There is another phase of the lesson. Not swiftness only, but patient persistence through days and years, is the mark of true living. There are many people who can work under pressure for a little time, but who tire of the monotony and slack in their duty by and by, failing at last because they cannot endure unto the end. There are people who begin many noble things, but soon weary of them and drop them out of their hands. They may pass for brilliant men, men even of genius, but in the end they have for biography only a volume of fragments of chapters, not one of them finished. Such men may attract a great deal of passing attention, while the tireless plodders working beside them receive no praise, no commendation; but in the real records of life, written in abiding lines in God's Book, it is the latter who will shine in the brightest splendor. Robert Browning puts this truth in striking way in one of his poems:-- "Now, observe, Sustaining is no brilliant self-display Like knocking down or even setting up: Much bustle these necessitate; and still To vulgar eye, the mightier of the myth Is Hercules, who substitutes his own For Atlas' shoulder and supports the globe A whole day,--not the passive and obscure Atlas who bore, ere Hercules was born, And is to go on bearing that same load When Hercules turns ash on Oeta's top. 'Tis the transition-stage, the tug and strain, That strike men: standing still is stupid-like." So we get our lesson. There is so much to do in the short days that we dare not lose a moment. Life is so laden with responsibility that to trifle at any point is sin. Even on the seizing of minutes eternal issues may depend. Of course we must take needed rest to keep our lives in condition for duty. But what shall we say of those strong men and women who do almost nothing but rest? What shall we say of those who live only to have amusement, who dance away their nights and then sleep away their days, and thus hurry on toward the judgment-bar, doing nothing for God or for man? Life is duty; every moment of it has its own duty. There is no malfeasance so sad and so terrible in its penalties as that which wastes the golden years in idleness or pleasure, and leaves duty undone. Shall we not seek to crowd the days with most earnest living? Shall we not learn to redeem the time from indolence, from loitering, from unmethodicalness, from the waste of precious moments, from self-indulgence, from impatience of persistent toil, from all that lessens achievement? Shall we not learn to work swiftly for our Master? "You must live each day at your very best: The work of the world is done by few; God asks that a part be done by you. "Say oft of the years as they pass from sight, 'This is life with its golden store: I shall have it once, but it comes no more.'