^ Have you ever, in a collected hour, and aided by a good memory, gone over the events of your own life — gone over them in some little detail ? To many people there comes at some time either a period of enforced inactivity, or some critical juncture, which makes their thoughts range over the past, turning its yellowed leaves, stopping a little here and sighing a little there, with now a half-sad smile and now a sharp twinge of regret, and once or twice the recollection of a great joy which even yet sheds its radiance over the page. If you have ever indulged in such a survey, you must have been struck with one thing — the unex- pectedness, the incalculableness of life, the utterly unforeseen and seemingly trifling circumstances that proved to be decisive, as a drop of water falling this side or that of the Great Divide will be carried to the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.
Take, for instance, Luther and Loyola. What turned the former to a religious career — what caused him to enter the monastery from which he emerged to challenge the Pope — was a narrow escape from being struck by lightning ; while what made Loyola from a soldier and courtier into tlie founder of the Jesuit order was tlie cannon ball which laid him low as he stood on the walls of Pampeluna. Men of iron will and mighty genius they both were, but the occasion, the impulse, which brought out their
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genius and gave direction to their will, they neither created, nor foresaw, nor resisted. Think as highly as we will of our own initiative, of our power to deal with the materials life supplies us withal, the extent to which unforeseen circumstances have shaped our course must touch the most confident at times with a strange humility, and make him echo the old words, " It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." *
2. It cannot be denied that advantage or disadvantage often comes to a man, irrespective of his moral worth, of his native gifts, or of any equivalent he has rendered for it of industry and self- denial. Two youths, let us say, enter a business house about the same age, and at the same time. They are, as near as can be, equally matched in equipment to command success. In this respect there is little to choose between them. One begins entirely on his merits ; he has no influence behind him to open doors before him as by some invisible hand. The other has in- fluence ; no matter what it is, or how it works, he has it, and it operates distinctly in his favour. A few years after, and the latter has far outdistanced the former in position, salary, and outlook. And the reason is not the capacity of either ; it is the arbitrary advantage, the piece of luck, that one has had over the other from the start
^ A cloth-worker in Yorkshire, by carelessness or inadvert- ence, raises the nap of a given fabric a shade above the regulation height. He is dismissed, and the cloth is laid aside as spoUed. A French buyer comes into the place, and casting his eyes on it, instantly sees for it a future. That touch of heightened nap has done it. The manufacturer has his wits about him, and what a week before was a mistake is now a new and valuable design which, in a couple of years, makes for him what some of us would regard as a substantial fortune.^
3. The omnipresence of God and of law is not questioned But concurrent therewith there is human action, which is partly free and sometimes irrational. This gives luck its loophole, and at the same time prescribes its limits. Do we seriously believe that nothing irrational ever happens in the universe ? Does everything happen in accord with God's plan for the world
^ J. Warschauer, The Way of Understanding, 321. ' A. Shepherd, Men in the Making, 66,
284 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PROVIDENCE
Does fore-ordination account for all things ? Is human freedom quite an illusion ? Is it not merely conditioned by circumstances and by habit, is it really non-existent ? All this and more must be asserted if we are to hold that law accounts for all and that luck is nowhere. Indeed, we shall abolish human responsibility and sin — in theory, at least. There is no choice but that between a mechanical world, absolutely ruled by fore-ordination, in which there is no spontaneity or moral possibility, and a world in which there is some chance, some luck. Human action, if at all free and if ever foolish and wrong, introduces an element into history which ensures that among all the unerring certainties of nature there shall mingle a little of the erratic and the whimsical. Man moves nature to produce many results. These must reflect the irrational in him, and must influence not only himself, but his fellows. Therefore we have luck, good and bad, in life. It would be simpler, and would save much confusion, if we could say without qualification all is law, everything happens as God ordains. But then things are not simple, and we must accept their complexities. This disturbing factor of luck must be reckoned with.