siness' a trade or profession,
or daily occupation. But the word means 'zeal' or 'earnestness.' And
what Paul says is just this--'In regard to your earnestness in all
directions, see that you are not slothful.'

The force and drift of the whole precept is just the exhortation to
exercise the very homely virtue of diligence, which is as much a
condition of growth and maturity in the Christian as it is in any
other life. The very homeliness and obviousness of the duty causes us
often to lose sight of its imperativeness and necessity.

Many of us, if we would sit quietly down and think of how we go about
our 'business,' as we call it, and of how we go about our Christian
life, which ought to be our highest business, would have great cause
for being ashamed. We begin the one early in the morning, we keep
hard at it all day, our eyes are wide open to see any opening where
money is to be made; that is all right. We give our whole selves to
our work whilst we are at it; that is as it should be. But why are
there not the same concentration, the same wide-awakeness, the same
open-eyed eagerness to find out ways of advancement, the same
resolved and continuous and all-comprehending and dominating
enthusiasm about our Christianity as there is about our shop, or our
mill, or our success as students? Why are we all fire in the one case
and all ice in the other? Why do we think that it is enough to lift
the burden that Christ lays upon us with one languid finger, and to
put our whole hand, or rather, as the prophet says, 'both hands
earnestly,' to the task of lifting the load of daily work? 'In your
earnestness be not slothful.'

Brethren, that is a very homely exhortation. I wonder how many of us
can say, 'Lord! I have heard, and I have obeyed Thy precept.'

II. Diligence must be fed by a fervent spirit.

The word translated 'fervent' is literally boiling. The metaphor is
very plain and intelligible. The spirit brought into contact with
Christian truth and with the fire of the Holy Spirit will naturally
have its temperature raised, and will be moved by the warm touch as
heat makes water in a pot hung above a fire boil. Such emotion,
produced by the touch of the fiery Spirit of God, is what Paul
desires for, and enjoins on, all Christians; for such emotion is the
only way by which the diligence, without which no Christian progress
will be made, can be kept up.

No man will work long at a task that his heart is not in; or if he