The Ending of the Day
‘Tis gone away,
Nor left a trace
In any place.
If I could only find
Its foot-fall in some mind,
Some spirit-waters stirred
By wand of deed or word,
I should not stand at shadowy eve
And for my day so grieve and grieve.”
From” Rest, The Tranquil HourP
There is always a sacredness about last ’ things. We remember the last things in the life of a loved friend who is gone, — the last walk we had together, the last talk, the last letter our friend wrote to us, the last book he was reading, with the mark at the place where he left off, the last piece of work the gentle hands did, the last words the dear lips spoke.
2J2 THE EVERY-DAY OF LIFE.
We are ever coming to last things, things we shall never meet again. Now it is the last hour of our day, the day which came to us new and clean in the morning, which we have spent well or ill, and which, however we have spent it, we cannot live over again. Now it is the last hour of a year which came to us with its thousand tasks and hopes and opportunities. Now it is the last hour of a life. The doctor says you can live but a little while, and if there are any matters you ought to attend to, you would better not put them off any longer.
But it is not death only that ends things. Each period of life has its closing which is as final and irrevocable in its place as death in its place. Childhood has its last hour. Childhood is the great sowing-time of life. Seed should then be sown in the tender soil, seeds that will grow up into beautiful things in the after years. This is the parents’ opportunity. While it lasts love should be alert to pour into the young mind and heart the germs of all true and beautiful things. It is also the child’s opportunity. A wasted childhood is apt to mean a marred, if not a maimed, manhood or womanhood. There are things that can be gotten into the life only in childhood; not to get these lessons, or qualities, or impulses, or tendencies, into mind and heart in the bright, sunny days, is to go through all the after years without them. Childhood has its last hour; then the veil drops and we are done forever with that period of life. It never will come again to us.
Then, in turn, youth has its last hour. Youth is wonderful in its opportunities and possibilities. It is the time for training and storing the mind, the time for the forming of habits, the time for the selection of friends, the time for the choosing of a calling, the time for the shaping of character. There are things that can be gathered into life only in this period. Few of us have any adequate conception of the crippling of lives, the marring of characters, the spoiling of careers, the poverty of the results of toil along the after years, the failure of splendid hopes and possibilities, because of the misimprovement of youth.
There are thousands of men who struggle helplessly and hopelessly with the responsibilities and duties of places they were meant to fill, but which they cannot fill because they made no preparation for them in the days when preparation was their only duty. There are countless women in homes, with the cares and tasks of households now upon their hands, failing in their lot, and making only unhappiness and confusion where they ought to have made happiness and beauty, because in their youth they did not learn to do the common things on which in home-making so much depends. When the last hour of youth is gone, with its opportunities for preparation neglected and unimproved, there is nothing that can be done to repair the harm. “Some things God gives often. The seasons return again and again, and the flowers change with the months; but youth comes twice to none.”
Thus each period of life has its own closing, its last hour, in which its work is ended, whether well done or neglected. Indeed, we may say the same of each day; its end is the closing of a definite season through which we can never pass again. We may think of each single day as a miniature life. It comes to us new; it goes from us finished. There are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year. The only way to have a well-finished year is to finish the tasks and duties of each day as it passes. A marred or a lost day anywhere along the years may lead to loss or even sore misfortune afterward.
A student missed learning but one single lesson. At the end of the year the principal problem given to him in the examination fell in the lesson he had missed, and he failed in it. Then a hundred times in after years did he stumble and make mistakes in problems and calculations, because he had lost that particular day’s lesson. Thus failure in any duty, any day, may fling its shadow to the close of life.
We are thus ever in last hours, because no hour is without its importance in its relation to other hours, and because no hour comes twice to us. Every hour is a last hour because we can never live it a second time. Then it is true, too, that any day or hour may really be our last. We are never sure of any to-morrow. One of the best measures and standards of living is to live each day as if it were the last we should live. Supposing that one morning we were told that we should have but the one day now before us: how would we pass the day? Would we not be very careful not to grieve God? Would we not be faihtful in all duty and all tasks, that nothing should be left undone, nothing unfinished, when the day closed? Would we not bear ourselves very lovingly and gently toward all about us, that the last day’s memories might be kindly, without bitterness, or anything to cause regret?
“We should fill the hours with the sweetest things
If we had but a day; We should drink alone at the purest springs
In our upward way; We should love with a life-time’s love in an hour,
If the hours are few; We should rest, not for dreams, but for fresher power
To be and to do.
We should guard our wayward or wearied wills
By the clearest light; We should keep our eyes on the heavenly hills
If they lay in sight; We should trample the pride and the discontent
Beneath our feet; We should take whatever a good God sent
With a trust complete.
We should waste no moment in weak regret
If the day were but one, If what we remember and what we forget
Went out with the sun. We should be from our clamorous selves set free
To work or to pray, And to be what the Father would have us to be,
If we had but a day.”
If we knew that this present day were our very last, we should certainly strive to make it a most beautiful day. We should fill it with all loving service and gentle ministries. We should not mar it with selfishness and ugly tempers. We should awake every energy of our being to its best power, and should work with all our might. We should not have one moment to spare for discontent, for idle dreaming, for complaint or murmuring, for pride, for regret; we should crowd the day to its last moment with love’s fidelities and duties.
Since any day may really be our last, we should live continually as if it were the last. We should make each day that God gives us beautiful enough to be the end of life. How may we do this?
We should keep all our work completed as we go on. This applies to our business and all our routine task-work. The week-day side of our life has a great deal more to do with our spiritual life, with the building of our character, with our growth in grace, than many of us think. Some people seem to imagine that there is no moral or spiritual quality whatever in life’s common task-work. On the other hand, no day can be made beautiful whose secular side is not as full and complete as its religious side. If we have read our Bible, and said our prayers, and observed the commandments, and been reverent toward God and loving toward our neighbor all the day, and yet have been indolent or negligent in our business, letting things run behind, putting off important duties till to-morrow, not paying debts that fell due, not keeping engagements or promises, leaving affairs tangled and in confusion, at the going down of the sun, we cannot call our day’s work well done.
Therefore, to be beautiful enough for the last day of life, each day must see all its work done with painstaking carefulness and fidelity. Nothing must be left undone. No piece of work must be slighted or done in a slovenly way. No duty which belonged in the day must be postponed. Especially should all matters of business affecting or involving others be attended to, so that if we never come again to our desk there shall be no confusion, no entanglement, no hurt done to any one. Men have died suddenly, and their affairs have been left in such shape that they never could be straightened out. Others with large plans for philanthropic bequests have deferred the writing of their will until death snatched them away, leaving all their liberal intentions to fail through their own negligence. There should never be an hour in any man’s life when instant dying would leave any of his matters in confusion, or in a shape which would cause litigation or controversy after he is gone, or so that his matured purposes concerning the distribution of his property shall come to naught. We should finish each day’s work and close its business affairs as carefully and conscientiously as if we knew it to be our last day.
The same rule should be observed in all our relations with others. Long ago St. Paul taught that we should never let the sun go down upon our wrath. If frictions occur in our busy days, and strifes mar the pleasure of our intercourse with neighbors or friends, we must make sure — he said — that before the setting of the sun all bitterness shall pass out of our heart, as we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.” This is a lesson we would do well to carry into practice with very literal application. No resentment should ever be allowed to live in our heart over night. Every feeling of bitterness, of anger, of malice, of envy or jealousy, that the day may have aroused in our breast, should be put away before the last hour passes. If we have injured another by word or act, we should hasten before we sleep to make amends and seek the restoration of the peace of love which we have broken. If we have omitted any duty of kindness, any ministry of affection, which we ought to have rendered, we should hasten to do, even so tardily, the neglected service, before the day altogether closes.
We should never lay our head on the pillow while any of the day’s duties of love remain not done. We should never sleep with any friend’s heart carrying hurt from us which we have not sought to heal with love. We should never let a day end with record of duty to one of the least of Christ’s little one’s neglected. God hears the cries of his children, and knows of their sufferings and their tears, when the help or the comfort they needed came not. We should never disappoint God when he expects us to be his messengers to his children in their pain or want.
No day should ever be allowed to close over us with its ministry of love unfulfilled, and its sins against love unatoned and unforgiven. We may never have another day in which to set things right that have gone wrong in this, to do the duties omitted, to show the kindnesses neglected, to unsay the angry or bitter words spoken, to undo the unloving things done. We should take heed, therefore, that the close of each day shall leave all our relations with others so true, so right, so loving, that if that dayshould prove to be our last all shall be well.
So it should be also with our relation to God and to our own eternal future. We should let no day end for us without being at peace, our sins forgiven, our duty well done up to that hour. We do not know, when we lay ourselves down to rest any night, that we shall have another morning in this world. Therefore we should leave nothing uncertain as to our own awakening if it should be in the presence of God. Preparation for death is simply life’s work well done up to the moment.
We need only, therefore, to make each day complete and beautiful with the completeness and beauty of fulfilled duty. There will always be sins and faults and mistakes in even the best day’s record; but if we have been truly faithful, doing what we could, God will receive our work, blotting out its stains, filling up its defects, and correcting its faults. At the close of such a day we can breathe the beautiful evening prayer of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: —” Take unto thyself, 0 Father!
This folded day of thine,
This weary way of mine;
Its ragged corners cut me yet,
Oh, still the jar and fret!
Father, do not forget
That I am tired
With this day of thine.
Breathe thy pure breath, watching Father,
On this marred day of thine,
This wandering day of mine;
Be patient with its blur and blot,
Wash it white of stain and spot,
Reproachful eyes! remember not
That I have grieved thee,
On this day of thine.”