Failing in order to (partially) succeed

Gospel scholar Vincent Taylor once observed:

As always every attempt to write a Life of Christ will be a failure; but with courage, faith, knowledge, and insight, the succession of failures will less deserve the name; each will point the way to something better.+

Taylor quotes Albert Schweitzer who observed the moral earnestness of those who try:

Though they cannot take Him with them, yet, like men who have seen God face to face and received strength in their souls, they go on their way with renewed courage, ready to do battle with the [evils of the] world.++

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+ Vincent Tayler, “Is It Possible to Write a Life of Christ?” Expository Times (1941): 65.

++ Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 1911, 311.