Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel / and Selections from his Writings

by F. G. Allen

ECONOMY OF TIME.

Time is a divine inheritance that no man has a right to squander. The antediluvians might have afforded to be a little profligate in this direction, but the man who would fulfill his high destiny in this age has no time to lose. Lost time is forever lost. There is much useless complaint in the world of a want of time. It is not more time we need, so much as a better use of that we have. I do not mean that we should deprive ourselves of requisite sleep and rest. On the contrary, the regulation of these constitutes a part of the economy of which I speak. Rest is necessary; but all rest is not idleness. We should learn to rest by changing our employment, not by its abandonment. The man whose mind becomes weary in his study, finds the most invigorating rest in manual labor. The physical and intellectual have a happy reflective influence on each other. The moments wisely taken for intellectual and moral culture by the laboring man are fountains whose refreshing stream, like that from Horeb, follows him through his daily toil. They are a ceaseless pleasure, both in remembrance and anticipation. Those, also whose lives are disconnected with manual labor should have such a variety of work that one kind prepares the way for the enjoyment of another. There are both pleasure and health in a change of diet. To happily manage this variety requires a training of the mind essential to self-culture. We must learn to do the right thing at the right time. The happy influence of one thing upon another depends on their arrangement and the manner of their execution. It may not be well to have too many irons in the fire, but it is certainly best to have enough for some to be heating while others are cooling.

In order to do the right thing at the right time, and do it well, we must learn to think about the right thing at the right time. This is one of the most important features in mental training. We can think well on but one thing at a time. Therefore, the mind that is filled with various kinds of thoughts can prosecute none of them successfully. We must learn to select the guests that we would have sit at our intellectual banquets, summon or exclude them at will, and never permit the intrusion of a promiscuous crowd. When our work is arranged for the day, the week, the month, the year, we should set apart the time to be devoted to each item, both in work and in thought; and then never allow the thoughts of one to encroach upon the time allotted to another. We should so train the mind that we can think about the thing only of which we wish to think, concentrate our whole mind upon it till the time comes to put it away; then dismiss it in a moment, turn to something else, and think no more about it, till its proper time. The mind is soon trained to pass from one subject to another in a moment, with all its powers of concentration. This mastery of the mind, once attained, will enable us to study at all times and places regardless of circumstances. The man who can not study amid the wild shouts of the excited multitude is not his own master. He who can command his time and his talents only when no surging billows beat against his quiet retreat, has necessarily to spend much of life in which he has neither time nor talents which he can call his own. A very important item, then, in the economy of time, is to learn to labor under difficulties, till we rise superior to external surroundings. To keep the reins of the mind well in hand when there is a stampede all around us, is absolutely essential in the great crises of life. This is attained only by training the mind to instantaneous concentration under all circumstances. This, then, I would urge you to persist in until it is accomplished. Without this you will lose much time in acquiring information, and, what is of vastly more importance, you will be unprepared to use what you have at the very time, it may be, when it is most needed.

Another important element in the economy of time we learn from the great Teacher who said, "Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost." If He who had the power to create as well as to preserve, was such an economist of the remnants of loaves and fishes, how much more should we save the fragments of time, which we can not lengthen out a span?

Many people seem to think they can make garments only out of whole cloth. If they have not an abundance of uninterrupted time in which to accomplish a thing, they think they can not accomplish it at all. Such men accomplish but little, not for want of time, but for want of its economy. To avoid this waste, we must learn to weave whole garments out of the mere ravelings of the fabric of time. But some complain that they can not "get up steam" for intellectual labor in these fractions of time. We don't need to "get up steam." The "steam" should be already up. We only need to change the gearing. "There is a momentum in the active man," says Mathews, "which of itself almost carries him to the mark, just as a very light stroke will keep a hoop going, when a smart one was required to set it in motion. While others are yawning and stretching themselves to overcome the vis inertiae, he has his eyes wide open, his faculties keyed up for action, and is thoroughly alive in every fiber. He walks through the world with his hands unmuffled and ready by his side, and so can sometimes do more by a single touch in passing than a vacant man is likely to do by strenuous effort."

Let no one conclude that nothing important can be accomplished by these scattered fragments. It is said that "Hugh Miller found time while pursuing his trade as a stone-mason, not only to read but to write, cultivating his style till he became one of the most facile and brilliant authors of the day." Also, that Elihu Burritt "acquired a mastery of eighteen languages and twenty-two dialects, not by rare genius, which he disclaimed, but by improving the bits and fragments of time which he could steal from his occupation as a blacksmith."

With these examples before us, then, let no one conclude that he can not get time from his daily vocation, whatever it may be, to cultivate his mind, and develop his moral and intellectual faculties. Another essential element in self-culture is

SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE.

"A man," says Emerson, "is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors." There is no adaptation or universal applicability in man; but each has his special talent; and the mastery of successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall need oftenest to be practiced. The successful man in every calling, whether literary, scientific or business, is he who is totus in illo—who can say with Paul, this one thing I do! With the exception of a few great creative minds, the men whose names are historic are identified with some one achievement, upon which all their life force is spent. "Whatever I have tried to do in my life," says Dickens, "I have tried with all my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely. Never to put one hand to a thing on which I would not throw my whole self, and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was, I find now to have been golden rules." The fact is, the range of human knowledge has become so extensive that the man who would know some things well must have the courage to be ignorant of many others. There are many things for which one is wholly incapacitated; for which he has no talent, and, as a rule, time spent in this direction is time lost. Goethe justly says: "We should guard against a talent which we can not hope to practice in perfection. Improve it as we may, we shall always, in the end, when the merit of the master has become apparent to us, painfully lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching." Sidney Smith condemns what he calls the "foppery of universality—of knowing all sciences and excelling in all arts." "Now my advice," he says, "on the contrary, is to have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything."

I do not mean that you should try to learn but one thing, or be a man or woman of one idea; far from it. I simply mean that you must be select. Select your calling, and then bend all your energies in that direction. Let those branches of knowledge that bear most directly on your vocation be mastered first, then widen the circle as opportunity affords. Do not scatter your powers over so much territory that they are felt nowhere. It is only when the sun's rays are brought to a focus that they burn. The man who is one thing this year, another next; studies medicine a while, then law, is next a school-teacher, and then an insurance agent, will, in the end, be nothing. Men who are always changing, never learn enough about anything to make it of any value. Men who are eminent in their professions have stuck to them with a singleness of purpose. Men talk much about genius, when, generally, the genius of which they speak is but the result of unremitting application. The genius that blesses this world is simply a talent for hard work. They are men who have the resolution to try, and the courage to persevere. Idle men of the most eminent natural ability are soon distanced in the race by the mediocre who sticks to his purpose and plods. Then, I repeat, if you would succeed in life, in whatever calling you may select, divest yourself of the idea that you are a genius and do not need the application demanded by common mortality; rely not on the caprices of fickle fortune; but rely on God and yourself, economize your time, apply yourself with diligence and with singleness of purpose. With these you will be a blessing to the world, and fulfill the high and holy purposes of God in giving you being.