*The Ant.*
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: which
having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer,
and gathereth her food in the harvest."--Prov. vi. 6-8.
Of what use is a sluggard? "Everything in the world is of some use,"
says John Ploughman, "but it would puzzle a doctor of divinity, or a
philosopher, or the wisest owl in our steeple, to tell the good of
idleness; that seems to me to be an ill wind which blows nobody any
good, a sort of mud which breeds no eels, a dirty ditch which would not
feed a frog. Sift a sluggard grain by grain, and you'll find him all
chaff." A sluggard is really a good-for-nothing, and no better advice
could be given to boys than this: "Get out of the sluggard's way, or you
may catch his disease and never get rid of it. Grow up like bees, and
you will never be drones."
In this passage from the Book of Proverbs, Solomon advises the sluggard
to go back to school that he may learn _wisdom_, for his folly is quite
equal to his idleness. He is too lazy to drive in a nail, and as the old
jingling rhyme has it, "For want of a nail a shoe came off, for want of
a shoe a horse was lost, for want of a horse a man was lost, for want of
a man a battle was lost, and for loss of a battle a kingdom was lost."
Because of the sluggard's first idleness in refusing to drive in the
nail the whole kingdom comes down about his ears. It is not much ease
he gets for all his scheming, and therefore he is sent back to school to
learn wisdom.
The schoolmaster this time is the _Ant_, for, as the Bible tells us,
"there be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are
exceeding wise: the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their
meat in the summer" (Prov. xxx. 24).
The wisdom taught by the ant is threefold.