Now, I doubt not that both readings may be allowed. For certainly both
thoughts were in the speaker's mind. He did not believe at that moment
that he could ever be brought to commit such infamous deeds, and he did
not believe that he could ever attain such high ambitions and power.
There was a dark moral depth predicted for him to which he was sure he
would never fall, and there was a certain grandeur and elevation to
which he was confident he would never rise. To both things he said,
"It is impossible," and yet the impossible came to pass.

Now I would have you observe that this is one of the prominent lessons
of the Bible; on many a page does it bring out an unexpected
development like this. Again and again it is the unlikely that happens
in the lives which figure on its pages. They rise or they fall in a
way that no one looked for, and which they, least of all, anticipated
themselves. We seem to hear them saying with Hazael, "Impossible," and
then, before we get far, the thing is done. Impossible, we say, that
king Saul should ever descend so low as to deal in witches; or that
Solomon, the wise, God-fearing youth, should give himself up to the
sway of lustful passions and idolatries. Yet that comes to pass.
Impossible, we say, that the cunning, lying Jacob should ever develop
into a man of prayer; and the outcast beggar, Jephthah, ever grow into
a hero-patriot and king. Yet we see it. In the Bible stories
greatness always comes to those who have neither marked themselves out
for it, nor deemed themselves fit for it; and, on the contrary, its
most infamous deeds are done, and its most shameful lives lived, by
those who have given promise of fairer things, and who in their early
manhood would have scouted the possibility of descending so low. The
men whom it describes have no suspicion, to begin with, of the great
power for good that is in them, or the equally great possibilities of