The Sunday Eight O'Clock/Redeeming the Time
"THE Chemistry building is full today," an undergraduate said to me late in May as we were walking past that structure.
"What's the show?" I asked.
"Oh, it's the loafers and the procrastinators trying to make up for lost time."
It is a misconception not confined to youth that if you let Opportunity go by you, you can catch her easily by cutting round the corner.
"My son failed in two subjects last semester," a father wrote me this week. "Since he has now got the hang of college, will it not be possible next semester for him to carry these two subjects in addition to his regular course?" Having carried but nine hours one semester, most loafers feel confident that they can easily carry twenty-five the next.
"I can make it up before the end of the semester;" "When I get out of college I shall find time for these things;" "After I am married I intend to cut out all my bad habits." How familiar these things sound. It seems a simple matter to redeem our lost time. If we have social or intellectual or moral delinquencies we expect, all of us, to atone for them in the near future.
Every sinner condones his evil life by promising himself that he will ere long become a saint; every loafer expects soon to brace up, to develop interest, and get down to hard work and win success; every intellectual delinquent looks forward to the time when his studies will be creditably completed. We all expect, no matter how late the day, to redeem the lost opportunity; but it is next to impossible.
There is no young person in college today, if he amounts to anything, who will ever have as much leisure time as he has at this moment; who will ever have as easy a chance Redeeming the Time to be wise and good and happy as he has today. The time and the opportunity that is lost is seldom if ever redeemed. Those who wait until the last to do their work, to make their reforms, usually fail. Behold now is the accepted time, behold today is the day of salvation.
Every one has some important work that calls him. Get at it today.
May