Psalms 75:6-7

God is the judge: He putteth down one, and setteth up another.

Getting on

It is not a trivial question, whether your life, my young friend, is to be a failure or a success. Everybody is going on. We are all getting through our little span of daylight. But some people are not only going on, they are getting on. Each vocation has its rising men. How is it that men get on? It is a very simple and primary notion, capable of reception only by the most unsophisticated mind, that the most deserving always get on best. Whatever be the law, it is not that. To gain any advantage or eminence, a man must have a certain amount of merit. I am obliged to say, as the result of all my observations of the way in which human beings get on, that they get on mainly by chance or luck, in a fashion that looks fortuitous. There must be merit in walks where men have to make their own way; but that a man may get on, he must be seconded by good luck. We know, of course, that there is a Higher Hand, and we humbly recognize that. I believe that these words of the psalmist give us the entire philosophy of getting on. It is a matter of God’s sovereignty; and God’s sovereignty, as it affects human beings, we speak of as their good or ill luck. Of course, there is really no chance in the matter. Everything is rightly arranged and governed. Still, nothing can be more certain than the fact that there are men who are what we call lucky, and other men who are unlucky. The unlucky, perhaps, need it all; and the lucky can stand it all; but there is the fact. And we know that there are blessed compensations, which may make the crook in the lot a true blessing. Life is a lottery. No doubt, there is no real chance in life; but then there is no real chance in any lottery. Honest industry and perseverance, also resolute selfishness, meanness, toadyism, and unscrupulousness, tend to various forms of worldly success. But you can draw no assurance from these general principles, as to what either may do for yourself. My text is not the resort of soured disappointment: it is the confession of humbled and shamed success. The worthier way of getting on is, when a man, by his doings and character, makes a position important, which in other hands would not be so. In treatises on the arts of self-advancement and self-help, there is a fallacy at the foundation of all their instructions. They all say, “Do so and so, and you will get on.” But they all fail to allow for chance or Providence. Let us always keep it in our remembrance that there is something far better than any amount of worldly success, which may come of worldly failure. A wise and good man in this world will not set his heart on getting on, and will not push very much to get on. He will do his best, and humbly take, with thankfulness, what the Hand above sends him. It is not worth while to push. “Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not.” It is not worth while. Let us trust in God, and do right, and we shall get on as much as He thinks good for us. (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.)