Each day read your chapter or passage with the idea that you are receiving your marching orders; that there is some new service to render, some new duty to perform, some new virtue to acquire. Let the attitude of your soul be indicated by Samuel’s words, “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.” When you hear, do! (F. B. Meyer.)
Do present duty
Procrastination is reckoned among the most venial of our faults, and sits so lightly on our minds that we scarcely apologise for it. But who can assure us that had not the assistance we had resolved to give to one friend in distress, or the advice to another under temptation to-day been delayed, and from mere sloth and indolence put off till to-morrow, it might not have preserved the fortune of the one, or saved the soul of the other? It is not enough that we perform duties; we must perform them at the right time. We must do the duty of every day in its own season. Every day has its own imperious duties; we must not depend upon to-day for fulfilling those Which we neglected yesterday, for to-day might not have been granted to us. Tomorrow will be equally peremptory in its demands, and the succeeding day, if we live to see it, will be ready with its proper duties. (Hannah More.)
The grasp of opportunity
Writing an article on Social Economy especially in reference to wages and industrial progress, Professor Atkinson says: “The man who had the shrewdness and capacity to seize the opportunity afforded by recent science and invention had made progress, wealth, success. While from him who had not the foresight or mental aptitude to adjust himself to the new conditions, had been taken away even the opportunity for common labour which he enjoyed before.”
Individual activity
Whatever noble work on earth is to be done you must do it yourself. If you leave it to others it will never be done. Do it yourself. Put away that poorest of poor spirits which would treat good wishes or benedictions, or even prayers, as substitutes for personal service. (Bishop Welldon.)
Doing your duty
There is one lesson which all agree that the Duke of Wellington taught, and which we are specially desirous of pointing out, viz., that throughout life, he made it a rule to do whatever hesaw to be his duty at the time--a more rare and valuable quality than many suppose, unless they remember that it was a rule which he applied to small things as well as great, to the answering of a letter, and to the movement of an entire army. While he notoriously confined himself strictly to his own duties, anything and everything was regarded as a duty when laid upon him by legitimate and competent authority. It was no question for him whether the thing were too small for his powers or his dignity; he was required to do it, he could do it, and he did it--did it with all his might, whatever it was. Great as he was, he has in this left an example to the least, as well as to the greatest--to the young as well as to the old. (Great Thoughts.)
