Year: 1868




point from which to do better in the future.
But 1t also happens that men who indulge this
tendency to lament what has been done, and
cannot be changed, lose heart for the game Of
life, lose confidence, and go diSpiritedly down
to the grave. One can very easily understand
the regrets that arise in mems minds when
they take the retrospect, which is necessarily
dlSheartenlng to US all. However successful a
man may have been-however vast the fortune
he has made-however brilliant the fame he
has won-this one thing may be taken as an
axiom: that his ambition was greater than his
achievement. Hence it is that men who, in
their boyh0Od, formed conception of the pos
slble, which, in their long life, they have found
to be beyond their attainment, are apt morbid
y to contrast what they have done by the
strained exertion of all their powers during
successive years with the mirage oftheir youth.
1t is strange fact, but fact it is worth while
to bear In mind, that there is nothing real in
which we believe so perfectly as the unreal
fancies that delight us when we were young
And, however stern and painful may have been
the revelations of our experience, the yearning
affection of the heart turns back to the old an
ticipations of things that were not to be; and
as, with religious loyalty, we scorn to cast
the blame on Providence or on Nature, it is
but natural and it seems to be- unavoidable,
that the recoil should be upon ourselves. Thus
it is that in all the troubles and disappoint-
ments, and half joys and semi-satisfacti0ns of
lite, we take refuge in that marvellous ''if''
that represents all that must have been but
never could have been. At the same time, it
is perhaps more healthy to consider not 50
much how futile those regretful "reminiscences
are as how false they are, and how derogatory
to ourselves and to the Great First Cause of
all and, still further, how they proceed upon
basis that is intangible and foundation that
is hollow IF we had known" then we
never should have known unless we had done
the very thing we say we should not have done
if we had known what would follow. The very
thing we think now would have guided us to
the knowledge that would have prevented our
mistake is the thing that arose out of our
mistake; and had we never made that mis-
take then the wisdom that now we wish
we had had before We made it would nev-
er have been ours. Hence it is that the fol-
ly OF man is the pregnant source of his wis
dom. By the design of the Creator we
learn better by doing worse. 1t is our for
tune-gOOd or evil, as according to our several
temperaments we may estimate it to pass
through the humiliating experience of our
own ioolshness in order that we may presently
arrive at the conception of what might be our
possible wisdom. In all this there is design
far above and beyond all human foresight and
| prudence and he that lamentS what seem to
be the blunders of his life, save where they
have been made deliberately in the face of the
knowledge of what was better, is about as wise
as the dog that bays at the midnight moon,
with the unreasoning lamentation that he is
not high enough or strong enough to reach
and to destroy the thing that annoyes him.
Frequent recourse to the regretful exclamation
If had knownl" is the saddest indication
of the weakness of mans mind. The strong.
est minds among men are those which utilise
the past for the Improvement of the present
or the approximate perfection Of the future
that accept what is accomplished, good or bad
as so prompting for the time to come that arc
above the paltry pride which shrinks from the
recognition of ones own weakness, folly and
sin, and, looking the past boldly in the face
thank Providence for the revelation which the
past has brought, and set forward to the future
life undismayed by the blunders of that which
is gone, and determined that no disappoint
ments and no regrets shall prevent them from
living up to the full capacity of their power
and the full possibility of their destiny in tn,
life that still remains.