Omaha daily bee., 1896-04-05
up the old drudgery now? We have done

up the old drudgery now? We have done
with such work, and forever!"
But no. Instead of this, they own the duty
that lies nearest them, and do it. And own
ing it, their Master owns them in the doing
of it. Going back to their nets, they find
that he is there before them. And there CO..
the shore-ht symbol of that which, as we
watch it from the troubled sea of life, endures
and abides-there upon the shore they see
their Lord!
Over against our tempest-tossed and toiling
life, my brother, he is still standing. There
are moments in your long day when it all
seems so wearisome and wninteresting-the
task you are set to do, the trust you are
given to keep, the stewardship of which you
must render account. Once there was nov
city in it, the praise Of men, perhaps, the
poor vanity of selfish achievement, 1t may
have been. But you have wearied of it all
now. The duty inks, the task loses its charm,
the awful sense of responsibility for talents
entrusted grows dim, and you want some
thing elsa.
Or it may have been that some crisis has
come in your life-a Joy long wished for, or a
grief long dreaded, and you are just waking
out of this strange and unwonted state into
the gray daylight of common life. Can you
go back to it," you ask, 1.-The poor task, the
petty drudgery, the little motives that make
up the wonted week day? Out of those SUI
preme moments, like some mount of vision
in which the unseen life has broken for a
little upon you, can you descend to the net
and the boat and the toil?" 81 go a-nshing,"
says Peter, but can you bring yourself to say,
w also go with thee?"
Go, my brother, do not tarry. There are
dreamers and idlers In this world, but God
has for them no blessing, nor has any near
nor distant shore for such a vision of their
Lord. Your craft and calling may be homely
enough, and Of the earth, earthly. The hours
that you spend in the Office or the shop, in
the schoolroom or the street, in your own
home or in other peoples, may seem to you
so full Of the spirit of this world as to have
no room in them for any vision of the next.
And yet it is possible for you to do your
work 30 brayely and trustfully, to own your
stewardship and not to shrink or evade 1t,
that right where you are your eyes shall get
a vision of the distant shore and Jesus stand
ing there and watching you. Out OF the
griefs and losses that make the world so
small, out of the failure of hopes that never
ripened to ~fruition, out of the dull sense of
a lost enthusiasm-and a chilled
afection-still toiling, there will
break a form, unrecognized at first, 1t may
be, but as you work and watch, somehow
orbing itself out of the mist and darkness,
until, with that other disclple"-yOu find
yourself saying, ut is the Lord" There are
plenty of people, / know very well, who VIII
tell you that all this Is mysticism, emotional
ism, anything but good, plain, common sense.
But / have observed that such colnsellors are
strangely absent or silent in the great crises
of life, in the presence Of sorrow, or death
or pain. When the sea is rough and you
ask them, as there any shore? VIII he
hear me II / call to him.? May | hope to hear
him II he speaks to me?" Their only
answer is, "Really l do not know." Peter
and John knew. For when the morning
was now come Jesus stood on the shore. But
the disciples knew not that 1t was Jesus.
Then saith Jesus unto them, Children"
Children! o, voice OF love and power, open
tho deaf aars IN hear thV call to-day. piUa |
us the faith that trusts In thee and works
for thee; and so, at last, out Of the toll, give
us the vision of thyself, waiting to welcome
all thy children on the shining shore!