like the spiritual intensity we see in Billy Graham. The two men’s
worldviews and commitments were largely congruent.
When Lee saw visible results of his own efforts, he would put
them into perspective. He believed forces other than his own
superb leadership were also at work, forces that were the ultimate
arbiters of meaning.
We see this in his perceptions of his failure to lead the South
to military victory. After the war, Lee became president of Wash-
ington College, seeking to train young men to rebuild the dam-
aged nation. One day Lee called an underachieving sophomore
into his office and told the young man that he must apply him-
self more to his studies, that only hard work would produce suc-
cess in life. The sophomore somewhat brashly raised the issue of
Lee’s efforts and the outcome in the recent war: “But, General,
you failed.”
Lee neither rebuked the student nor conceded his point but
said simply, “I hope that you may be more fortunate than I.” Lee
later elaborated to a friend, “We failed, but in the good providence
of God, apparent failure often proves a blessing.” As biographer
H. W. Crocker points out, Lee’s convic-
tion was that “one must do one’s duty to
the best of one’s ability, whatever the
cost, whatever the circumstances, and
trust that Providence will turn everything, even apparent disaster,
to some useful purpose, however dimly perceived, if it can be per-
ceived at all.”
Lee’s spirit in that regard paralleled Lincoln’s remarkable sec-
ond inaugural address, in which his humility and awareness of
Providence are so profoundly expressed and etched in granite in
his memorial. How ironic that these men, so spiritually deep and
aware, led the terrible struggle against each other in that war. Yet
these men were painfully aware of such ironies: that the great
forces at work are beyond our facile comprehension, and that
awareness of that fact has an enormous impact on the ego.
Such leaders understand that neither success nor failure can
be understood immediately, that powers beyond their own are at
Redeeming the EgoHumility is to make a right
estimate of one’s own self.
CHARLES H. SPURGEON