The Blight of Idleness. WR REV. GEORGE R. HEWITT, B.D., Springfield, Mass. E live in a day when the poet and the philosopher have combined to sound the praise and dignity of labor. Idleness is no longer deemed honorable or genteel. Work is the new patent of nobility. "The latest gospel in this world is," says Carlyle, "Know thy work and do it." No man, rich or poor, has any right to be idle if he is able to work and can find work to do. Every man born into the world is bound to perform his proportionate share of the world's work. He cannot, unless he is a hermit, live by and for himself alone. He is born into society, stands included in society, derives unnumbered benefits from society, and so is morally bound to make some contribution to society. Work is the law under which men live. Fish do not leap from the lakes into our frying pans, nor loaves of bread drop down from the skies; forests and clay banks do not shape themselves into dwellings, nor the mines automatically give up their treasures; and so long as they do not, the life of man on this planet can have no other law than that of unremitting toil. Let the world play holiday for a year and famine would reign from pole to pole. The world is always within one year of actual starvation. We really live from hand to mouth, and the world's incessant toil is all that keeps its fourteen hundred millions alive. Since work is the law by which men live and society exists, the lazy man who will not work is a nuisance and a burden to society. Somebody else must do double work that he may live without doing any. An able-bodied, healthy man who spends his days in idleness, refusing to contribute his share of work, manual or mental, for the maintenance of the world's life, is a traud and a cheat. A man who shuns work defrauds and disgraces himself. Idleness if it became general would bring a universal blight over the earth's surface. If the world to-day wears a different look from what it wore when Adam walked in it, if foul jungles have been cleared and waste places reclaimed, if stately cities have arisen and the desert been made to rejoice and blossom as the rose, it is all by reason of the labor that has been bestowed upon it. Man by his work has "stamped the brute earth and the raw materials taken out of it with the signature of mind." Let labor cease and the earth would revert to a wilderness. Industry and civilization go hand in hand. Indolence and barbarism are invariably linked together. By idleness it comes to pass that instead of the fir tree comes up the thorn, and instead of the myrtle tree comes up the brier. Says Solomon: "I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction." But idleness brings a blight not only on the earth and on man's possessions; it also brings a blight on man himself. (1) It blights his powers. Man is a bundle of latent powers and capacities. Labor, in its varied forms muscular and mental, is the divinely appointed way by which our powers and capacities are to be quickened and unfolded. But an idle man's powers, being unexercised, remain undeveloped; and not only so, they even wither and shrink. Capacities unused waste away. We read in Scripture that the man who hid his talent lost it. Every member of the body and every faculty of the mind has a function to fulfill. Let them lie in idleness, and feebleness and atrophy ensue. A man needs work, then, not only for work's sake but for his own sake. He thereby perfects himself. Toil is a great teacher. Daily work is a daily school of patience, punctuality, fidelity, honesty, truthfulness, and all the virtues. Idleness is a school of nothing but vice. It is a tomb in which a living man shuts himself. It is the blight of every talent, the paralysis of every power. (2) Idleness blights a man's happiness. There is joy in work well done. The humblest mechanic who accomplishes a given piece of work experiences a pleasure the idle man never knows. No bread eaten by man is so sweet as that earned by his own labor. No man can be happy who is living a useless life. Everybody despises him, and in his inmost heart he at length comes to despise himself. Self-respect wells up in the heart of a man whose powers are employed for useful ends. (3) Idleness blights character. "Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do." It was when King David tarried in idle luxury in Jerusalem, instead of taking the field in person and leading his army to battle, that he fell into the double crime that is the only blot on his otherwise fair fame. A man is never so well fortified against evil as when he is busy. The bicycle is kept upright by its own velocity. When it stops it falls. Regular employment is a moral safeguard. "Doing nothing is an apprenticeship to doing wrong." When you find a young man doing nothing, the chances are ten to one that he is drifting to the bad. Satan finds his recruits largely among loafers. Idleness is the mother of crime. Some time ago a young man was sentenced to the state prison of Connecticut for forgery. As he was changing his own for the prison suit, he remarked to the officer, "I never did a day's work in my life." The officer sagely replied, "No wonder, then, you have brought up here." The devil tempts all other men, but an idle man tempts the devil. The idle brain is the devil's workshop. "One Dream not, then, young man, of a life of idleness. monster there is in the world," says Carlyle, "the idle man.” Honorable toil is the road to health, wealth, and happiness. Idleness will prove a curse to you and an injury to those with whom you come in contact. It will blight your powers of mind and body and at last it will bring you down "To the vile dust from whence you sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung." |