Opportunity

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OPPORTUNITY

OPPORTUNITY

[Address by Bishop J. L. Spalding, Roman Catholic Bishop of Peoria, Ill., since 1877 (born in Lebanon, Pa., June 3, 1840; --), delivered at the opening of the Spalding Institute, Peoria, December 6, 1899.]

How shall I live? How shall I make the most of my life and put it to the best use? How shall I become a man and do a man's work?

This, and not politics or trade or war or pleasure, is the question.

The primary consideration is not how one shall get a living, but how he shall live, for if he live rightly, whatever is needful he shall easily find. Life is opportunity, and therefore its whole circumstance may be made to serve the purpose of those who are bent on self-improvement, on making themselves capable of doing thorough work.

Opportunity is a word which, like so many others that are excellent, we get from the Romans. It means near port, close to haven. It is a favorable occasion, time, or place for learning or saying or doing a thing. It is an invitation to seek safety and refreshment, an appeal to make escape from what is low and vulgar and to take refuge in high thoughts and worthy deeds, from which flows increase of strength and joy. It is omnipresent. What we call evils, as poverty, neglect, and suffering, are, if we are wise, opportunities for good.

Death itself teaches life's value not less than its vanity. It is the background against which its worth and beauty stand forth in clear relief. Its dark form- follows us like our shadow, to bid us win the prize while yet there is time; to teach that if we live in what is permanent, the destroyer cannot blight what we know and love; to urge us, with a