Fronting his master the terror-stricken soldier had no excuse to offer save this; "While thy servant was busy here and there the man was gone." Gone opportunity!—and lightning could not equal its swift flight. Gone forever opportunity!—and the wings of seraphim could not overtake and bring it back. Gone honor, gone fidelity, gone good name!—all lost irretrievably. For though dying be long delayed, coming at last death would find the soldier's task unfulfilled. From "It might have been," and "It is too late," God save us all! For not Infinity himself can reverse the wheel of events and bring back lost opportunities.
The genius of opportunity lies in its strategic element. In every opportunity two or more forces meet in such a way that the one force so lends itself to the other as momentarily to yield plasticity. Nature is full of these strategic times. Iron passes into the furnace cold and unyielding; coming out it quickly cools and refuses the mold; but midway is a moment when fire so lends itself to iron, and iron so yields its force to flame as that the metal flows like water.
This brief plastic moment is the inventor's opportunity, when the metal will take on any shape for use or beauty. Similarly the fields offer a strategic time to the husbandman. In February the soil refuses the plow, the sun refuses heat, the sky refuses rain, the seed refuses growth. In May comes an opportune time when all forces conspire toward harvests; then the sun lends warmth, the clouds lend rain, the air lends ardor, the soil lends juices. Then must the sower go forth and sow, for nature whispers that if he neglects June he will starve in January.
The planets also lend interpretation to this principle. Years ago our nation sent astronomers to Africa to witness the transit of Venus. Preparations began months beforehand. A ship was fitted up, instruments packed, the ocean crossed, a site selected and the telescopes mounted. Scientists made all things ready for that opportune time when the sun and Venus and earth should all be in line. That critical moment was very brief. Instinctively each astronomer knew that his eye must be at the small end of the glass when the planet went scudding by the large end. Once the period of conjunction had passed no machinery would offer itself for turning the planet back upon her axis. Not for astronomers only are the opportune times brief. For all men alike, failure is blindness to the strategic element in events; success is readiness for instant action when the opportune moment arrives. When nature has fully ripened an opportunity man must stretch out his hand and pluck it. Inventions may be defined as great minds detecting the strategic moment in nature; Galileo finding a lens in the ox's eye; Watt witnessing steam lift an iron lid; Columbus observing an unknown wood drifting upon the shore. To untold multitudes nature offered these opportune moments for discovery, but only Galileo, Watt and Columbus were ready to seize them. As for the rest, this is our only answer to nature: "While thy servant was busy here and there, the strategic moment was gone."
This majestic principle often appears in history. There is a strategy in Providence. Nations, like individuals, have their crisis hours. Through events God makes all society plastic, and then raises up some great man to stamp his image and superscription upon the nation's hot and glowing heart. As scholars move back along the pathway of history, they discern in each great epoch these strategic conditions. How opportune the moment when Jesus Christ appeared!
Alexander's march had scattered every whither the seeds of learning; the Greek language had turned the whole world into one great whispering gallery, in which the nations were assembled; all the provinces around the Mediterranean were linked together by the newly completed system of roads; the Roman judge was in every town to set forth the rights of citizens of the empire; the Roman soldier was there to protect all who brought messages of peace; the long-expected hour had struck. Then Christianity set forth from Bethlehem upon its errand of love. Along every highway ran the eager feet of the messengers of peace and good-will. Events were fully ripe, and soon Christianity was upon the throne of the Caesars.
How strategic that epoch called the fourth century! He who sat in Caesar's palace looked out upon a dying empire. The old race was worn out with war and wine and wealth and luxury. Civilization seemed about to perish, and society was fast sinking back into barbarism. To the north of the Alps were the forest children, ruddy and robust, with their glorious youth full upon them. These young giants needed the dying language and literature and religion, and these great institutions needed their young, fresh blood. But between lay the granite walls builded from sea to sea. Now mark what Charles Kingsley called "the strategy of Providence." Suddenly a blind impulse fell upon the forest children. Two columns started southward. The one rested upon the North Sea and marched southeast; the other rested upon the Ural Mountains and marched southwest; the two met and converged upon Trieste. Without maps or military tactics or plans, wholly ignorant that Napoleon's favorite method of attack was being carried out by them, these two columns converged toward the Alpine pass, and for ten years pounded and pounded against the Roman walls until these yielded and fell. Then the forest children poured down into the vineyards and villages and cities of the dying empire. Multitudes remained to intermarry and preserve the dying race. Other multitudes returned to their old home to sow the northern forests with those great ideas that were to carry civilization through the long night of the dark ages.
Another strategic hour came in the thirteenth century. Then all Europe was stirred with new and awakening life. It was dawn after darkness. Constantinople had fallen and scholars laden with manuscripts went forth to sow Europe with the new learning. The times were fully ripe for another great forward movement for society. Only one thing was lacking—great men for leaders. In that strategic crisis six leaders appeared. God gave each wing of the army of civilization a genius for its general. Copernicus overthrew superstition and brought in science; Luther gave religion, Gutenberg the printing-press, Calvin individualism, Michael Angelo art and the beautiful, Erasmus critical scholarship; and because the old world was filled with debris, and the new ideas needed room, Columbus gave the new world, offering what Emerson calls "the last opportunity of Providence for the human race." Surely this was a strategic moment in history, giving each citizen unique opportunity.
The strategic element enters into the individual career. Destiny is determined by our use of our critical hours. It is as if life's great issues were staked upon a single throw. Not but that the forces we neglect are permanent. It is that the strategic condition has passed out of them. The sluggard driving his plow into the field in July has sun, soil and seed, but the torrid summer refuses to perform the gentle processes of April. The man who in youth's strategic days denied to memory the great facts of nature and history, in maturer years still has his memory, but the plasticity has gone. It now refuses to hold the facts he gives it. The Latin poet interprets our principle by the story of the maiden in the boat, holding her hand in the water while she toyed with a string of pearls until the string snapped and the treasure sank into the abyss. The miner interprets opportunity lost through him who, for a rifle and a blanket, traded a rich copper mine that has since paid its owner millions. The historian interprets it by Napoleon's bitter signal to his General, tardy at Waterloo, "Too late! the critical hour has passed." Froude interprets it through the old hero bitterly condemning himself over his wife's grave, knowing that his wild love and fierce outburst of affection were impotent now to warm the heart that froze to death in a home.
Ruskin interprets it through a nation that allowed her noblest to descend into the grave, garlanding the tombstone when they refused to crown the brow; paying honors to ashes that were denied to spirit; wreathing immortelles only when they had no use save for laying on a grave where was one dead of a broken heart through a nation's ingratitude. Above all, Jesus Christ interprets it at midnight in Gethsemane, when he saw the torches fluttering in the darkness, heard the clanking of sabers and soldiers' armor, and in sad, reproachful irony wakened his disciples with these words: "Sleep on, now; sleep forever if you will! Henceforth no stress of your vigilance can help me; no negligence of your duty can harm me beyond the harm you have already wrought. Take your ease now. Sleep; the opportunity has gone." Then was the disciples' joy turned into mourning, and for garments of praise did they put on ashes and sackcloth. An irreparable loss was theirs. Yet for all of us each neglected duty means a tragedy. It is always now or never. The treasure wrapped up in each strategic opportunity is of infinite value. To-morrow can hold no joy when yesterday holds this memory: "While I was busy here and there my opportunity was gone."