Mark the End…

There are times and moments in life when people seem to have arrived at what they want—when the plans and purposes they have pursued seem to have been successful. But this we learn, sooner or later: that life is not a single scene. It is a series of scenes. It is not a portrait or a static picture—it is a moving picture, and not a matter of any single moment. And just when we think all the pieces are in place, something may happen to change the pattern and the picture.

To turn for a moment to history: Napoleon, in the period of his success, is said to have written a boasting letter concerning the solidness of his situation. But Lord Nelson, into whose hands the letter fell, added a three-word postscript to it: “Mark the end.” Mark the end—and the end of that episode came later with the defeat of Napoleon’s fleet.

“We know what we are,” wrote Shakespeare, “but know not what we may be.” One successful scene doesn’t necessarily make a successful plot of a successful play. A play is composed of many parts and is not over until the final curtain—all of which suggests humility as a becoming quality: humility among men, humility before God, for we none of us know when success will sour, when happiness will turn to sorrow, when health will turn to sickness, when affluence will be altered by accident or adversity.

So changeable is life, so varied are the shifting scenes, that no matter who we are, or what we are or where we have arrived, we none of us know when we shall have need of other men—or need for help beyond the help of men. And a smug sense of superiority, inconsideration of others, taking unfair advantage, abusing power, abusing position, all these and many other things unmentioned have often proved to be but the prologue to a different kind of scene and sequence.

The tides of all things turn, and before we can surely say someone is successful, we should know how far and how consistently he can carry success. And before we smugly assume that we are unassailable, we would well remember Nelson’s postscript to the boasting words of Bonaparte: “Mark the end.” “…he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved.” God help us to remember that life is not a matter of one scene, but an endless and eternal sequence of scenes.