Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1876 — Lost Opportunities. [ARTICLE]

Lost Opportunities.

One of the saddest chapters of a Christian’s biography is the unwritten chapter of his lost opportunities; privileges and helps and inspirations and comforts he might haye enjoyed, and through some delinquency failed of. He fails, in his late and hurried rising, of a morning portion of God’s Word, some faithful warning, some comforting promise, some helpful truth, he might have carried with him through the day. Through the same eagerness to get to his worldly tasks, he misses of a visit to the closet of prayer, and his Savior’s benediction of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. He misses, through the day, by timidity or pre-occu-pation, occasions for witnesses for Christ, and of the reacting strength and comfort. He misses the prayer-meeting through weariness, or the call of a friend, or the charm of some fascinating book, or the attraction of some bill of fare in earthly entertainments; and so does not enter with his brethren under the portal over which is written, “ there am I in the midst of

you." So he misses on the Sabbath of instruction and all its quickening influence; so he misses of the feast, the Master of which testifies: “My flesh is meat indeed.” Oh, these lost opportunities; charged against us on the remembering books, weakening all our spiritual forces, and robbing us of treasures inestimable for our spiritual life! Watch and pray against such losses! Be avaricious of these sacred and priceless privileges. Let no reproach stand against Vour name of such woful delinquency! — The Pacific.