The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1913-03-23
Facing Lies Mistakes

\ Interesting Paper Read by
Zarephath Consistory Of S
| port, Iowa, March 20, 191,
There are only two classes OF PEG
lple who never make mistakes-they
are the dead and the unborn. Mistakes
are the inevitable accompaniment OF
the greatest gift given to man in.
dividual freedom of action. If he was
only pawn in the fingers of Omnipot-
ence, with no self moving power, man
would never make mistake but would
be degraded to the ranks of the lower
animals and plants. An oyster never
makes mistake--it has not the mind
Let us be glad of the privilege of
making mistakes. glad of the wisdom
that permits us to realize them,
glad of the power that enables us to
turn their light as glow of illumina-
ton along the pathway of our future.
Mistakes are the growing pains OF
wisdom, the assessments we pay on
our stock of experience, the raw ma
terial of error we can transform into
higher living. Without them there
would be no growth, no progress, no
conquest. Mistakes are the knots, the
tangles, the broken threads, the drop
ped stitches, in the web of our living.
They are the misdeals in Judgment.
the unwise investments in morals, the
profit and loss account of wisdom,
the misleading bypaths from the
straight road of truth-and truth is
but the accuracy of the soul. Human
fallibility, weakness, pettiness, folly,
and sin are all mistakes. They are to
be accepted as mortgages of error to
be redeemed by wiser living, never
weakly taken as justifying bankruptcy
of effort. Even a great mistake is
only an episode, never a whole life.
The Purpose OF Life.
Life is simply time given TO man
to learn how to live. Mistakes are
always part of learning. The real
dignity of life consists in cultivating
fine attitude toward our own mis-
takes and those of others Man be-
comes great, not through never max
ing them, but by profiting by those he
does make: by being satisfied with a
single rendition of an unwise act, not
encoring it into continuous per-
formance; by getting from it the
honey of new, regenerating inspira-
ton, with no irritating sting of use
less regret: by building glorious to-
DAY on the ruins of his yesterday; and
by rising with renewed strength, finer
purpose, and freshened courage every
time he falls.
II we have made an error, done a
wrong, been unjust to another or to
ourselves. passed by. like the Pharisee
some opportunity for good, we should
have the courage to look chr mistake
squarely in the eye and to acknowl
edge it frankly with no flimsy ai.bis
of excuse to protect an anemic self
esteem. If we have wronged. we
should right. If we have hurt, we
should heal: if We have taken unjust
ly, we should restore. if we have been
Unfair we should become just Regret
without regeneration is an emotional
gold brick. Every possible reparation
should be made: If confession of re
gret and inability to atone be the ut
most we can do, let us at least dc
that. If it be impossible tc repay to
A, the individual we have wronged
because death has closed the doors
of atonement forever against us. let
us make the rest of the alphabet lega-
tees of the love, thougbtfulness. help,
kindness, and Justice we owed to A.
paying to humanity our debt to one
human being. Those who waken
months Or years later to the realiza-
Ition of wrong sometimes feel it is
better to let confession or reparation
lapse, that it is too late to reopen a
closed account: but men rarely feel
wounded if asked to accept payment
on an old promissory note outlawed
for years.
Some people like to wander in the
cemetery of their past errors, to re-
read the epitaphs, and to spend hours
in mourning over the grave OF a
wrong. This is a new mistake that
does not antidote its predecessor. The
remorse that paralyzes hope, corrodes
lsurnnGa and doadaps aDarov 10 nrIy
a sort of indigestion of the soul which
cannot assimilate an act. 1t is COW
ardly, selfish surrender to the domil-
Isnce of the past. 1t does no coed to
the injured, to the individual, to 9th
ers, or to the world. If the past Is
unworthy. live it down; if worthy,
live up to 1t and surpass it. We can
not change the past; but, transformed
into new purpose. we can compel that