Five Minutes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jun 30, 1904

At the commencement at Chartlier Institute, Dr. S. Iranaeus Prime spoke to the young men as follows:—

I am invited to speak to you five minutes—and only five. Little may be said, and much may be done, in five minutes. In five minutes you may fire a city, scuttle a ship, or ruin a soul. The error of the moment makes the sorrow of a life. Get that thought well in your hearts, and my work is done in a minute, instead of five.

Tempted to sin, remember that in five minutes you may destroy your good name, fill your soul with undying remorse, and bring, with sorrow, your father's gray hair to the grave. But if you can do so much evil, so you may do a mighty sum of good in five minutes. You may decide to live for usefulness and honor. Everything hangs on that choice, and it may be made in five minutes.

Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves; take care of the minutes, and the hours are safe. I made a little book in this way: in the breakfast-room were pen and ink and paper; and if, when the hour for breakfast came, all was not ready, I wrote a few words or lines, as time allowed. The book was finished, and it had been published scarcely a week before I heard it had saved a soul; it has saved many since. It did not cost me one minute that would have been used for anything else.

Five minutes in the morning, and as many in the evening, will make you the master of a new language in two or three years. Before you are of middle age, you may speak all the modern tongues, if you will but improve the spare moments of the years now flying by.

Minutes are more than jewels; they are the stuff life is made of; they are diamond stepping-stones to wisdom, usefulness, and wealth; the ladder to heaven.

It will not take five minutes to do a good deed, and one a day will make a life of honor and usefulness, with glory beyond.—Selected.