| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 8 |
Page 4 |
On every church roll there are the names of those who began well, with unusual promise, and for a little time maintained the high standard of their auspicious beginning, but by and by, in the stress and pressure of duty and responsibility, or in the face of opposition and ridicule, they lost interest and soon fell out of the ranks altogether. In every city and town there are thousands of lapsed church members. Once they were active and enthusiastic in following Christ, but they wearied in well doing and no longer even claim to be Christians.
Nor is it in religion only that this failure appears; we see illustrations of like fickleness in all departments of life. We see it in work, in business, in friendship, in education. Men are so impatient to get into active life, to be doing good, to be making money, to be shining as lights in the world, that they will not take time for adequate and thorough preparation. What in other men requires ten years they try to crowd into three or four. They will spend no time in laying deep foundations; they are in such haste to see the superstructure of their dreams rising. They will not give years to apprenticeship – life is too short, they say, for such slow processes, at least for them; and they are out in the world long before the slow, plodding companions of their earlier youth. They form friendships almost at sight, and in a few days or weeks make intimacies which in persons of different mould require months or years. The seed springs up immediately.
But the end is the same in all cases. The eager student who had not patience to make thorough preparation for his profession finds himself at length facing tasks which he cannot perform and is a failure. The man who in youth spurned the drudgery required to learn a trade or a business, at midlife or earlier discovers that he can do nothing well, and that there is no place for him in the world’s crowded ways. He is pushed out of the ranks, therefore, not because men are hard or unfraternal, but because he cannot hold his place and do his work.
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