Why stay we on earth except to grow?
Browning
While we live we must be moving on. When we stop we begin to die. Rest is necessary, but only to renew our strength that we may press on again. An anchor is needful for a ship, but anchoring is not a ship’s business; it is built for sailing. A man is made for struggle and effort, not for ease and loitering.
J.R.M.
Philadelphia, U.S.A.
“My soul is sailing through the sea,
But the Past is heavy and hindereth me;
The Past hath crusted, cumbrous shells,
That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells
Above my soul.
The huge waves wash, the high waves roll,
Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole,
And hindereth me from sailing!
“Old Past, let go and drop i’ the sea,
Till fathomless waters cover thee!
For I am living, but thou art dead;
Thou drawest back, I strive ahead
The day to find.
Thy shells unbind! night comes behind,
I needs must hurry with the wind
And trim me best for sailing.”
There is an incident in the history of the Wandering of the Israelites which is suggestive. It was near the close of the forty years in the wilderness. The people had been for some time in the region of Mount Seir, and seem to have been going round and round the mountain. The meaning is not very clear, but the record says they had compassed Mount Seir many days. They were constantly in motion, and yet were making no progress, were not getting any nearer the promised land. They would journey laboriously for many days through the wilderness, enduring hardship, suffering pain and weariness, and at last would come to the very place from which they had started. It was a fruitless kind of journeying. Then they were called to cease their going round the mountain and to enter on a course that would lead them somewhere. “Jehovah spake unto me, saying, Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward,” there is a tendency among people to do something like this in their everyday life. We are inclined to settle down in our present condition and stay there when we ought to be moving on to something beyond, something better, something larger and nobler. We let ourselves form the habit of moving round and round in a circle, when we ought to break away from the circular course and start forward. It is easy for us to get into a routine in life which will keep us in the same lines from day to day and from week to week.
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