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Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students
godliness, they also tend to poverty and want. “He becometh poor
that dealeth with a slack hand.”
Proverbs 10:4
.
Judicious labor is a healthful tonic for the human race. It makes
the feeble strong, the poor rich, the wretched happy. Satan lies in
ambush, ready to destroy those whose leisure gives him opportunity
to approach them under some attractive disguise. He is never more
successful than when he comes to men in their idle hours.
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The Lessons of Contented Industry
Among the evils resulting from wealth, one of the greatest is
the fashionable idea that work is degrading. The prophet Ezekiel
declares: “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride,
fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her
daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
Ezekiel 16:49
. Here are presented before us the terrible results of
idleness, which enfeebles the mind, debases the soul, and perverts
the understanding, making a curse of that which was given as a
blessing. It is the working man or woman who sees something great
and good in life, and who is willing to bear its responsibilities with
faith and hope.
The essential lesson of contented industry in the necessary duties
of life is yet to be learned by many of Christ’s followers. It requires
more grace, more stern discipline of character, to work for God in
the capacity of mechanic, merchant, lawyer, or farmer, carrying the
precepts of Christianity into the ordinary business of life, than to
labor as an acknowledged missionary in the open field. It requires
a strong spiritual nerve to bring religion into the workshop and the
business office, sanctifying the details of everyday life, and ordering
every transaction according to the standard of God’s word. But this
is what the Lord requires.
The apostle Paul regarded idleness as a sin. He learned the
trade of tentmaking in its higher and lower branches, and during his
ministry he often worked at this trade to support himself and others.
Paul did not regard as lost the time thus spent. As he worked, the
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apostle had access to a class of people whom he could not otherwise
have reached. He showed his associates that skill in the common
arts is a gift from God. He taught that even in everyday toil God is