Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 22
November 12, 1970
NUMBER 27, PAGE 3

Richmond, Lee, And October

Editorial

We are in Richmond, Virginia. It is mid-October and the autumnal colors are in full glory. There are surely few places in America, or in the world, that can equal Virginia after the first frost of fall. Those who have been here can hardly be impressed by mere words.

This is a city of traditions. Now numbering upward of a half-million in population, there were only 38,000 people living here during those bloody months when Lee's hard pressed men so valiantly defended the city. When the nightmare of bloodshed and violence finally came to an end at Appomattox in April 9, 1865, Lee's battered and broken men turned homeward. This editor's own grandfather, William Tant, was one of those men. He had been gone from home for four long years, with not a single furlough or leave of absence to return to his family. He turned homeward now (to Georgia) to find his great house burned to the ground, his farms lying desolate and waste, his stock all confiscated or stolen, his family living under the spreading boughs of a great oak tree, barely subsisting on such scraps of fruit and berries as they could find, plus a few bushels of grain gleaned from the fields of out of the way farms.

William Tant was an embittered and broken man — but he had no word of bitterness or complaint toward Robert E. Lee. Nor did Lee's other warriors. On the contrary Lee was then, and has been for a full century, the supreme hero of the southern Confederacy. Here in Richmond his great equestrian stature on Monument Avenue is a sight that is always pointed out to the tourists with respect and a hushed sort of veneration. He died more than a hundred years ago (September of 1870) but he still lives in the hearts of his countrymen. Even in the north he has become a legendary hero (as Lincoln has in the south), and one to be admired and respected.

All of which is simply a preamble to our saying that for one to fail and to be a failure are not the same thing. Robert E. Lee failed in his efforts to defend the Confederacy, but Lee himself was not a failure. Jesus Christ failed in his efforts to win his Jewish brethren to his cause; but he himself was not a failure. For fifteen hundred years God had prepared and conditioned the Jewish nation to bring Christ into the world, and then to become his evangelists or messengers to carry his gospel to all the human race. When Christ came "in the fullness of the times" his nation rejected him, crucifying him, as a common criminal. His mission, in that sense, ended in ignominious failure and defeat. But Christ did not fail. And the cause for which he died (the salvation of men from the curse and control and consequences of sin) has been a glorious success in the lives of untold millions of men during these two millennia since he died.

There is a wonderful distinction to be made between being a failure and making a failure. Any man may make a failure in what he undertakes; but no man need be a failure in his life. God demands success in what we are, not necessarily in what we do. Many a man engaged in some lowly and menial task, living his brief day in obscurity and perhaps in virtual poverty, may be a far greater success in his life than the most famous and honored men of his generation. It was Christ himself who said, "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth."

That Robert E. Lee was a military genius is recognized by all, but he is not remembered for that. His victories and defeats on the fields of battle are simply incidents in his life. The nobility of his character, the strength of his commitment to what he considered his "duty" (which he once said was the noblest word in the English language), these are the things for which he is remembered. It is in a sense amazing to realize how much his moral stature overshadows his military stature. It is due to the former, not the latter, that he has become a folk here for reverence and veneration. He failed in what he tried to do; he was a towering success in what he was, the very epitome of chivalry and honor.

-F. Y. T.