[496] Eccles. xv. 11-20.
[497] James i. 13-15.
[498] Prov. xix. 2.
[499] Prov. xii. 15.
[500] Prov. xv. 22.
[501] Prov. xix. 20.
[502] Prov. xi. 14.
[503] Prov. xx. 18.
[504] Prov. xxiv. 5, 6.
[505] Prov. xx. 5.
[506] Prov. xix. 21.
[507] Prov. xix. 23.
[508] Prov. xix. 16.
[509] Prov. xix. 8.
[510] Prov. xix. 27.
[511] Prov. xiii. 13.
[512] Prov. xix. 29.
[513] Prov. xxi. 30.
[514] Prov. xxi. 31.
[515] Prov. xvii. 11.
[516] Prov. xix. 20.
"After the autumn gathering the slothful does not plough; he asks in the harvest, and there is nothing."--PROV. xx. 4.
We have already in the sixth lecture caught a glimpse of the sluggard, and in the ninth we have seen in passing that diligence in work is enjoined by the teacher; but we must give a more concentrated attention to this subject if we would realize the stress which this book of Wisdom lays on work as the grand condition of life in this earnest world. They who will not work have no place in an order of things which is maintained by work, and in which the toil itself is the great discipline of character and the preparation of joy. It is no churlish or envious spirit which pronounces a doom on the idle, but it is the very necessity of the case; that idleness which in moments of excessive strain we so eagerly covet is, if it is accepted as the regular and continuous state of the soul, a more ruinous and miserable curse than the hardest labour. By a law which we all break at our peril, we are required to have an honest end and a strenuous occupation in our life; and we are further required to labour diligently for the end, and to spare no pains to achieve it. We have many faculties lying dormant, and we must wake them into activity; we have many gifts half used or not used at all; we must turn them all to account, if we would be wholesome, happy, and in the true sense successful.
First of all, let us look at the portrait of the sluggard as it is delineated in some of these proverbial sayings. We see him in bed, at the board, in the house, out of doors. He will not get up in the morning; he turns from side to side, just like a door which swings backwards and forwards on its hinges, but of course never gets any further.[517] "Yet a little sleep," he says, "a little slumber, a little folding of the hands in sleep."[518] Or when at last he has brought himself to get up and to sit down to table, he is too lethargic even to eat: "He buries his hand in the dish, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again;"[519] or if he raises the morsel to his lips, he does it with an air of indescribable languor and weariness.[520] Then the time comes for him to go out to his daily duties. But he has a number of ingenious, though utterly absurd, excuses why he should not leave the house: "There is a lion in the streets," he says, "a lion in the way;"[521] "There is a lion without; I shall be murdered in the streets."[522] When he is told that this is a delusion, he is prepared to argue the matter, and to show that his fear is well grounded; he is quite scornful of all the people who assure him to the contrary, because they have been out and seen for themselves: "The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men that can render a reason."[523] And when at length he is launched on the business of the day, arriving late, his wits gone wool-gathering, his will as inactive as his mind is inattentive, he drags through every duty with the air of one who is walking "through a hedge of thorns."[524] Where another person would proceed with easy alacrity, he seems held back by invisible obstacles; his garments are always getting caught in the briars; there is not impetus enough to carry him over the slightest difficulty; and after frequent and somnolent pauses, the end of the day finds him more weary than the busiest, though he has nothing to show but futile efforts and abortive results.