Truth
I Expect To Pass Through This World But Once
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
As Fine as any Scripture
I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to my fellow-creatures, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
John o’London rightly thinks this sentence conveys as fine a message as any scripture, and says more correspondents than he could number had asked him to give its origin. He could not.
Strange to say, the author is unknown. Many people are prepared to state confidently who wrote it, but their different claims cancel each other out. What has long been sought, but not yet found, is proof of the authorship by the discovery of the saying in the published writings of the author to whom it is attributed. This authentication is never forthcoming. People will accept any attribution in a collection of quotations, forgetting or not realizing, that these authorities are at odds with each other.
Someone or another has firmly held that the quotation can be found in the writings of Marcus Aurelius, Stephen Grellet, William Penn, Professor Henry Drummond, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lord Houghton, Thomas Carlyle, An early fifteenth century sampler, Thomas Payne, William C Garnett, W S Ross, Colonel R G Ingersoll, Thomas a Kempis, Father Faber, H B Hegeman, R W Emerson, Sir Rowland Hill, Beatrice Harraden, Joseph Addison, and half a dozen more. But no one has confirmed any of them.
A good many years ago Messrs Bemrose and Sons published a card bearing the passage on one side and on the other the following statement:
This Resolve was written by a New York lady, much impressed with the thought of the uncertainty of life. Not many days after, she was at a meeting in Madison Square Gardens, where she had distributed some printed leaflets with the Resolve, when the Hall roof fell in, and she was one of those killed by the fall.
Mr Moody (of Sankey and Moody) denied that he was the author, and, according to a statement of a correspondent of Notes and Queries (February 6th, 1897), could only say that he…
…secured it from a member of the Massachusetts Legislature who is now dead. This gentleman used to carry it in his pocket, showing it on every possible occasion in the House to those with whom he came in contact.
Again, he throws no light on the authorship. The following similar thought is said to be found on a tombstone at Shrewsbury:
For the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, Do all the good you can, To all the people you can, In all the ways you can, As long as ever you can.
In the course of a prolonged inquiry, a Yorkshireman wrote this interesting communication:
The following, Portrait of a True Gentleman was found in an old manor house in Gloucestershire, written and framed, and hung over the mantelpiece of a tapestried sitting room:
The true gentleman is God’s servant, the world’s master, and his own man, virtue is his business, study his recreation, contentment his rest, and happiness his reward. God is his father, Jesus Christ his Saviour, the saints his brethren, and all that need him his friend, Devotion is his chaplain, chastity his chamberlain, sobriety his butler, temperance his cook, hospitality his housekeeper, Providence his steward, charity his treasure, piety his mistress of the house, and discretion his porter to let in or out, as most fit. Thus is his whole family made up of virtue, and he is the true master of the house. He is necessitated to be in the world on his way to heaven; but he walks through it as fast as he can, and all his business by the way is to make himself and others happy. Take him in two words—a Man and a Christian.
The lines emphasized seem to anticipate, or echo, the famous sentence whose authorship is being sought. Jol’s offer of a reward of £5 for the discovery of the author did not bring a single valid claim, but it did bring him a message saying:
I am glad to see that you have offered a reward for the apprehension of the criminal who wrote “I shall not pass this way again”, etc, and I hope that when you have caught him you will deal with him as he deserves. Though the moral he draws may appeal to a limited number of very good people (who, however, do not need the stimulant) I think the average sinner is just as likely to draw the opposite one, even if he only does so subconsciously. As thus:I shall not pass this way again, So it’s no matter what I do.
I’ll mess the pasture, spoil the track, I do not care a damn for you.
With broken bottles, empty tins, I’ll strew the road you’ve got to take.
I shall not pass this way again, I do not care what mess I make.If everyone of us expected to have to return to the scene of our exploits, I am inclined to think that we should be more careful to leave the world as we should like to find it.
The same correspondent added:
A lady tells me that she has seen the passage in some museum inscribed in Chinese characters on a metal plate. Unfortunately she cannot remember where.
Nobody ever does.
