Self-Improvement
241
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
truly successful only by having regular hours for rising, for prayer, for
meals, and for retiring. If order and regularity are essential in worldly
business, how much more so in the work of 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.
Improving Odd Moments
Ministers should devote time to reading, to study, to meditation and
prayer. They should store the mind with useful knowledge, commit-
ting to memory portions of Scripture, tracing out the fulfilment of the
prophecies, and learning the lessons which Christ gave His disciples.
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Take a book with you to read when traveling on the cars or waiting
in the railway station. Employ every spare moment in doing some-
thing. In this way an effectual door will be closed against a thousand
temptations....
Many have failed, signally failed, where they might have made
a success. They have not felt the burden of the work; they have
taken things as leisurely as if they had a temporal millennium in
which to work for the salvation of souls.... The cause of God is not
so much in need of preachers as of earnest, persevering workers for
the Master. God alone can measure the powers of the human mind.
It was not His design that man should be content to remain in the
lowlands of ignorance, but that he should secure all the advantages of
an enlightened, cultivated intellect.
Every one should feel that there rests upon him an obligation to
reach the height of intellectual greatness. While none should be puffed
up because of the knowledge they have acquired, it is the privilege of
all to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that with every advance step
they are rendered more capable of honoring and glorifying God. They
may draw from an inexhaustible fountain, the Source of all wisdom
and knowledge.