Malicious Waste

“He would be a cruel man who shoicld cast his provisions and superfluities into the street a7id deny the?n to the poor; or should allow his drink to run ijito the kennel rather than that the thirsty should taste a drop of it. Such are we to God; we know not what to employ oicr thoughts upon, and yet we will not thitik of his name. We will go musing tcpon vanity all the day lofig, and thus grindijtg chaff rather than we will take good cor7t into the milW* Well put! We meet with persons upon whose hands time hangs heavily; they have nothing to do, and are dying of ennui. Why will they thus spend their time in waste? Yet all the while they give not God a thought, nor spend a little time in reading his word, or in conversing with him in prayer. Have they all their days on hand, and yet will they not afford their God an hour? Are they full of time even to a surfeit, and yet cannot they give ten minutes’ space to their Maker Well does our author speak of cruelty. Was ever such cruelty on earth as this denial of an hour of our superfluous time to God .? Will we rather waste it, or defile it, than give him a portion of it? Must we invent pastimes to pass time away, and yet refuse ten minutes for meditation?

Oh, that this little parable might meet some careless eye, and through the eye pierce the heart! What, will you sooner kill time at cards, or with a novel, or in utter idleness, than do your greatest Benefactor the honour of thinking of him? Is he so distasteful to you that you count it a bore, a burden, a bugbear even to hear his sacred name? Come, do thyself this favour — to give the next hour to God and to thine own soul. Your cruelty to your God will prove to be cruelty to yourself. Do not persevere in it, but yield to your heavenly Friend a portion of your weary time. May be you will thus find out a way of never being weary again in this fashion — find out, in fact, the way to make time pass like a river which flows over golden sands, with a paradise on either bank.