Usefulness Gives Value to Activity by Lina Jeanette Walk

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 12, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 37.

Usefulness Gives Value to Activity

By Lina Jeanette Walk

EVEN the busiest person may be but a cumberer. It is usefulness only that gives value to activity. The beautiful and stately tree in the parable, which was declared to be a cumberer of the ground, and which the gardener was ordered to cut down as a cumberer, grew as luxuriously as any other tree in the garden, but it bore no fruit. It was therefore an evil where it was, for it absorbed the strength and sustenance of the soil which would otherwise have been taken up by the roots of the other trees. The humblest effort that accomplishes some good is worth more than the greatest show of energy that serves no useful or worthy purpose.—Lina Jeanette Walk.