ABUNDANCE OF IDLENESS by David Paulson, M. D.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 21, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 25.

"ABUNDANCE OF IDLENESS."

By David Paulson, M. D.

SO much for pride and fulness of bread, now what about abundance of idleness? Eph. 16:49. This is sapping the very life out of society. I have seen children in the yard raking up leaves and having a gay time. Take those children twenty years from that time and ask them to rake up similar leaves, and they would feel very much insulted. Now, they have reached a stage when they want to learn how they can get through the world without working. They want a "soft snap." Children are taught to look forward, as a thing to be desired, to a time when they can have an abundance of idleness, to seek positions where they will not have much hard work to do.

That is the main reason young people crowd into cities, where they can have an easy time. Parents encourage children in this very direction. Many a father says to his boy: "Johnny, you shall never have such a hard time as I was compelled to have. I will see that you get a chance in the world." So the father saws the wood, and does the necessary work on the premises, while Johnny is getting more and more thoroughly convinced that he is learning more than his father knows, and that there is a better way of getting through the world than by working at honest labor. Seed that has been sown in that boy's mind will, by and by, bear its legitimate fruit. And, unless the grace of God saves him from reaping the full harvest of it, he will some day become an outcast, and possibly, a vile criminal. Our prisons are full of young men who are brought up in that kind of homes, in that kind of training.

What about Johnny's sister? The mother, who toiled at honest labor in her youth, and developed physically as she developed mentally, says: "Mary, you shall never have such a time in life as I have had. I am glad we can give you a chance." So she drums the piano, learns a little crocheting, fools away a little of her time trying to paint landscapes that she has not yet learned to appreciate, and gradually despises more and more the humble duties that her mother has to pursue in order to give her this "chance."

"What shall the harvest be," provided circumstances are favorable for its full development? Go with our midnight mission workers as they go on their errand of mercy on the streets of Chicago to-night; learn the home history of the majority of the 10,000 girls who on the open streets seek to barter their womanhood for money, and you will be amazed to find that they were reared by just such mothers as I have described, and they had just these very advantages (?). But ought we to be surprised at this when the Lord says that "pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness" will produce Sodom, and when children are educated to have all three of them?

"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." But right in the midst of this corruption there will be a people who will follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, and as a result of following Him here, they will continue to follow Him in the better world. There will be a difference between those who serve the Lord and those who do not. A thousand will fall on one side and ten thousand on the other side, but it will not come nigh them. It is because they have recognized and avoided these fundamental origins of all sin.

DAVID PAULSON, M. D.