There is nothing more necessary for
our future welfare than the improvement of time.
Our time is too valuable to be spent in idleness.
If we wish to be respected, we must be industrious;
and to be industrious we must know how to value our
time. Every moment must be spent as we should
wish it had been when we come to years of discretion.
There are many things that we can busy ourselves in
doing that will fill up a few leisure moments, and
perhaps it will do some good. If we are poor,
we can relieve our parents in trying to assist them
in the daily labors and toils of life, for hard must
be the lot of that toil-worn father, and care-worn
mother, who have a numerous family to maintain by
their daily labor, all careless and indifferent of
their hardships and fatigues. If we are rich,
we can make those happy around us by the thousand
nameless attentions which the hand of industry alone
can supply. Therefore, whatever our situation
in life may be, the good improvement of our time will
not only tend to promote our usefulness, but our happiness.
Take for instance a man who has indulged in habits
of indolence from his childhood, and see what it has
brought him to. He has been in the habit of lounging
about the streets unemployed, or perhaps watching
for opportunities for mischief; step by step he descends
in his moral degradation; vice succeeds folly, till
a dark catalogue of crimes brings him to a drunkard’s
grave. State prison, or the gallows. While,
on the other hand, take a man who has been accustomed
to labor and toil for his daily food, and see how
much more he is respected, and what a difference there
is in the lives of those two men. The one is beloved
and respected, and the other is miserable and degraded.
The industrious man begins life, and
perhaps has no better prospects before him than his
companion; but see how much better he ends life than
the other. He begins to climb the ladder of science,
and by perseverance, he will soon reach the top round,
and he can not do this unless he improves his time.
We have ample proof that unless we
improve our time we can not be happy or respected,
and when we have a feeling of indolence come over
us, we must shake it off and try to arouse our energies,
and we must bear in mind that for every idle moment
we must give an account at the bar of God on the judgment
day, before God and man.