The Future

Always we are faced with the fact that it is only given to men to see so far, and that the future is cloaked and closed. As Emerson observed, the Creator “with grand politeness…draws down before us an impenetrable screen.” Whatever we may know of the past, we know that the pattern will never precisely repeat itself and that no generation was ever free from uncertainties. Tomorrow is always somewhat uncertain and always has been. But suppose that fifty years ago, or forty, or twenty, or ten, we had had a full foreknowledge of all the events that have intervened. Some of us would surely have shrunk from facing what was then future, but which is now past. But we have survived all those uncertainties. And having lived and endured through all past unforeseen circumstances, we may reasonably expect to continue to meet the demands of the unknowable future. And there is no point in rudely rushing it, or in trying to tear the veil from its face because all the time there is, is coming our way and eternity also and a foreknowledge of sorrow might overshadow the anticipation of happiness and success. Foreknowledge of life itself might dull the edge of effort and interest. Foreknowledge of any era of history might place too weighty a load upon mere men. In any case, the Lord God in His wisdom has seen fit to draw down before us the inscrutable screen that isolates us from memories of the immortal past and from intimate foreknowledge of the future. And we are grateful for the faith that there are some essential certainties, some permanent principles and divine purposes which are constant and can be counted on despite the impermanence of some parts of the picture. We are grateful for strength to meet the demands of each day as it dawns and to face each hour as it presents itself which is all men have ever been able to do or have ever been asked to do. We must learn in our lifetime, as others have learned in theirs, to accept the actual circumstances and situations of our own time, and to face the future with faith.