ij. E. M'Fadyen.
542 OPPORTUNITY
ought to be able to discover without any warning voice what God s purpose is, and what our opportunity is worth.
^ There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
^ There is nothing that stands still in time, so that no duty at all admits of delay ; each is strictly the duty of the moment. The act of social kindness, which is a gracious attention this week, becomes an overdue debt the next, and is presented with sad apology instead of being received with glad surprise. The wounded tenderness to which we spoke not the timely and soothing word, passes into permanent soreness instead of healing with grateful love. All round our human existence, indeed, does this same thincr appear. Each present conviction, each secret suggestion of duty, constitutes a distinct and separate call of God, which can never be slighted without the certainty of its total departure or its fainter return. Our true opportunities come but once ; they are sufficient but not redundant; we have time enough for the longest duty, but not for the shortest sin.^
Farewell, fair day and fading light! The clay-born here, with westward sight, Marks the huge sun now downward soar. Farewell. We twain shall meet no more.
Farewell. I watch with bursting sigh My late contemned occasion die. I linger useless in my tent: Farewell, fair day, so foully spent!
Farewell, fair day. If any God At all consider this poor clod, He who the fair occasion sent Prepared and placed the impediment.
Let him diviner vengeance take — Give me to sleep, give me to wake Girded and shod, and bid me play The hero in the coming day ! ^ * James Martineau. ' R. L. Stevenson, Songs of Travel.
ESTHER IV. 14 543
(1) Life is an opportunity. — It is coming to our kingdom. To live physically, intellectually, spiritually, to exist, is our call Do we understand the wonderful possibilities of our life ? Often it drops down into a dull routine, monotonous, mechanical. We seem to be within the grasp of a savage power, which puts us here and there, forcing us through daily exercises of one sort and another in a way over which we seem to have no control. But it is possible to have this seeming iron destiny placed under the control of a still higher Power.
^ Our days have fallen on a time different from all that has gone before, unique in this particular, if in nothing else — the power of public opinion. In former days, only one man here and there seemed to have a kingdom to enter upon, a few men swayed the nations, a few men seemed to be inspired to deeds which raised them into leaders of the people. But now the rulers in name are the ruled in fact. The government is governed, and the people, as freedom has broadened slowly down from precedent to precedent, control everything. It is a great thing to live now. Are we equal to the occasion ? We may know much. Literature pours its wealth out before us. Science teaches us how to look away into space, and follow the stars in their girdling orbits ; to look down into little things, and see how great a world of being exists in points and specks which our eye can scarcely discern. It tells us how the earth is made, and reads off to us the story of its framing. Are we equal to our time ?
We need it every hour —
A purpose high, To give us strength and power
To do or die. We need it every hour —
A firm, brave will. That, though hate's clouds may lower,
Shall conquer still.
We need it every hour —
A calm strong mind. Enriched by reason's dower,
Nor warped nor blind. We need it every hour —
A patient love, Which shall all souls endower
From heights above.
544 OPPORTUNITY
We need it every hour—
A conscience clear, That shall be as a tower
Of strength and cheer. We need it every hour —
A true pure life, Which failure cannot sour
Or turn to strife.^
(2) Christian life is an opporUtnity. — As Christians we have come to a kingdom. Shall we prove ourselves equal to the times on which our lot has fallen ? Christianity, ever since its birth, has presented two aspects — the offensive and the defensive, self- assertion and aggression. At the building of the wall round Jerusalem men worked with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other, watchful to resist attack, watchful that the work should make progress. So has the new spiritual Jerusalem been built, from the time of the early Fathers of the Church down to the latest contributors to Christian apology, from the time of St. Paul the Apostle down to the latest heroes of mission- ary enterprise.
^ No time is Mdthout its own pathos and its call for patriotic and self-sacrificing work. Certainly ours is not. The wonderful progress of science in the last two generations has supplied means of helping the world such as have never existed before. The problem of the degraded and disinherited is pressing on the attention of intelligent minds with an urgency which cannot be disregarded. It is intolerable to think that a noble population like ours should forever lie sodden and stupefied, as it now does, beneath a curse like drunkenness; and events are rapidly maturing for a great change. The heathen world is opening everywhere to the influences of the Gospel. And perhaps the most significant of all the signs of the times is the conviction, which is spreading in many different sections of the community, that the average of Christian living is miserably below the standard of the New Testament, and that a far broader, manlier, more courageous and open-eyed style of Christianity is both possible and necessary.^