"THERE IS A LION IN THE WAY."

Who says so? Well, Solomon says so, or rather Solomon represents a lazy man as saying so by way of excusing his laziness. "The slothful man saith there is a Lion in the way; a Lion is in the streets." And again,-"There is a Lion without; I shall be slain in the streets." The lazy fellow was an object of Solomon's great dislike and contempt, and, in the Book of Proverbs, he often gives him a dig. "I went by the field of the slothful and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding, and lo it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well; I looked upon it and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep so shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man." "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore shall he beg in harvest and have nothing." "Go to the ant thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise." "A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again." In this sentence Solomon's idea of a lazy man comes near to that given in the proverb—“As lazy as Ludlam's dog, that leant his head against a wall to bark."

But, to return to our subject, "There is a Lion in the way; a Lion is in the streets." Not a likely thing, but a thing extremely unlikely, in Jerusalem and in every other Jewish town, although Lions might be found in wild parts of the country not very far off.

Samson had met with one, David with another; but as to a Lion in the streets, that was all humbug, and the fellow who talked about such a thing knew it. And this is the pith of what Solomon puts into the mouth of the lazy man,—that he is ready to excuse his laziness under any pretence, however untrue and however ridiculous; and I dare say we have heard idle fellows try to justify their idleness by excuses as false and as foolish as this of Solomon's sluggard.

What Solomon's sluggard says suggests for our consideration the excuses which men often make for neglecting their duty. There are three kinds of men who are much given to this practice, three kinds of men who often say and sometimes think that "there is a Lion in the way." Such is, in effect, the excuse put forward by the indolent man, by the changeable man, and by the timid man. The first says "there is a Lion in the way" because he dislikes hard work; the second because he has not perseverance enough to contend with difficulties; the third because he shrinks from everything that has the smallest appearance of danger.

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The indolent man says "there is a Lion in the way." If f you were to go to an idle fellow who kept in his own house or sat in the public-house, if you were to remonstrate with him on his mis-spending of his time, and to urge him to turn to and work, and he were to excuse himself by saying "there is a Lion in the way," you would laugh in his face and replynonsense man, you must be either a liar or an idiot; there are horses in the street, and dogs in the street, and asses, plenty of them, some with four legs and ten times as many with only two, but there are no 'Lions' there." Of course no idle fellow, however unwilling to work, would say in so many words “there is a Lion in the way;" but the idler would, probably enough, when remonstrated with, make an excuse not much

nearer than that to wisdom and to truth. The excuses put forward by some people who come begging to my door are not much better than that made by Solomon's sluggard—" there is a Lion in the way," or "there was a Lion in the way," or "there might have been a Lion in the way," or "somebody said that there was a Lion in the way." I ask a man how is it that you are out of work?—and he tells me that the last place he was in the work was too hard for him, and that he is fit only for some "light occupation," his constitution won't stand long hours and great exertion; or the employer or the foreman took some dislike to him, for no cause in the world, and discharged him. I ask him how he comes to be so very poor, and he pleads a large family, or sickness, or slackness of trade. Of course these excuses are often, too often, true enough; especially this last of dull trade and bad times; but often, too, when we come to inquire into them, we find that they are more or less unsound, that though there is truth, there is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth in them; there was some reason for the employer's or the foreman's dislike and dissatisfaction; and some reason, and not at all a creditable reason, for the ill-health and the shattered constitution that can stand only some "light employment." The true answer to my question would often be "I am out of work; I am penniless; I have hardly a shirt to my back, or a shoe to my foot; my family is starving;-because I have played the fool exceedingly, and thrown away my chances of success." I say to such a one,-There's many a man whose chances of doing well for himself were no better than yours, nor half so good, and yet he has done well for himself. Your excuses "won't wash"; they are all a pretence; they are little if any better than that of Solomon's lazy lubber. If in there be such a Lion as the sheer impossibility of

a man's

way

getting work to do, the poor fellow is to be pitied and helped ; but what Lion is there in the way when, although there is work to be had, a man won't go to it on the Monday? Is that the day on which especially the Lions prowl about the streets, driving tailors and shoemakers, smiths and bricklayers, carpenters and masons, into the public-houses for refuge? I think that it is there you will meet the Lions; the beer, the gin, the whisky, and the rum that you devour there are the Lions that, if you don't look out, will devour you. If there really be "a Lion in the way," a downright, honest, valid excuse for being out of work, out of pocket, and out of bread, you deserve the deepest commiseration; but don't dress up an Ass in a Lion's skin and tell us that that is a Lion; be sure his long ears will pop out of the covering, or he will begin to bray, and you and your sham Lion will be dismissed, as you ought to be, with more kicks than halfpence. No! I will tell you, my friend, what is in your way. Your own indolence, your horror of hard work, your dislike of being put into a perspiration, your desire to lead a very easy life, your partiality for pleasure, so called, leading you into extravagance. These things are in the way of your doing well in the world. I have often been reminded of the contemptuous manner in which the Germans answer the cry of Solomon's sluggard-“There is a Lion in the way," when they say "There's a goose at the gate"; and, of course, if it be "a goose" that is "at the gate," something much less terrible than "a Lion" will effectually prevent his venturing into "the way." And so, in regard to these excuses for idleness and laziness, two questions present themselves; not only what is it that stands "in the way"? but also, what sort of a creature is it that stands at "the gate," afraid to sally forth into "the way?"

But the lazy man is not the only person who says "there is

a Lion in the way." He says so without in the least believing it, and merely as an excuse for his indolence, and a lame excuse it is; there are others, however, who in effect say this with more or less belief that it is as they say; not, of course, that they believe that there literally is "a Lion" in their way, but they believe that there is before them something so extremely difficult to deal with that it will prove too much for them. I now refer more especially to men who are of an unstable character, and who set out upon some course with great spirit and apparent determination, but are soon discouraged, and after spending time, money, and labour upon the object of their pursuit, abandon it in despair.

There are some people who either can't or won't foresee a difficulty. If any one points out such a thing to them they pooh-pooh him and won't believe him; or, if they cannot but believe him because the thing is so plain and certain, still they are very sanguine, full of hope, and confident that, be the difficulty what it may, they will be more than a match for it, While it is at a distance the difficulty looks small, appears to present no great obstacle; like a mountain several thousand feet high, which, seen from afar, seems easy enough to climb, so that even the most portly man believes that he can go up it like a stag, until he really has to tackle it. For there is such a thing as "making a mole-hill of a mountain," as well as "making a mountain of a mole-hill;" such a thing as underrating as well as overrating a difficulty; and he who does the former when the difficulty is far off is the very man to do the latter when it is close at hand, and when he gets into it. So when the over prudent and cautious man says to his sanguine friend "there is a Lion in the way," his sanguine friend replies "nonsense! it is only a cat ;" but often, when he comes up to it, though it be nothing more than a cat, it assumes in his eyes the