting a roc's egg, and did not know what it was. But the consciousness
of something lacking had been roused, and it marred his enjoyment of
what he had and drove him to set out on his travels to secure the
missing thing. There is always something lacking, for our desires grow
far faster than their satisfactions, and the more we have, the wider our
longing reaches out, so that as the wise old Book has it, 'He that
loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth
abundance with increase.' You cannot fill a soul with the whole
universe, if you do not put God in it. One of the greatest works of
fiction of modern times ends, or all but ends, with a sentence something
like this, 'Ah! who of us has what he wanted, or having it, is
satisfied?' 'The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger'--and the
struggle always fails--'but they that seek the Lord shall not want any
good thing.'