"Life is a leaf of paper white, Whereon each one of us may write His word or two--and then comes night."
--LOWELL.
Many good people are very slow. They do their work well enough, perhaps, but so leisurely that they accomplish in their brief time only a fraction of what they might accomplish. They lose, in aimless loitering, whole golden hours which they ought to fill with quick activities. They seem to have no true appreciation of the value of time, or of their own accountability for its precious moments. They live conscientiously, it may be, but they have no strong constraining sense of duty impelling them to ever larger and fuller achievement.
They have a work to do, but there is no hurry for it; there is plenty of time in which to do it.
It is quite safe to say that the majority of people do not get into their life half the achievement that was possible to them when they began to live, simply because they have never learned to work swiftly, and under pressure of great motives.
There can be no doubt that we are required to make the most possible of our life. Mr. Longfellow once gave to his pupils, as a motto, this: "Live up to the best that is in you." To do this, we must not only develop our talents to the utmost power and capacity of which they are susceptible, but we must also use these talents to the accomplishment of the largest and best results they are capable of producing. In order to reach this standard, we must never lose a day, nor even an hour, and we must put into every day and every hour all that is possible of activity and usefulness.
Dreaming through days and years, however brilliantly one may dream, can never satisfy the demands of the responsibility which inheres essentially in every soul that is born into the world. Life means duty, toil, work. There is something divinely allotted to each hour, and the hour one loiters remains forever an unfilled blank. We can ideally fulfil our mission only by living up always to the best that is in us, and by doing every day the very most that we can do.
"So here hath been dawning another blue day; Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away?
Out of eternity this new day is born; Into eternity at night will return."
We turn over to our Lord for example, since his was the one life in all the ages that reached the divine thought, and filled out the divine pattern; and wherever we see him, we find him intent on doing the will of his Father, not losing a moment, nor loitering at any task. We see him ever hastening from place to place, from ministry to ministry, from baptism to temptation, from teaching to healing, from miracle-working to solitary prayer. His feet never loitered. He lost no moments; he seems indeed to have crowded the common work of years into a few short, intense hours. He is painted for us as a man continually under the strongest pressure, with a work to do which he was eager to accomplish in the shortest possible time. He was always calm, never in nervous haste, yet ever quietly moving with resistless energy on his holy errand.
We ought to catch our Master"s spirit in this celerity in the Father"s business. Time is short and duty is large. There is not a moment to lose, if, in our allotted period, we would finish the work that is given us to do. We need to get our Lord"s "straightway" into our life, so that we shall hasten from duty to duty, without pause or idle lingering. We need to get into our heart a consciousness of being ever on the Master"s errands, that shall be within us a mighty compulsion, driving us always to duty.
Naturally we are indolent, and fond of ease and self indulgence. We need to be carried out of and beyond ourselves. There is no motive strong enough to do this but love to G.o.d and to our fellow-men.
Supreme love to G.o.d makes us desire to do with alacrity everything he commands. Love to our fellow-men draws us to all service of sympathy and beneficence for them, regardless of cost. Constrained by such motives, we shall never become laggards in duty.
Swiftness or slowness in duty is very much a matter of habit. As one is trained in early life, one is quite sure to continue in mature years. A loitering child will become a loitering man or woman. The habit grows, as all habits do.
"Lose this day loitering, "twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory; The indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost, lamenting o"er lost days.
"Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute.
What you can do, and think you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, magic in it.
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work will be completed."
Many people lose in the aggregate whole years of time out of their lives for want of system. They make no plan for their days. They let duties mingle in inextricable confusion. They are always in feverish haste. They talk continually of being overwhelmed with work, of the great pressure that is upon them, of being driven beyond measure. They always have the air of men who have scarcely time to eat or sleep. And there is nothing feigned in all their intense occupation. They really are hurried men. Yet in the end they accomplish but little in comparison with their great activity, because they work without order, and always feverishly and nervously. Swiftness in accomplishment is always calm and quiet. It plans well, suffering no confusion in tasks.
Hurried haste is always flurried haste, which does nothing well.
"Unhasting yet unresting" is the motto of quick and abundant achievement.
""Without haste! without rest!"
Bind the motto to thy breast; Bear it with thee as a spell; Storm or sunshine, guard it well; Heed not flowers that round thee bloom, Bear it onward to the tomb.
"Haste not! let no thoughtless deed Mar for aye the spirit"s speed; Ponder well and know the right; Onward then with all thy might; Haste not; years can ne"er atone For one reckless action done.
"Rest not! life is sweeping by, Do and dare before you die; Something mighty and sublime Leave behind to conquer time; Glorious "tis to live for aye When these forms have pa.s.sed away.
"Haste not! rest not! calmly wait; Meekly bear the storm of fate; Duty be thy polar guide; Do the right whate"er betide.
Haste not! rest not! Conflicts past, G.o.d shall crown thy work at last."
There is another phase of the lesson. Not swiftness only, but patient persistence through days and years, is the mark of true living. There are many people who can work under pressure for a little time, but who tire of the monotony and slack in their duty by and by, failing at last because they cannot endure unto the end. There are people who begin many n.o.ble things, but soon weary of them and drop them out of their hands. They may pa.s.s for brilliant men, men even of genius, but in the end they have for biography only a volume of fragments of chapters, not one of them finished. Such men may attract a great deal of pa.s.sing attention, while the tireless plodders working beside them receive no praise, no commendation; but in the real records of life, written in abiding lines in G.o.d"s Book, it is the latter who will shine in the brightest splendor. Robert Browning puts this truth in striking way in one of his poems:--
"Now, observe, Sustaining is no brilliant self-display Like knocking down or even setting up: Much bustle these necessitate; and still To vulgar eye, the mightier of the myth Is Hercules, who subst.i.tutes his own For Atlas" shoulder and supports the globe A whole day,--not the pa.s.sive and obscure Atlas who bore, ere Hercules was born, And is to go on bearing that same load When Hercules turns ash on Oeta"s top.
"Tis the transition-stage, the tug and strain, That strike men: standing still is stupid-like."
So we get our lesson. There is so much to do in the short days that we dare not lose a moment. Life is so laden with responsibility that to trifle at any point is sin. Even on the seizing of minutes eternal issues may depend. Of course we must take needed rest to keep our lives in condition for duty. But what shall we say of those strong men and women who do almost nothing but rest? What shall we say of those who live only to have amus.e.m.e.nt, who dance away their nights and then sleep away their days, and thus hurry on toward the judgment-bar, doing nothing for G.o.d or for man? Life is duty; every moment of it has its own duty. There is no malfeasance so sad and so terrible in its penalties as that which wastes the golden years in idleness or pleasure, and leaves duty undone.
Shall we not seek to crowd the days with most earnest living? Shall we not learn to redeem the time from indolence, from loitering, from unmethodicalness, from the waste of precious moments, from self-indulgence, from impatience of persistent toil, from all that lessens achievement? Shall we not learn to work swiftly for our Master?
"You must live each day at your very best: The work of the world is done by few; G.o.d asks that a part be done by you.
"Say oft of the years as they pa.s.s from sight, "This is life with its golden store: I shall have it once, but it comes no more."
"Have a purpose, and do with your utmost might: You will finish your work on the other side, When you wake in his likeness, satisfied."
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SHADOWS WE CAST.
"The smallest bark on life"s tumultuous ocean Will leave a track behind for evermore; The slightest wave of influence set in motion Extends and widens to the eternal sh.o.r.e."
Every one of us casts a shadow. There hangs about us a sort of penumbra,--a strange, indefinable something,--which we call personal influence, which has its effect on every other life on which it falls.
It goes with us wherever we go. It is not something we can have when we want to have it, and then lay aside when we will, as we lay aside a garment. It is something that always pours out from our life, like light from a lamp, like heat from flame, like perfume from a flower.
No one can live, and not have influence. Says Elihu Burritt: "No human being can come into this world without increasing or diminishing the sum total of human happiness, not only of the present, but of every subsequent age of humanity. No one can detach himself from this connection. There is no sequestered spot in the universe, no dark niche along the disk of non-existence, to which he can retreat from his relations to others, where he can withdraw the influence of his existence upon the moral destiny of the world; everywhere his presence or absence will be felt, everywhere he will have companions who will be better or worse for his influence." These are true words. To be at all is to have influence, either for good or evil, over other lives.
The ministry of personal influence is something very wonderful.
Without being conscious of it, we are always impressing others by this strange power that goes out from us. Others watch us and their actions are modified by ours. Many a life has been started on a career of beauty and blessing by the influence of one n.o.ble act. The disciples saw their Master praying, and were so impressed by his earnestness, or by the radiancy they saw on his face, as he communed with his Father, that when he joined them again they asked him to teach them how to pray. Every true soul is impressed continually by the glimpses it has of loveliness, of holiness, or of n.o.bleness in others.
One kind deed often inspires many kindnesses. Here is a story from a newspaper of the other day, which ill.u.s.trates this. A little newsboy entered a car on the elevated railway train, and slipping into a cross-seat, was soon asleep. Presently two young ladies came in, and took seats opposite to him. The child"s feet were bare, his clothes were ragged, and his face was pinched and drawn, showing marks of hunger and suffering. The young ladies noticed him, and, seeing that his cheek rested against the hard window-sill, one of them arose, and quietly raising his head, slipped her m.u.f.f under it for a pillow.
The kind act was observed, and now mark its influence. An old gentleman in the next seat, without a word, held out a silver quarter to the young lady, nodding toward the boy. After a moment"s hesitation, she took it, and as she did so, another man handed her a dime, a woman across the aisle held out some pennies, and almost before the young woman realized what she was doing, she was taking a collection for the poor boy. Thus from the one little act there had gone out a wave of influence touching the hearts of two score people, and leading each of them to do something.
Common life is full of just such ill.u.s.trations of the influence of kindly deeds. Every good life leaves in the world a twofold ministry, that of the things it does directly to bless others, and that of the silent influence it exerts, through which others are made better, or are inspired to do like good things.
Influence is something, too, which even death does not end. When earthly life closes, a good man"s active work ceases. He is missed in the places where his familiar presence has brought benedictions. No more are his words heard by those who ofttimes have been cheered or comforted by them. No more do his benefactions find their way to homes of need where so many times they have brought relief. No more does his gentle friendship minister strength and hope and courage to hearts that have learned to love him. The death of a good man, in the midst of his usefulness, cuts off a blessed ministry of helpfulness in the circle in which he has dwelt. But his influence continues. Longfellow writes:--
"Alike are life and death When life in death survives, And the uninterrupted breath Inspires a thousand lives.
"Were a star quenched on high, For ages would its light, Still travelling downward from the sky, Shine on our mortal sight.
"So when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men."
The influence which our dead have over us is ofttimes very great. We think we have lost them when we see their faces no more, nor hear their voices, nor receive the accustomed kindnesses at their hands. But in many cases there is no doubt that what our loved ones do for us after they are gone is quite as important as what they could have done for us had they stayed with us. The memory of beautiful lives is a benediction, softened and made more rich and impressive by the sorrow which their departure caused. The influence of such sacred memories is in a certain sense more tender than that of life itself. Death transfigures our loved one, as it were, sweeping away the faults and blemishes of the mortal life, and leaving us an abiding vision, in which all that was beautiful, pure, gentle, and true in him remains to us. We often lose friends in the compet.i.tions and strifes of earthly life, whom we would have kept forever had death taken them away in the earlier days when love was strong. Often is it true, as Cardinal Newman writes:--