LOST TIME by Lord Brougham

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 18, 1879

LOST TIME.

By Lord Brougham

Let any man pass an evening in vacant idleness, or even in reading some silly tale, and compare the state of his mind when he goes to sleep or gets up next morning, with its state some other day when he has spent a few hours in going through the proofs, by facts and reasoning, of some of the great doctrines in natural science, learning truths wholly new to him, and satisfying himself by careful examination of the grounds on which known truths rest, so as to be not only acquainted with the doctrines themselves, but able to show why he believes them, and to prove before others that they are true, he will find as great a difference as can exist in the same being—the difference between looking back upon time unprofitably wasted, and time spent in self-improvement; he will feel himself, in one case, listless and dissatisfied, in the other, comfortable and happy; in the one case, if he did not appear to himself humble, at least he will not have earned any claim to his own respect; in the other case, he will enjoy a proud consciousness of having, by his own exertions, become a wiser, and therefore a more exalted, nature. —Lord Brougham.