Men in the Making

by Ambrose Shepherd

And this was the finish for the poor old father Terah. Whatever the motives with which he had set out on this pilgrimage, whether of conviction more or less, or parental affection entirely, he was now weary. There had been little temptation to pause before on the score of a people's worship. That of the sun, of Venus, of Baal, of Jupiter, probably did not arouse in him even a passing interest. But when, worn out in body and mind, he suddenly came upon the old religion, his journeyings after another faith and form of worship were at an end. This powerful appeal to his past, with its resurrection of old memories, old prejudices, and the pathos of old associations, was too much for the old man. No second call came to him; or if it did, he had neither heart nor ear for it. It was Abram the younger man who withstood the temptations of Haran and with the faithful went on to a land they knew not of. It was the younger who had the staying power which, when acquired early, goes through life, and rejoins it in eternity sure as ever it came to it in time. Terah travelled some six hundred miles—a big journey in those days—to get away from the worship of the moon, and in the worship of the moon he ended his years. His evening and his morning were the same day: "And Terah died in Haran."

You see the thought underlying this bit of prosaic information. It simply means that the years close down the possibilities of a certain kind of moral exodus. It is in the days of your youth that you must make the "legs of iron," as Emerson calls them, for the journey which lies before you. If you wait until you get into years before you find right principles, and form good resolutions—well, even then it is better to make some start in the right direction. But why pile up the odds, that start you never will; or that you will not go far if you do? The enthusiasms of old men are as rare as they are short-lived, unless they are evolved out of earlier and worthy days.

There may be exceptions. If there are, I have never known one. The rule is practically a law, that old men, who are nothing more than old men, cannot make mighty resolves and carry them through. They may, for many reasons, start out from Ur of the Chaldees; but it is not often they get past Haran, if, indeed, they ever get so far. More likely will it end in the old defeat: "I will return into the house whence I came out," which is much the same, or, in some cases, is even worse, than if they had never left it. The old man Terah would get an interesting tour; although very probably people would hear from him more about it at the end than he had ever seen on the way. He would be a much-travelled man for those days, but he never found the new religion. It was the old religion that re-found him.

Understand me: I am far from saying that old age necessarily blocks the way to great attempts, or to conspicuous success in them. All history would cry out against such a statement. There is an old age we delight to honour, and which reverses the ordinary attitude to it in the general world. Instead of considering it a legitimate matter for lying about, and polite not to be aware of its presence, we make our boast in the virility which, in some men, accompanies their years until they quite shade out in a mellow maze of glory.

Take some of our statesmen. Were not the mighty men of the great nineteenth century aged men, if we count age only by shadows on the dial? At a time of life when most men are honoured with a natural right to senility, Mr. Gladstone was girding on his armour for one of the biggest conflicts ever waged in the arena of our Parliament. And years after, as the struggle still raged—to see him, almost blind and deaf, looking like so much vitalized parchment rather than a figure of flesh and blood, as night after night he stood up to the agility of a Chamberlain, and the subtlety of a Balfour—each perfected to a fine art—surely never gamer, grander sight ever challenged the imagination of poet, patriot, or historian. It was a testimony to all time of what can come out of the brain and soul of a man, when the body that houses them is written and re-written over with the hieroglyphics of age. It was a fitting termination to what may be, and ought to be, the great and sacred processes of life.

But Mr. Gladstone was great at the end, because all the way had been a preparation for it. This is the secret, if secret it be, which young men cannot know and master too soon. To end well, you must begin well; and you must fill in well the distance between the one and the other. Study carefully the triumph of old age in statesmanship, in science, and in affairs, and you will have to connect them with years of stern discipline and strenuous endeavour. In no case will you find strength where there has been no strain, or palm where there has been no dust. There are levels on which the truth, that "we reap what we sow," admits of no qualification. Omnipotence itself cannot make it possible for us to gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles. To attempt after a given age, and on the strength of a chance impulse, to leave Ur of the Chaldees with its old habits and associations, its old moral settings, will carry us far as the impulse lasts, but that in all probability will be only as far as Haran. And as Terah died at Haran, so shall we. It will be from moon to moon. Youth is the time to determine whether old age shall be a beautiful consummation, or a bitter regret. The threshold of manhood is the place to form resolutions that will have some chance of being kept, to cultivate the thoughts you would have ultimately become things. The serious danger is that, with the impression of a long future before you, you should merely drift in the present, and forget how inextricably the texture of to-day will be woven into the fabric of to-morrow.

I am quite aware that what I have so far said is more likely to hinder than help the purpose I have in saying it. You will not question that a clear nexus runs through our years, but my teaching about it, you tell me, is needlessly severe. If as the beginning is, so must the end be, what are we to say of a man's will? What are we to say about the power and working of divine grace? While there is life, does there ever come a time when it is no longer true to say that out of it can pass the old, or into it can come the new?

Surely to affirm that such a time can be is to give the lie to religion and experience. Many a young man is having what is called his "fling," who is yet quite sure in his own mind that when the time comes to accept the more serious responsibilities of life, he will change his habits and turn to ways that befit the new occasion. So we are told. And is it not true? Have we not known young men cover a considerable space of life with questionable, and even more than questionable courses, and yet settle down into exemplary domestic men and admirable citizens?

Yes, we have known them, and, whatever influences have brought about the change, let us be thankful for it. But what proportion do they bear to the legions who, once in Ur of the Chaldees, have neither thought nor desire for a better country? While, again, they may leave it from anything but worthy motives. Men may be compelled to change their habits without changing their natures. It is really to multiply words to no profit to debate the question. Your instinct tells you that it would be wickedness to encourage you to take your "fling" in Ur of the Chaldees on the risk that you can get away from it when prudence speaks the word. Settle it, then, as true for you, that out of to-day walks a to-morrow; and that what you shall do with to-morrow is practically determined by what you are doing to-day.

This counsel, or admonition, cannot be over-emphasized. I assume that I am talking to young men who do not intend to make a failure of life; then, I tell you again, that you must seize the one great chance you have, to make it a success.