^ When he was urged to desist and take rest his favourite expression was, " No, I will never be a loafer. If there are no meetings to be addressed, I will return to my work in Australia and the Islands." " You tell me I am working too hard," he would say, " but my time to work for Jesus cannot be long now. I only wish I could press three times the quantity of work for Him into
^ Newman, in Wilfrid "Ward's Life of John Henry Cardinal Nevmiany ii. 126. ' A. Maclaren.
420 A TIME TO WORK
each day, resting on His promise for the needed help : ' Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end.' " ^
(2) Postponement of duty is loss. — Postponement of the obvious duty means irretrievable loss and inevitable incompleteness when the day is done. Our Lord's more immediate meaning would seem to be that the work and the moment are so adjusted that what is missed at one time cannot be made up at another. Not only does the day bring its task, but every separate hour has its appointed portion of the work. So that if the work of the third hour be missed, there is no time in which to do it. Each sub- sequent hour brings its own responsibility, and there is no room for any work that does not belong to that hour. The work of the passing moment must be done in it, or remain for ever undone. This is a law of life that will be acknowledged the moment it is mentioned, and yet we are apt to grow strangely indifferent to it. But consider what it means. The omission of this moment t^Us upon the work of the next. One stone is left out, and the wall shakes for the want of it A word is left out of the sentence, and the sense of it is thereby obscured. An exercise is skipped in the lesson, and the examination is rendered unsatisfactory. Christ's work was cumulative, and every step in the staircase was fitted in its place. So must it be with us if we would be prime and perfect workmen.
^ Sins of commission are the usual punishment for sins of omission. He that leaves a duty, may well fear that he wUl be left to commit a crime.^
^ I should have said your letter delighted me, but for the
news you gave me of D 's death, . . . My dear, it is awful ; not
that death is awful or even to be regretted, but I could have borne with more composure the news of the death of my most intimate friend. Learn from me what I never so fully realized before, the self-reproach that foUows upon the omission of duty.
I am most deeply grieved when 1 think that D 's appearance,
manners, peculiarities, stood in my way of doing what I might have done: time after time I have thought of his real merits, of his honesty, integrity, zeal, conscientiousness, and I have thought, " Some day, when I have more time, when I am less worried, I will try and see if I cannot make his solitary life happier, make him less eccentric" I have felt that it was hard
1 John G. Paton, iii. 44. ' GumalL
ST. JOHN IX. 4 421
for him to be condemned bo loneliness, to be cheered by scanty sympathy on his coui-se, which was an honest hard-fought one, because his voice was loud, and other little matters. I feel that I have weakly disregarded a noble human soul because it had an unsightly body ; and now he has gone, and I cannot ask his pardoc or make amends.^
"But who art thou, with curious beauty graced, 0 woman, stamped with some bright heavenly seal ? Why go thy feet on wings, and in such haste?"
" I am that maid whose secret few may steal, Called Opportunity. I hasten by Because my feet are treading on a wheel,
Being more swift to run than birds to fly. And rightly on my feet my wings I wear, To blind the sight of those who track and spy ;
Rightly in front I hold my scattered hair To veil my face, and down my breast to fall, Lest men should know my name when I am there ;
And leave behind my back no wisp at all For eager folk to clutch, what time I glide So near, and turn, and pass beyond recall"
"Tell me; who is that Figure at thy side?" "Penitence. Mark this well that by decree Who let me go must keep her for his bride.
And thou hast spent much time in talk with me Busied with thoughts and fancies vainly grand. Nor hast remarked, 0 fool, neither dost see How lightly I have fled beneath thy hand."*
IV.
Why We must Cease fbom Working.
1. The coming night. — It was Jesus who assured us that God was the God of the living, not of the dead ; yet it was Jesus who told us that the night was coming. In the glamour and fretful haste
* Life a-nd Letters of Mavddl Creighton^ L 105.
* J. E. Flecker, Forty-tipo Poems, 28.
422 A TIME TO WORK
of the day, we too often forget the blackness of the night into which it is rushing, and thereby lose all the directness and con- centration of aim, which would chase away the terror of the night when it falls. And yet terror there should be none ; for in the beginning God ordained that in every night the moon and the stars should shine, and no night can be very dark into which Christ the Light has passed. Yet, with all its gracious possibilities, it is night that awaits us. The longest day dies into night, and though out of the darkness a new day will be born, yet that darkness is the grave of a day that is gone.