and left the field.
Then came the king's son wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day."

With the blunt sword, broken now, which the craven had flung away as
unfit for use, the princely hand won its great victory. Life is full
of illustrations of this very experience. The materials of life which
one man has despised and spurned as unworthy of him, as having in them
no charmed secret of success, another man is forever picking up out of
the dust, and with them achieving noble and brilliant successes. Men,
alert and eager, are wanted, men with heroic heart and princely hand,
to see and use the opportunities that lie everywhere in the most
commonplace life.

There is but one thing to do to get out of life all its possibilities
of attainment and achievement; we must train ourselves to take what
every moment brings to us of privilege and of duty. Some people worry
themselves over the vague wonder as to what the divine plan in life is
for them. They have a feeling that God had some definite purpose in
creating them, and that there is something he wants them to do in this
world, and they would like to know how they can learn this divine
thought for their life. The answer is really very simple. God is
ready to reveal to us, with unerring definiteness, his plan for our
life. This revealing he makes as we go on, showing us each moment one
little fragment of his purpose. Says Faber: "The surest method of
aiming at a knowledge of God's eternal purposes about us is to be found
in the right use of the present moment. Each hour comes with some
little fagot of God's will fastened upon its back."

We have nothing to do, therefore, with anything save the privilege and
duty of the one hour now passing. This makes the problem of living
very simple. We need not look at our life as a whole, nor even carry
the burden of a single year; if we but grasp well the meaning of the
one little fragment of time immediately present, and do instantly all
the duty and take all the privilege that the one hour brings, we shall
thus do that which shall best please God and build up our own life into
completeness. It ought never to be hard for us to do this.

"God broke our years to hours and days, that hour by hour
And day by day