Perseverance | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 6, 1861

Perseverance.

He who allows his application to falter, or shirks his work on frivolous pretexts, is on the sure road to ultimate failure. Let any task be undertaken as a thing not possible to be evaded, and it will soon come to be performed with alacrity and cheerfulness. The habit of strenuous, continued labor, will become comparatively easy in time, like every other habit. Thus even men with the commonest brains and the most slender powers will accomplish much, if they will but apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.

Sir Charles Napier, when in India, encountered an army of 35,000 Belouches with 2000 men, of whom only 400 were Europeans. He charged them in the center up a high bank, and for three hours the battle was undecided. At last they turned and fled.

It is this sort of pluck, tenacity, and determined perseverance which wins soldiers’ battles, and indeed, every battle. It is the one march more that wins the campaign; the five minute’s more persistent courage that wins the fight. Though your forces be less than another’s, you equal and outmaster your opponent, if you continue it longer and concentrate it more. The reply of the Spartan father, who said to his son, when he complained that his sword was too short, “Add a step to it,” is applicable to everything in life.

It is not how much a man may know, that is of so much importance, as the end and purpose for which he knows it. The object of knowledge should be to mature wisdom and improve character, to render us better, happier, and more useful; more benevolent, more energetic, and more efficient in the pursuit of every high purpose in life.

We must ourselves be and do, and not rest satisfied merely with reading and meditating over what others have written and done. Our best light must be made life, and our best thought action.

The humblest and least literate must train his sense of duty, and accustom himself to an orderly and diligent life. Though talents are the gifts of nature, the highest virtue may be acquired by men of the humblest abilities, through careful self-discipline.

At least, we ought to be able to say, as Richter did, “I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.”—Self-Help.