78 
C. L. Herrick 
failure is the spur which rides a good horse to success. But the 
goal is ever receding, the success of today is the failure of tomor- 
row. 
He who counts himself to have achieved will train no more and 
run no more. Let us bury successful men, they are all dead men. 
What if we must all fail? How many crushed corpses were flung 
into the trench that other legions of the one army might rush 
over to victory? 
If our self ideal is large enough, we may view life as the hero 
views death, a mere incident in the triumphant flow of a great 
cause. Savage legends picture happy hunting grounds. 
Mohammed promised his followers paradise and bright-eyed 
houris. Christian authors have foretold streets of gold and joy 
unspeakable. Older religions thought it sufficient incentive to 
right living to look forward to such oneness with the creative 
Power and directive Intellect that self shall expand to embrace 
the all-will and the all-purpose. The insignificance of the finite is 
thus absorbed in the infinite and shares in its fulness. 
By such scaffolding has humanity buoyed itself up under the 
weight of failure. Be it what it may, it is incumbent upon us, 
as Margaret Fuller expressed it, ^flo accept the universe, con- 
tent to believe that while it has not entered into the heart of man 
to conceive of what awaits the contrite, yet finally we shall be 
satisfied. And do not snatch away the child’s painted toy 
because it is but a poor image of the reality. In good time he 
will put away childish things. 
Ah, but about sin? Surely there can be no good arising from 
that terrible sense of defilement which follows recognition of 
sin. We have seen that, for the old Hebrew, sin was but failure, 
a missing of the mark. The Greek had little or no idea of sin in 
our modern sense. 
Sin is failure, but of a peculiar kind. Ordinary failure grows out 
of error of judgment. Our estimate of the effort necessary, for 
example, was wrong. The object was more remote than we 
thought. In sin the failure in adjustment is in the citadel of 
self, the will. The higher self required a certain act, moral judg- 
ment approved the act, but recalcitrant will performed another. 
Otherwise expressed, the ideal self which we pictured, is found not 
to exist, and the self we loathe is found dominant. The ideal and 
the actual are conflicting. This maladjustment is most humili- 
