So strangely do the destinies of men and women resolve themselves out of every day circumstances, that philosophers and moralists, with their choicest erudition, are ofttimes puzzled over the solution of a mysteriously chequered life, which they will not allow was guided by the most natural and common-place accidents of existence.
That there are certain premises, from which the tenor of a yet unlived life can be more or less accurately anticipated, no one will deny. There are certain surroundings, certain particular circumstances, that, from time immemorial have never failed to produce certain infallible results; but, these abnormal pauses, and unforeseen interruptions, that, time and again, have made of human lives the very thing against which appearances were guarding them, are, it may be providentially, held outside of the range of man's moral vision, and screen themselves in ambush along either side of the seemingly smooth vista, that spans the interval for certain individual human lives, between time and eternity.
Such a high-sounding title as predestination, seems to lose much of its potent charm when we take an interesting existence into our hands, to dissect it, and analyse it, and reduce it to a rational origin. Like decades of heterogeneous pearls, a human career with all its varied details, glides through the fingers of the moral anatomist, each fraction standing out by itself, suggesting its own real or relative importance, yet associating itself ever with the rest, making of the whole a more or less intricate, and, at best, a very uneven chain.
When we consider that all the bewildering throng around and about us have evolved into their present conditions of misery or joy from a passive and innocent babyhood, we are mystified and awe-stricken; there is so much inequality among the lots and portions of the children of men, that it comes strangely home to us in our reverie, to realize that the starting-point is, for one and all, the great and the lowly, one and the same.
In its cradle, or on its mother's breast, the human creature knows no special individuality, but when the rails of the cradle have been climbed over, and the first foot-print stamped unaided upon the "sands of time," a distinct personality has been established, which is the embodiment of possible, probable, or uncertain influences—a personality which grows and thrives upon internal stimulants administered by an expanding mind and heart, and which leans almost entirely for support upon the external accidents of fate or fortune that may come in its way.
Were we as thoroughly penetrated with this conviction as we should be, how different would be the issues of many human careers? Could we accustom ourselves to meditate upon this truth as seriously as we would upon a religious one, to examine our conscience from it as from a reliable standpoint every day of our lives, what a flood of sympathy and Christian charity would be let loose upon the social world from converted hearts?
When men and women will thoroughly understand the strange and intimate frame-work of human society, the wail of the pessimist will be soothed and hushed forever: for then will they realize how dependent we poor mortals are upon each other for sorrows or joys: then will it be plain to them that no human life, however obscure, however trifling, is an unfeeling thing, apart from every other, outside the daily contact of every other.
Ah! we think, that God's creation, in all its grandeur and unrivalled beauty, would be little worth, to a creature born to live and enjoy it alone: and the infinite Wisdom decreed otherwise, when it gave unto man a friend and companion in the first moments of his existence; but is the world less desolate, less empty to a million hearts, because a million others inhabit it as well? Has God's original intention concerning the mutual love and companionship of His creatures, survived unto the present day? I think the record of each reader's large or small experience will answer this question for him eagerly enough.
That these preliminary reflections should be the outgrowth of such an ordinary event as the coming of a new baby into the already crowded world may seem extravagant in more ways than one: but my object, as the reader will see, is only to remind the forgetful majority, that there are necessarily many reasons why men and women who have had a common starting-point in life, should find themselves ere long at such different goals.
I would suggest to them to consider the essential impressionability of the human heart, especially in its period of early development, to examine the nature of every external influence that weighs upon it, and if the innocence of childhood has been recklessly forfeited with time, to reserve their judgment until every aspect of the circumstances has been impartially viewed.