Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/166

 "I can make it up before the end of the semester;" "When I get out of college I shall find time for these things;" "After I am married I intend to cut out all my bad habits." How familiar these things sound. It seems a simple matter to redeem our lost time. If we have social or intellectual or moral delinquencies we expect, all of us, to atone for them in the near future.

Every sinner condones his evil life by promising himself that he will ere long become a saint; every loafer expects soon to brace up, to develop interest, and get down to hard work and win success; every intellectual delinquent looks forward to the time when his studies will be creditably completed. We all expect, no matter how late the day, to redeem the lost opportunity; but it is next to impossible.

There is no young person in college today, if he amounts to anything, who will ever have as much leisure time as he has at this moment; who will ever have as easy a chance