SERIOUS THOUGHTS.

Waikato Argus, Volume VII, Issue 491, 23 September 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

SERIOUS THOUGHTS.

AWAKE! AWAKE ! ' Whkn you have found your work, whatever it may be, give yourself to it with all your heart, and make the resolution in God's sight never to go to your rest leaving a stone unturned which may help your aims. Half-and-half charity does very little good to its objects ; and is a miserable, slovonly affair for the workers. And when the end comes and the night olosss in, the long last night of earth, when no man can work any more in this world, your milk and water, halfhearted charities will bring no memories of comfort to yon. They are not so many ' good works * which you can place on the credit side of your account, in the mean, commercial spirit taught by some of the churches. Nay, rather, they are only solemn evidenoes that you knew ytur duty, knew you might do good and did it not or did it half-heartedly ! What a thought for thoso last days when we know ourselves to be going home to God, God whom at bottom, after all, we have loved and shall love for ever—that we might have served Him here, might have blessed His creatures, might have done His will on earth, as it is done in Heaven, but we have let the glorious chance slip by us for ever.'

LIFE OF FRANCIS P. COBBE. These words of Miss Cobbe's sound like a clarion note to awaken the careless to a sense of the responsibility and to urge on thoso in ' the way ' to greater energy. Whatever our work may be, in office or shop, at the sewing-machine or the plough, preparing articles for the press or dinner for tho family, let us do it with all our might, santified by this clause : ' As unto the Lord.' Our time is short. Let us make the most of it. ' I expect to pass through this life but once. If therefore there be any kindness I can show or any good thing L can do to my fellow beings, let me do it now, let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. In Christ's parable in which the great division of mankind is likened to the separation of sheep from goats, it was the Bins of omission which sondomned the guilty. 'Yo did it not ' was the accusation.

'For all the kind deeds we might have done hut have not done, for the good words we might have spoken but have not spoken, forgive us we beseech Thea good Lord. Arouse us to our opportunities, lost they slip by us unperoeived. Enable us to make the most of the prrsont life, both in so using the circumstauces in which Thou has plaoed us for the perfecting of our own character and in helping others to come to Thee, that at the opening of the fuller life of the heieafter we mfty meet Thee face to face with joy and not with shame.' —(F)