89 Sermon Illustrations on Diligence

Men who have had a dozen irons in the fire are not the men to go crazy. It is the man of voluntary or compelled leisure who mopes and pines, and thinks himself into the madhouse or the grave. Motion is all Nature's law. Action is man's salvation physical and mental. And yet nine men out of ten are wistfully looking forward to the coveted hour when they shall have leisure to do nothing, or something, only if they feel to like it,—the very siren that has lured to death many a "successful" man. He only is truly wise who lays himself out to work till life's lates hour; and that is the man who will live the longest, and live to the most purpose.

Drudgery is the gray angel of success.... Look at the leaders in the professions, the solid men in business, the master-workmen who begin as poor boys and end by building a town to house their factory-hands; they are drudges of the single aim.... “One thing I do.”... Mr. Maydole, the hammer-maker of central New York, was an artist. “Yes,” he said, “I have made hammers for twenty-eight years.” “Well, then, you ought to be able to make a pretty good hammer by this time.” “No, sir,” was the answer. “I never made a pretty good hammer; I make the best hammer made in the United States.”

— WILLIAM C. GANNETT

See WEAKNESS, CONSIDERATION FOR.

BUILDERS, ANCIENT

The old Egyptians were better builders than those of the present day. There are blocks of stone in the pyramids which weigh three or four times as much as the obelisk on the London embankment. There is one stone the weight of which is estimated at eight hundred and eighty tons. There are stones thirty feet in length which fit so closely together that a penknife may be run over the surface without discovering the break between them. They are not laid with mortar, either. We have no machinery so perfect that it will make two surfaces thirty feet in length which will meet together as these stones in the pyramids meet. It is supposed that they were rubbed backward and forward upon each other until the surfaces were assimilated, making them the world’s wonders in mechanical skill.--The London _Budget_.

It has been told of a modern astronomer that one summer night, when he was withdrawing to his chamber, the brightness showed a phenomenon. He passed the whole night in observing it, and when they came to him early in the morning and found him in the same attitude, he said, like one who has been collecting his thoughts for a few moments:

“It must be thus; but I will go to bed before it is too late.” He had gazed the entire night and was not aware of it.

“He seems to have lost his grip,” said one man to another in talking of an acquaintance who had not been long in the ranks of the “middle-aged.” They both felt that their friend had talents; they longed to see him apply them with judgment and success. The term “grip” was an expressive one. Whatever one’s work may be, it can not be properly done unless the worker has firm hold of his tools. Lack of grip may often be resolved into lack of incentive, and, therefore, whoever imparts to his comrade a sufficient motive for holding fast, is doing him service of the most effectual kind.--Providence _Journal_.

Capt. Robert McCulloch, who was elected president of the United Railways Company at the age of sixty-seven, was asked recently why he does not retire and live comfortably on his income. As general manager of the $90,000,000 corporation, Captain McCulloch is frequently at his office at 5 A.M. and remains until late in the evening.

“I had a friend once,” said Captain McCulloch, answering the inquiry, “who started in life in a very modest way. He sold railway supplies, and to help him along I bought some of his goods. Eventually he branched out, became the general manager of a railway-supply house, and in time got rich.

“I met him two weeks before his fiftieth birthday. He told me he had acquired a competency, having several hundred thousand dollars invested in gilt-edged securities, besides his magnificent home in Chicago, and that on his fiftieth birthday he was going to retire and enjoy life.

“Just a year later I received his funeral notice. If he had kept on working like I have, he would be living yet. Work is necessary to enjoyment, good health, and length of days. That’s why I don’t quit. I prefer to live a while longer, and know I would die if I quit.”--St. Louis _Post-Dispatch_.

“Our hours,” said a nature student, “are nothing to the birds. Why, some birds work in the summer nineteen hours a day. Indefatigably they clear the crops of insects.

“The thrush gets up at 2:30 every summer morning. He rolls up his sleeves, and falls to work at once, and he never stops until 9:30 at night. A clean nineteen hours. During that time he feeds his voracious young two hundred and six times.

“The blackbird starts work at the same time as the thrush, but he ‘lays off’ earlier. His whistle blows at 7:30, and during his seventeen-hour day he sets about one hundred meals before his kiddies.

“The titmouse is up and about at three in the morning and his stopping time is nine at night. A fast worker, the titmouse is said to feed his young four hundred and seventeen meals--meals of caterpillar mainly--in the long, hard, hot day.”--_Green’s Fruit Grower._

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William Elbert Munsey was born upon a Virginia mountain farm, which was so poor that a disturbance could not be raised upon it, much less the articles of food which produce a thrifty physical manhood. After toiling in the field all day, he would carry wood upon his tired, youthful back for a mile, that his widowed mother and five brothers and sisters might have warmth from the evening fire; he went to school only twelve months in his life, but he ate the heart out of every book that came within his reach; while plowing he would keep his book at the end of the furrow, and when he had plowed a “round,” he would talk with his tongueless companion for a few moments, “and then push on between the plow handles,” the great thoughts ringing in his soul like the tolling of a cathedral bell.

Well, what kind of a man did he make? Let one who heard him deliver his famous lecture on “Man” answer the question: “The vast amount of scientific knowledge he had stored his mind with was truly amazing.

He spoke as if he had been a professor in every branch of science for a lifetime. Every technical term was at his tongue’s end. Man was presented in spirit, soul and body as the most wonderful trichotomy of the universe; was analyzed, synthetized, exalted and glorified as the last and grandest work of God. He soared amid clouds and lightning and thunder and tempests; he was as familiar with anatomy as if he had been a Sir Charles Bell; with mental phenomena, as if he had been a John Locke; with mythology, as if he had been born a Greek and had lived in Greece a thousand years.” At the conclusion of his sermons, congregations have been so “bewildered as to rise up in an unconscious way, facing each other, and not knowing for some moments whether to remain or leave the room.” But how old was this wonderful man when he died? Just a little over forty years of age. Like David Livingstone in the African hut, William Elbert Munsey was found dead upon his knees by the side of his bed.

— F. F. SHANNON

It is the little greater care of the extra hour, the additional effort that constitutes the margin of advantage of one man over another. President Garfield said:

When I was in college, a certain young man was leading the class in Latin. I couldn’t see how he got the start of us all so. To us he seemed to have an infinite knowledge. He knew more than we did. Finally, one day, I asked him when he learned his Latin lesson. “At night,” he replied. I learned mine at the same time. His window was not far from mine, and I could see him from my own. I had finished my lesson the next night as well as usual, and, feeling sleepy, was about to go to bed. I happened to saunter to my window, and there I saw my classmate still bending diligently over his book. “There’s where he gets his margin on me,” I thought. “But he shall not have it for once,” I resolved. “I will study just a little longer than he does to night.” So I took down my books again, and, opening to the lesson, went to work with renewed vigor. I watched for the light to go out in my classmate’s room. In fifteen minutes it was all dark. “There is his margin,” I thought. It was fifteen minutes more time. It was hunting out fifteen minutes more of rules and root derivatives. How often, when a lesson is well prepared, just five minutes spent in perfecting it will make one the best in the class. The margin in such a case as that is very small, but it is all-important. The world is made up of little things. (Text.)

When you’ve got a job to do, do it now! If it’s one you wish was through, do it now! If you’re sure the job’s your own, just tackle it alone; don’t hem and haw and groan--do it now! Don’t put off a bit of work, do it now! It doesn’t pay to shirk, do it now! If you want to fill a place, and be useful in the race, just get up and take a brace, do it now! Don’t linger by the way, do it now! You’ll lose if you delay, do it now! If the other fellows wait, or postpone until it’s late, you hit up a faster gait--do it now!--_Intelligencer._

In spite of his continual need of movement, his passionate love of sport in all its forms, and especially of motoring, his expansive, rather mad, but very attractive youthfulness, Alfonso XIII, even in his flying trips, never loses the occasion to improve his mind. He is very quick at seizing a point, possesses a remarkable power of assimilation, and, altho he does not read much, for he has no patience, he is remarkably well informed regarding the smallest details in matters that interest him. One day, for instance, he asked me, point-blank:

“Do you know how many gendarmes there are in France?”

I confess that I was greatly puzzled what to reply, for I have never cared much about statistics. I ventured to say, off-hand: “Ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand! Come, M. Paoli, what are you thinking of? That’s the number we have in Spain. It’s more like twenty thousand.”

This figure, as I afterward learned, was strictly accurate.

As for business of State, I also noticed that the king devoted more time to it than his restless life would lead one to believe. Rising, winter and summer, at six o’clock, he stays indoors and works regularly during the early part of the morning, and often again at night. In this connection, one of his ministers said to me:

“He never shows a sign of either weariness or boredom. The king’s ‘frivolity’ is a popular fallacy. On the contrary, he is terribly painstaking. Just like the queen mother, he insists upon clear and detailed explanations before he will sign the least document; and he knows quite well how to make his will felt. Besides, he is fond of work, and he can work anywhere--in a motor-car, in a boat, in a train, as well as in his study.”--XAVIER PAOLI, _McClure’s_.

What a characteristic story of poverty and pluck is that of Andrew Carnegie! His father, a Scotch weaver who worked with hand-looms, thrown out of employment by improved machinery, came to Pittsburg when “Andy” was but ten years of age. The boy went to work as a bobbin-boy at $1.20 a week. At thirteen he was promoted to the post of engineer of the factory engine. At fourteen he became telegraph boy, and was promoted at sixteen, for quick intelligence, to the post of telegraph operator at a salary of $300 a year. About this time his father died, and the support of the family devolved on him. He soon got a dollar a week extra for copying telegrams for the papers, which he called his “first bit of capital.” His salary went for household expenses, but the dollar surplus he invested wisely, first in the express business, then in sleeping-cars, and, finally, as an outcome of his management of transportation in the Civil War, in a plant to manufacture iron railway bridges. And so by alertness and economy and untiring energy he came to be the world’s most distinguished manufacturer and philanthropist, putting as much talent into giving as he had before put into getting.

He watched the clock.

He was always grumbling.

He was always behindhand.

He asked too many questions.

His stock excuse was “I forgot.”

He wasn’t ready for the next step.

He did not put his heart into his work.

He learned nothing from his blunders.

He was content to be a second-rate man.

He chose his friends among his inferiors.

He ruined his ability by half-doing things.

He never dared to act on his own judgment.

He did not think it worth while to learn how.

He thought it clever to use coarse and profane language.

He imitated the habits of men who could stand more than he could.

He did not learn that the best part of his salary was not in his pay envelop.--_Success._

“Paradise Lost” was finished in 1665, after seven years’ labor in darkness. With great difficulty Milton found a publisher, and for the great work, now the most honored poem in our literature, he received less than certain verse-makers of our day receive for a little song in one of our popular magazines. Its success was immediate, tho, like all his work, it met with venomous criticism.

The work stamped him as one of the world’s great writers, and from England and the Continent pilgrims came in increasing numbers to speak their gratitude.--WILLIAM J. LONG, “English Literature.”

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If ever a literary success was earned by hard work, General Wallace earned it with “Ben Hur.” He first started the book as a novelette, which he intended to offer to _Harper’s Magazine_; but the story expanded until it far outgrew the original design, and occupied its author for seven years. Full as it is with the most graphic pictures of Palestine, it is difficult to realize that General Wallace had never been in that country when he wrote the novel. The general was recently asked how he accomplished such wonderful results, and replied as follows:

“I doubt if any novel has ever had more careful studies for its background and life than those made for ‘Ben Hur.’ I knew that the novel would be criticized by men who had devoted their lives to Biblical lore, and I studied Palestine through maps and books. I read everything in the way of travel, scientific investigation, and geography. I had scores of maps and worked with them about me. My best guide was a relief map of Palestine made in Germany. This was hung on my wall, and by means of it I took my characters through the passes of the mountains and up and down the hills, measuring their daily travel by the scale of miles. I also made studies of the bird and animal life of the time and place.” (Text.)

One of the remarkable characteristics displayed by Charles E. Hughes in the conduct of his important lawsuits conducted against great corporations on behalf of the people was his complete mastery of the facts entering into the cases. In regard to this characteristic, the following is illuminating as showing his painstaking preparation for his cases:

His habit of thorough preparation made him one of the most formidable trial lawyers in New York. When he went into court, he could usually defeat his adversary not only on the point directly at issue, but upon dozens of others that might come up correlatively. In his search for information he never limited his investigations to law-books. He was once called upon to defend a patent held by a company manufacturing a mechanical piano-player. He mastered all the law points involved, and then began to work on the mechanism itself. He had an instrument moved up to his house, and spent many hours playing upon it, taking it apart, and becoming entirely familiar with its mechanical details. When Mr. Hughes appeared in court, he confounded the experts by his familiarity with the technicalities involved and easily won his case.

If all the efforts wasted on such tasks as that described below were put into useful and constructive work, the world’s wealth would be far more rapidly increased.

Mr. William L. Stuart, a young man engaged in business in New York City, has performed the seemingly impossible feat of engraving the entire Lord’s Prayer on the head of an ordinary pin, to which he has added his name and the year, making altogether two hundred and seventy-six letters and figures.

Mr. Stuart did the work at odd times during his regular employment and with very ordinary tools, which seemingly are not adapted to such fine engraving. The pin was set in a block of wood, and a common engraver’s tool was used. A simple microscope, costing only about twenty-five cents, and known as a “linen tester,” furnished the necessary magnifying.

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Paul was not ashamed to work with his hands, altho he had been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel and taught according to the perfect manner of the law. He had not forgotten the custom of the Jews, who always taught their sons in early youth to work at some trade or handicraft. A true saying is that “an idle brain is the devil’s workshop.” Miss Dryer, a Chicago missionary, in addressing the ministers’ meeting of that city in behalf of girls’ sewing-schools, made the significant statement that in all her experience of many years she had never known of a fallen woman who knew how to sew. (Text.)

ORIGINAL VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

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MODERN AMERICAN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that, in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Then a representative of the NAGB (The National Association of Green Bugs) shows up on nightline and charges the ant with green bias, and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism.

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings “It's not easy being green.”

Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on the CBS Evening News to tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the Reagan summers.

Richard Gephardt exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his “fair share.”

Finally, the EEOC drafts the “Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act” retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal hearing officers that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's between 1:30 and 3 PM.

THE ANT LOSES THE CASE

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing Bill Clinton standing before a wildly applauding group of Democrats and Republicans announcing that a new era of “fairness” has dawned in America.

The Postage Stamp "Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there."

-- Josh Billings

[see also HolwickId #16214]

Bob Wieland finally crossed the finish line on Thursday, November 6, 1986, the New York City Marathon's 19,413th and final finisher . . . and the first to run a marathon with his arms instead of his legs! Wieland is a 40-year old Californian whose legs were blown off in a Vietnam battlefield 17 years ago. He recorded what race officials said was the slowest time in marathon history: four days, two hours, 48 minutes, 17 seconds. But he was greeted like a champion by race director Fred Lebow, who had written Wieland off as a dropout.

When he finished, Wieland shouted, "We love New York!" and repeatedly pumped his arms in the air. He claimed his finisher's medal and explained why he did it: "For the same reason as 20,000 other people. It's the greatest marathon in the country." He also cited three specific reasons: to show his born-again Christian faith; to test his conditioning and to promote the President's Council on Physical Fitness, of which he is a member.

He said, "Success is not based on where you start, it's where you finish, and I finished. The first step was the most difficult, after that, we were on our way home. The joy has been the journey."

Wieland started Sunday at 8:23 a.m., more than two hours before the main body of runners. But, moving at an average speed of about one mile an hour, his lead soon vanished; the champion, Gianni Poli, ran the entire race in the time it took Wieland to cross the Verrazano Bridge. Wieland runs in a sitting position, using his muscular arms like crutches to lift his torso and swing it forward. He sits on a 15-pound saddle and covers his clenched fists with pads he calls "size 1 running shoes."

Paul the Apostle said it like this, "Let us run with patience the race that is set before us."

________

Adapted from an Associated Press story in the Denver Post, Nov 7, 1986. Submitted by Robert Strand, First Assembly of God, Grand Junction, Colorado.

In 1990, Americans consumed almost 300 million pounds of honey. If you think that's a lot, you're right; and if you wnat to understand the expression "busy as a bee," think about this - it takes more than 550 bees visiting 2.5 million flowers to create one pound of honey. To make those 300 millions pounds of honey, the busy little creatures had to dip into about 700 quadrillion flowers. Another way to look at it is that a bee makes about 154 trips to a flower for one teaspoon of honey and about 20,000 trips to bring in one pound. Translation: about 160,000 bee-hours go into producing a pound of honey.

Somerset Maugham, the English writer, once wrote a story about a janitor at St Peter's Church in London. One day a young vicar discovered that the janitor was illiterate and fired him. Jobless, the man invested his meager savings in a tiny tocacco shop, where he prospered, bought another, expanded, and ended up with a chain of tobacco stores worth several hundred thousand dollars. One day the man's banker said, "You've done well for an illiterate, but where would you be if you could read and write?"

The man smiled and ultimately replied, "I would be a janitor!"

One of the more interesting TV reality shows was one by PBS called "Frontier House." Three modern families were each given some training and 160 acres of undeveloped land in Montana. They then had to live with the same tools available to homesteaders in 1883 and see how well they did.

The Clune family took to the frontier life agressively but they let some important tasks slip. They knew they needed to gather hay in the summer so their animals wouldn't starve in the winter, but they kept putting it off. Finally they go out and cut some grass while their kids folick in the meadow. Unfortunately, it was too late in the year and the grass had the nutritional value of straw - zilch. The verdict of the experts: the animals would have starved, and probably the Clunes as well.

As Solomon warned us long ago, "A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing." (Proverbs 20:4)

________

The PBS show is at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/project/. Details about the show taken from "Frontier House, Episode 6: The Reckoning," by Melinda Smith, Reality News Online, July 10, 2002; http://www.realitynewsonline.com/cgi-bin/ae.pl?mode=1&article=article1951.art&page=1

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[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]

John Gardner, author of EXCELLENCE, said, "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted

activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."