THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE
By B. HINSON, D.D.
The
men who have not succeeded are often the great heroes of God, and heaven is
reserved for these conspicuous failures. The glory of these un-succeeding
ones, who were un-seduced by the prizes the world offers,* and un-affrighted at all the hostilities
which surround them. The glory of those who dared while
daring was possible, and who died when life could no longer be maintained.
If you dip into the past some two millenniums you arrive at the time when
Nero, Emperor of Rome, smeared pitch upon men and women who believed in the Saviourhood of the Son of God and set them on fire, while
he pursued his deviltries [i.e., 'devilish practices and behaviour.'] illumined
by light emitted from those living torches. And you go back to the time
when the Son of God stood before Pilate who said: "Take him to the cross, and let Him be put to death!" Failed!
These are the failures! And the Lord write me
down among them, among the mighty men who attained unto the glory of
conspicuous failure.
And
Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles, writing his Epistles, preaching his sermons,
living his wonderful life for Christ, and then to put his neck down upon the
block and lose his head by the axe of a Roman executioner on the Appian Road. A failure! And David
Livingstone over in Africa, every nerve an avenue for the charges of pain to
prance along, writing in his diary the day before he died a prayer that God’s
blessing might rest on any man who would help to heal the open sore of the
world in poor down-trodden Africa. A failure! And Chinese Gordon, shut up in Khartoum - the
man who put a handkerchief outside his tent by which all men knew the great
General was at prayer and might not be disturbed - scorning any weapon, and
leading his troops to victory after victory with a little cane he held in his
hand, and at last cooped up in the city of the alien to be cowardly
assassinated. A failure!
The
men to whom the honours of the world appeared as tinsel; the men
who were so large in brain and heart and aspiration and endeavour that nothing
in the world could satisfy them, and so they died in faith, not having received.
The men who cannot be warped, who cannot be bought; the
men who will not lie; the men who believe, and believe in the very
innermost recess of the soul. The men who have got the
conviction and the men
who are held by that conviction; the men about whom nobody would
believe the slander. These failures of time, these failures of the world,
who are the heroes of eternity, and the kingly priests in the
He
it is who inspired old Latimer in
the blaze, to say to Ridley: "Play the man, and by God’s grace we will light a candle in
I
wonder if we dare stand beside Him in these testing days? Not in vain is the great emblem of the Christian
religion a cross. You have got it in your watch charm, my brother.
You have got it around your neck, my sister. But have you got it in your
brain? Have you got it in your
heart? Have you got it in your life? How
much money have you ever lost because of the Cross? How many opportunities for attaining success
have you let slip because of the Cross?
Upon what honour have you turned your back because of the Cross? What disparagement have you deliberately
incurred and invited because of the Cross?
What loneliness has been yours, what
vituperation [i.e., 'blame, abuse',] and slander
have you endured because of the Cross? How much has it cost you to be Christ’s true man, to be Christianity’s
champion?
I
wonder how many of us are daring to go without the camp to Christ and share His
reproach. I remember when that cup was put to my own lip, the time when
He arrested me; and of all the things in the world there was nothing more
repugnant to me than to be baptized into His death and resurrection; and when I
read His Word and found I had to do it, it was putting my head in the dust, and
it was bending my proud neck in humiliation. And I do not believe I have
ever done an act that called for such denial and self-sacrifice as when I walked down into the water and was
baptized into the Name of Jesus Christ and into the company of people I had
derided and scorned, who called themselves Baptists. And the cup He
has put to my lip many a time since, asking me to do things I shrank from
doing, asking me to say things I would almost as soon have died as spoken them,
asking me to take a stand that was the opposite of all that I was inclined to
do. Why, only yesterday I said I was never intended to be a preacher of
the Gospel. But ere five minutes had passed by He came to me again and
said, "Now I have been calling you to be without
the camp and bear the reproach for forty years. Are you going to fail Me now?" And once again I looked up into
His face and said, "Not while there is a sky
above my head and an earth beneath my feet, for where Thou goest
I will go; where Thou dwellest I will dwell; and Thou
shalt be my God till my life ends, or until the heavens are split, and Thou
shalt appear in Thy glory."
This
is the success of failure. This is the glory of defeat. That a man can overcome himself, and overcome the
world and overcome hell,
and stand God’s loyalist and Jesus
Christ’s champion. Are we standing
there? Do we dare stand there? I can promise you
nothing for to-day because you do it. But I can promise you a great deal to-morrow,
when He shall come, before whose fiery Presence the stars dry up like
dew-drops, and the heaven opens, and hell, and He in all His glory will say to you and to me who have tried to do
our little bit down here: "Well done, good and
faithful servant, ENTER into the joy of thy Lord!"
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FOOTNOTE
"Affliction worketh
glory:" "our light
affliction worketh an exceeding weight of glory:"
"our affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh
an eternal weight of glory." Every word is a marked and beautiful
antithesis. Strange to say, the Apostle
describes the glory by an old earthly metaphor, nay, by the very metaphor he
used to apply to his afflictions; he calls it a weight. We speak of a weight of care, a weight of
sorrow, a weight of anxiety: but a weight of glory! Surely that is a startling symbol. We do not think of a man [or woman] as being
crushed, overwhelmed, weighed down by glory. We should have thought that the old metaphor of
care would have been repulsive, that it would have been cast off like a
worn-out garment and remembered no more for ever. Nay, but the old garment is not worn out when
the glory comes, it is only transfigured; that which made thy weight of care is
that which makes thy weight of glory. Thou
needest not a new object but a new light - to see by day what thou hast only
seen in darkness. Thou who art weighted
with some heavy burden, pause ere thou askest its removal; thy weight of
present care may be thy weight of future glory - may be, nay, must be
when light shall dawn.
- GEORGE MATHESON, D.D.
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