510. Opportunity

Opportunity

Gal_6:10 : ’93As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good.’94

At Denver, Colorado, years ago, an audience had assembled for divine worship. The pastor of the church for whom I was to preach that night, interested in the seating of the people, stood in the pulpit looking from side to side, and when no more people could be crowded within the walls, he turned to me and said, with startling emphasis: ’93What an opportunity!’94 Immediately that word began to enlarge, and while a hymn was being sung, at every stanza the word ’93opportunity’94 swiftly and mightily unfolded, and while the opening prayer was being made, the word piled up into Alps and Himalayas of meaning, and spread out into other latitudes and longitudes of significance until it became hemispheric, and it still grew in altitude and circumference until it encircled other worlds, and swept out, and on, and around until it was as big as eternity. Never since have I read or heard that word without being thrilled with its magnitude and momentum. Opportunity! Although in the text to some it may seem a mild and quiet note, in the great Gospel harmony it is a staccato passage. It is one of the loveliest and awfulest words in our language of more than one hundred ’91thousand words of English vocabulary. ’93As we have opporturnity, let us do good.’94

What is an opportunity? The lexicographer would coolly tell you it is a conjunction of favorable circumstances for accomplishing a purpose; but words cannot tell what it is. Take a thousand years to manufacture a definition, and you could not successfully describe it. Opportunity! The measuring rod with which the Angel of the Apocalypse measured heaven could not measure this pivotal word of my text. Stand on the edge of the precipice of all time and let down the fathoming line hand under hand, and lower down and lower down, and for a quintillion of years let it sink, and the lead will not strike bottom. Opportunity! But while I do not attempt to measure or define the word, I will, God helping me, take the responsibility of telling you something about opportunity.

First, it is very swift in its motions. Sometimes within one minute it starts from the throne of God, sweeps around the earth, and reascends to the throne from which it started. Within less than sixty seconds it fulfilled its mission.

In the second place opportunity never comes back. Perhaps an opportunity very much like it may arrive, but that one never. Naturalists tell us of insects which are born, fulfill their mission, and expire in an hour; but many opportunities die so soon after they are born that their brevity of life is incalculable. What most amazes me is that opportunities do such overshadowing, far-reaching and tremendous work in such short earthly allowance. You are a business man of large experience. The past eighteen months have been hard on business men. A young merchant at his wits’92 end came into your office or your house, and you said, ’93Times are hard now, but better days will come. I have seen things as bad, or worse, but we got out, and we will get out of this. The brightest days that this country ever saw are yet to come.’94 The young man to whom you said that was ready for suicide, or something worse, namely, a fraudulent scheme to get out of his desperate position. Your hopefulness inspired him for all time, and thirty years after you are dead he will be reaping the advantage of your optimism. Your opportunity to do that one thing for that young man was not half as long as the time I have taken to rehearse it.

In yonder gallery you sit, a man of the world, but you wish everybody well. While the clerks are standing round in your store, or the men in your factory are taking their noon spell, some one says, ’93Have you heard that one of our men has been converted at the revival meeting in the Methodist Church?’94 While it is being talked over you say, ’93Well, I do not believe in revivals. Those things do not last. People get excited, and join the church, and are no better than they were before. I wish our men would keep away from those meetings.’94 Do you know, oh man, what you did in that minute of depreciation? There were two young men in that group who that night would have gone to those meetings and been saved for this world and the next, but your words decided them not to go. They are social natures. They already drink more than is good for them, and are disposed to be wild. From the time they heard you say that, they accelerated their steps on the downward road. In ten years they will be through with their dissipations, and pass into the Great Beyond. That little talk of yours decided their destiny for this world and the next. You had an opportunity that you misimproved, and how will you feel when you confront those two immortals in the last judgment and they tell you of that unfortunate talk of yours that flung them over the precipice? Oh, man of the world, why did you not say in that noon spell of conversation, ’93Good! I am glad that man has got religion. I wish I had it myself. Let us all go to-night. Come on; I will meet you at the church door at eight o’92clock.’94 You see, you would have taken them all to heaven, and you would have got there yourself. Opportunity!

The day I left our country home to look after myself, we rode across the country, and my father was driving. Of course I said nothing that implied how I felt. But there are hundreds of men here who from their own experience know how I felt. At such a time a young man may be hopeful, and even impatient, to get into the battle of life for himself, but to leave the homestead where everything has been done for you; your father or older brothers taking your part when you were imposed on by larger boys; and when you got the cold, your mother always around, with mustard applications for the chest, or herb tea to make you sweat off the fever, and sweet mixtures in the cup by the bed to stop the cough, taking sometimes too much of it, because it was pleasant to take; and then to go out with no one to stand between you and the world, gives one a choking sensation at the throat, and a homesickness before you have got three miles away from the old folks. There was on the day I speak of a silence for a long while, and then my father began to tell how good the Lord had been to him, in sickness and in health, and when times of hardship came how Providence had always provided the means of livelihood for the large household; and he wound up by saying, ’93DeWitt, I have always found it safe to trust the Lord.’94 My father has been dead thirty years, but in all the crises of my life’97and there have been many of them’97I have felt the mighty impetus of that lesson in the farm wagon: ’93DeWitt, I have always found it safe to trust the Lord.’94 The fact was, my father saw that it was his opportunity, and he improved it.

This is one reason why I am an enthusiastic friend of all Young Men’92s Christian Associations. They get hold of so many young men just arriving in the city, and while they are very impressionable, and it is the best opportunity. Why, how big the houses looked to us as we first entered the great city; and so many people! It seemed some meeting must have just closed to fill the streets in that way; and then the big placards announcing all styles of amusements, and so many of them on the same night, and every night, after our boyhood had been spent in regions where only once or twice in a whole year there had been an entertainment in schoolhouse or church. That is the opportunity. Start that innocent young man in the right direction. Six weeks after will be too late. Tell me what such a young man does with his first six weeks in the great city, and I will tell you what he will be throughout his life on earth, and where he will spend the ages of eternity. Opportunity!

We all recognize that commercial, and literary, and political successes depend upon taking advantage of opportunity. The great surgeons of England feared to touch the tumor of King George IV. Sir Astley Cooper looked at it and said to the King: ’93I will cut Your Majesty as though you were a plowman.’94 That was Sir Astley’92s opportunity. Lord Clive was his father’92s dismay, climbing church steeples and doing reckless things. His father sent him to Madras, India, as a clerk in the service of an English officer. Clive watched his time, and when war broke out came to be the chief of the host that saved India for England. That was Lord Clive’92s opportunity. Pauline Lucca, the almost matchless singer, was but little recognized until in the absence of the soloist in the German choir she took her place and began the enchantment of the world. That day was Lucca’92s opportunity. John Scott, who afterwards became Lord Eldon, had stumbled his way along in the practice of law until the case of Ackroyd v. Smithson was to be tried, and his speech that day opened all avenues of success. That was Lord Eldon’92s opportunity. William H. Seward received from his father a thousand dollars to get a collegiate education. That money soon gone, his father said, ’93Now, you must fight your own way,’94 and he did, until gubernatorial chair and United States senatorial chair were his, with a right to the presidential chair, if the meanness of American politics had not swindled him out of it. The day when his father told him to fight his own way was William H. Seward’92s opportunity. John Henry Newman, becalmed a whole week in an orange boat in the strait of Bonifacio, wrote his immortal hymn, ’93Lead, Kindly Light.’94 That was John Henry Newman’92s opportunity. You know Kirk White’92s immortal hymn, ’93When Marshaled on the Nightly Plain.’94 He wrote it in a boat by a lantern on a stormy night as he was sailing along a rocky coast. That was Kirk White’92s opportunity.

The importance of making the most of opportunities as they present themselves is acknowledged in all other directions; why not in the matter of usefulness? The difference of usefulness of good men and women is not so much the difference in brain, or social position, or wealth, as in equipment of Christian common sense; to know just the time when to say the right word or to do the right thing. There are good people who can always be depended on to say the right thing at the wrong time. A merchant selling goods over the counter to a wily customer who would like to get them at less than cost; a railroad conductor while taking up the tickets from passengers who want to work off a last year’92s free pass, or get through at half rate a child fully grown; a housekeeper trying to get the table ready in time for guests, although the oven has failed to do its work, and the grocer has neglected to execute the order given him; those are not opportunities for religious address. Do not rush up to a man in the busiest part of the day, and when a half dozen people are waiting for him, and ask, ’93How is your soul?’94

But there are plenty of fit occasions. It is interesting to see the sportsman, gun in hand and pouch at side, and accompanied by the hounds yelping down the road, off on hunting expedition, but the best hunters in this world are those who hunt for opportunities to do good, and the game is something to gladden earth and heaven. I will point out some of the opportunities. When a soul is in bereavement is the best time to talk of Gospel consolation and heavenly reunion. When a man has lost his property is the best time to talk to him of heavenly inheritances that can never be levied on. When one is sick is the best time to talk to him about the supernatural latitude in which invalidism is an impossibility. When the Holy Spirit is moving on a community is the best time to tell a man he ought to be saved. By a word; by a smile; by a look; by a prayer, the work may be so thoroughly done that all eternity cannot undo it. As the harp was invented from hearing the twang of a bowstring; as the law of gravitation was suggested by the fall of an apple; as the order in India for the use of a greased cartridge started the mutiny of 1857, which appalled the nations; so something insignificant may open the door for great results. Be on the watch. It may be a gladness; it may be a horror; but it will be an opportunity.

A city missionary in the lower parts of the city found a young woman in wretchedness and sin. He said, ’93Why do you not go home?’94 She said, ’93They would not receive me at home.’94 He said, ’93What is your father’92s name, and where does he live?’94 Having obtained the address and written to the father, the city missionary got a reply, on the outside of the letter the word ’93immediate’94 underscored. It was the heartiest possible invitation for the wanderer to come home. That was the city missionary’92s opportunity. And there are opportunities all about you, and on them written by the hand of the God who will bless you, and bless those whom you help, in capitals of light, the word ’93IMMEDIATE.’94

A military officer, very profane in his habits, was going down into a mine in Cornwall, England, with a Christian miner, for many of those miners are Christians. The officer used profane language while in the cage going down. As they were coming up out of the mine the profane officer said, ’93If it be so far down to your work, how much farther would it be to the bottomless pit?’94 The Christian miner responded, ’93I do not know how far it is down to that place, but if this rope should break, you would be there in a minute.’94 It was the Christian miner’92s opportunity. Many years ago a clergyman was on a sloop on our Hudson river, and hearing a man utter a blasphemy, the clergyman said, ’93You have spoken against my best Friend, Jesus Christ.’94 Seven years after, this same clergyman was on his way to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at Philadelphia, when a young minister addressed him and asked him if he was not on a sloop on the Hudson river seven years before? The reply was in the affirmative. ’93Well,’94 said the young minister, ’93I was the man whom you corrected for uttering that oath. It led me to think and repent, and I am trying to atone somewhat for my early behavior. I am a preacher of the Gospel, and a delegate to the General Assembly.’94 Seven years before, on that Hudson river sloop, was the clergyman’92s opportunity.

I stand this minute in the presence of many heads of families. I wonder if they all realize that the opportunity of influencing the household for Christ and heaven is very brief, and will soon be gone? For a while the house is full of the voices and footsteps of children. You sometimes feel that you can hardly stand the racket. You say, ’93Do be quiet! It seems as if my head would split with all this noise.’94 And things get broken and ruined, and it is, ’93Where’92s my hat!’94 ’93Who took my books?’94 ’93Who has been busy with my playthings?’94 And it is a-rushing this way, and a-rushing that, until father and mother are well-nigh beside themselves. It is astonishing how much noise five or six children can make and not half try. But the years glide swiftly away. After a while the voices are not so many, and those which stay are more sedate. First this room gets quiet, and then that room. Death takes some, and marriage takes others, until after a while the house is awfully still. That man yonder would give all he is worth to have that boy who is gone away forever, rush into the room once more with the shout that was once thought too boisterous. That mother who was once tried because her little girl, now gone forever, with careless scissors cut up something really valuable, would like to have the child come back, willing to put in her hands the most valuable wardrobe to cut as she pleases. Yes! Yes! The house noisy now will soon be still enough, I warrant you; and as when you began housekeeping, there were just two of you, there will be just two again. Oh, the alarming brevity of infancy and childhood! The opportunity is glorious, but it soon passes. Parents may say at the close of life, ’93What a pity we did not do more for the religious welfare of our children while we had them with us!’94 But the lamentation will be of no avail. The opportunity had wings and it vanished. When your child gets out of the cradle let it climb into the outstretched arms of the beautiful Christ. ’93Come thou and all thy house into the ark.’94

But there is one opportunity so much brighter than any other; so much more inviting, and so superior to all others that there are innumerable fingers pointing to it, and it is haloed with a glory all its own. It is yours! It is mine! It is the present hour. It is the now. We shall never have it again. While I speak and you listen, the opportunity is restless as if to be gone. You cannot chain it down. You cannot imprison it. You cannot make it stay. All its pulses are throbbing with a haste that cannot be hindered or controlled. It is the opportunity of invitation on my part, and acceptance on your part. The door of the palace of God’92s mercy is wide open. Go in. Sit down, and be kings and queens unto God forever. ’93Well,’94 you say, ’93I am not ready.’94 You are ready. ’93Are you a sinner?’94 ’93Yes.’94 ’93Do you want to be saved now and forever?’94 ’93Yes.’94 ’93Do you believe that Christ is able and willing to do the work?’94 ’93Yes.’94 ’93Do you give yourself into his hands to be saved?’94 ’93I do.’94 Then you are saved. You are inside the palace door of God’92s mercy already. You look changed. You are changed. ’93Hallelujah, ’91tis done!’94 Did you ever see anything done so quickly? Invitation offered and accepted in less than a minute by my watch or that clock. Sir Edward Creasy wrote a book called ’93The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, from Marathon to Waterloo.’94 But the most decisive battle that you will ever fight, and the greatest victory you will ever gain, is this moment when you conquer first yourself, and then all the hindering myrmidons of perdition by saying, ’93Lord Jesus, here I am, undone and helpless, to be saved by thee, and thee alone.’94 That makes a panic in hell. That makes celebration in heaven.

On the 11th of January, 1866, a collier brig ran upon the rocks near Walmer Beach, England. Simon Pritchard, standing on the beach, threw off his coat and said, ’93Who will help me save that crew?’94 Twenty men shouted, ’93I will,’94 though only seven were needed. Through the awful surf the boat dashed, and in fifteen minutes from the time Pritchard threw off his coat all the shipwrecked crew were safe on the land. Quicker work today. Half that time more than necessary to get all this assemblage into the lifeboat of the Gospel, and ashore, standing both feet on the Rock of Ages. By the two strong oars of faith and prayer first pull for the wreck, and then pull for the shore. Opportunity!

Over the city went the cry,

Jesus of Nazareth passeth by!

Let the world go. It has abused you enough, and cheated you enough, and slandered you enough, and damaged you enough. Even those from whom you expected better things turned out your assailants; as when Napoleon, in his last will and testament, left five thousand francs to the man who shot at Wellington in the streets of Paris. Oh, it is a mean world! Take the glorious Lord for your companionship. I like what the good man said to one who had everything but religion. The affluent man boasted of what he owned, and of his splendors of surroundings, putting into insignificance, as he thought, the Christian’92s possessions. ’93Ah!’94 said the Christian, ’93man, I have something you have not.’94 ’93What is that?’94 said the worldling. The answer was, ’93Peace!’94 And you may all have it’97peace with God; peace with the past; peace with the future; a peace that all the assaults of the world, and all the bombardments satanic, cannot interfere with.

A Scotch shepherd was dying and had the pastor called in. The dying shepherd said to his wife, ’93Mary, please to go into the next room, for I want to see the minister alone.’94 When the two were alone the dying shepherd said, ’93I have known the Bible all my life, but I am going, and I am ’91afeered to dee.’92’93 Then the pastor quoted the psalm, ’93The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.’94 ’93Yes, mon,’94 said the shepherd, ’93I was familiar with that before you were born, but I am a-goin’92 and I am afeered to dee.’94 Then said the pastor, ’93You know that the psalm says ’91Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’92’93 ’93Yes,’94 said the dying shepherd, ’93I knew that before you were born, but it does not help me.’94 Then said the pastor, ’93Don’92t you know that sometimes when you were driving the sheep down through the valleys and ravines, there would be shadows all about you, while there was plenty of sunshine on the hills above? You are in the shadows now, but it is sunshine higher up.’94 Then said the dying shepherd, ’93Ah! that is good. I never saw it that way before. All is well. ’91Though I pass through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me.’92 Shadows here, but sunshine above.’94 So the dying shepherd got peace. Living and dying may we have the same peace! Opportunity! Under the arch of that splendid world let this multitude of my hearers pass into the pardon, and hope, and triumph of the Gospel. Go by companies of a hundred each. Go by regiments of a thousand each. The aged leaning on the staff; the middle-aged throwing off their burdens as they pass; and the young to have their present joys augmented by more glorious satisfactions. Forward into the kingdom!

As soon as you pass the dividing line there will be shouting all up and down the heavens. The crowned immortals will look down and cheer. Jesus of the many scars will rejoice at the result of his earthly sacrifices. Departed saints will be gladdened that their prayers are answered. An order will be given for the spreading of a banquet at which you will be the honored guest. From the Imperial Gardens the wreaths will be twisted for your brow, and from the halls of Eternal Music the harpers will bring their harps, and the trumpeters their trumpets, and all up and down the amethystine stairways of the castles, and in all the rooms of the House of Many Mansions, it will be talked over with holy glee that this day while one plain man stood on the platform of this vast building giving the Gospel call, an assemblage made up from all parts of the earth and piled up in these galleries, chose Christ as their portion, and started for heaven as their everlasting home. Ring all the bells of heaven at the tidings! Strike all the cymbals at the joy! Wave all the palm branches at the triumph! Victory! Victory!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage