Wherever you are, and whoever you may be, there is one thing in which you and
I are just alike at this moment, and in all the moments of our existence. We
are not at rest, we are on a journey. Our life is a movement, a tendency, a
steady, ceaseless progress towards an unseen goal.
We are gaining something, or losing something, or losing something, everyday.
Even when our position and our character seem to remain precisely the same,
they are changing. For the mere advance of time is a change. It is not the same
thing to have a bare field in January and in July. The season makes the difference.
The limitations that are childlike in the child are childish in the man.
Everything that we do is a step in one direction or another. Even the failure to
do something is in itself a deed. it sets us forward or backward. the action of
the negative pole of a magnetic needle is just as real as the action of the
positive pole. To decline is to accept--the other alternative.
Are you nearer to your port today than you were yesterday? yes, you must be a
little nearer to some port or other for since your ship was first launched upon
the sea of life, you have never been still for a single moment, the sea is too
deep, you could not find an anchorage if you would, there can be no pause until
you come into port.