“There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.” Even the counsels of the prudent He bringeth to nought. “There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel, against the Lord,” nor any that prospers without Him. Without Him, where is the wise? where is the scribe? What, after all, is the wisdom of the children of this world, wiser in their generation than the children of light? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.” Nay; unworldly wisdom, in its forming of plans, and elaboration of schemes, and devising of devices, enjoys no privileged immunity from failure, at the veto of Him who chargeth His angels with folly. “L’homme propose, Dieu dispose.” The Divine disposal of human proposals is ofttimes very summary and entire.
The proverb, “Man proposes, God disposes,” is believed by one learned in such lore to be naturalised in every nation of Europe:—thus the Spanish, “La gente pone, y Dios dispone;” the German, with its corresponding jingle, “Der Mensch denkt’s, Gott lenkt’s,” etc., so deeply upon all men is impressed the sense of Hamlet’s assertion of a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. Molière’s shrewd-spoken Dorine enounces a truism when reminding Damis that,—
A wise man endeavours, it has been said, by considering all circumstances, to make conjectures and form conclusions: but the smallest accident intervening (and in the course of affairs it is impossible to foresee all) often produces such turns and changes, that at last he is just as much in doubt of events as the most ignorant and inexperienced person. What Shakspeare in his sonnets calls “millioned accidents” creep in between design and result, between plan and performance, between scheme and issue, and “blunt the sharpest intents.” As the old moralising poet, modernised by Dryden, puts it—
Fortune, or fate, is the popularly recognised agent in these reversals and collapses; and subtile philosophers speculate curiously on the plenipotent character of this agency. One such, for example, predisposed to paradox may-be, yet no heedless or hasty penman, affirms, that if you look closely into the matter, it will be seen that whatever appears most vagrant, and utterly purposeless, turns out, in the end, to have been impelled the most surely on a preordained and unswerving track. Chance and change, he goes on to remark, love to deal with men’s unsettled plans, not with their idle vagaries. So that, as he argues the matter, if we desire unexpected and unimaginable events, we should contrive an iron framework, such as we fancy may compel the future to take one inevitable shape; for then comes in the unexpected, and shatters our design in fragments.
The biographer of Columbus, narrating the story of his shipwreck in 1492, describes him as passing, with his usual excitability, from a state of doubt and anxiety to one of sanguine anticipation, and thus coming to consider his present misfortune as a providential event mysteriously ordained by Heaven to work out the success of his enterprise. At once, therefore, he began to look forward to glorious fruits to be reaped from this seeming evil, and laid his plans accordingly. “Such was the visionary yet generous enthusiasm of Columbus, the moment that prospects of vast wealth broke upon his mind. What in some spirits would have awakened a grasping and sordid avidity to accumulate, immediately filled his imagination with plans of magnificent expenditure. But how vain are our attempts to interpret the inscrutable decrees of Providence! The shipwreck, which Columbus considered the act of Divine favour, to reveal to him the secrets of the land, shackled and limited all his after-discoveries.” For it is shown to have linked his fortunes, for the remainder of his life, to this island, which was doomed to be to him a source of cares and troubles, to involve him in a thousand perplexities, and to becloud his declining years with humiliation and disappointment.
It is instructive to note in the memoirs of Gabriel Naudé, that great scholar’s exultant anticipation of the public opening of the library he had mainly helped to form. He must have reckoned on that day as a beau jour for him, the happiest day of his life; and he arranged a fête accordingly, to be celebrated with his most intimate friends. But that very day broke out the public troubles of the Fronde; and barricades in the streets of Paris ill accorded with Gabriel Naudé’s cherished hopes. “Ainsi vont les projets humains sous l’œil d’en haut qui les déjoue.” The Scotch ploughman-poet, eyeing the mouse and its “wee bit housie, too, in ruin,” as turned up by his plough, gave racy utterance to but a trite reflection, when, apostrophising the “wee sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,” he thus moralised his song:—
As the good friar in Shakspeare has it,—
well laid and discreetly devised as they seemed to be.
And as with the seemingly laudable plans of the prudent, so with the arrogant designs of the self-confident. The enemy said, “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.” Thus said the enemy, even Pharaoh’s host, on the shores of the Red Sea. But then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord: “Thou didst blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” It is but an emphasised reading of the standard text, that the Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought, and maketh the devices of the people of none effect, and casteth out the counsel of princes. Whereas, turning from man proposing to God disposing, “The counsel of the Lord shall endure for ever, and the thoughts of His heart from generation to generation.” The same is He of whom it is written that He turneth wise men backwards, and maketh their knowledge foolish.
Wordsworth, ever a moralist, moralised his song when, at a critical juncture in the legend of the “White Doe of Rylstone,” he interposed this reflection:—
For a closing variation on the present theme, a worse might be found than this from the play within the play of “Hamlet:”—
But, with a slight change of title and text, the same theme is pursued, in the section next ensuing, through another fugue-course of variations.