p. 229 | Go to Work by Dudley Marvin Canright

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · May 27, 1875

Go to Work.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Hundreds of hearts are panting to be useful. The thought of a listless life is positively painful to them. But they are waiting for golden opportunities which never seem to come. Many of them are looking too high. While they eagerly watch for something to "turn up," which shall open some grand avenue of usefulness, they allow a thousand little opportunities to pass unimproved. The secret of success is in being quick to see, and prompt to do, present duty. Life is but an aggregation of items. To ignore the items, is to waste a life.

Probably not less than five hundred of you who read this brief article, are waiting for something to do. You watch with eager gaze to see which way the cloudy pillar moves. With uplifted hammer you stand ready to strike, if you could only be sure of hitting the heated iron in the right place. While you hesitate, the iron cools and the timely occasion is over.

Hesitate no longer. Make no more bargains with the thief of time. Break up this chronic habit of parleying with questions of duty. Let no plausible excuses paralyze your nerves of activity. Wake up to the momentous issues that are pending. Look out upon the suffering, dying, perishing world! Have you no tears to shed, no groans to utter, no prayers to offer, no warnings to sound out, no instruction to impart, no money to scatter? How wide the field! How urgent the demands! How short the time! How solemn the responsibility! How terrible the results of neglect! How glorious the reward of consecration to the work of God!

Channels of usefulness run in every direction. Every tear that glistens in the eye of sorrow, is a Macedonian cry. Every sigh of distress is a fresh proof that we are in a fallen world, where sympathy and activity are especially needed. Every sound of blasphemy and every scene of debauchery, should remind us that we are standing in the midst of a vast missionary field. There is a world of work on hand. Where are the workers?

The above earnest words from the Bible Banner are worthy of being read and heeded by all. How the devil cheats the most of us out of what good we might do by leading us to overlook small duties and present opportunities to engage in some imaginary great work in the future. Let us have done with this, and take hold of the first thing that comes up and do it now. D. M. CANRIGHT.