Mr. Lowell said that most men act as if they had sealed orders not to be opened till middle life!  I do not want you to waste your life like that, I want you to feel that you have a definite purpose and that you know what orders you ought to give yourselves, or rather what are God’s orders for your life.

What is your purpose in life?  I hope—­Lord Bacon’s words in our Tuesday midday Prayer express it—­“the glory of God and the relief of man’s estate.”  You go into life knowing how dearly the Lord Jesus Christ loves you, at how dear a cost He bought you; therefore, not just to save your souls, not just because you would be afraid to live carelessly, but, because of His amazing love, you will try to live as He asks you to do.  God grant you such a sense of that amazing love that you may rejoice to spend and be spent in His service.

And you will want to live for the relief of man’s estate.  The more your eyes open to life, the more you see how many sore hearts there are in the world, and (besides the well-dressed sorrows which are as sore as any) there is the pain and poverty and sin of those who have no chance in the world; what can you do for the poor—­you who have so many chances in life, who have so much love, so many pleasures?  There may not be very much open to you when you first grow up, and you may be very busy with your pleasures and home duties.  Let your mother enjoy your pleasures, she has been planning them for years, but do what little things you can to discipline yourself so that by-and-by (when you are free to work) you may be a worker worth having.  It is that which makes the waiting years worth while.

Often a girl gets tired of enjoying herself and longs for some purpose in life, but she is tied in a hundred ways.  Sometimes she loses her aspirations, her wish to do some good in the world, and sinks down into an idle round of small pleasures and worries.  But do not you do that; rather realize that, according as you spend your waiting time,—­before you marry or find some definite work,—­such you will be when your opportunity comes: 

                 “Be resolute and great
    To keep thy muscles trained:  know’st thou when Fate
    Thy measure takes, or when she’ll say to thee,
    ’I find thee worthy; do this thing for me’?”

I was talking over East London work the other day with a worker, and she was saying that the best preparation for usefulness lay in such common things as cooking, cutting out, musical-drill, gardening, children’s games, neat business-like letters, keeping your own accounts, a power of small talk!  All these are possible to each of you, and a resolute putting of salt into each day,—­some discipline, some self-denial, some thoroughness,—­will turn you out able by-and-by to do good work for the Relief of man’s estate.

             “Be resolute and great
    To keep thy muscles trained”

that you may be fit to do something to show forth your sense of the exceeding great love of our Master and only Saviour Jesus Christ.