You must have for years attended to
what is taught from the pulpit and the desk, and, alongside of that, you
must have made a sobering and solemnising application of it all to your
own heart. And then you would have seen and felt that the heels of your
mind and of your heart are only too firmly fettered with the irons of
ignorance and inexperience and self-complacency. But as it is, if you
would tell the truth, you would say to us what Simple said to Christian,
I see no danger. The next time that John Bunyan passed that bottom, the
chains had been taken off the heels of this sleeping fool and had been
put round his neck.
SLOTH
Sloth had a far better head than Simple had; but what of that when he
made no better use of it? There are many able men who lie all their days
in a sad bottom with the irons of indolence and inefficiency on their
heels. We often envy them their abilities, and say about them, What
might they not have done for themselves and for us had they only worked
hard? Just as we are surprised to see other men away above us on the
mountain top, not because they have better abilities than we have, but
because they tore the fetters of sloth out of their soft flesh and set
themselves down doggedly to their work.
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