The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-08-29
THE SIN OF WASTING TIME.


The wisdom of economizing time
and the folly of wasting it have ever
been favorite themes of preachers,
moral philosophers, essayists, and
poets. 1t would be easy to fill
columns of this magazine with pas
sages eloquently enforcing the truth
of Bishop Spalding's saying: Econ
omy of time is more indispensable
than economy of money; for it is a
means of getting not only money but
what is vastly higher and more pre-
cious-wisdom and virtue" Or Glad
stones: Thrift of time will repay
you in after-life with a usury of profit
beyond your most sanguine dreams;
and the waste of it will make you
dwindle alike in intellectual and
moral stature beyond your darkest
reckoning" Seneca, Bacon, Quarles,
Smiles, Mathews and a thousand
others, have emphasized the truism
that lost wealth may be replaced by
industry, lost knowledge by study,
lost health by temperance, but lost
time is gone forever.
That time wasted is folly, then,
will be admitted by most persons who
reflect upon the subject at ALL that it
is most commonly sin as we'll a
fragrant injustice is a contention not
especially difficult to make good, al
though infrequently perhaps brought
to our minds, or dwelt upon in our ex-
animation of conscience. In the case
of those whose time, in the ordinary
acceptation of the phrase, is not their
own, who have hired it out to an en-
ployer the injustice of their wasting it
is, of course, obvious. The plumber or
carpenter who dawdles for half a day
at job which he could readily finish
in an hour or two, is clearly guilty of
dishonesty. The clerk who in the en-
ploy of private firm or of the Gov
eminent, neglects the work for which
he receives a salary to devote his
time, or any considerable portion of it,
to other matters, or to idling, is I'M
questionably defrauding his employ
ers, is unjustly disposing of what is
not his own.
In such cases as the foregoing and
in Vulnerable similar ones, the positive
sinfulness of wasting time can scarce
ly be ignored by any save the most
callous conscience. But what of those
whose time is their own, at least in
the sense that they are subject to no
specific task-master? What of mer-
chants and Journalists, lawyers, and
judges, physicians and clergymen,
who habitually squander some portion
of what Franklin calls 'the stuff that
life is made Of? Does their waste of
time injure no one but themselves?
Is the self-culture, the increase in wis
dom and virtue, the expansion of
powers for good, the additional skill
and efficiency in their respective
callings, their progressive develop
ment into citizens of notable worth
and eminence,-is all this, so clearly
dependent on the genuine improve
ment of the time which they waste,
merely personal affair? Assuredly
not. They all owe duties to their
families, to their clients, to the COM
munity of which they form a part,
to their country as whole, and to
the Church: and in just that measure
in which their waste of time prevents
their giving to these various creditors
the best of which they are, or should
be capable they can not but be con-
sidered as delinquent debtors.
The physician who fails to utilize
the odd half-hours of his leisure in
keeping up with the latest advances
in medical science is guilty of injus-
tice toward his actual and prospective
patients. The lawyer who gives up
serious study when once he has passed
the state board of examiners, and who
fritters away the hours that should,
and easily could, be devoted to the
acquisition of further legal lore, is
unjust to his clients, even though he
Grams heroicaIly for each special case
And so of all other professions,-in
none of them does waste of time in
jure the waster only; on all of them
such waste is an injustice to others,
few or many.
1t need scarcely be added that,
from the Christian viewpoint, all our
time belongs primarily to God, and
that every hour lived in separation
from Him is, in the fullest and most
comprehensive sense of the world,
utterly and irretrievably wasted. To