All work is modest, all idle
self-contemplation is vain. And what the young man needs with his
vague aspirations and conceits is to make himself the servant of some
worthy purpose. And what the merchant needs with his growing business
is to count himself the steward of some worthy Master. And what the
student needs with his active mind is to trace the footsteps of the
God of wisdom in the path he walks and to count the reaching nearer to
Him, the true prize and object of all thinking. Consecration! We are
proud of life because we do so little with it. It is as if the bearer
of dispatches sat down calmly and boasted of the well-made box in
which they had been given to him, and never bore them to their
destination. Life is force, to be transmitted and delivered to a
purpose and an end. It loses its true nature and sweetness, it
corrupts into pride, when it is robbed of its true purpose and
cherished only for itself.
We can find our example of the consecrated man wherever we see true
lives lived in history or about us now, in the Bible or in common
life.
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