I Have Lost a Day

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 23, 1861

"I Have Lost a Day."

Such were the words of Titus, one of the best of the Roman emperors. He was remarkable for his generosity and munificence, and was accustomed to allow no day to pass without conferring some important obligation on at least one of his subjects. On a certain occasion, while supping with a circle of his friends as the Latin historian, Eutropius informs us, and suddenly recollecting that he had done no act of kindness to anyone on that day, he exclaimed, with great earnestness, "Oh, my friends, I have lost a day!" How few there are in this Christian land and age who are as regardful of time and its uses as the Pagan ruler.

The Christian may well consider that day as lost, for all the purposes of a true life, in which he has done no good to his fellow-creatures. The page in the record of his earthly history, intended for the reception of that day's deeds of usefulness, is worse than a blank. Its whiteness is sullied with the dark stain of guilt, born of neglected duty. Could the professed disciple of Christ be furnished, at any stage of his earthly existence, with a volume whose contents should accurately represent the performances of his past life, how many unwritten and blotted pages would meet his eyes! As he looked through the book, leaf by leaf, how great would be his astonishment, how profound his mortification, how poignant his sense of personal criminality! If the spectacle did not plunge him into despair, it would probably lead

him to resolutions of amendment, and render him a wiser and a better man.

The Sabbath-school teacher may view that Sabbath as a lost day in which he has not personally addressed some one at least of his scholars on the subject of religion, and pressed its paramount claims upon his immediate consideration. He may truly call that Sabbath lost, in which he has not held up Jesus Christ before his class, as the way, the truth, and the life, and delineated the plan of salvation through the blood of his atonement. It matters not how many points of geography, chronology, or antiquities he may have explained. If Christ has not been the central theme of his instructions, he has frittered away the golden moments of holy time, and wasted opportunities which can never be recalled. And he should deem the secular days of the week as lost, in which he does not bear the interests of his pupils on his heart at the throne of heavenly grace, and plead with God that each soul may be the subject of his renewing and sanctifying influences.

How justly may the impenitent sinner say to himself each night, before he closes his eyes in slumber, "I have lost this day." With him every day is lost, as far as the higher and better ends of his existence are concerned. But the loss of time, precious as it is, might perhaps be borne, did it not pave the way for the irremediable loss of something far more valuable than all time—the soul.