To the Idle
Charles Spurgeon · John Ploughman's Talk; or, Plain Advice for Plain People
My advice to my boys has been, get out
of the sluggard's way, or you may catch his
disease, and never get rid of it. I am al-
ways afraid of their learning the ways of the
idle, and am very watchful to nip anything
of the sort in the bud ; for you know it is
best to kill a lion while it is a cub. Sure
enough our children have all our evil nature
about them, for you can see it growing of
itself like weeds in a garden. Who can
bring a clean thing out of the unclean ? A
wild goose never lays a tame egg. Our
boys will be off to the green with the ne'er-
do-wells unless we make it greener still at
home for them, and train them up to hate
the company of the slothful. Never let
tjiem go to the " Rose and Crown;" let
them learn to earn a crown while they are
young, and grow the roses in their father's
garden at home. Bring them up bees and
they will not be drones.
There is much talk about bad masters
and mistresses nowadays, and I dare say
that there is a good deal in it, for there's bad
of all sorts now as there always was ; another
time, if I am allowed, I will have a say
about that matter ; but I am sure there is
16 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
plenty of room for complaint against some
among the working people too, especially
upon this matter of slothfulness. You know
we are obliged to plough with such cattle
as we have found for us ; but when I am
set to work with some men, I'd as soon
drive a team of snails, or go out rabbit hunt-
ing with a dead ferret. Why, you might
sooner get blood out of a gatepost, or
juice out of a cork, than work out of some
of them ; and yet they are always talking
about their rights ; I wish they would give
an eye to their own wrongs, and not lean
on the plough-handles. Lazy lie-a-beds
are not working men at all, any more than
pigs are bullocks, or thistles apple trees.
All are not hunters that wear red coats,
and all are not working men who call
themselves so. I wonder sometimes that
some of our employers keep so many cats
who catch no mice. I would as soon drop
my halfpence down a well as pay some
people for pretending to work, who only
fidget you and make your flesh crawl to
see them all day creeping over a cabbage
leaf. Live and let live, say I, but I don't
TO THE IDLE. 1 7
include sluggards in that license ; for they
who will not work, neither let them eat.
Here, perhaps, is the proper place to say
that some of the higher classes, as they
are called, set a shamefully bad example in
this respect : our great folks are some of
them quite as lazy as they are rich, and
often more so ; the big dormice sleep as
long and as sound as the little ones. Many
a parson buys or hires a sermon, so that he
may save himself the trouble of thinking.
Is not this abominable laziness ? They
sneer at the Ranters ; but there is not a
Ranter in the kingdom but what would be
ashamed to stand up and read somebody
else's sermon as if it were his own. Many
of our squires have nothing to do but to
part their hair in the middle ; and many
of the London grandees, ladies and gentle-
men both alike, as I am told, have no bet-
ter work than killing time. Now, they say
the higher a* monkey climbs, the more his
tail is seen ; and so, the greater these
people are, the more their idleness is
noticed, and the more they ought to be
ashamed of it. I don't say they ought to
plough, but I do say that they ought to do
18 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
something for the state, besides being like
the caterpillars on the cabbage, eating up
the good things ; or like the butterflies,
showing themselves off, but making no
honey. I cannot be angry with these peo-
ple somehow, for I pity them when I think
of the stupid rules of fashion which they
are forced to mind, and the vanity in which
they weary out their days. I'd sooner by
half bend my back double with hard work
than be a jack-a-dandy, with nothing to
do but to look in the glass and see in it
a fellow who never put a single potato into
the nation's pot, but took a good many
out. Let me drop on these Surrey hills,
worn out like my master's old brown
mare, sooner than eat bread and cheese
and never earn it ; better die an honorable
death than live a good-for-nothing life.
Better get into my coffin, than be dead and
alive, a man whose life is a blank.
However, it is not much e^se that lazy
people get by all their scheming, for they
always take the most pains in the end;
they will not mend the thatch, and so
they have to build a new cottage ; they will
not put the horse in the cart, and so have
TO THE IDLE. 19
to drag it themselves. If they were wise,
they would do their work well, so as to save
doing it twice ; and tug hard while they are
in harness, so as to get the work out of the
way. My advice is, if you don't like hard
work, just pitch into it, settle it off, and have
your turn at rest.
I wish all religious people would take this
matter under their consideration ; for some
professors are amazingly lazy, and make sad
work for the tongues of the wicked. I think
a godly ploughman ought to be the best
man in the field, and let no team beat him.
When we are at work, we ought to be at it,
and not stop the plough to talk, even though
the talk may be about religion; for then we
not only rob our employers of our own time,
but of the time of the horses too. I used to
hear people say, " Never stop the plough to
catch a mouse," and it's quite as silly to stop
for idle chat ; besides, the man who loiters
when the master is away is an eye-server,
which, I take it, is the very opposite of
a Christian. If some of the members of our
meeting were a little more spry with their
arms and legs when they are at labor, and a
little quieter with their tongues, they would
20 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
say more for our religion that they now
do. The world says the greatest rogue is
the pious rogue ; and I'm sorry to say one
of the greatest sluggards I know of is a pro-
fessing man of the " Mr. Talkative " kind.
His garden is so overgrown with weeds
that I feel often half a mind to weed it for
him, to save our meeting the shame which
he brings upon it : if he were a young lad,
I'd talk to him about it and try to teach
him better, but who can be schoolmaster to
a child sixty years old ? He is a regular
thorn to our good minister, who is quite
grieved about it, and sometimes says he
will go somewhere else because he cannot
bear such conduct ; but I tell him that
wherever a man lives he is sure to have one
thornbush near his door, and it is a mercy
if there are not two. However, I do wish
that all Christians would be industrious, for
religion never was designed to make us
idle. Jesus was a great worker, and his
disciples must not be afraid of hard work.
As to serving the Lord with cold hearts
and drowsy souls, there has been too much
of it, and it causes religion to wither. Men
ride stags when they hunt for gain, and
TO THE IDLE. 21
snails when they are on the road to heaven.
Preachers go on see-sawing, droning, and
prosing, and the people fall to yawning and
folding their arms, and then say that God is
withholding the blessing. Every sluggard,
when he finds himself enlisted in the ragged
regiment, blames his luck; and some
churches have learned the same wicked
trick. I believe that when Paul plants and
Apollos waters, God gives the increase, and
I have no patience with those who throw
the blame on God when it belongs to them-
selves.
Now I have come to the end of my
tether. I am afraid I have been watering
a dead stake, but I have done my best, and
a king can do no more. An ant can never
make honey if it work its heart out, and I
shall never put my thoughts so prettily to-
gether as some do, book-fashion ; but truth
is truth, even when dressed in homespun,
and so there is an end of my rigmarole.