Go Forward!'.

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:12-14

While we live we must be moving on. When we stop—we begin to die. Rest is necessary—but only to renew our strength that we may press on again. An anchor is needful for a ship—but anchoring is not a ship's business; it is built for sailing. A man is made for struggle and effort, not for ease and loitering.

There is an incident in the history of the Wanderings of the Israelites, which is suggestive. It was near the close of the forty years in the wilderness. The people had been for some time in the region of Mount Seir, and seem to have been going round and round the mountain. They were constantly in motion, and yet were making no progress, were not getting any nearer the promised land. They would journey laboriously for many days through the wilderness, enduring hardship, suffering pain and weariness, and at last would come to the very place from which they had started. It was a fruitless kind of journeying. Then they were called to cease their going round the mountain and to enter on a course that would lead them somewhere. "Jehovah spoke unto me, saying—You have gone round this mountain long enough—turn northward." There is a tendency among people to do something like this in their everyday life. We are inclined to settle down in our present condition and stay there when we ought to be moving on to something beyond, something better, something larger and nobler. We let ourselves form the habit of moving round and round in a circle, when we ought to break away from the circular course and start forward. It is easy for us to get into a routine in life which will keep us in the same lines—from day to day and from week to week.

Sometimes in the country one sees a primitive contrivance for grinding bark. A horse, attached to a pole, goes round and round, running the bark-mill. For hours every day the patient animal treads on, always moving—but never getting away from his little circular path. So it is that many people plod on in their daily routine of life. They do the same things day in and day out, week in and week out. This routine is not idle. It is really necessary that we do the same tasks over and over, with scarcely a variation from year to year.

The women find it so in their home life; their housekeeping duties are about the same every day. It cannot be otherwise. To break up the routine would be to mar the completeness of the home life and work. To omit any of the little duties of the kitchen, the dining room, or the general housework—would be to leave the work of the home less beautifully done. Mostmen in their daily work must follow a like imperious routine. They must rise at the same hour, take the same train or trolley car, be at their desk in the office, or at their place in the mill, at the same time, follow the same order, perform the same tasks, go to their meals at the regular times—day after day. To miss a link anywhere in the routine would mar the day's work.

Some people fret and chafe over the drudgery, as they call it, of their common lives. They are weary of its monotonous rounds, its lack of variety, its never-ending repetition. But really there is a benefit, a discipline, is this very sameness of tasks. The old horse that goes round and round in his circular track, turning the creaking, crunching mill, does his duty well, grinding the bark honestly—though he never makes any progress himself. No doubt his work through the years adds thousands of dollars to the world's wealth. The men and the women who rise in the morning and go through the same monotonous round of tasks every day, six days in the week, are doing their work faithfully and at the same time are forming their own character. That is the way we build our life. It would not be well if we were released from the daily round, though it is so monotonous. We owe much to it. It trains us.

Yet there is always danger that we come to be contented with our routine, and indisposed to go beyond it. We must always do the same daily tasks, never omitting any of them, never neglecting the least duty, however dull or plain. But, besides this monotonous round—there should always be something larger going on. "You have gone round this mountain long enough—turn northward." We must not let our life run forever and only in a little circle—but must branch out, learn new lessons, venture into new lines, leave our narrow past—and grow into something more meaningful. Our daily walk should be like that of one whose path goes about a mountain, moving in a circle, perhaps—but climbing a little higher with each circuit, pursuing a sort of spiral course, constantly ascending the mountain peak, until at last he reaches the clear summit and looks into the face of God.

Narrowness is a constant peril, especially for those whose lives are plain and without distinction, the two-talented men and women, the common people. They must do chiefly tasks which are set for them. They do, all their life, some one little thing—over and over. It is not easy to live an ever-widening life in such conditions. We are apt to let our immortality shrink into the measure of the little place we fill in the world. Yet it is possible, though our daily round is so small, to keep our mind free and be ever reaching out in sublime flights. There are men who work year after year in some small department of business, and then spend the hours outside of business in some line of work or research in which they are ever growing in knowledge, in mental breadth—into larger, stronger, better, and worthier men.

That is the way the lesson shapes itself for many of us. We must not allow our narrow occupation to dwarf our souls. Our work itself is valuable and noble, and we must never be ashamed of it and must do it with zest and enthusiasm. But while we do our little allotment of lowly duty faithfully, we must never permit our minds to dwarf or shrivel—but must continually train ourselves into larger things. Instead of hugging our little mountains and never going off the old paths, we should turn northward and find delight in new fields. This is a large world, and we live most inadequately when we stay all our life in a little one-acre lot.

There seems to be in this thought a suggestion for New Years or birthdays. We should not live any year merely as well as we lived the year before. There are people who really never advance in anything. They do their common task-work this year as they did it last, certainly no better. They keep the same habits, faults and all. They become no more intelligent, no more refined. They seem never to have a new thought, to learn a new fact, to become more useful among men. They grow no more patient, gentle, or sweet. They take no larger place in the community, and are no more useful among their fellows. They read no new books, make no advance in knowledge. Their life consists of the same old commonplaces, they tell the same little jokes over and over. In their religious life they do not grow. They know God no better, have no more trust in time of trouble, love no more, live no more helpfully, never get to know their Bible any better. They quote only the same two or three verses which they learned in childhood. If you hear them often, you will get to know their prayers by heart. They live the same pitiably narrow religious life at sixty—which they were living at twenty! They simply go round and round the mountain, never climbing up to any loftier height as they journey. They never get the wider look they would get by ascending as they plod.

This is not the way to live. The message comes to us continually, "You have been going round this mountain long enough—turn northward!" Northward for these pilgrims was toward Canaan, the new homeland. The wilderness was not their destination—it was only a road on which they were to travel, a region through which they were to pass to reach their land of promise, the good land of their hopes. So the call to us is northward, away from the common things into the higher and nobler things of life! We belong to God, and we should seek the things of God. We are risen with Christ, and we should seek the things of the resurrection life. Our citizenship is in heaven, and we should have our home there. We are called to leave the narrow life of our earthly state—and turn heavenward!

Paul teaches us the same lesson in a remarkable passage in one of his epistles. He gives us a glimpse of the ideal life, the perfect life in Christ. He says frankly that he himself has not yet attained this sublime height, has not reached the best. "Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect." But this unattained life he does not regard as unattainable,—he will come up to it sometime. "I press on." He is like the boy in Longfellow's "Excelsior." At the foot of the mountain he stood, gazing at the far-away radiant heights—but he wasted no moments in mere gazing. Carrying a banner which bore his motto, he began to climb. Disregarding all allurement, he kept on in his ascending path until he was lost sight of in the storms of the mountain crest. Thus Paul, this man of quenchless ardor, pressed his way toward the highest and best. He was in prison now—but prison walls were no barrier to his progress. He tells us, too, the method of his life. The two words which contain the secret of his noble career were—"forgetting," "reaching."

Next Part Go Forward!'. 2

Back to J. R. Miller