The Majesty of Calmness | Page 8

never fall down in despair at
dangers and sorrows at a distance; they may be harmless, like Bunyan's
stone lions, when he nears them.
The man who is self-reliant does not live in the shadow of some one
else's greatness; he thinks for himself, depends on himself, and acts for
himself. In throwing the individual thus back upon himself it is not
shutting his eyes to the stimulus and light and new life that come with
the warm pressure of the hand, the kindly word and the sincere
expressions of true friendship. But true friendship is rare; its great value
is in a crisis,--like a lifeboat. Many a boasted friend has proved a
leaking, worthless "lifeboat" when the storm of adversity might make
him useful. In these great crises of life, man is strong only as he is
strong from within, and the more he depends on himself the stronger
will he become, and the more able will he be to help others in the hour
of their need. His very life will be a constant help and a strength to
others, as he becomes to them a living lesson of the dignity of
self-reliance.

V
Failure as a Success

It ofttimes requires heroic courage to face fruitless effort, to take up the
broken strands of a life-work, to look bravely toward the future, and
proceed undaunted on our way. But what, to our eyes, may seem
hopeless failure is often but the dawning of a greater success. It may
contain in its debris the foundation material of a mighty purpose, or the

revelation of new and higher possibilities.
Some years ago, it was proposed to send logs from Canada to New
York, by a new method. The ingenious plan of Mr. Joggins was to bind
great logs together by cables and iron girders and to tow the cargo as a
raft. When the novel craft neared New York and success seemed
assured, a terrible storm arose. In the fury of the tempest, the iron bands
snapped like icicles and the angry waters scattered the logs far and
wide. The chief of the Hydrographic Department at Washington heard
of the failure of the experiment, and at once sent word to shipmasters
the world over, urging them to watch carefully for these logs which he
described; and to note the precise location of each in latitude and
longitude and the time the observation was made.
Hundreds of captains, sailing over the waters of the earth, noted the
logs, in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Mediterranean, in the South Seas--
for into all waters did these venturesome ones travel. Hundreds of
reports were made, covering a period of weeks and months. These
observations were then carefully collated, systematized and tabulated,
and discoveries were made as to the course of ocean currents that
otherwise would have been impossible. The loss of the Joggins raft was
not a real failure, for it led to one of the great discoveries in modern
marine geography and navigation.
In our superior knowledge we are disposed to speak in a patronizing
tone of the follies of the alchemists of old. But their failure to transmute
the baser metals into gold resulted in the birth of chemistry. They did
not succeed in what they attempted, but they brought into vogue the
natural processes of sublimation, filtration, distillation, and
crystallization; they invented the alembic, the retort, the sand-bath, the
water-bath and other valuable instruments. To them is due the
discovery of antimony, sulphuric ether and phosphorus, the cupellation
of gold and silver, the determining of the properties of saltpetre and its
use in gunpowder, and the discovery of the distillation of essential oils.
This was the success of failure, a wondrous process of Nature for the
highest growth,--a mighty lesson of comfort, strength, and
encouragement if man would only realize and accept it.
Many of our failures sweep us to greater heights of success, than we
ever hoped for in our wildest dreams. Life is a successive unfolding of
success from failure. In discovering America Columbus failed

absolutely. His ingenious reasoning and experiment led him to believe
that by sailing westward he would reach India. Every redman in
America carries in his name "Indian," the perpetuation of the memory
of the failure of Columbus. The Genoese navigator did not reach India;
the cargo of "souvenirs" he took back to Spain to show to Ferdinand
and Isabella as proofs of his success, really attested his failure. But the
discovery of America was a greater success than was any finding of a
"back-door" to India.
When David Livingstone had supplemented his theological education
by a medical course, he was ready to enter the missionary field. For
over three years he had studied tirelessly, with all energies concentrated
on one aim,--to spread the