ll the New Year fulfil itself in
ever widening glory and that enchanting loveliness which invests the
higher fulfilments of life.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Interruptions as Opportunities.]

"To work, to help and to be helped, to learn sympathy through suffering,
to learn faith by perplexity, to reach truth through wonder,--behold!
this is what it is to prosper, this is what it is to live," said
Phillips Brooks. When Herbert Spencer produced his great "Data of
Ethics" he did not consider in it the ethics of interruptions which
sometimes assume a formidable place in the strenuous life. One is
perhaps exceptionally patient and tolerant when it is a question of
great trial or calamity, and not infrequently very impatient with the
trifling annoyances and demands and interruptions that occur. Yet, is
there not just here a richness of opportunity in the aim to "do good to
all men" that may often be unrecognized? A writer who may be pressed for
time finds in his mail-matter a number of personal requests from
strangers. One package contains manuscripts, perhaps, which a woman in
Montana entreats shall be read and returned with advice or suggestion.
Some one in Texas wants a paragraph copied that he may use it in
compiling a calendar. An individual in Indiana has a collection of
autographs for sale and begs to know of the ways and means for disposing
of them. And an author in Arizona desires that a possible publisher be
secured for her novel; and so the requests run on. Strictly speaking,
perhaps, no one of these has any real right to thus tax the time and
energy of a stranger; but is there not another side to it? Here are an
array of interruptions, but why not give them another name--that of
opportunities? One has, perhaps, his theories and his convictions
regarding the service of humanity. He holds it to be a duty,--a
privilege. He believes that it is through entering into this service
that he may even co-operate with God in the onward progress. To "help
humanity" is a very attractive and high-sounding term. But what is
humanity? Is it not, after all, composed of individuals? And here are
individuals to be helped; here they are, with their several individual
requests, and the injunction of the apostle suggests itself, "_As ye
have therefore opportunity_, ... do good unto all men." Do not the
interruptions assume a new form, and are they not, thereby, transfigured
into glad and golden opportunity?