Romans 2:7-10 To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life:… It is only by slow stages that we can rear a monument whose proud boast it shall be that it is oere perennius. The constant dropping of water, says one proverb, hollows out the stone, and another that "he who goes slowly goes long, and goes far." No work is well done that is done by fits and starts. Steadfast application to a fixed aim is the law of a well-spent life. When Giardini was asked how long it would take to learn the violin, he replied, Twelve hours a day for twenty years. Alas! too many of us think to play our fiddles by a species of inspiration. The Leotards and Blondins — what painful diligence must they have exhibited! The same adherence to a settled purpose might assuredly have made them benefactors of mankind had they been animated by a nobler impulse. In music, take the examples of Malibran and Pasta; in painting, of Titian and Raffaelle; in letters, of Lord Lytton and Carlyle; in science, of Laplace and Faraday; and you will find that the great results which have surrounded their names with imperishable honour, were wrought out by the most wonderful constancy of labour, and the most heroic energy of patience. Nothing can be greater mistake than to suppose that genius dispenses with labour. What genius does is to inspire the soul with a power to persevere in the labour that is needed; but the greater geniuses in every art invariably labour at their art far harder than all others, because their genius shows them the value of such patient labour, and aids them to persist in it. (W. H. D. Adams.) Parallel Verses KJV: To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:WEB: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruptibility, eternal life; |
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