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 fo