第11章 THE SHADOW OF DISAPPOINTMENT(5)

I may say, indeed, that to any man who is rightly exercised by it, disappointment always brings a better result.But this statement requires that I should say, likewise, that the result of disappointment depends upon the level and quality of a man's spirit."One thing happens alike to the wise man and the fool." But how different in texture and substance is the final result of the event! Disappointment breaks down a feeble and shallow man.There are those, again, whom it does not make better, -- in fact, whom nothing, as we can see, makes better.Everything glides easily off from them.Now, it is a noble thing to see a man rise above misfortune, - a moral Prometheus, submissive to the actual will of God, but defying fate.But there are men whose very elasticity indicates the superficiality of their nature.For it is good sometimes to be sad, -- good to have depth of being sufficient for misfortune to sink into, and, accomplish its proper work.But the man who rightly receives the lesson of disappointment, and improves by its discipline, bent as he is on some great or good work, is impelled by it only to a change of method, -- never to a change of purpose; and the disappointment effectually serves the purpose.But the fact before us is most clearly seen when we contemplate the results of disappointment upon a religious and un-religious spirit.A man is not made better by disappointment to whom this world is virtually everything;--to whom spiritual things are not realities.To him life is a narrow stream between jutting crags, and its substance flows away with the objects before his eyes.Nay, some men of this sort are made worse by the failure of earthly hopes, and their natures are compressed and hammered by misfortune into a sullen and granitic defiance.But he who sees beyond these material limits, looking to the great end and final relations of our being, always extracts from mortal disappointment a better result.In the wreck of external things he gathers that spiritual good which is the substance of all life; -- that faith, and patience, and holy love, which, when all that is mortal and incidental in our humanity passes away, constitute the residuum of personality.

Our hopes disappointed, --our plans thwarted and overthrown;but out of that disappointment a richer good evolving than we had conceived; something that tends more than all our effort to produce the real object of life.My friends, what do we make out of this fact? Why, surely this, that life is not our plan, but God's.Consider what we, often, would have made out of life, and compare this with what Providence has made out of it.Contrast the man's achievement with the boy's scheme; the dream of care with the moral glory that has sprung from toil and trouble.Contrast the idea of the Saviour in the minds of those disciples with the actual Saviour rising victorious from the conditions of shame and death.

Life is God's plan; not ours.We may find this out only by effort; but we do find it out.

We are responsible for the use of our materials, but the materials themselves, and the great movement of things, are furnished for us.Let us fall into no ascetic view of life.

Out of our joy and our acknowledged good the Supreme Disposer works his spiritual ends.But, especially, how often does he do this out of our trials, and sorrows, and so-called evils!

Once more I say life is God's plan; not ours.For often on the ruins of visionary hope rises the kingdom of our substantial possession and our true peace; and under the shadow of earthly disappointment, all unconsciously to ourselves, our Divine Redeemer is walking by our side.