Word: objectives
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...Failures of this kind to see aright beset everyone in every occupation, and they are most insidious because unconscious. Jonah in success lost sight of the real object of his work. The same may be true in failure...
...repentance. Never, as you may observe, was he informed that Nineveh would be destroyed, or even directed to threaten the people with overthrow. But it was, of course, understood that calamity would befall them if they did not repent--yet clearly only if they did not do so. The object was repentance, not destruction. The threat of the consequences of their sin was the means of bringing about reform. It was the argument Jonah was to use, the weapon he was to employ; but he had the threat so firmly fixed in his mind that it became the subject...
...went to Nineveh and foretold the destruction of the city. His preaching was so powerful that to his astonishment the whole people immediately repented in sackcloth and ashes. The object of his mission was accomplished with miraculous speed; the destruction, which was to follow a persistence in sin, was avoided and did not take place; but having fore told evil, he was disappointed that it did not come. He was angry with himself and with God, and retired to brood in solitude over the failure of his prophecy. The moral, then, is that of the man who becomes so intent...
President Lowell then drew attention to the singular pertinence of this moral to the life of a forcible man in the "ordinary currents of our time." During the war there was the comfort of having a plain duty to perform, with no moral questions to decide. The great object, never lost from sight, was winning the victory; a man's duty his courses prescribed, was to obey orders, and this was true whether he served in the armed forces or as a civilian. But with the ceasing of hostilities this singleness of aim has changed, as man again becomes...
Losing Sight of the Real Object...