(1) God has a right to our ambition. Life itself is, or should be, carried out in obedience to vocation. Let us ask ourselves, Are we giving God His due in this respect ? Are we doing what 1 D. Watson, Social Problems and the Church's Duty, 118.
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we ought for the Great Being who sent us into this world, not to eat and drink and be crammed with useful knowledge, and then push and struggle again, and perhaps die exultant because we had beaten a companion in the competitive examinations of life, and stood one step higher on its dizzy ladder ? The idea is wrong in itself, it is not the profession but the vocation that we have to consider. If we have got God's call, and recognize our duty to Him, then it matters not where we work. The servant of God will glorify a cabin, a man who forgets God will degrade a palace. Let us cease the mere struggle to get on, and put God first. Am I glorifying God by my actions in honest, serious life, lived in His sight ? Is this world the better because I am alive ? Is society purer because I move in it ? Is the place of business more worthy because I am there ? Justice within my heart assigns the first place in life to God who made it.
O patient Christ! when long ago
O'er old Judaea's rugged hills, Thy willing feet went to and fro
To find and comfort human ills — Did once Thy tender, earnest eyes Look down the solemn centuries, And see the smallness of our lives ?
Souls struggling for the victory,
And martyrs, finding death was gain,
Souls turning from the Truth and Thee, And falling deep in sin and pain —
Great heights and depths were surely seen,
But oh ! the dreary waste between —
Small lives, not base perhaps, but mean:
Their selfish efforts for the right,
Or cowardice that keeps from sin, Content to only see the height
That nobler souls will toil to win ! Oh shame! to think Thine eyes should see The souls contented just to be — The lives too small to take in Thee.
Lord, let this thought awake our shame, That blessed shame that stings to life,
Rouse us to live for Thy dear name, Arm us with courage for the strife.
ACTS xxiv. 25 193
O Christ ! be patient with us still ; Dear Christ: remember Calvary's hill, — Our little lives with purpose fill ! x
(2) God has a right to our activity. How sad it is to count the number of those who sit idly looking on as the pushing, anxious stream grinds its way past them. There they sit, men and women, who seem to have lost energy for everything and to have missed their place in life. " My Father worketh hitherto and I work." To be idle is to fail in one of those marks of resemblance which ought to distinguish man made in the image and likeness of God as the son of His Heavenly Father. To us all, whether early in the morning or at midday, or even at the eleventh hour, the voice of God speaks through our slumbering sense of Justice, and says : " Why stand ye here all the day idle ? " " Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right that shall ye receive."
If, as a flower doth spread and die, Thou wouldst extend me to some good, Before I were by frost's extremity Nipt in the bud;
The sweetness and the praise were Thine, But the extension and the room Which in Thy garland I should fill were mine At Thy great doom.
For as Thou dost impart Thy grace, The greater shall our glory be. The measure of our joys is in this place, The stuff with Thee.
Let me not languish, then, and spend A life as barren to Thy praise As is the dust, to which that life doth tend. But with delays.
All things are busy; only I Neither bring honey with the bees, Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry To water these.
1 Margaret Deland. ACTS & ROM. — 13
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I am no link of Thy great chain, But all my company is a weed. Lord, place me in Thy concert; give one strain To my poor reed.1
(3) God has a right to our homage and worship. This we offer to no one else; but Justice demands that we should offer it to Him. Do we realize that God has a right to our prayers and praises and our worship ? It is not a question of our inclination, but of God's due, whether or not we say our prayers. It is not a matter of our own whims and fancy, but of God's honour, whether or not we " come before His Presence with thanksgiving, and show ourselves glad in Him with psalms." God has a right to one day in seven which He claims as His due. He has a right to at least a small portion of our time every day in the morning and in the evening. It is the very least we can give as a recognition of Him who gives us all, and who never yet received the gifts of His creatures without returning to them a bountiful interest in that which enriches life and happiness.