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ers good. Indolence is proof of depravity. Every faculty of the mind,
every bone in the body, every muscle of the limbs, shows that God
designed these faculties to be used, not to remain inactive. Brother A is
too indolent to put his energies into the work and engage in persevering
labor. Men who will unnecessarily take the precious hours of daylight
for sleep have no sense of the value of precious, golden moments.
Such men will prove only a curse to the cause of God. Brother A is
self-inflated. He is not a close Bible student. He is not what he ought
to be, nor what he may become by earnest exertion. He rouses up
occasionally to do something; but his laziness, his natural love of ease,
leads him to fall back again into the same sluggish channel. Persons
who have not acquired habits of close industry and economy of time
should have set rules to prompt them to regularity and dispatch.
Washington, the nation’s statesman, was enabled to perform a great
amount of business because he was thorough in preserving order and
regularity. Every paper had its date and its place, and no time was lost
in looking up what had been mislaid. Men of God must be diligent
in study, earnest in the acquirement of knowledge, never wasting an
hour. Through persevering exertion they may rise to almost any degree
of eminence as Christians, as men of power and influence. But many
will never attain superior rank in the pulpit or in business because of
their unfixedness of purpose and the laxness of habits contracted in
their youth. Careless inattention is seen in everything they undertake.
A sudden impulse now and then is not sufficient to accomplish a
reformation in these ease-loving, indolent ones; this is a work which
requires patient continuance in well-doing. Men of business can be
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truly successful only by having regular hours for rising, for prayer,
for meals, and for retirement. If order and regularity are essential in
worldly business, how much more so in doing work for God.
The bright morning hours are wasted by many in bed. These
precious hours, once lost, are gone never to return; they are lost for
time and for eternity. Only one hour lost each day, and what a waste of
time in the course of a year! Let the slumberer think of this and pause
to consider how he will give an account to God for lost opportunities.
Ministers should devote time to reading, to study, to meditation and
prayer. They should store the mind with useful knowledge, committing
to memory portions of Scripture, tracing out the fulfillment of the
prophecies, and learning the lessons which Christ gave to His disciples.