XIII

CIRCUMSTANCE AND CHARACTER

Two things have I asked of Thee: deny me them not before I die. Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches : feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full, and deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor, and steal, and use profanely the name of my God.-PROV. xxx. 7−9.

And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to His purpose.-ROM. viii. 28.

We are often perplexed as to the relation of circumstances to character. Sometimes they seem favourable to it, at other times they appear inimical, whilst again the influence of certain situations and events appears altogether ambiguous or negligible. Agur prays that so long as he lives he may be favoured with such a lot as will best preserve him from vanity and falsehood; that this may be so, he deprecates both wealth and poverty, and by implication solicits an intermediate appointment and career. On the contrary, St. Paul teaches that all circumstances and events, entirely irrespective of their character, work together for the highest good of the godly.

To form a true view of the chances and changes of life which so often puzzle and dishearten, let us consider: I. The Peril of the Extreme.

1. The peril of riches is recognized. 'Lest I be full and deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord?' Agur perceives the tendency of affluence to breed a spirit of self-sufficiency, so that we no longer feel our dependence upon God, but deny Him. Revelation everywhere warns us against this fatal tendency, and we too often have occasion to observe how much reason there is for the warning. One of our travellers tells of a peculiar experience that happened to him as he voyaged on the coast of South America. Whilst his ship lay at anchor it became lily-bound. The growth of vegetation in that climate is of course very rapid, and during a few calm days the vessel became the centre of a great floating island of beautiful lilies. But the beauty was soon forgotten in the danger. They accumulated so quickly that the chains became entangled, and, yielding to the flow of the tide, the flowery mass caused the vessel to drag her anchor and to drift in a wrong direction. Eventually the crew had a long and tedious task with cutlasses and hatchets to release their barque from the imprisoning flowers -a picture of the embarrassing effect of eminent success. How often has an accumulation of the gay

and golden flowers of opulence and pleasure accounted for the fatal drifting of noble lives!

2. The peril of poverty alarms Agur. 'Lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.' The blighting action of straitened circumstance on the intellectual life is recorded on numerous pages of sad biography. Some flowers never open, and in every generation men are born gifted with potential powers they can never express, because stultified by chronic adversity. In modern times Dr. Johnson saw the fatal force of grinding poverty. When left destitute by the death of his father, he writes in his diary: 'I now therefore see that I must make my own fortune. Meanwhile let me take care that the powers of my mind may not be debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any criminal act.' The modern Solomon, as well as the historic one, saw the peril of extreme need, alike to the intellectual and moral life. We spoke just now of a vessel being endangered in a land of sunshine by a wealth of gorgeous flowers, but we are more familiar with the perils of ships imprisoned in the polar world, ice-bound, not lily-bound. Crushed in a vice of infinite frost, snowed under, darkened in a long eclipse, in jeopardy every hour, the devoted barque makes one of the most pathetic tragedies of the world. Yet is it a picture of the condition of the

victims of stern circumstance. Their position threatens the best that is in them, seems to forbid all the great things of which they are capable. So Balzac writes: 'Where poverty is absolute there exist no such things as shame or crime, or virtue, or intelligence.'

Here, then, is the dilemma. Looking in one direction we are warned against success, opulence, luxury, as fraught with moral and spiritual danger; whilst in the opposite direction invidious circumstance threatens consequences not less disastrous. It is a familiar saying that 'extremes meet'; they do so here, the two extremes of human fortune meeting in sceptical thought, blasphemous speech, immoral conduct. Is there, then, a path of safety, one that will avoid the ominous extreme? Yes, there is a temperate zone, a middle station, a modest lot, an uneventful history, a golden mean. Surely the wise and pious will cry to heaven with Agur,' Give me neither triumph nor tragedy, neither purple nor sackcloth, neither velvet nor rags, neither the tropical glory nor the arctic night ; let me neither feast with Dives nor starve with Lazarus, give me just necessary things and food convenient for me, and I am content.' This seems a just conclusion, an enlightened prayer, and yet in reality it is neither. There is a solution infinitely wiser and

better.

II. The Fallacy of the Medium. In choosing the golden mean, as we are pleased to describe the middle station, we conclude that we have chosen the better part. We have no ambition for marble halls, we recoil from the dosshouse; we pray just for a cottage between the two, and in sight of neither. It must be confessed that as a rule we are rather particular about that cottage. We should like it to be a nice one, not too small, in a pleasant neighbourhood, with a south aspect, and a bit of garden with a few climbing roses. Still a modest cottage. We approve the golden mean, although with a lingering regret that it is not a bit more golden.

Now what does all this signify?

In plain words it is a prayer for a comfortable career, for a life of the least strain, vicissitude, temptation, or suffering, for one as easy, pleasant, and safe as such a world as this will permit. There is no golden mean, no such life as this phrase suggests. We may get the ideal cottage, but it is not exempt from any of the tribulations common to men, and they are felt as keenly there as in any other situation. The difficulties of a middle path differ in aspect from those encountered on the polished pavement of the great, or on the flinty road of the pauper, but they are every whit as real and as formidable as either. All the discontents of life arise