If thou knewest the gift of God!--to have had one's opportunity in one's hands and to have let it slip; to have had the Messiah sitting by you and not to have recognized Him; to have thought it just a commonplace day when the most sacred revelations of God were occurring,--that is about the saddest confession that any one can make. And yet, that is what might happen to any one any day. No one can be sure when the great exigencies of life are likely to occur. He looks forward to great things to be done in some more favoring future, and, behold, the insignificant incidents of to-day are the greater things which he does not discern. He looks forward to the discovery of God in some difficult intellectual achievement, and meantime the daily task is full of revelation, and as he wakes to the morning the new day stands by him and says: "If you only knew the gift of God, and who it is that speaks to you today." And at last perhaps he begins to realize that the ordinary ways of daily life are the channels of God's revelation, and then there "Comes to soul and sense The feeling which is evidence {184} That very near about us lies The realm of spiritual mysteries. With smile of trust and folded hands, The passive soul in waiting stands, To feel, as flowers the sun and dew. The one true life its own renew." {185} LXXIV THE WEDDING GARMENT _Matthew_ xxii. 11-14. Here is a man who has the feast offered to him, but is not clothed to meet it. He is unprepared and is therefore cast out. He does not wear the wedding garment and therefore is not fit for the wedding feast. This seems at first sight harsh treatment; but one soon remembers that it was the custom of an Oriental feast to offer the guest at his entrance a robe fit for the occasion. "Bring forth the best robe," says the father of the prodigal, "and put it on him." This man had had offered to him the opportunity of personal preparation and had refused it. He wanted to share the feast, but he wanted to share it on his own terms. He pressed into the happiness without the personal preparedness which made that happiness possible. Every man in this way makes his own world. The habit of his life clothes him like a garment, and only he who wears the wedding garment {186} is at home at the wedding feast. The same circumstances are to one man beautiful and to another, at his side, demoralizing. You may have prosperity and it may be a source of happiness, or the same prosperity and it may be a source of peril. You may be at a college and it may be either regenerating to you, or pernicious in its influence, according as you are clothed or unclothed with the right habit of mind. God first asks for your heart and then offers you his world. The wedding feast is for him alone who has accepted the wedding garment. {187} LXXV THE ESCAPE FROM DESPONDENCY 1 _Kings_ xix. 1-13.