Opportunity

Opportunity | Previous file | Next file

toward the mark, knowing that the present moment is the only opportunity. Now is the day of salvation, now is the day of doom. The individual is but as a bubble that rises from out the infinite ocean of being and bursts in the inane; but his life is nevertheless enrooted in the Absolute, and all the circumstances by which his existence is surrounded and attended are but meant to awaken in him a knowledge and appreciation of his abiding and inestimable worth. They all, therefore, are or may be made opportunities. The paramount consideration is not what will procure for him more money, finer houses, better machines, more rapid or more destructive engines, but what will make him wiser, stronger, holier, more loving, more godlike. The useful is not the best; or shall I say that the most useful is that which serves divine ends, which though it provide not bed or board, illumines, exalts, and enriches the life of man? Emerson rightly affirms that they are beggars who live but to the useful.

All things exist for God and to educate man into his likeness. If one were but high and pure enough he would scatter blessings as the flower fragrance, and all who· came near him would depart made sweet and rich as the air the flower has kissed. To rise daily out of one's self toward truth and beauty and goodness is the secret of becoming day by day more like unto God.

We imagine that we lack material things, but what we really need is more and diviner life. Money is but a remedy for poverty, and poverty is but one of many evils; and if we give our hearts chiefly to riches, we leave ourselves exposed to all the ills that make man miserable, save one.

We find ourselves where we seek ourselves-in matter or in mind, in the low world of mere sensation and base desire, or in that where souls are transfigured by truth and love. Perfection, indeed, is beyond our reach, but they who seriously strive to become perfect acquire excellences and virtues, taste a peace and a joy of which the many have hardly a conception. When we act in the light of the ideal of human perfection, all the ways of life 'become plain, and opportunity is ever present and appealing. We find it in youth and in age, in glad days and in sad days, in health and in sickness, in poverty and in