"I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night
cometh."--ST. JOHN ix. 4.
There are few things more commonly disregarded by us in our early years
than the brevity of our life through all its successive stages, and the
fleeting nature of its opportunities.
In childhood we are almost entirely unconscious of both these
characteristics of life. Indeed, it would hardly be natural if it were
otherwise. That reflective habit which dwells upon them is the result of
our experience, and comes later. It is enough for a child if he follows
pure and safe instincts, and lives without reflection a healthy,
unperverted life, under wise guidance and good teaching. Growing in this
way, free from corrupting influences or the contagion of bad example, and
poisoned by no bad atmosphere, he develops naturally towards a manhood
which is rooted in healthy tastes, affections unspoilt, and in good
habits. Thus you see what the very young have a right to claim at the
hands of all their elders--that they should be careful not to mislead
them, and should see that they live in pure air, and feed their growing
instincts and activities in wholesome pastures.
During the stage of earliest growth it would be a sign of unhealthy
precocity if a child were much occupied with the continuity of things, or
the close union of to-day with to-morrow, or of all our thoughts, acts,
pleasures, and tastes, with the bent of character which is being silently
but surely formed in us; and it would be equally unnatural if his
thoughts were to dwell much on the essential shortness of our life, and
the flight of opportunity which does not come back to us.
It is part of the happiness, or, I fear, it must be said sometimes, part
of the pain of early life, that the time before it seems so long. The
day is long with its crowded novelty or intense enjoyment, or possibly
with its dreary and intolerable task-work; to-morrow, with all its
anticipations of things desired or to be endured, seems long; and the
vista of years, as they stretch through boyhood and youth, manhood and
age, seems to lose itself in the far distance of its length. So, viewed
from its beginnings, life is long.
But with the approach of manhood all this begins to change. As we grow
out of childhood our self-conscious and reflective life grows; and thus
there rises in us the feeling of moral responsibility never to be shaken
off again. Not, however, that we should leave all our childhood behind
us. It hardly needs to be said that there are some characteristics of
our earliest years which every man should pray that he may retain to the
end. Unless he retains them his life becomes a deteriorating life.
And first among these is the reverential or filial habit. This deserves
our careful attention, because we sometimes see an affectation of silly
and spurious manliness, which thinks it a fine thing to cast it off. This
reverential or filial feeling, which is natural to the unspoilt and
truthful nature of the child, is preserved in every unspoilt manhood;
only with a difference.
It is raised from the unreflective, instinctive trust in a father's
guidance or a mother's love to that higher feeling which tells us that,
as is the child in a well and wisely ordered home, so is each of us in
that great household of our heavenly Father. This spirit of true piety,
which uplifts, refines, strengthens, and gives courage to manhood, as
nothing else can do, is the natural outcome and successor of a child's
trustfulness, as we rise through it to the feeling that we are
encompassed by a Divine consciousness, and that our life moves in a holy
presence. Or again, we pray that we may not lose that simplicity and
freshness of nature which is at once a special charm of childhood, and,
wherever it is preserved, the chief blessing of a man's later years.
These qualities and characteristics of our infancy--trust, filial
reverence, freshness, simplicity--are not qualities to be left behind,
but the natural forecast of that religious spirit which is the highest
growth of maturity, and our own safeguard against the hardening and
debasing influences of the world and the flesh. And this was the
Saviour's meaning when He said, "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom
of God as a little child shall in nowise enter therein." And if there is
one thing more than another that constitutes the special curse of any
depraved influence acting on young lives, it is that it robs the later
life of these childlike qualities which are the gifts of God to bless us
in youth and age.
But assuming that we bear all this in mind, and hold fast to these
fundamental gifts, and so escape those lower and baser forms of life
which we meet all about in the world, spoiling the manhood and
embittering the age of so many men, we cannot forget the essential
difference between mature years and the years of early growth.
As we grow towards manhood our life necessarily loses its childlike and
unreflecting spontaneity in the ferment of thought, desire, and passion,
and in the light of experience; and therefore it becomes a matter of no
slight importance to estimate the value of that which we hold in our
hands to-day, the nature of the web which our conduct is weaving, and the
fateful character of any mistake in the purposes, notions, ambitions, or
tastes that are, as a matter of fact, fixing the drift and direction of
our life. But to do this amidst all the daily temptations of life is not
always an easy matter; and it is certain that we shall not do it if we do
not fully recognise, while our life is still young and unhampered, the
importance of these two very obvious reflections, which, in fact, resolve
themselves into one, that our time is essentially short, and that our
opportunities are very fugitive.
In one sense, no doubt, there is a long stretch of time before most of
you. As yet hope has more to say to you than memory. Some of you will
look back on these early days from the distant years of another century.
Your life's journey may extend far away over the unexplored future, and
may in some cases be a very long one; but, although this is possible, we
are not allowed to forget that it is always precarious--unexpected graves
are constantly reminding us how short may be the time of any one of
us--how the night cometh.
But it is not merely of the literal shortness of our time, or the
possible nearness of death, that our Lord's words should set us thinking,
when He warns us that the night cometh, and we must work while it is day.
If we measure our life by the things we should accomplish in it, by the
character it should attain to, by the purposes that should be bearing
fruit in it, and not by mere lapse of time, we soon come to feel how very
short it is, and the sense of present duty grows imperative. It is thus
that the thoughtful man looks at his life; and he feels that there is no
such thing as length of days which he can without blame live carelessly,
because in these careless days critical opportunities will have slipped
away irrecoverably; he will have drifted in his carelessness past some
turning-point which he will not see again, and have missed the so-called
chances that come no more.
But even this is only a part of the considerations that make our present
life so precious; for this is only the outer aspect of it. What makes
our time so critically short, whether we consider its intellectual or its
moral and spiritual uses, is that our nature is so very sensitive, so
easily marred by misuse, and spoilt irretrievably. The real brevity of
the time at your disposal, whether for the training of your mind, or for
your growth into the character of good men, consists in this, that
deterioration is standing always at the back of any neglect or waste.
Deterioration is the inseparable shadow of every form of ignoble life.
"Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk with us still."
Leave your faculties unused and they become blunted and dulled; leave
your higher tastes uncultivated and they die; let your affections feed on
anything unworthy and they become debased.
To those who do this it may happen that whilst, so far as years go, they
are still in all the freshness of youth, they are already dying that
death to all higher capacity which is worse than any decay of our
physical organism. Such an early death of higher tastes and faculties,
and of hope for the future, is sometimes effected even before schooldays
are over. And the mere possibility of such a fate overhanging any of us
should stir us like a trumpet-call to take care that we do not surrender
our life to any mean influence, and that we are very zealous for all that
concerns the safety of the young.
"I send out my child," I can imagine the parent of any one of you having
said, "to be trained for manhood; I send him to his school that his
intellect may be cultivated, his moral purpose made strong, and that all
good and pure tastes may be fostered in him; but it is dreadful to think
that instead of this he may, by his life and companionship there, be
hardened and debased, or even brutalised; he may become dead to the
higher life even before he becomes a man." Seeing, then, that there is
this possibility of death even in the midst of life--a possibility, we
would fain hope, seldom realised in this school, but still a
possibility--shall we not be very careful, men and boys alike, so to do
our part in this society, so to shelter the young and strengthen the
weak, and to keep the atmosphere of our life a pure atmosphere, that
every sensitive soul which comes amongst us may grow up here through a
healthy and wholesome boyhood, and go out to the duties and the calling
of his life, strong, unselfish, public-spirited, pure-hearted, and
courageous--a Christian gentleman.