“Arouse thee, soul!
Oh, there is much to do
For thee if thou wouldst work for humankind!
The misty future through
A greatness looms: ‘tis mind—awakened mind!
Arouse thee, soul!”
It is a good thing always to face forward. Even nature shows that men’s eyes were designed to look always “to the fore,” for no man has eyes in the back of his head, as all men certainly would have if it had been intended that they should spend much time in looking backward. We like to have Bible authority for our rules in life, and there is a very plain word of Scripture which says,
“Let thine eyes look right on,
And let thine eyelids look straight before thee.”
There is also a striking scriptural illustration in the greatest of the apostles, who crystallized the central principle of his active life in the remarkable words, “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark.” The picture is of a man running in the race-course. He sees only one thing — the goal yonder. He does not trouble himself to look back to see how far he has come or how far the other runners are behind him; he does not even look to the right hand or to the left to catch glimpses of his friends who are watching him and cheering him: his eyes look right on to the goal, while he bends every energy to the race.
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