Bible Commentaries
Psalms 49

Verse 18

SUCCESS

‘For while he lived, he counted himself an happy man: and so long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak good of thee.’

Psalms 49:18 (Prayer Book Version)

‘Nothing succeeds like success’ is a proverb invented by a famous man of the world, and of the truth of it from the world’s point of view there is no denying.

I. The uncertainty of success.—In our text we have first the fact, and secondly, the motive of that success which is of the earth earthy. Its motive is selfishness, doing well to oneself, looking after one’s own interests, and making them the supreme consideration. Then again its nature is to be satisfied with present temporal conditions, not to trouble about any higher life than that of the time and sense. The most striking feature about this forty-ninth psalm is the author’s firm conviction that in a future state the scale of fortune will be readjusted. Nowhere else do we find a Jewish writer contentedly permitting the final issue of the adjustment of the things of this world to the life beyond the grave. What we find asserted here so strongly is the unreality of the success which is not achieved on the eternal principles of righteousness. How true to life and experience is that expression ‘He counted himself an happy man’! How it brings out the situation of contented enjoyment, which is assumed in place of the genuine thing; the affectation of interest for the sake of mere appearance; the hypocritical sentiments mouthed out in order that the world may exclaim ‘What a noble fellow is here!’ And yet there is always the haunting, ever-present consciousness of secret failure, the knowledge that nothing is quite what it seems. And is there not another element in success, as the world counts it, which, even when success has been fairly and squarely won, goes very far to discount its worth? One sees that so much is due not to real merit but to the chance disposition of circumstance—the luck of an examination which comes once in a lifetime, the luck of particular questions set, which places you, perchance, in the class list just above a much better man than yourself, and he loses the prize which is the making of your career. The sensible man of discrimination knows and recognises all this and appraises his success at its true worth.

II. The intrinsic worth of success.—We can only say, then, that failure and success in this world are too often but uncertain and capricious things. The all-important question for each is that which concerns the intrinsic worth of success in life. ‘For while he lived, he counted himself a happy man.’ The inference is, I suppose, that when he died he found out his mistake. The answer that follows is full of irony: ‘so long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak good of thee’; of course they will. All the world cares about is that you should keep up appearances. And the same vaunting world is not slow to extend its appreciation to success achieved by its own methods even in the very presence of Christ. There is the religious partisan who prays for every one but himself, and to whom no conscience is sacred but his own. The world rewards him with its votes.

III. The right side to success.—Nevertheless there is a right and wholesome side to the world’s worship of success, for surely we were not sent here to court failure. There is a depreciation of success that is nothing but unreasoning affectation. It boasts of the so-called failure of the Cross, forgetting that our Lord’s ministry on earth ended not with the Cross but with the Resurrection and the Ascension. Christ never speaks of failure, but looks forward to the restoration of all things. What the Christian should deprecate is not success, but sham, false success—the success which does not last, that which is of the earth, earthy.

—Archdeacon Bevan.

Illustration

‘No more significant truth exists, perhaps, to show the slight correspondence between success and merit, than the fact that the self-same man—by the exercise of the self-same powers—may at one time succeed and at another fail. Edmund Kean, acting in stable buildings to farm servants, and gaining bread for his wife and children, was just as great a genius as when crowned in Drury Lane. When George Stephenson died amid the applause and gratitude of the people, he was the same man, maintaining the same principles, as when he was scorned by all.’