' M. S. "Watts, George Frederic Watts, ii. 137.
• Dr. MacGregor of St. Cuthberts, 109.
• B. F. Westcott, Village Sermons, 321.
EPHESIANS V. i6 259
famine and plague. Especially she loved children, and built hospitals for them ; and they loved her so that they ran after her, calling out " Mother ! mother !" The sick children she took into her hospital, washed and dressed their poor little limbs, and bought them toys and gifts to amuse them. For this she was canonized ; and she well deserved it, not because of the miracles which they tell of her, but for that which is more Divine than any miracle, her tender heart and love of humanity.^
Up, up, my soul, the long-spent time redeeming ;
Sow thou the seeds of better deeds and thought; Light other lamps while yet thy lamp is beaming —
The time is short.
Think of the good thou might'st have done when brightly
The suns to thee life's choicest season brought ;
Hours lost to God in pleasure passing lightly —
The time is short.
If thou hast friends, give them thy best endeavour, Thy warmest impulse, and thy purest thought,
Keeping in mind and word and action ever — The time is short.^
II.
Circumstances that Increase the Value of the Article.
St. Paul regards life as an opportunity for which a price must be paid ; the full price of constant watchfulness and endeavour and sacrifice. He speaks in the language of the market or the exchange ; and far down in the undercurrents of his mind seems to be moving the thought that, if men would but expend upon the investment of their intellectual and spiritual possessions one- tenth of the pains they give to the investment of their worldly goods, their redemption would already have begun. And yet it is in the spiritual sphere that it is most needful to pay the price. Experience confirms the protest of King David that he could not — not merely would not, but could not — make an offering to the Lord his God of that which had cost him nothing. In all the higher walks of life, we neither get nor give anything of value, if it has cost us nothing in the getting or the giving.
» J. r. Clarke. « E. Prentiss.
26o THE PURCHASE OF OPPORTUNITY
1. Opportunities both rise iii price and grow fewer every time we refuse to purchase them. — If it be hard to subdue passion and the cravings of irregular desire to-day, it will be harder to-morrow, should we leave the hours of to-day unimproved. If it would cost us much to do what we know to be the will of the Lord to-day, it will cost us more every day we neglect our duty, A man who has long disobeyed the Divine will has in doing that will difficul- ties which the obedient can but faintly conceive. His polluted memory, his perverted and obstinate will, the force of sinful habit, the stings of impure desire, or even the mere custom of indiffer- ence to things unseen and eternal, turn the obedience which should be his happiness into mere labour and pain.
This moment's thine, thou never more may'st liear The clarion-summons-call thus loud and clear; What now thou buyest cheap may yet prove dear.
Part with thine all, spare not the needed cost; That which thou partest with were better lost, Thy selfish worldly schemes more wisely crossed.
Thy loss infinitesimal, thy gain
Endless, immense ; thy momentary pain
The single step the boundless bliss to attain!
Eye hath not seen, man's ear hath never heard, Nor heart conceived — save some faint image blurred — The bliss of those who keep the Christly word —
Let go ; my soul, let go ! ^
2. Evil times give a special value to opportunity. — The disciples of Jesus Christ, living in the midst of a great pagan city, were exposed to grievous and continuous perils. The moral corruption of the ancient world found there its most complete and deadly expression. It entered into all the relations of life — commerce, politics, society, worst of all, religion, were steeped in it. The very atmosphere of existence was heavy with gross sin. Evil, which in the country diffused itself over a wider area, and was at all times checked and shadowed by the solemn and beautiful scenes of nature, was here brought together into a centre, and obtruded upon the notice without hindrance or intermission. To
» William Hall, "Via Crucis."
EPHESIANS V. i6 261
borrow Cardinal Newman's simile, " It was basking under the sun, and rioting and extending itself to its amplest dimensions, like some glittering serpent, or spotted pard . . . without interposition from heaven or earth in correction of so awful a degradation." Such a centre and focus of evil was ancient Ephesus.
^ St. Paul sets a good example of his own precept by his own practice. When he wrote this Epistle he was a prisoner, bound to a soldier. The days were evil for him : but he redeemed them. He made his prison to be a pulpit, from which he preached to the world. The Koman soldier's presence was a perpetual memento to him that he himself was a soldier of Christ. Every part of the soldier's armour suggested to him a weapon of Christian warfare, to be wielded in the cause of Christ.^