were a failure. To me the suit was worthless because it
was a misfit.

And there are many men just as worthless to-day. But they need not
have been so. If they did not know their task they might have known
it. They did not fail, as this man did not fail, through ignorance.

Second, this man did not fail for lack of ability. If he could have
said that he was overpowered, if he could have told that superior
numbers came upon him and took his prisoner in spite of himself we
could have pardoned him. Or if he could have shown us a scarred breast
and a face that had been hacked by a sword, and said, "I won these
wounds trying to keep my prisoner," we would have respected him. We
would have sympathized with him. But he had no scars to show. He had
made no fight at all. Therefore he could not say, "I failed, 'tis
true, but I could not help it." Neither can you say that. No man here
is failing for lack of ability.

Now, I do not mean by that that you can do anything that you want to
do. When I was a boy people used to come to our school and tell us
such rubbish as that. But it is all false. Suppose I were to take a
notion to be a great painter, not one after the fashion of the ordinary
sixteen year old girl of to-day, but a painter like Turner. Why, I
might work at it a thousand years and never accomplish anything.

Suppose some of you were to take a notion to be great singers. Is
there any use for me to tell you that if you persist you will succeed?
Not a bit of it. You might succeed in ruining the nerves of your
teacher. You might easily make those who hear you practise "want to
gnaw a file and flee into the wilderness." But you would never learn
to sing. There is no hope for some of us till we get to Heaven.

No, we cannot do anything that we might want to do. But we can do
something infinitely better. We can do everything that God wants us to
do. I cannot do your task, and you cannot do mine. I am glad that
that is true. I am glad that we all do not have the same aptitudes. I
am glad that we all cannot do successfully the same things. I am glad
that we do not all have the same tastes. But while that is so, every
man has the ability, through grace, to perform the task to which he is
called.

In the third place, this man did not fail because of idleness. He did
not fail because he was lazy. Of course idleness will wreck anybody.
Laziness is a deadly sin unless it is overcome. I know someth