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�*
GOING THROUGH AND
GETTING OVER.
A DISCOURSE
BY
Rev. PHILIP H. WICKSTEED, M.A.,
DELIVERED AT
I
South Place
H
C AP EL,
Finsbury,
SUNDAY, JANUARY 30TH, 1876.
Price 2d.
�k:
t:.
�READINGS
I. Passages from the Third and Fourth Books of the Meditations
of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right
reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything
else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou
should st be bound to give it back immediately ; if thou holdest
to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy
present activity, according to nature, and with heroic truth in
every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy;
and there is no man who is able to prevent this.
As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready
for cases which suddenly require their skill, so do thou have
principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human,
and for doing everything, even the smallest, with a recollection
of the bond which unites the divine and human to one another ;
for neither wilt thou do anything well which pertains to man
without at the same time having a reference to things divine, nor
the contrary.
That which rules within, when it is according to nature, is so
affected with respect to the events which happen, that it always
easily adapts itself to that which is possible and is presented to
it For it requires no definite material, but it moves towards its
purpose—under certain conditions, however—and it makes a
material for itself out of that which opposes it, as fire lays hold of
what falls into it, by which a small light would have been ex
tinguished ; but when the fire is strong, it soon appropriates to
itself the matter which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises
higher by means of this very material.
Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the
complaint, “ I have been harmed.” Take away the complaint,
“ I have been harmed,” and the harm is taken away.
�4
That which does not make a man worse than be was, also does
not make his life worse, nor does it harm him either from within
or from without.
Do not have such an opinion of things as he has who does the
wrong, or such as he wishes thee to have, but look at them as they
are in truth. Within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to
whom thou art now a beast and an ape, if thou wilt return to thy
principles and the worship of reason.
How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what
his neighbour says, or does, or thinks, but only to what he does
himself, that it may be just and pure; or, as Agathon says, “ look
not round at the depraved morals of others, but run straight along
the line without deviating from it. ”
Do not disturb thyself. Make thyself all simplicity. Does
anyone do wrong ? It is to himself that he does the wrong. Has
anything happened to thee ? Well, out of the universe, from the
beginning, everything which happens has been apportioned and
spun out to thee. In a word, thy life is short. Thou must turn
to profit the present by the aid of justice and reason. Be sober
in thy relaxation. Love the art, poor as it may be, which thou
hast learned, and be content with it; and pass through the rest
of lifelike one who has entrusted to the gods, with his whole soul,
all that he has, making thyself neither the tyrant nor the slave
of any man.
Thou will soon die, and thou art not yet simple, nor free from
perturbations, nor without suspicion of being hurt by external
things, nor kindly diposed towards all, nor dost thou yet place
wisdom only in acting justly.
*** N.B.—The translation used is that of Mr. George Long.
Bell and Daldy, 1862.
II. Job, Chaps. I—II: 10.
�“GOING THROUGH AND
GETTING OVER.”
Some difficulties have to be gone through, others have
to be got over, and sometimes it seems as if almost all
the waste and deterioration of lives that have real good
in them were caused by the attempt to get through
what must be got over and to get over what must be
got through.
Some people seem to fret away their whole strength
in struggling against the thousand small vexations and
annoyances of life. They are never without a griev
ance, never without a worry. Some one has always
been insulting or slighting them, or treating them un
fairly or misrepresenting or misunderstanding them;
or some most unlucky chance has thwarted their pro
jects and stood between them and their lawful prize; or
in some way they are the victims of men or things, and
must be set right. One man must be exposed, another
must make an apology; one must listen to explanation,
or another must make one 1 This provoking regulation
or practice must be removed, and the little details
�6
which appear to confuse and harass life so much must
all be set in order. And if the tangled mass of com
plication and annoyances is at last reduced to
order, in a fortnight it is all confusion again 1
There are more misunderstandings, more annoyances,
more slights, more worries and vexations, and all is as
bad as ever! Is not the secret weakness of such a
life as this due to the attempt to get through what
ought to be got overt A life may easily be spent in
trying to set right things that never can be set right
and might just as well be left wrong. In attempting
to solve problems that ought not to be recognised as
problems at all; in attempting to arrange according to
our own ideas things about which we ought to care
enough to have any ideas at all concerning them.
And again, it has become a commonplace with all
satirists that the high aspirations of youth die away in
manhood, that the generous and impulsive boy
becomes the grasping, cautious man, and the romantic,
disinterested girl, becomes the worldly and selfish
woman, and when all allowance has been made for
exaggeration and misrepresentation there remains only
too much truth in the sneer. Who can say how
many generous aspirations and lofty hopes, how many
resolves to right some wrong or relieve some suffering,
have died between sixteen and thirty ? How many
who had resolved to do something to make the world
better than they found it, have ended by striving only
to make themselves as comfortable as possible in
the world as it is. How familiar in our ears are the
words—which always seem to me to ring the knell
�7
of a dead soul—“ Oh yes ! I began life with very
romantic ideas on such and such a subject. But
when you are a little older you will find—” and so
on 1 How is it that with growing strength this
weakening of the higher life so often goes hand-inhand? Is it not because people are so apt to get
over what they ought to go through. Religious doubts
and difficulties trouble them—they get over them in
stead of through them; deep sorrows come over their
lives, again they get over instead of through them;
problems of social and domestic duty present them
selves to them, they get over them instead of going
through them ! To shirk all the real problems of life
as if they needed no solving, to work at the miserable
little problems of life as if they were soluble or worth
solving—this is to make the great mistake between
through and over, and to waste the true power of our
lives.
With this key in our hands, then, let us once more
consider the small and great problems of life and the
spirit in which we should meet them.
Every mechanician knows the importance of
diminishing friction in working his machines, and the
small annoyances, personal or other, of our daily lot,
are the friction of life, which may become so intoler
able as first to work us to fever heat of impatience and
fretfulness, and then make us burst into flames of
passion in which our whole strength is consumed !
No life is free from this friction. We all stand in
numerous and complicated relations with both
persons and things; and neither persons nor
�things conduct themselves solely with a view
of saving us annoyance. The harmony of these
relations, therefore, is constantly liable to be
disturbed. In the first place, those thousand unre
cognised sequences of cause and effect, which make
up the material background and framework of our
lives, and which we quaintly but expressively speak of
as “ things,” are, as we all know, apt to “ go wrong.”
There is nothing for it but to go on and not mind it.
“ Fret not thyself,” said an old Greek dramatist, “ Fret
not thyself because of things, for they care naught
about it 1” Many a life is fretted to pieces, is kept in
a constant state of heat and soreness from the inability
to get over the wrongness of things, from a constant
effort, destined from its very nature to be a constant
failure, to get through the minute problems of daily
life, which are not really problems to be solved at all,
but simply incidents to be accepted. If we get through
one set, we are simply involved in another, for they
grow in rank luxuriance in the soil of human life, and
there is no greater delusion than to suppose that if
“ things ” are once put straight, after our conception of
straightness, they will remain so ever after. The one
and only way of dealing with these difficulties is to get
above them, to establish ourselves permanently in a
region to which they cannot reach. There is as much
philosophy as there is wit in the poet’s description of
his friends: “Should aught annoy them they refuse
to be annoyed.” And when we have once succeeded
in lifting ourselves out of these vexations, we discover
how largely they were due to our own chafed and
�9
heated tempers, and how the very determination to go
over them has removed them out of our way.
But all this is still more true of that large number
of vexations and annoyances which rise more directly
from our relations with each other. The whole life of
some people seems entirely to consist of misunder
standings and explanations, and giving and taking
offence; and as every explanation gives rise to fresh
misunderstandings, the weary round goes on for ever.
Some one is always slighting us, or trying to make use
of us, or neglecting us, or refusing us our dues, or
treating us disrespectfully. So and so might have done
this, and need not have done that; and really we have a
right to claim this, and ought not to be exposed to
that; and we are always trying to put things straight.
But as long as we remain in the same state of mind
things cannot be put straight. We are trying to get
through these personal vexations, but we cannot. We
are cutting our way through an infinite jungle, and it
is vain to suppose that if we could struggle through a
little further, we should come to the open country. As
long as we are open to vexation from these things we
shall be vexed by them ! Our only chance is to get
above them, into quite another stratum of life, where
they do not affect us. Really, it is no matter whether
we are appreciated or not. It is no matter whether
we are treated with due respect; no matter whether
our feelings are considered; no matter whether we
are fairly treated. If we have any love of our work,
if we have any true self-respect, we shall not fight for
petty points of precedence, but shall go on our way
�IO
heedless of misunderstanding and misrepresentation,
shall live down all unworthy reports or suspicions, and
shall be taken in the long run pretty much for what we
are worth. Let the men of Belial refuse Saul the
honour he so well deserves, but let not the flashing
blade of Saul soil itself with their craven blood I Let
Shimei cast dirt at David, but let not David’s royal
hand pollute itself by casting it back 1
All these small and personal vexations, all this fric
tion of daily life we must get over, for we cannot get
through them. And we shall get over them best by
living a real life and grappling with the real problems
of life—those which we ought to work through, which
we often try to get over. Let us take one or two
examples—resembling each other only in this, that all
belong to the deeper currents of life, that all are real
problems, without the solution of which the meaning
of life is lost.
First let us speak of those sorrows of life which spring
from disappointed or wounded affection, or from the
loss, in whatever form it may occur, of those who are
dear to us. These sorrows we may try to get over, or
we may try to go through ! To get over them is to
forget them, or to give up thinking about them, or to
cease regarding them as really sorrowful; to go
through them is to learn what they have to teach us,
what they mean to us, to throw the light of God’s
consolation and strength upon them, and then take
them up and weave them into the tissue of our lives.
Common-place consolation urges us to turn our
thoughts to other things, to go away and try what
�II
change of scene and of occupation will do, to get
away from our sorrow, to push it aside, keep our
thoughts off it and forget it. Is not this advising us
to kill a part of our life ? To lock up and desert one
of the chambers of our heart, hang a curtain over the
door of it, try to forget that it exists ? It is against
such advice that Miss Procter so nobly protests in her
beautiful poem:—
“ Do not cheat thy heart, and tell her
* Grief will pass away;
Hope for fairer times in future,
And forget to-day.’ ”
Tell her, if you will, that sorrow
Need not come in vain ;
Tell her that the lesson taught her
F ar outweighs the pain.
Cheat her not with the old comfort,
“ Soon she will forget ”—
Bitter truth, alas—but matter
Rather for regret;
Bid her not “ Seek other pleasures,
Turn to other things —
Rather nurse her caged sorrow
Till the captive sings.
Rather bid her go forth bravely,
And the stranger greet;
Not as foe, with spear and buckler,
But as dear friends meet;
Bid her with a strong clasp hold her,
By her dusky wings—
Listening to the murmured blessing
Sorrow always brings.”
�12
Doubtless there is a danger here also, especially in
the lines—
“ Rather nurse her caged sorrow
Till the captive sings.”
It is a grievous and unrighteous thing to brood
over a sorrow, to dwell upon it in the very luxury of
grief until it absorbs our lives, and this is the truth
that lies at the bottom of the usual advice—turn to
other things. It is sound enough if it only means to
stimulate the smitten soul to fresh action and revive
the stagnant currents of its life, but the very strength
thus gained must be used in living through, not in
getting over, the sorrow. If a portion of our life has
been smitten by a sorrow, and we try to forget it, to
put it away, we are then hewing off one of our limbs,
we are paralyzing one of the powers of our soul. He
that thinks he has got over a real sorrow, has but
withdrawn the life-blood from a part of himself and is
so far dead to the higher life. He that has lived
through a sorrow has purified in the fire a part of
himself, has found out what is temporal and what
eternal in it, has passed behind the veil and stood
face to face with the reality, has had all the dross
burned and purged away and God’s precious and
pure metal saved to him from the purifying fire !
There is another life-problem which it seems must,
in some form or another, be presented to most earnest
men, though the form under which it meets us differs
from age to age, and now demands a greater now a
less degree of persevering effort and courage for its
�13
solution. To each of us there comes a period when
religion can no longer be authoritative or traditional,
but must become individual and personal. It is for
the most part a gloomy, lonely struggle 1 What once
was certain, now becomes doubtful; what we had been
taught to lean upon as the staff of life, proves to be a
mere broken reed, or pierces into our flesh I It is the
time of the awakening of our religious life, but some
times we think it is the hour of its death. When this
season of religious doubt and difficulty meets us, we
stand face to face with one of the most solemn and
mysterious of all life-problems ! Here again the ad
vice often given is, in effect, “ Shut your eyes to it!
Refuse to recognise it I Put it aside and think of
other things 1 ” The story is well known of the clergy
man who had difficulties as to the truth of the Thirtynine Articles, and asked the advice of an eminent
and pious friend. He was urged to devote himself to
his parish work, as that was the best way of settling
all theological doubts! This is a type of the kind
advice often given in these cases, and it has a
certain amount of truth and value in it. If it simply
means to urge men not to allow themselves to drop
into a morbid and self-centred way of looking at things
apart from the healthy realities life and work, the
advice is good, but if it means that all these theological
or religious doubts should be simply set aside and
neglected, that we should turn our thoughts away
from them and try to get over them, then, surely, it is
utterly miserable and fruitless. We must face all
our doubts and difficulties, we must question them and
�14
examine them to the utmost, we must go right through
with them, like Abraham going forth in faith, we know
not whither, and then whatever may be the final
outcome our beliefs will be our own, we shall have
fought for them and won them; as princes having
wrestled and overcome, we shall have power with God
and with men. It often happens that at the end of
this mental conflict we are in many points of actual
belief, pretty much where we were at the beginning,
but there is all the difference between having worked
the problem through and solved it ourselves, and
having accepted the conclusions of another without
examination, just because we feared they might turn
out to be incorrect. The man who has put away his
religious life-problem can never have a faith on which
to rest as upon a rock, for this is the privilege of him
who has gone through and not passed by the dark
valley of religious doubt.
I will only refer very briefly to one more life-problem,
which one would think must present itself to every
earnest and thoughtful man. The social condition of
the world in which we live, even when we set aside
the pauperism and the crime which disfigure modern
society, can not appear to anyone satisfactorily. The
immense inequalities in the share of enjoyment, ease,
culture, above all moral and religious advantages, which
fall to the different classes of society must be a source
of grief to every right-minded man. What can I
individually do towards restricting and modifying this
evil ? This is a very practical life-problem for each of
us. We may shirk it by saying that we cannot help
�15
these things, that they are ordained of God, and that
if we are born amongst the privileged ones so much
the better—we must be thankful; if not, we must
be content in the position in which God has placed
us. On the other hand, we may work through this
problem, and find, according to our station, some clear
way in a wider or narrower circle of spreading happi
ness, goodness, and culture amongst those around us,
and doing something towards compensating the less
favoured of mankind. In time, in thought, in money,
in sympathy we can find some way of sacrificing
ourselves to those who need our help, and according
to our light and in our degree bringing a contribution
to the solution of the social problem.
Even if it were our hard fate to spend all our life
in striving to understand some sorrow and to learn its
lesson, and yet failing to do so, in manfully striving
to gain some real faith of our own, and yet failing
ever to reach it, in earnestly seeking some means of
helping our fellow-men, and yet finding none, yet surely
even this sad lot would be nobler and more worthy of
our emulation than the peace which is the fruit of the
spiritual death, the contentment, which simply means
that we have ceased to care for the great problems of
life. But for almost all of us, if we meet the problems
of life like men, after a longer or shorter time of dark
I wrestling of the spirit, the light dawns, and each day,
I almost each hour, our faith becomes clearer and
| stronger and more joyously triumphant over doubt,
| our purposes for good become more settled and firm,
I our love becomes purer and more exalted, we have
�16
met as messengers from God, and have not shunned,
as devil-born, the problems of life, and “ like as the
rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and
returneth not thither, but watereth the earth and
maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to
the sower and bread to the eater: so has God’s word
been that has come forth to us from His mouth : it has
not returned unto Him void, but it has accomplished
in us that which He pleased, and it has prospered in
us in the thing whereto He sent it.” We have been
raised out of the small vexations and worries of life,
have got over what some fret away their lives in trying
to get through, and have got through what some get
over at the cost of all the better possibilities of their
lives.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Going through and getting over: a discourse by Rev. Philip H. Wicksteed delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, Sunday, January 30th, 1876
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Wicksteed, Philip Henry
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Place of publication: [London].
Collation: 16 p. ; 16 cm.
Spine title of bound volume: Morris Misc. Tracts 3.
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[South Place Chapel]
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[1876]
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G3364
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English
Conduct of life