p. 116 | FORWARD AND NOT BACKWARD by The Westminster Teacher

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 25, 1889

"FORWARD AND NOT BACKWARD."

By The Westminster Teacher

THERE are some things that we are always leaving behind us as we move forward in life. It is just as when we go on a journey; we are ever coming up to new scenes, looking at them a moment, and then passing them by. We do not linger anywhere. We are but pilgrims forever on time's endless journey. We build and settle down in no permanent abiding-place. We dwell always in tents, and are forever pulling up the tent-pins and moving forward.

As we go on, we do not carry with us anything but memories and impressions. In the mysterious chambers of the brain, we hang away pictures of all that we have seen. Then everything that touches us ever so slightly or transiently leaves its mark upon us in some way. These marks or impressions we carry with us forever,—either scars or lines of beauty. But we really carry little else with us out of all the busy, fleeting life through which we pass day by day.

The wisest life is that which best realizes the pilgrim idea, and ever stretches forward and presses on. Looking back is not usually a profitable or healthy exercise. It was disastrous for Lot's wife, and it has proved just as disastrous for many others since her day. Countless lives, with noble possibilities, have been caught in their wistful backward gazing, or in their morbid, indolent dallying by the way, and the path through this world is thickly marked with its pillars of salt. Many people insist on stopping by the way whenever any startling thing interrupts them, and standing still, while the quick march of life moves on. Then they are either thrust aside and left there, or they are trampled down in the dust of defeat.

For example, some people are never willing to leave their sorrows behind them. If joy of theirs is laid away in the earth, they stop by the grave and stay there, inconsolable in their grief. There are lives that never rise again from a crushing sorrow. Then others are arrested in their course by defeat or failure, and, losing all hope, and all incentive to further effort, sit down amid the ruins in utter despair.

There is nothing noble or manly in such living. The true, heroic life is that which cannot be crushed by any disaster. It buries its dead with loyal love and sincere grief, and, dropping its tear upon the grave, moves on, with a spirit chastened, and a heart softened and enriched by the sorrow, to the next duties which wait to be done. We do not best honor our dead by allowing the floods of grief to overwhelm us. The Lord's word to Joshua when Moses was dead, had in it a meaning for more than the one man to whom it was then spoken, "Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise." The mantle of the dead leader fell now on the shoulders of the one next to him. The great workman was buried, but the work must be carried on by those who were now sorrowing by his grave. The death of a friend, instead of being a call to inconsolable grief, is a call to new duty. What our friend was doing yesterday must be done to-day by us.

Or it may have been care alone that was laid down, as when a mother puts a little baby away into the grave. No work drops out of the dead hands for her to take up. But may we not then say that, since God has emptied the hands of their care and duty, he has some other work for them to do? He has set them free from their own tasks that they may serve others. In any case, we should not sit down in the shadows of sorrow and let the night darken over us into the gloom of despair; we should turn our faces away toward the light, and quicken every energy for better duty, and truer, holier service. Grief should always make us better, and give us new skill and power. It should make our hearts softer, our spirits kindlier, our touch more gentle. It should teach us its lesson, and then we should go on with its ordination to new and better life.

So with failure. If there were no second chances in life, we might despair when once we have failed. But it is the glory of the gracious dispensation under which we live, that though we fall we may rise again; that our very failure may become a stepping-stone on which we may plant our feet to climb higher. Most people, at least, who ever rise in life, who grow noble, strong, and helpful, reach their place through victories over difficulties, and over their own failures and defeats.

"We rise by the things that are under our feet; By what we have mastered of good or gain; By the pride deposed, and the passion slain, And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet."

"Forward, and not back," is one of the wisest life mottoes. There are always in any and every life better things on before, toward which we should press with unwearying earnestness. No one ever does absolutely the best that he might do; there is still a better possible for him. No achievement or attainment, therefore, should ever satisfy us. No disaster should ever cause us to give up in despair. There is always something left, and we should gather up the fragments that remain and begin anew; even though the failure seem utter, so far as earth is concerned, this life is not all. Through the grace of Christ we, who turn to him in our failure, may in the endless years there rise into great beauty and blessedness.

"Forward, and not back." Let no past enchain our eyes or our thought. Let us leave behind all that is behind, and let us bend every energy toward the brighter, better things that are before.