Consider what abundant opportunities God has bestowed on men of meriting, of advancing in holiness, and increasing their meed of future glory. In every period, place and condition of life men can merit. If each position has its special difficulties, it has also its peculiar opportunities. God places a person in a certain state of life, and He accords such light and strength as that state requires. In the world as well as in the cloister, in prisons and in royal courts, in the lecture-room and in the labourer s cottage, amid the corruptions of Babylon as in the temple courts, men and women have sanctified themselves and won the position of saints. Meritorious service is not limited to the strong and well-endowed, or to the period of maturity and vigour. Children and the aged, the bed-ridden and the silent toiler in obscurity can do the work of God in their own souls and in the world, and can earn the highest degree of reward by the meritoriousness of their daily duties and the fervour of their good-will. The power of meriting, of atoning, of impetrating, is exercised more fully perhaps by those who can only suffer and pray than by those who are gifted with brilliant energies for external action. Never think that the accidents of time or place or employment can prevent you from serving God and advancing in merit. They may obstruct some particular forms of well-doing, but they afford other opportunities of greater merit, if you know how to seek them out and employ them.
