The Idle Man | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 24, 1871

The Idle Man.

ALL degrees of indolence incline a man to rely upon others, and not upon himself; to eat their bread, and not his own. His carelessness is somebody's loss; his neglect is somebody's downfall; his promises are a perpetual stumbling-block to all who trust them. If he borrows, the article remains borrowed; if he begs and gets, it is as letting out of waters—no one knows when it will stop. He spoils your work; disappoints your expectations; exhausts your patience; eats up your substance; abuses your confidence; and hangs a dead weight upon all your plans; the very best thing an honest man can do with a lazy man, is to get rid of him.

Society precipitates its lazy members, as water does its filth; and they form at the bottom, a pestilent sediment, stirred up by every breeze of evil, into riot, robberies and murders. Into it drains all the filth, and out of it, as from a morass, flow all the streams of pollution. Brutal wretches, desperately haunted by the law, crawling in human filth, brood here their villain schemes, and plot mischief to man. Hither resorts the truculent demagogue, to stir up the fetid filth against his adversaries, or to bring up mobs out of this sea, which cannot rest, but casts up mire and dirt.—H. W. Beecher’s Lectures to Young Men.