These words apply specially to those amongst you, my dear girl friends and fortunate holiday makers, who were able to leave ordinary cares and anxieties behind you, and enjoy to the full the new beauties amid which you found yourselves.
To take holiday, without need for care about ways and means, and possessing a good share of health and strength to begin with, would seem to most of us the perfection of enjoyment. Yet I am by no means sure that we should judge rightly. Can you not well imagine that the rare holiday, obtained at the cost of long saving and even self-denial, may have brought to some an intensity of enjoyment unknown to those who have only to will in order to obtain any indulgence they desire. If each could give her personal experience this evening, what varied stories should we hear. Some, who longed for and much needed a holiday, would tell that they had been kept at home and at work all through the hot days by poverty or the sickness of one they loved and could not bear to leave.
Others, who left home hoping for renewed health, may have returned disappointed. Some may have expected only enjoyment, and have found pain and trouble as their constant companions. To those amongst you who have had all and even more than you hoped for, let me say, "Look back upon your happy experiences with heartfelt thankfulness to the Giver of all good, and resolve that, by the help of the Holy Spirit, you will use your increased knowledge and strength in His service and for your neighbour's good."
If any of you have spent money lavishly upon yourselves, or upon those who did not need your gifts, think, before another holiday season comes round, of some of those who are poor and longing for what you could so easily give them. You, who can take holiday and have change when you wish, might make some of your poorer sisters very happy by giving them a taste of what you can always enjoy even to repletion. Try to diffuse blessings by sparing something out of your abundance, and your own enjoyment will be doubled, as well as your sense of wealth, in the very act of imparting. I am speaking in time—am I not, dear girls? I think I hear some of you say, "When the days are lengthening again it will be time enough to talk of the next summer holidays."
It may be so with those who can give out of their abundance, but by far the greater number of us could only render such help by saving a little at a time the year round. In all earnestness, but leaving the method to yourselves, I ask such of you as are able to give in the future to some poor toiler a taste of the happiness you can now look back upon from the home fireside. If, in any neighbourhood, a few of you, my dear girl friends, will combine for this purpose, all your own pleasures will be increased, and your memories enriched by so doing.
To those amongst you who have this year been saddened by disappointment, I say, "Look forward hopefully, asking the while that the power to do this may be given you. Try not to look back upon the dark days, or to dwell mentally on what cannot be undone."
Several years ago, I was staying in a charming home, from the different sides of which we could look on scenery of very opposite kinds. The house stood just beyond what is called "The Black Country," and looking into a valley in one direction, we could see the glare of the smelting furnaces, and the smoke rising from the coal-pit banks. From these indications we knew that both aboveground and below it in the mines work never ceased.
If we looked from the other side, we saw a lovely range of beautifully wooded hills in the distance, and below them all the fair features of an English landscape. If we had kept our eyes fixed on the valley behind us, we should have seen only blackness and comparative desolation, whilst the sense of ceaseless toil would have been ever present to us.
So, dear disappointed ones, I pray you turn your backs on the inevitable, and, though there may be no fair landscape within sight, you can always look heavenward with your mind's eye, even whilst your hands are busy, and, it may be, your spirit is heavy within you.
Friends may be forgetful. No human message of cheer or comfort may reach you, or bit of much needed help be in sight, but still there are messages which you can claim, and consolations meant expressly for you, which are better than the best which mortal lips can utter, for they come from Him Who cannot lie. You are invited to cast your care upon God, for "He careth for you." This one sweet assurance is like the fair landscape on which we can turn the eye of faith, and forget the gloomy realities which lie behind us.