| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 10 |
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We may set it down as a first rule that the duties which belong to our common vocation or calling should always have the precedence. We must not neglect these, however urgent other calls may be. If a boy is in school his school tasks must receive his thought and occupy his time, to the exclusion of every other occupation, until they have been mastered. If a young man is in a business position of any kind the duties of his position must be attended to with punctuality, promptness, and fidelity, before he has a minute for anything else. No matter how many outside interests may appeal to his sympathy or his desire, nor how eager he may be to respond to the appeals, he has no right to listen to one of them until he is free from the allotted tasks of the day.
If a young woman is a teacher in a school her engagement binds her to perform the duties of her position during certain hours of five days every week, for a definite number of months in the year. There may come to her many opportunities of doing other things. Poor people may need care and help which she could give them. Sick neighbors may require visiting and watching with through long nights, and her heart may prompt her to undertake this ministry of mercy. Mission work may appeal for helpers and she may be eager to enter it, may almost feel that she dare not refuse to do so. It would be easy for her to be always going somewhere on some good errand, filling every moment of her time with work aside from her school duties.
But this young woman will make a serious mistake if she thinks that it is her duty to do all these good and beautiful things which make their appeal to her sympathetic heart. Her first thing, that to which God has called her for the time, at least, that which she has covenanted to do, and for which she has been sacredly set apart, is her work as a teacher. Not only is she to devote the regular school hours to her specific duties as teacher, but, besides, she must give all the time necessary for conscientious and careful preparation for her tasks, so as to do them well, and also must secure such measures of rest as will fit her for her duties. All this work is her’s by divine allotment, by divine commandment, and if she turns aside to any other task, though it be a religious service, she is robbing God. Everything else that offers must be resolutely neglected until this work has been done well enough to present to her Master.
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