Busy Idleness by Dr. Guthrie

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 17, 1864

Busy Idleness.

By Dr. Guthrie

Till we enter God's service, all our industry is idleness. As we have the church in the "vineyard," we have the world in the "market-place" of the parable of the laborers; and how striking the picture! There, where some talking with their neighbors, tell the news, and some having nothing else to do engage in games, and some are laughing, and some are yawning, and some with their backs to the wall, or stretched out at full length on the ground, are sleeping, but none are working, is the world—this busy world, as it is called—where people, believe them, in their daily toil for bread, or keen pursuit of wealth, or pleasure, or fame, have not one hour to spare for the things that belong to salvation and their everlasting peace.

Ay, how would many deem us mad, and fancy that religion had turned our brain, were we to walk into the counting-room, the crowded shop, the silent study, the public assembly, to say nothing of the festive hall, the applauding theater, the gay, whirling ball-room, and address them thus: "Why stand ye here idle all the day?" Mad? "I am not mad, most noble Festus."

There is such a thing as laborious idleness. Busy? So was the shepherd on the Alps, mentioned by Dugald Stewart, who spent fifteen years of his life learning to balance a pole on his chin; and the philosopher sagely remarks, how much good, had they been directed to a noble object, this diligence and perseverance would have accomplished.

Busy? So have I seen the miller's wheel, which went round and round; but idly, grinding no corn.

Busy? So, in a way, was the Russian who facing the winter's cold, nor regarding the cost of massive slabs, brought at great labor from frozen lake and river, built him an icy palace, within whose glittering, translucent walls, wrapped in furs and shining in jewels, rank and beauty held their revelry, and the bowl and the laugh and the song went round. But with soft breath, and other music, and opening buds, spring returned; and then, before the eyes that had gazed with wonder on the crystal walls of that fairy palace as they gleamed by night with a thousand lights, or flashed with the radiance of gems in the bright sunshine, it dissolved, nor left "a wreck behind;" its pleasures, "vanity;" its expense, "vexation of spirit."

Busy? So, in a way, are the children who, when the tide is at the ebb, with merry laughter and rosy cheeks and nimble hands, built a castle of the moist seasand—the thoughtless urchins, types of lovers of pleasure and of the world, so intent on their work as not to see how the treacherous, silent tide has crept around them, not merely to sap and undermine, and with one rude blow of her billow demolish the work of their hands, but to cut off their retreat to the distant shore, and drown their frantic screams and cries for help in the roar of its remorseless waves. From a death-bed, where all he toiled and sinned and sorrowed for is slipping from his grasp, fading from his view, such will his life seem to the busiest worlding; he spends his strength for naught, and his labor for that which profiteth not.

With an eye that pities because it foresees our miserable doom, God calls us from such busy trifling, from a life of laborious idleness, to a service which is as pleasant as it is profitable, as graceful as it is dutiful, saying, Work out your salvation—work while it is called to-day, seeing that the night cometh when no man can work.—Dr. Guthrie.