I wish I was a little rock,
A-sittin' on the hill,
A-doin' nothin' all day long
Except just sittin' still.

I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep,
I wouldn't even wash.
I'd sit and sit a thousand years
And rest myself, by gosh.

Now, isn't that an inspiring poem? Doesn't that just get you all excited so that you want to go out and turn the world over, do a lot of wonderful things, and be helpful in the community?

While we are on the subject of great poems, some time ago I was down in Louisville, Kentucky, when the Kentucky Derby was being run; and because I like to investigate success I thought I would like to find out why it was that one of the jockeys in this race could get his horse to run around the track faster than anybody else could get his horse to do it. Aristotle once said that one never knows a thing until he knows it by its causes--that is, every success has a cause, and every failure has a cause. Indigestion has a cause; overweight has a cause. If one can find out what causes failure, the cause can usually be eliminated. In the same way, if one can find out what causes success that cause can be reproduced.

Since I knew that someday you would invite me to come down here and talk to you, I thought you would like to have me bring some success facts along to help you with, so I checked up and discovered an interesting thing. This jockey won the race by reciting poetry to his horse! I had never heard of anybody doing that before, so I checked into it a little further, since I knew that you would want to know what the poem was; and I am prepared to leave a copy of it here with you if you would like to have it. This is what the jockey said to his horse as they went around the race track--these are the words which inspired the horse to do his best. The jockey kept repeating this poem over and over again so that the horse would be sure to understand it. He said:

Roses are red and violets are blue
And horses that lose are made into glue.

And that so inspired the horse that he won the race.

But life has also written some glue poems for us. We think of the Master as a very kind-hearted, gentle, fine person, and I am sure he was; but the Lord sometimes said some rather severe things to certain people who did certain things. I checked through all the works of the Bible and a few other places to find out what seemed to me to upset the Lord the most. The Lord was kind to the repentant adulteress, and he had a sympathetic interest with the thief on the cross who wanted to do better; but to the lazy man who said, "I was afraid so I hid my talent in the ground and have brought forth nothing," the Lord said: "Thou wicked and slothful servant." Now, he was a servant--not an enemy, not a traitor, but a servant. I suppose he was a member of the Church, but he was inactive and did not do his job. Then the Lord said to those who were with him,

Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. . . . And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [see Matthew 25:14–30]

But this devastating inactivity is a common fault.

I heard a member of the genealogical committee say recently that all the genealogical work of the Church is done by two percent of the members. Two percent do the work; and under that two percent are eight percent who do the praying and bear their testimonies about genealogical work but do not do any. Then there are ninety percent that do not even bear their testimonies or say prayers about it. There is too small a percentage that do all of the things the Lord asks--such as pay the tithing, do the missionary work, and provide the leadership.

Do you remember the vine dresser who said to his sons, "Go work today in my vineyard," and one said, "I will not go," and the other said, "I go, sir," but went not? In other words, one of the sons was disobedient and the other was irresponsible. To those who are in the class of the one who promised to go and did not go, Christ said, "The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you" (see Matthew 20:28–31). That is, he put the publicans and harlots in line ahead of those who promised to do the work of the Lord and did not get it done.

Finally, you remember his promise for our own day, that when he comes he will divide the people into two great groups. In one group will be those who have done as he asked us to do. They are the doers of the word, the ones who live these great principles that we came here to understand and know something about, and to them he is going to say: "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." It would be wonderful to be in that group. And then he will say to those on his left hand, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire. . . . I never knew you" (see Matthew 25:31–46, 7:21–23). I cannot find anything that was written by Jesus in the Bible or anyplace else where he takes such a harsh attitude as with somebody who merely talks about religion and does not live it, or is not a doer of the word.

For the most part, we are not bad people. As one great sales manager said about his salesman, "There are no lazy salesmen; there are just salesmen who lack motives." All of us have this power of inertia fastening itself upon us to keep us at rest. But the Lord has given us other powers to fight against inertia--that we might call initiative or motivation--by which we can overcome it and become doers of his word and sharers of his excellence. The thing that pleases him most is living righteous principles and obeying the word of the Lord. The greatest success formula that has ever been given in the world, no matter what one is trying to accomplish, is simply to keep the commandments and to do what the Lord says we ought to do. There is nobody in any business organization that would rather have somebody who violated the Word of Wisdom or broke the Ten Commandments or did not understand the beatitudes or did not know the Articles of Faith. Everyone who gets married wants the same kind of person as the Lord wants in the Church--someone who will keep the commandments.