PROVIDENCE AND PUSH

Evening Star, Issue 14308, 5 March 1910, Page 2

PROVIDENCE AND PUSH

Wines Dr Findlay visited Auckland a. week or two ago ho refeired in complimentary terms to t!io cilj'. Accounting tor its prosperity, he said it was mainly due to two things—Providence .and Push. This alliterative explanation was excellent. Jt is, indeed, a most- happy generalisation of the conditions of success in any circumstances. Whether it is true of Auckland in particular wo need not hero discuss. Put it may he worth while to expand Dr Findlay’s words a little. They contain the secret both of individual and national progress. * * * * * * * Providence; it is an old-fashioned word What is suggests has formed the battleground of centuries. The fight is not yet finished, Int tho smoko is lifting, and we can see a little more clearly over which camp hover the omens of victory. It is easy to 'emulate the objections to a doctrine of Providei.ee. They arc partly scientific .»nd partly moral. The vaslness of the universe tempts us to believe that wo are too small atoms to be considered by its Maker. Modern science, with its revelation of this vaslness, has given keener point to this difficulty. An astronomer suggests that if (tod were to despatch one of His angels to discover this globe of ours, it would be like sending a child out iq-on a vast, prairie to find a §pcck of sand at the root of some blade of grass! Put to (his it has been very properly answered that it mistakes hulk for greatness. A baby is scarcely tho weight or the size of a brick in tho sky-scraper of tho New Zealand Express Company’s new building, but what mother would consent to have its value for her assessed by a carpenter’s mlc or a grocer’s scale? It is said, again, that it is derogatory to greatness to concern itself with trifles. It is beneath tho head of a business firm or a Government to ho bothered with details. Put why? because of his incapacity. The supremo genius is characterised not merely by his grasp of principles, hut by his mastery of tho smallest details. Moreover, who can toll what is a trifle? It was a Iritlo that Cleopatra’s nose was not an eighth of an inch shorter. If it had, tho history of the world would have been changed. How often in our experience the things which seemed of no account, at the moment reveal themselves in later years as the hinge of destiny—the great critical events that wore tho turning-points of character and career. It may seem preposterous to talk of the hairs of our head being numbered. Hut either they are or there is no Supreme Providence at all. He is everywhere and in everything, or lie is nowhere, and nothing is in His charge. To say that Providence is 100 great to attorn! to iho wants of an individual man looks at first sight like reverence, but, as has been truly said! “it is reverence of “that insincere and spurious kind which “goes through tho proprieties of etiquette “ in tho palace of a falling dynasty, while “its heart- is with the revolution outside, “(hat is already battering' at tiro gates “and clamoring for an abdication.” * * -x- * * * * lint possibly the greatest difficulty about a- belief in Providence conics from the moral side. Wo think that if there bo one, he often makes a mess of the business. Wo have only to look out over the world anywhere, ; ny lime, to see that if it is not iho worst of all' possible worlds, as Schopenhauer held, it is certainly a very confused concern. We are reminded of wars, of earthquakes, of pestilences, of cyclones, of shipwrecks, of all Iho stage and stale panorama, of killing and cruelty, and it is cynically said : God must surely'havo forgotten human lives in His care for hairs. Let Him leave tho sparrows and care a little for His children. Ho seems to think of millions of lives as lightly as we think of hairs. But the answer is, or at least our answer, wc see only the merest fraction of even one side of the picture. We do not know what the final goal may bo. Who can toll what Death is, or what may bo beyond its bourn for those wo think prematurely called to go? When we are delivered in some special way we call it providential. The man who misses the steamer that is never heard of again says “What luck!’’ But what of those who went down? Was there no Providence watching over the lost as well as the saved? The rustic who knows nntliing of the laws of art will probably deem the first few strokes of the painter on the canvas as a stupid and useless proceeding; hut the fame of a Titian or a Tissot is a sufficient answer to his ignorance. And we must wait till wo see the picture of the Supreme Artist finished before we can rightly judge of its comparatively insignificant details. ******* But what do wo gain if wo-reject an Allwise and All-powerful Providence? What is the other alternative? Atheism, Chance. But Science is making such an explanation of Creation impossible. The groat mathematician Dc Morgan demonstrated, when only eleven planets were known, that the odds against their moving in one direction round tho sun with a slight inclination of the planes of their orbits—had chance determined the movement—would have been 20,000.000,000 to 1. But when these planets are increased a million-fold, who can calculate the problem then? Tho naked eve can count only 6,000 stars. But the great telescopes reveal to us a hundred million euns in the vast spaces, and how many more beyond these no mortal man can guess. And if, when only cloven planets were known, the probabilities against chance as Lord of All were such as De Morgan proved, how incredible it becomes with these vaster additions! We have said that there must be a “ Providence of the Trifle." And it lias been well pointed out that even those who reject such Providence do yet believe in one that “builds up differentiated functions “ and perfect typo out of hairbreadth varialions it has been guarding for ages, and “accentuates at last into distinct families “and kingdoms.” This is the doctrine of Darwinism. But some of its disciples ask us to believe that the Providence thus revealed has stony eyeballs, rigid hands, and is harmless; and yet by some amazing chance it achieves these things. This asks too much from faith, especially when Science is excluding chance from the physical world and ethics from the moral. Tho real truth is that the difficulty of accepting the doctrine of Providence is not created by reason, but by imagination. We are unable to conceive of so wonderful a Being and the methods by which He could carry on His providential governments throughout Hjs vast universe. But the impotency of odr imagination should not scare ns from tho possible reality. And especially when the alternative is so irrational and repulsive. The latter makes man a mere bubble on the n\ci. As a writer in the ’Spectator sajs. That a mere subtle chemical combination. itself without thought, and controlled by no thought, irresponsible, ignorant, a final fact in nature, should exercise the jxjwer of absolutely destroying that wonderfi’il piece of work called man, of cancelling his will, intellect, soul in a moment, and of wiping his

6 personality out of the universe, is a thought so horrible, so unbearable,/ that if it were really believed .by the bulk of the human race, madness on a gigantic scale would inevitably follow. We are kept sane by a reasonable faith that all we see is, a’s Wordsworth says, “full of blessings.” * * * * * * 9 But we have gone off into an abstract discussion of certain aspects of Providence. What Dr Findlay meant was different from this. He meant, we presume, to assert that our prosperity depends first of all on certain things that are given to us. We do not create the world. We find it already here when we come. We find earth, air, sunshine, sea, Nature and her vast forces awaiting us. Wc may or we may not regard these things ns the gifts of a beneficent and all-wise Providence, and operated by it continuously. Still, it is much belter if wc can. It will help us greatly in our work if we can have a reasonable assurance that we are not like thistledown in the autumn days; that we are not left alone to muddle our way through this wiltcr of a world, unhelped and guidelcss. But what puzzles and pains us sometimes is the apparent partialities of Providence. Ho starts some in the race of life, with immense advantages. Men have not equal opportunities any more than they arc born equal. But on the other hand, it must be remembered that the best gifts of Providence are not external, but internal. Providence, for instance, may have been kind to Auckland in bestowing on her great natural advantages. But push is necessary to develop these and turn them to account. It often happens that the richest endowments cancel energy, while out of hard conditions are developed the finest characters. John Forster, m the dedicatory sonnet to Charles Dickens, prefixed to his biography of Goldsmith, speaks of the latter as having— A liberal nature and a. niggard doom ; A difficult journey to a splendid tomb. It might be written of thousands as well as of the genial Oliver. Without push Providence can do nothing for ns. Those who are placed in niggard conditions may count their lot hard. Yot in reality they may bo better off than their more favorably circumstanced fellows, 'there may be other ways of choking a dog than with butter. But that at least is one way, and a. very effective way by which it can he accomplished. And we all know multitudes who are thus being done to death. Character is what Nature Is often, and nothing can be worse for its development than an environment which needs little energy. When everything else comes easy character does not come at all. Wo mean character of the noble and enduring kind. Compare, for instance, manhood in Hie tropic and the temperate zones, or contrast the Orient with the Occident. We recall Arnold’s memorable lines— The East bowed low beneath ths blast In patient, deep disdain; She let the legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again. And so she has remained dreaming, till once again the pushful West is hammering at her gates. And on the smaller scale wo see the same thing everywhere. Of course, it is possible (and with many it is actual) that the conditions may become so hard as to cripple and cow energy altogether, but within certain limitations man is all the better for an environment that compels him to strenuous action. We have been having the representatives of the Wesleyan Church in session here this week. Would the founder of that Church have developed into the man he was had he remained in the safe and snug preserves of Episcopalianism ? It was because he was Hung out of this nest and forced to face tremendous odds, social and religious, that he did the work which made him famous. In his old age he wrote : • J am sick of opinions. • Give mo a man laying himself out in the work of faith, the patience of hope, the labor of love. Let my soul be with those Christians wheresoever they are and whatsoever opinion they are of. That is the spirit that brings Providence to our aid. What is given ns may be great and desirable, but whether it will he good for us depends not on what it is, hut on what wc arc who use it. Providence without push is disastrous to life. Push without Providence makes life stern and hard. But Push and Providence combined—push, exerted under the conviction that, our fate is, as Wordsworth Ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power, Whoso everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good —this is the triumph of life.