We all have had the experience of how in our lives there are long
stretches of uneventful days, and then, generally without warning, some
crisis is sprung on us, which demands quite a different order of
qualities to cope with it. Our typhoons generally come without any
warning from a falling barometer.
We may at any moment be confronted with some hard duty which will task
our utmost energy.
We may at any moment be plunged in some great calamity to which the
quiet course of our lives for years will be as the still flow of the
river between smiling lawns is to the dash and fierce currents of the
rapids in a grim canyon.
The tasks that may come on us and the tasks that must come, the dangers
that may beset us and the dangers that must envelop us, the
possibilities that lie hidden in the future, and the certainties that
we know to be shrouded there, should surely sometimes occupy a wise
man's thoughts. It is but living in a fool's paradise to soothe
ourselves with the assurance which a moment's thought will shatter:
'To-morrow shall be as this day.' We shall not always have the easy
competition with footmen; there will some time come a call to strain
our muscles to keep up with the gallop of cavalry. We shall have to
struggle to keep our feet in the swelling of Jordan, and must not
expect to have a continual leisurely life in 'a land of peace.'
II. Think of what experience tells us as to our power to meet these
crises.
The footmen have wearied you. The small tasks have been more than your
patience and strength could manage. No doubt great exigencies often
call forth great powers that were dormant in the humdrum of ordinary
life. But the man who knows himself best will be the most ready to
shrink with distrust from the dread possibilities of duty.
If we think of the 'footmen' with whom we have contended as
representing the smaller faults that we have tried to overcome, does
our success in conquering some small bad habit, some 'little sin,'
encourage the hope that we could keep our footing when some great
temptation of a lifetime came down on us with a rush like the charge of
a battalion of horsemen? Or, if we cast our eyes forward to the
calamities that lie still 'on the knees of the gods' for us, do we feel
ready to meet the hours of desolating disaster, the 'hour of death and
the day of judgment'? Even in a land of peace we have all had alarms,
perturbations, and defeats enough, and our security has been at the
mercy of marauders so often that if we are wise, and take due heed of
what experience has to say to us of our reserve of force, we shall not
be hopeful of keeping our footing in the whirling currents of a river
in full flood.