Connecticut western news., 1905-01-12

lrorkers of the world have been early | .sers. While other men were in bed | t'ley were at their desks or in their | laboratories or down at their offices or out making their investigations. liar | " Lee once said to his great leader, the | father of His Country, Sir, we sol l Giers are amazed at the vast amount of work you can accomplish" Sir an- svered General George Washington, ''I | do what I do because 1 rise every morning at o'clock, and great deal | of my work is done while others are asleep" How did Walter Scott write | his many books? He arose every morn | ing at 5. He then cleared away his correspondence. He laid out his plans of work, and "by breakfast time," he ! said, q have broken the neck of the days work" Frederick the Great did | not need any one to describe for hi:n l the rising sun. During all the long seven years war which has been the J marvel of European strategistS for a 1 century and a half he saw with his | own eyes the sun rise every morning. | But, though the great work of nearly | all our great workers was due to the | fact that they were early risers, many | of us finger in our beds in the morn ing just as long as possible, Instead | of living up to the old proverb we say, Late to bed and late to rise" and we | fritter away the late hours of the night
 on doing nothing, just as in the morn 1 ing we fritter them away in bed.
 A Family History.
 What time does your rising bell
 ring?" I ask. ."Oh," you answer, i've do not have any rising bell; we get up | when we are slept out" What time 1 does your breakfast bell ring" "We do
 not have any breakfast bell," you an-
 swer "When we are slept out, we get
 up and dress and go to breakfast. That | is the history of our house." Oh, no. | That is part of the history; it is not all.
 I will tell you the rest of it. When you
 awake, you get up and dress, but you | do not all dress at the same time. First l the father has his breakfast. Then one | or two of the children struggle down. | Then the mother comes last, or the | elder sister Then the breakfast, which ought to take just twenty-five minutes, | drags out over an hour. The children run off to school. The father hurries away to business. The servant girls dishes are not washed for.an hour and
 half later. There has been no time | for prayers. Everything In the home
 goes topsy turvy merely because the | family did not arise together, eat to- | fo o,Iy | at the same time. The wasted minutes | of the early morning are directly re | sponsible for whole days and weeks | and months of life wasted for the sery- | ice of the Master. 'The Austrians lost | the battles of Lodi and Arcola," said | Napoleon, "because they did not appre- | ciate the value of five minutes" The
 reason many men waste whole days of | life's service that might have been con- secrated for Christ Is because they do | not appreciate the value of the sacred | minutes in the early hours of the morn | ing.
 Utilize the Minutes.
 How do we diminish our service for
 Christ by lost days? By not improv- ing the fragments of time that lie scat tered about us during the days work by not utilizing those extra few min
 utes here and there to fit ourselves in
 telligentTy Ty reading and study for
 the work God has given us to do, by
 supposing that God will let us inter-
 pret the passage, "Ask, and ye shall
 receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock.
 and it shall be opened to you" when
 our lips are dumb, when our feet are palsied and know nothing about the
 right paths to tread, when our hands are helpless in their stupidities. Can
 the blind lead the blind? Can some thing come from nothing? Can the little child run and leap like a fawn
 unless she has been first taught to
 creep and to walk?
 We must have intelligence in the di- rection of our life or else all our work will go for naught. What would you l think if one summer day I should walk up on the captains bridge of a | steamer and say: Captain, I would | like to take charge of this steamer
 Would the helmsman obey my com | mandY Where would you take the | shipY ''To Australia" I would an | swer. Do you know anything about | the laws of navigation?" No" "Then | I cannot let you take command. You | know not the law of the compass. The | great surface of the sea is the same | everywhere. You have no guideposts, | as on the mountain sides. The first | thing ,u would do would be to get ] tha shin off its oourca If uoI,ld taLa us perhaps days or weeks to regain | our course, or perhaps we would never | be able to do so. We might land in | China, as dishonest captain made the | pilgrim fathers land on the cold, bleak | New England shores when they had | set sail for the southern lands. No
 matter how good a mans purpose may | be, if he knows not the laws of navi- i gation he cannot guide his boat to the ! right harbor"
 | What would you think of a laborer | who should enter your sickroom and | say: Discharge the doctor. Let ne be your physician and prescribe your medicinesv' What would you think | of mechanic who would try to con- | duct a case in court when he did not l know the first A B C's of the law? | What would you think of a minister
 who would try to build the Panama | canal when he had never taken a
 course in engineering? And yet the
 landlubber trying to pilot a ship, the
 hodcarrier trying to cure sickness, the | layman trying to draw up his own i Hast will and testament" the clergy
 man trying to be the chief engineer of
 Brooklyn bridge, is no more absurd than the ordinary men and women try
 ing to perform their tasks in life with
 out an intelligent knowledge of their duties.
 We must have intelligence to fit our
 selves for the duties of life. How do l most successful men get that necnS=