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 HUGH BLACK 
 
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Date Due 
 
 
 ^ ' Cornell University Library 
 
 " arW37589 
 
 Work, 
 
 3 1924 031 786 902 
 
 olin,anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924031786902 
 
By THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 FRIENDSHIP O O O 
 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 IN some moods there are few things 
 more irritating than a panegyric of 
 work and a denunciation of idleness ; 
 for to workers it seems hke beating the 
 air so far as they are concerned. They are 
 inclined to think that those who speak 
 most eloquently in praise of work, as if 
 labor were a luxury, are usually people 
 who know little of its burden. Still 
 there is no subject which has more right 
 to be considered, since there is no single 
 subject which fills so large a space in the 
 lives of most. 
 
 We may object that we have no choice 
 in the matter, and no need for encourage- 
 ment or reproof. We at least have the 
 spur of necessity, which would soon prick 
 our side if we tried to dispense with what 
 is our lot. It might seem also as if it 
 9 
 
IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 A../^^e=a??^?=^ 
 
 could be said with some truth that idle- 
 ness is not a very glaring fault of our race, 
 that our country compared with some 
 others is a perfect hive of industry, and 
 that many among us suffer from over- 
 work rather than underwork. It may be 
 worth while considering the subject, 
 though all this be true, and though we 
 ourselves be even desperately industrious ; 
 for is it not the case that the false and 
 foolish standard is set up in society 
 which almost looks upon it as a disgrace 
 to work, or at least makes idleness an 
 ideal ? If we search for it we may find 
 it in some corner of our own heart. 
 Many work hard with little thought 
 either of the nobility or the meaning of 
 work, but only to get rich so that some 
 fine day they too may be able to be idle. 
 In spite of our activities we may hanker 
 after what we conceive to be the paradise 
 of idleness. The ultimate ambition in 
 our minds is to be freed from the neces- 
 sity of work, as if work and not idleness 
 10 
 
IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 ■were the evil. We do not value work for 
 its own sake, but think of it as a disa- 
 greeable necessity. 
 
 The common social ideal is certainly a 
 life of ease and pleEisure, not a life of 
 work and service. Society among us 
 seems to be carefully graded in inverse 
 proportion according to the amount of 
 leisure enjoyed. We know how " Society '" 
 looks down on trade and business, the 
 industry which alone makes it possible 
 for them to live at all ; and as for manual 
 labor, that is another hemisphere ! If 
 we do value business, it is for its returns, 
 its profits, not for the honest employ- 
 ment which trains body and mind and 
 develops character. This is not just the 
 ignorant contempt of a select class ; it 
 has permeated all classes, so that to climb 
 the social ladder means getting rid of 
 work. Burton gives a chapter full of 
 his quaint and pedantic learning about 
 exercise, quoting the wisdom of the 
 ancients as to the necessity of labor for 
 11 
 
AND 
 
 health of body and mind, citing Seneca 
 and Xenophon, the practice of the 
 Egyptians of old, Jews, Turks, and then 
 he draws the contrast in irony : " But 
 amongst us the badge of gentry is idle- 
 ness, — - to be of no calling, not to labor, 
 for that ^s derogatory to their birth ; to 
 be a mere spectator, a drone." This ideal 
 affects the whole social organism, and 
 influences the thought and conduct of 
 all. Some of us, who are very diligent 
 and industrious, have the makings of 
 pretty fair specimens of the sluggard in 
 us, since our hearts are set on that as the 
 great end of life. 
 
 Certainly, one of the commonest 
 modern ideals is that of no work, or as 
 near that as possible. This does not refer 
 to the demands of some sections to have 
 more leisure, which will give at least op- 
 portunities for fuller self-education. Some 
 of these demands are just enough in a 
 civilized community, and must be granted 
 where practicable. The reference is to 
 12 
 
IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 the ideal to be found in all classes, which 
 looks upon toil as only an evil, and which 
 has lost the old moral dignity of labor. 
 This false ideal has cut deep. We find it 
 
 in literature and in religion. 
 
 A good 
 
 many books have been written to show 
 what Utopian life on this earth would be, 
 and they are almost all spoiled by mak- 
 ing work an evil thing, to be got rid of 
 as much as possible. 
 
 The objection is often made against 
 any form of socialism that nobody would 
 be found willing to do the necessary lower 
 forms of work needed by society. It is a 
 very poor objection. If that were the 
 only objection to socialism, some of us 
 would have little diificulty in believing 
 in it. There are in our midst men and 
 women cheerfully taking upon themselves 
 burdens, and bending their necks to 
 duties, from which they could easily 
 escape. It is incredible that in any state 
 of society the spirit of Christ will die out. 
 Men are this day serving Him faithfully 
 13 
 
ID 
 
 LENESS AND WORK 
 
 as hewers of wood and drawers of water, 
 doing for their daily task what the world 
 calls lower work, and who might well be 
 envied for their content of mind and 
 largeness of soul. A stronger objection 
 to socialist ideals is precisely the opposite, 
 that they make too much of the mere ex- 
 ternals of life. It is assumed too often 
 that man can live by bread alone. Most 
 of the ideals for perfect human life and 
 society have this flaw. The notion of 
 happiness is like that described in such 
 books as Lord Lytton's The Coming 
 Race, where social and political felicity 
 is made to consist of having all they 
 need. The motto of their lives is, They 
 were born ; they were happy ; they died. 
 There is no stimulus of want, no goad of 
 poverty, no fierce rivalry. We pray for 
 the time when there will be no want and 
 less rivalry, but never for the time when 
 men will be above effort. Was there not 
 a philosopher who thought that the earth 
 was turning into a bun, and the sea into 
 14 
 
DLENESS AND WORK 
 
 lemonade, that mankind might be happy 
 without effort ? 
 
 Some kinds of work are evil because of 
 unhealthy surroundings or fierce competi- 
 tion, but work must have a place in all 
 schemes to ameliorate the race. Work is 
 needed to attain moral progress, and to 
 conserve it when attained. There is noth- 
 ing more astonishing on this earth of ours 
 than the spectacle of some who do not 
 know how to kill time — so long as there 
 are thorns and thistles of various kinds 
 to keep down. And there is nothing 
 more pathetic than that of others, willing 
 to work and unable to find a place where 
 to use a spade or handle a tool. There 
 is something wrong somewhere, which it 
 behoves us to put right, when these two 
 classes exist. 
 
 The subject of this book is, however, 
 not a discussion of economic problems, 
 but the more personal one of our actual 
 work, with its claims on us and its lessons 
 for us. This subject of personal duty is 
 15 
 
I DLENESS A ND WORK 
 
 distinct from the larger question of social 
 rearrangement and schemes for the reor- 
 ganization of labor, by which fervent re- 
 formers hope to bring in a condition of 
 society in which labor will be more fairly 
 apportioned and the fruits of labor be 
 more equably distributed. We are here 
 not concerned with criticising the present 
 state of industry, or criticising the proj- 
 ects of reformers. Such larger consider- 
 ations do affect the subject, since we are 
 all influenced for good and evil by the 
 social .state in which we are placed. In- 
 dustrial conditions immensely aflFect the 
 individual worker. But our subject is a 
 primary one, and simpler, if narrower, 
 than such economic discussions. It is the 
 personal duty incumbent on each in this 
 or any other order of society. Here we 
 have our feet on fact, and are not just 
 treading the air vaguely, as is so often 
 the case in dealing with the more gran- 
 diose questions about an ideally perfect 
 social reconstruction. We do not need 
 16 
 
IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 ^f'J.W 
 
 to wait till society has been transformed 
 by social reformers before we can have 
 a school for character. The school is 
 here, and the door is open. The labor 
 market, as we know it to-day, is some- 
 times a rough and stern teacher, but it 
 has valuable lessons to enforce, and it is a 
 duty we owe to ourselves to submit our- 
 selves to the discipline. 
 
 A further instance of the prevalence of 
 the false ideal is seen in the way it even 
 colors religious thought. Many treat 
 the work and service of life as a painful 
 necessity in order to qualify for the Rest 
 that rcmaincth, and look forward to a 
 millennium of ease and not to a millen- 
 nium of holiness. It is of a piece with 
 the offence taken at Christ's birth and 
 home and occupation. The Jews sneered 
 at the Nazarite, and the Nazarites sneered 
 at the Carpenter. Every class has its 
 prejudices, and men could not easily rid 
 their minds of a natural prejudice against 
 17 
 
y^mff^ 
 
 IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 a provincial tradesman as a teacher of re- 
 ligion. Celsus, who wrote the first great 
 polemic against Christianity, made it one 
 of his objections that Christ had worked 
 with His own hands. It was a natural 
 objection to a learned philosopher, who 
 did not enter into the heart of the faith, 
 and who, therefore, could not see the 
 bearing of the strange fact. 
 
 Even many defenders of the faith have 
 stumbled at the same thing, and seem to 
 think it unworthy of their Lord to have 
 ever appeared in such a humble guise. 
 The Apochryphal gospels, for example, 
 show Christ above work and worry, doing 
 everything miraculously even when a child. 
 The moral dignity and the spiritual 
 power of the simple gospel story are lost 
 in the stilted artificial divinity, which 
 good men with the best will in the world 
 attributed to the Master. The mediae- 
 val stories and legends which gathered 
 round Christ have many of them the 
 same fatal misapprehension. In the 
 18 
 
i 
 
 t 
 
 j>^ 
 
 IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 miracle-play introduced into Longfellow's 
 Golden Legend this is seen. In one 
 scene the boy Jesus is at play with His 
 school-mates by the river-side, where 
 their game was to make sparrows out of 
 clay. Jesus claps His hands, and the 
 clay sparrows become real birds and fly 
 away singing. These mistakes of friends 
 and enemies of the faith are due to fail- 
 ure to apprehend the deep bearing of 
 what wc call Christ's humiliation. We 
 fail utterly if we do not see that common 
 work has been sanctified by Him, and 
 common duty hallowed. He has taken 
 away the curse from work by His life, as 
 well as the curse of sin by His death. 
 
 It is remarkable how St. Paul exalts 
 the common duties of daily life — all the 
 more remarkable because he was by 
 nature open to the high enthusiasms 
 which usually neglect, if not despise, the 
 humbler things of practical life. He 
 never lets his mystical raptures and 
 religious fervor cut him off from the 
 19 
 
DLENESS AND WO RK 
 
 mm 
 
 ordinary world of work and duty. 
 Rather, he lifts this up to a plane where 
 the highest motives rule. He links the 
 humblesb life to the loftiest spiritual 
 thoughts, and reinforces plain duty by 
 unearthly sanctions. It shames us to see 
 how he ennobles the meanest tasks, the 
 work of a slave, for example, not content 
 with calling it useful and necessary work, 
 but exalting it as truly spiritual. He 
 never despised manual labor, according 
 to the social standard of his time, and 
 even of our own time. He knew too 
 well what it could do for a man, as he 
 worked at his own trade in the intervals 
 of other labors. Perhaps, too, he felt 
 that it brought him into a great succes- 
 sion when he remembered that his Lord 
 had been a carpenter ! He knew the 
 value of steady, honest work, and was 
 never more severe in his judgments than 
 when condemning those who neglected 
 work on the plea of religion. The 
 heathen world gave honor to certain 
 20 
 
DLENESS 
 
 kinds of work, that of government and 
 war, intellectual work, and even the 
 laborious training of the athletes to fit 
 themselves for the great games, but man- 
 ual labor was classed by them as servile, 
 and that meant work fit only for slaves. 
 They of course recognized that it was 
 necessary in order to keep society going, 
 but it had no honor on that account, but 
 only contempt. It was looked upon as 
 taking away from human dignity, un- 
 worthy of a free man. St. Paul insisted 
 that instead of a man being lowered by 
 his work he was raised by it in manhood, 
 growing in character and even in grace, 
 if it were done honestly and faithfully. 
 The common callings of humble life are 
 taken as of God's appointment, a test of 
 conscience and an open way to character. 
 
 The false standard of life also widens 
 
 the cleavase between different classes of 
 
 the community. The foolish envy of 
 
 idleness creates bitterness among the 
 
 21 
 
 'y> 
 
Idleness and work 
 
 iiiM-i.-j-i-fii 
 
 workers, and it has to be confessed that 
 the frivolous work of idlers gives ground 
 for the bitterness. The envy is foolish, 
 whatever we may say about the worse 
 than folly of selfish idleness. Richard 
 Jefferies in one of his sketches tells of 
 meeting three women field-workers. He en- 
 vied them and thought their health ideal. 
 What would he not give to be like them ? 
 " There was that in their cheeks that all 
 the wealth of London could not purchase, 
 a superb health in their carriage prin- 
 cesses could not obtain.^' But he could 
 see plainly that they regarded him with 
 bitter envy, jealousy, and hatred written 
 in their eyes. They cursed him in their 
 hearts, simply because they worked and 
 he seemed to be idle. Because he did 
 not appear to be doing any visible work, 
 they hated and envied him ; and he who 
 knew both lives would have gladly ex- 
 changed places to get their unwearied 
 step, and to be always in the open air 
 and abroad upon the earth. 
 22 
 
^'>^;(^ <?^^a. 
 
 IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 ^1' 
 
 Whether it be a cause or effect of the 
 prevalent ideal, there is a pleasure-loving 
 spirit abroad. We are looking more and 
 more to excitements, and less to duty for 
 our true happiness. In our day there 
 are more temptations than ever before 
 to a great number of people to lead an 
 aimless, useless existence. This is due to 
 the accumulation and extension of wealth 
 in our country, making it possible for 
 many to live without work. Perhaps as a 
 consequence of this the general standard 
 for all of us has been relaxed. There 
 are more occasions for pleasure, for 
 amusements of all sorts, which though 
 innocent in themselves make it easy for 
 us to fritter away a great deal of time, 
 which might be spent with equal recrea- 
 tion to much more purpose. One has 
 only to mention the subject of reading 
 to call up a vision of the mass of trivial 
 and ephemeral and stupid waste of 
 printer's ink. How much of our reading 
 is disconnected, purposeless, inane — 
 23 
 
 ''?i 
 
DLENESS 
 
 AND WORK 
 
 merely to pass the time as we even say. 
 There is a place for recreative literature, 
 but surely the great treasures of the 
 world deserve better treatment, and de- 
 mand more serious study than most of 
 us ever give them. 
 
 Of course there is the very idlest of all 
 idle society, where waste of time is raised 
 to a fine art. Addison, in the Spectator 
 of 1712, satirizes the emptiness of many 
 lives of his day, and the satire is perhaps 
 the keener that it consists merely in 
 transcribing from supposed diaries. One 
 is that of a man who had nothing to put 
 into his diary but when he got up in the 
 morning, and when he went to bed, 
 when he smoked three pipes of Virginia 
 tobacco and read the papers, what he 
 had for dinner and when he went to the 
 coffee-house, which was the substitute for 
 the club of these days. It is satire, not 
 of a vicious man, but of an idle man, 
 " designed," as he says, " not so much to 
 expose vice as idleness, and aimed at 
 24 
 
IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 those persons who pass away their time 
 rather in trifle and impertinence, than in 
 crimes and immoralities." He recom- 
 mends his readers to keep a journal of 
 their lives for one week, a kind of self- 
 examination which will give them a true 
 state of themselves, and incline them to 
 consider seriously what they are about. 
 The other extract is from the journal of 
 a fashionable woman whom he calls 
 Clarinda, detailing for five days the time 
 spent in dressing, in washing and comb- 
 ing her lap-dog, in shopping and cheap- 
 ening a couple of fans, and in seeing 
 company, with a little mild employment 
 thrown in of working half a violet leaf 
 on a flowered handkerchief. Is there not 
 enough force in this antiquated satire to 
 sting still ? " I would have Clarinda con- 
 sider," is Addison's moral, " what a pretty 
 figure she would make among posterity, 
 were the history of her whole life pub- 
 lished like these five days of it." 
 
 When the soul is awakened to the 
 25 
 
AND WORK 
 
 meaning of life, the remorse of lost 
 opportunities is only a little less terrible 
 than the remorse of misspent and evil 
 days, the remorse of so many fine intel- 
 lects in our own literature — as Marlowe, 
 with genius from which Shakespeare did 
 not think he stooped to learn, killed in a 
 drunken street-brawl — or Greene, pam- 
 phleteer, romancer, playwright, a leader 
 of wits in the wittiest and keenest time 
 of English literature, dying in distress in 
 the house of a cobbler who had saved 
 him from starvation, pouring out his 
 remorse in the words, " that a year 
 were granted me to live ! . . . Time 
 loosely spent will not again be won. 
 My time is loosely spent, and I undone." 
 
 Even when there is no stain in the 
 past, the mere failure to attain carries 
 almost as sore a regi'et. When opportu- 
 nities of self-culture were ours, when all 
 the riches of mind and heart and soul of 
 sage and saint were offered to us, when 
 
 chances of development in character came 
 26 
 
1^ 
 
 IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 ■^:f:jim\i^ 
 
 rfiwSinSi"""' 
 
 to us, and when open doors of service 
 invited us, it is little to be able to say 
 that at least we did nobody any harm. 
 We would not waste property, and throw 
 away an inheritance like a spendthrift, 
 but what about the most vahiable gift 
 of all, without which other gifts could 
 not be, the gift of time ? No one gets 
 more of it than another at any one period. 
 A strange but true fact is that when 
 anything is wanted to be done, it is 
 always the idlest who say that they have 
 no time. The busiest men somehow can 
 find time to read, and to add to their 
 labors, and to do some service. 
 
 Complaints are common among em- 
 ployers of the lack of efficient and zealous 
 help in business. Young men, we are 
 told, are keen about their sport and 
 their games, and seem to want to do as 
 little as possible in return for their salary. 
 Work is something to be gone through, 
 a disagreeable necessity in order to get 
 27 
 
 15 
 
AND WORK 
 
 recreation. No wise man grudges the 
 young their relaxations and pleasures, but 
 when these usurp the first place we can- 
 not be without qualms for the future. 
 Business men are quite unanimous in 
 asserting that laziness is at the root of 
 most failures. It is possible to make too 
 much of worldly success, but it is also 
 possible to make too little of it. If the 
 want of success, as is often the case, is the 
 result of moral failure, we cannot afford 
 to pass it by as of no account. 
 
 Even in our day there is no manual of 
 conduct, which young men might take 
 for practical guidance, more to the point 
 than the old book of Proverbs. As is to 
 be expected from a book which deals so 
 largely with wisdom in the conduct of 
 practical life, it is full of praise of indus- 
 try and of satire on sloth. It approaches 
 the subject from almost all possible 
 angles, now from the national standpoint, 
 
 stating that the vigorous nation rules and 
 the weak and slothful is under tribute, 
 
 28 
 
IDLENESS AND WORK 
 
 .■o^ 
 
 and now from the individual standpoint in 
 all the relationships of life. The indus- 
 trious man attains wealth — " the hand of 
 the diligent maketh rich " : he attains honor 
 and a position of influence ■ — ■ " seest thou 
 a man diligent in his business ? he shall 
 stand before kings." It satirizes the inca- 
 pacity and negligence and shiftlessness of 
 the lazy man, sometimes in such a humor- 
 ous couplet as this, " The sluggard dips 
 his hand in the dish, and will not so 
 much as bring it to his mouth again '" ; 
 sometimes showing humorously the nui- 
 sance a sluggard is to others by his lack 
 of activity and punctuality, " As vinegar 
 to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is 
 the sluggard to them that send him." 
 Sometimes it sternly states the inevitable 
 result of idleness in poverty and misery. 
 Again, it points the plain moral to all 
 who have discretion, as it paints the 
 picture of the sluggard's garden grown 
 over with thorns, its face covered with 
 nettles, and its wall broken down, while 
 29 
 
the slothful owner murmurs in stupid 
 dulness, " A little sleep, a little slumber, 
 a little folding of the hands to sleep.'' 
 
 It is chiefly the evident and surface 
 aspects of the question which are treated 
 by the book ; and its chief argument is 
 naturally of a piece. Its great argument 
 is the success which attends industry either 
 in wealth or power or position ; but we 
 are inclined to be such finical moralists 
 to-day that we despise such plain and 
 vulgar standards. It is not the last nor 
 the highest argument, nor is it a rule 
 without exceptions ; but at the same time 
 this argument is too palpable to be safely 
 omitted, when we are speaking to men 
 who need all the aids to virtue and all 
 the arguments to right conduct that can 
 be gathered together. It was most natu- 
 ral for this wise book to point to results, 
 to the experience of everybody who could 
 see or think ; and it was natural to at- 
 tempt to reinforce moral action by the 
 evident sanctions that could be estab- 
 30 
 
IDLENESS 
 
 y^"^^ <7)^^.f\ 
 
 AND WORK 
 
 lished offhand. Proverbs is setting forth 
 the accumulated observation and wisdom 
 of the ages when it asserts that the slug- 
 gard desireth and hath nothing while the 
 diligent prospers, and that he becometh 
 poor that dealeth with a slack hand, but 
 the hand of the diligent niaketh rich. 
 
 The book, it shoidd be remembered in 
 this connection, makes plain that dili- 
 gence is not merely a physical thing, the 
 mere thoughtless activity of body that 
 never tires and never rests. It satirizes 
 that type almost as much as the slug- 
 gard, the fussy busy worker who goes on 
 without intelligence and without thought. 
 The industry praised here is not exclu- 
 sively manual, but asks for reflection 
 and prudence and foresight and manage- 
 ment. In the counsels of this book it 
 is difficult sometimes to distinguish be- 
 tween the workman and the wise man. 
 The one is implied in the other. The 
 wise man works ; and the true worker 
 uses all his faculties of mind. 
 31 
 
Now it is a fact, allowing for all possi- 
 ble exceptions, that earnest, serious dili- 
 gence does succeed. Such a laborer is 
 worthy of his hire at least. Prosperity 
 is the natural reward of industry. This 
 is true of peoples as well as of individuals. 
 The prosperous nations are those with 
 the fewest slack hands. It is in keep- 
 ing with the great natural law which 
 has ordained work for life. The earth 
 bringeth forth fruit of herself while man 
 sleeps and rises, but before that there 
 must have been the preparatory toil, 
 ploughing, sowing, and weeding ; and 
 when nature has done all there must still 
 be labor, the labor of harvest, reaping, 
 and gathering, and winnowing. Nothing 
 thrives, as Proverbs asserts, in the slug- 
 gard's garden. If a man will do nothing 
 for his farm, his farm will do nothing 
 for him. Human life and the whole 
 order of society are maintained by labor, 
 and those who will not work have no 
 real place in the social scheme. The 
 32 
 
. THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
THE place of habit in life can hardly 
 be overestimated. Habit works a 
 groove for us into which we fall 
 easily and in which we move swiftly, so 
 that the great bulk of our actions are 
 done automatically, and the whole trend 
 of our life is established. Habit cuts 
 a pathway from the brain tlirongh 
 the nerve-centres, until after a time a 
 thing is done almost mechanically. We 
 do not .stop to think how we will walk 
 when we want to go anywhere. We have 
 laboriously acquired the art of walking, 
 till it is done without any conscious 
 attention. The law extends its sway over 
 every region of life. We have gone on 
 doing acts and making judgments along 
 a certain line till it could be foretold 
 what we will do on any 
 37 
 
HABIT OF WORK 
 
 No wonder that all moralists make 
 much of the importance of the formation 
 of habits. It is the way character is 
 formed, and life is moulded, and destiny 
 is fixed. What can match it for im- 
 portance ? It is " by reason of use," as the 
 Apostle says, that " the senses are exer- 
 cised " ; by reason of use the body is 
 developed ; by reason of use the tiiind is 
 colored and twisted and shaped ; by 
 reason of use the soul prays and com- 
 munes and grows in grace ; by reason of 
 use each is made the person he is. Even 
 natural disposition, of which we make so 
 much when we speak of heredity, is only 
 a tendency till habit takes it and sets it 
 and hardens it and drives it to a settled 
 goal. 
 
 Habit is the process by which acts 
 and thoughts and feelings are organized 
 into life. There is nothing that is out- 
 side of this law in business or art or 
 morality or religion. " The harper is not 
 made otherwise than by harping, nor the 
 38 
 
 '(• 
 
 
 \\ 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK ^ 
 
 just man otherwise than by doing just 
 deeds," says Aristotle with his keen in- 
 sight into the ethical interests of life. 
 And it is not merely in such specialized 
 lines that habit tells, as when a man sets 
 himself to be a skilled musician, or an 
 exact scholar, or a master of an art, or a 
 just man. It touches us all along the 
 line, never leaving us at any point, but 
 ceaselessly making its mark. Everything 
 counts, registering its effects in the mys- 
 terious region of nerve-cells and fibres, 
 and has its corresponding result on mind 
 and character. There is a dreadful 
 warning to youth in this, a warning 
 which all moralists give with passionate 
 earnestness. Every observer of life has 
 the same story to tell, every psychologist 
 has the same sermon to preach, every physi- 
 cian has the same moral to point. Evil 
 assumes its despotic sway gently and 
 insidiously at the beginning of habit. 
 It moves by little and little, till it en- 
 thrones itself in the nerve-structure itself. 
 39 
 
HABIT 
 
 Says R. L. Stevenson : " Evil was called 
 youth till he was old, and then he was 
 called Habit." 
 
 We usually hear of the evil of this 
 great force, the power of bad habits and 
 the difficulty of breaking them. Habit 
 is spoken of as if it were a diabolic in- 
 fluence menacing us on every side. We 
 forget that it is a law of life designed for 
 its best interests. We forget that it is 
 full of good and blessing, and is meant 
 not to destroy but to conserve and 
 strengthen human life. If this force is 
 meant as a preservative, it is in its deep- 
 est intention an inducement to good 
 habit ; and the law is as strong on this 
 side as on the other. It ought always to 
 be remembered that the odds are on the 
 side of health and good ; and in every 
 sincere moral endeavor we put both 
 nature and God on our side. If by rea- 
 son of use evil can lay hold and grasp 
 the mastery, so by reason of use good 
 also grows — faith, and love, and moral 
 40 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 ^M^ 
 
 vigor, and spiritual vision. By reason 
 of use good habits attain and secure and 
 increase good. 
 
 There is no habit more important than 
 tlie habit of work, because it is open to 
 all of us in our place and degree, and 
 because to most the working hours mean 
 a big slice of our lives. We will work all 
 the more intelligently if we look at the 
 hopeful side of this sphere of life, and if 
 we see how it is linked on to moral life 
 generally, how the law of habit uses it 
 to bless and strengthen the whole man. 
 Professor James closes a chapter in his 
 Fsychology with a passage which I can- 
 not refrain from quoting, because for one 
 thing he is speaking from the strict scien- 
 tific standpoint, and because it presents 
 the hopeful and obverse side of the power 
 of habit. " As we become perniaiieiit 
 drunkards by so many separate drinks, so 
 we become saints in the moral, and 
 authorities and experts in the practical 
 and scientific spheres, by so many sepa- 
 41 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 rate acts and hours of work. Let no 
 youth have any anxiety about the upshot 
 of his education, whatever the hne of it 
 may be. If he keep faithfully busy each 
 hour of the working day, he may safely 
 leave the final result to itself. He can 
 with perfect certainty count on waking 
 up some fine morning to find himself one 
 of the competent ones of his generation 
 in whatever pursuit he may have singled 
 out. Silently, between all the details of 
 his business, the power of judging in all 
 that class of matter will have built itself 
 up within him as a possession that will 
 never pass away. Young people should 
 know this truth in advance. The igno- 
 rance of it has probably engendered more 
 discouragement and faintheartedness in 
 youths embarking on arduous careers 
 than all other causes put together." 
 
 But apart from the ambition to be- 
 come competent — though there is not 
 such a plethora of completely competent 
 ones in any line of activity as to make us 
 42 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 want to depreciate such an ambition — 
 the value of assiduous and faithful and 
 regular work is that it accumulates moral 
 force, which not only tells by success in 
 the particular occupation, but gives stead- 
 iness and backbone to the whole charac- 
 ter. The beauty of this is, that it does 
 not matter what we are working at ; in 
 work we are creating habit which is send- 
 ing a stream of healthful influence over 
 the whole life, and is strengthening the 
 complete character. We are bringing 
 training and discipline to bear on our 
 entire self. It also aids all other good 
 habits, and is an agent to fight against 
 any bad habit that may already liave taken 
 possession. Such discipline is absolutely 
 necessary for moral ends as well as for 
 practical. The bow must not be bent too 
 much nor too long ; but hcnt it must be, 
 to be a bow at all and not a useless stick. 
 
 Nothing will make up for the want of 
 this habit of work, either in the particu- 
 43 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 lar line or in the effect on the character. 
 No brilliance or quickness or cleverness or 
 special aptitude can make up for want of 
 it. There is a profound truth in the old 
 fables, like that of the hare beaten by the 
 tortoise even in its own line of running. 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, who preached this 
 doctrine untiringly, says in his Second 
 Discourse on the Method of Study : " If 
 you have great talents industry will im- 
 prove them ; if you have but moderate 
 abilities industry will supply their defi- 
 ciency. Nothing is denied to well-di- 
 rected labor ; nothing is to be obtained 
 without it. Not to enter into metaphys- 
 ical discussions on the nature or essence 
 of genius, I will venture to assert that 
 assiduity unabated by difficulty and a dis- 
 position eagerly directed t-o the object of 
 its pursuit, will produce effects similar to 
 those which some call the result of 
 natural powers.'" There should be some 
 necessary qualification here, especially in 
 speaking about art. It might tempt 
 44 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 some, who have no aptitude, to think that 
 labor alone is enough for any branch of 
 work. 
 
 There is truth in Hazlitt's criticism 
 that industry alone will only produce 
 mediocrity, and mediocrity in ait is not 
 worth the trouble of industry. Efforts 
 of course may be misguided and end in 
 inevitable failure. Application the most 
 laborious can never take the place of the 
 initial gift, without which high art is 
 impossible. But allowing for this. Sir 
 Joshua's preaching of industry and the 
 persistent habit of labor may well be 
 taken to heart. Careless slovenly work 
 is responsible for more failures in art than 
 any other cause. INIen trust to what they 
 call their genius, and many a gifted artist 
 has never come to his kingdom because 
 he has never learned to toil. It is one 
 of the subtlest temptations in all produc- 
 tive work, whether it be painting pictures, 
 or Avriting books, or preparing sermons, 
 or pursuing any subject of study, to ti-ust 
 45 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 to happy inspirations, with the result that 
 desultory efforts alternate with long spells 
 of indolence. It not only hurts the work, 
 but it hurts the morale of the worker. 
 
 There is no finer lesson from the lives 
 of many scientific workers of our time 
 than tliat of the patient investigation 
 and tireless labor with which they pur- 
 sue their branch of truth. Darwin, in 
 a letter to Romanes, refers to this as a 
 necessity if a man is to advance any 
 science at all. He writes, " Trollope in 
 one of his novels gives us a maxim of 
 constant use by a brickmaker, ' It is 
 dogged as does it,' and I have often 
 and often thought that this is the motto 
 for every scientific worker." Here in its 
 own degree, in the sphere of scientific 
 truth as in the sphere of spiritual truth, 
 it is by reason of use that the senses are 
 exercised to discern good and evil. To 
 accept our work as part of our duty, to 
 cultivate it as a habit, is to safeguard our 
 lives from many a mistake and error, and 
 46 
 
'W^:CS<: 
 
 HABIT OF WORK 
 
 even from many a sin. We are traitors 
 to our opportunities and gifts unless we 
 make them the servants of habit. 
 
 Many illustrations could be culled from 
 the lives and wiitings of great men, show- 
 ing how they cultivated this habit till it 
 was ingrained both in their work and in 
 their characters. Take just one other il- 
 lustration, this time a very different type of 
 man from Sir Joshua Reynolds or Darwin 
 — Lord Macaulay, whose work is often 
 ignorantly thought facile and shallow. 
 One thing certainly in it is its amazing 
 industry, the patience and energy with 
 which he carried on his historical investi- 
 gations, whether we accept his conclusions 
 or not. Thackeray gives him deserved 
 credit in this. "Take at hazard any 
 three pages of the Essays or History ; 
 and glimmering below the stream of the 
 narrative you, an average reader, see one, 
 two, three, a half-score of allusions to 
 other historical facts, characters, litera- 
 ture, poetry, with which you are ac- 
 47 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 quainted. Your neighbor, who has his 
 reading and Ms little stock of literature 
 stowed away in his mind, shall detect 
 more points, allusions, happy touches, in- 
 dicating not only the prodigious memory 
 and vast learning of this master, but the 
 wonderful industry, the honest humble 
 previous toil of this great scholar. He 
 reads twenty books to write a sentence ; 
 he travels a hundred miles to make a line 
 of description." This is no exaggeration. 
 We see from his private journal the ter- 
 rible toil he pledged himself to under- 
 take for tfie writing of the second part 
 of his history — visits to Holland, Bel- 
 gium, Scotland, Ireland, France ; ransack- 
 ing Dutch and French archives ; turning 
 over thousands of pamphlets ; exploring 
 in libraries ; soaki 
 erature of the period. 
 
 soakmg his mind in the lit- 
 
 True success in working will only come 
 from treating work itself as an art, the 
 best methods of which have to be learned 
 
 48 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 and practised. A man must bring him- 
 self into discipline before he becomes a 
 perfect instrument for his work. No 
 great work of art is possible without 
 previous training in the art of work. 
 When the habit of industry is ingrained 
 in a man^s nature he has mastered the 
 art, although his methods of working 
 may be peculiar to himself. Illustrations 
 from literature are specially valuable in 
 treating of this subject, because it is a 
 sphere in which a man is usually thought 
 to be altogether dependent on intuition 
 and inspiration. We speak vaguely of 
 " genius " as explaining any achievement 
 in writing ; but we only need to know a 
 little of the inner literary history of any 
 time or country to see what toil lies back 
 of what we call genius. 
 
 Even those forms of art which appear 
 most spontaneous, such as poetry and 
 music, are not struck off at a flash, or 
 if any single piece of work seems to be so 
 struck off, that is made possible by years 
 
 4 49 
 
I THE H ABIT OF WORK 
 
 '?'' -. i j ' "-" ■■■ ■ . I I » II iii »»ji i ' »T '' • .,.,■ 
 
 of past training. Improvisation can only 
 be done by one who is a master of his art. 
 Even Shakespeare, who is often spoken of 
 as an improvisatore, was a careful artist, 
 as can be seen by comparing the first 
 edition of one of his plays with the later 
 editions. This can also be seen in the 
 remarkable growth and intellectual de- 
 velopment displayed in the order of liis 
 works which has been at least approxi- 
 mately established by critics. Beginning 
 with adaptations of other plays, improv- 
 ing upon every model he took, his grow- 
 ing power in dramatic art and in rich 
 mellow wisdom can be traced. 
 
 To speak of any man as a careful artist 
 does not mean that every piece of work 
 needs to be retouched and gone over 
 again and again with painstaking indus- 
 try ; but that the capacity to do any- 
 thing with finish and delicacy, however 
 easily, has come from previous years of 
 training. Tennyson's Crossing' the Bar 
 was written in his eighty-first year on 
 50 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 
 a day in October when the suggestion 
 for it came to him. He showed the 
 poem to his son, who said, " That is the 
 crown of your Hfe's work." He answered, 
 " It came in a moment." But no one as 
 a rule put such fastidious and exacting 
 care into his work as did Tennyson, cor- 
 recting and polishing and revising. In 
 all great ait we aie deceived by tlie ap- 
 pearance of ease, with no joints and no 
 marks of the file anywhere. We see the 
 artisfs finished work, but we do not see 
 the hundreds of sketches made for that 
 work, and all the training of eye and 
 hand and taste without which the work 
 would have been impossible. The ca- 
 pacities have been brought into effi- 
 ciency by intense and persistent labor. 
 When we look on a great completed 
 work, such as Milton's Paradise Lout, or 
 Gibbon's Decline and Fall, or Michael 
 Angelo's Last Judgment — to take great 
 achievements iii different spheres — we 
 are inclined to forget all that led up to 
 51 
 
^^ 
 
 THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 them. We think of them as a kind of 
 
 miracle outside cause and effect, and at- 
 tribute them vaguely to the inspiration 
 of genius. An unremitting habit of 
 work was one of the secrets which made 
 such achievements possible. This is not 
 to say that if any man will only persist 
 in similar intense toil he will rival Mil- 
 ton's epic ; but it does mean that with- 
 out such toil the epic would never have 
 seen the light of day. Only through 
 habit will the intellectual concentration 
 needed for any high work become part 
 of a man's endowment. 
 
 Even style, which is thought to be in 
 a special degree a heaven-born gift, can 
 only be perfected by the scrupulous train- 
 ing of fastidious taste. It is difficult to 
 say what are the qualities which give 
 distinction to stvle — a delicacy of ear, 
 sensitiveness to the music of words, a soi't 
 of instinctive knowlege of the value of 
 vowels and consonants in the building of 
 a sentence — but such a gift remains 
 52 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 only an aptitude till it has received care- 
 ful discipline. If any writer of our time 
 could be called a " stylist "' it was Robert 
 Louis Stevenson, and we might just have 
 accepted it as one of his natural gifts if 
 he had not so frankly revealed the long 
 training to which he subjected the gift. 
 There were years of labor before he had 
 his instrument ready for its work. Even 
 after he attained fame he would write an 
 article seven or eight times over, and in 
 his early days he toiled terribly in learn- 
 ing to write, " playing the sedulous ape " 
 to many masters. In a letter to a friend 
 he wrote, " I imagine nobody had ever 
 such pains to learn a trade as I had ; l)ut 
 I slogged at it day in and day out ; and 
 I frankly believe (thanks to my dire in- 
 dustry) I have done more with smaller 
 gifts than almost any man of letters in 
 the world." Genius cannot be explained 
 as an infinite capacity to take pains, for 
 without that something we call genius 
 the pains will be wasted ; but a passion 
 53 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 for an art which shows itself in such a 
 way is a presumptive evidence of genius, 
 sufficient at least to go on with. 
 
 In the whole matter of habit, decision 
 is the master-key. We must learn to act 
 on the spur. The hardest thing is to 
 begin, to overcome the inertia and mental 
 sluggishness. Some men are always pre- 
 paring for work, which usually means 
 postponing any serious effort and ends in 
 a mere waste of time. There are many 
 ways of deluding ourselves about our 
 industry, and ministering all the time to 
 our innate indolence. Especially in intel- 
 lectual work it is easy to put off beginning 
 a task with the excuse that we are not 
 ready for it, that we have not read and 
 thought enough, that we are not in the 
 mood at present, or that we need to make 
 more preparation. We go on improving 
 our implements for work which is never 
 attempted, as if an artisan were to be 
 perpetually sharpening his tools and never 
 54 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 putting them to any practical use. The 
 worst of it is that indecision like this has 
 an effect on the character, and weakens 
 the whole capacity. No new habit can 
 be begun without a hard struggle, or 
 continued without constant effort. It 
 will be all the better if there is at the 
 beginning some enthusiasm, a definite 
 resolution to pursue some task in worthy 
 fashion ; but watchful and jealous care is 
 needed before the habit is formed. Later 
 on, when the apprenticeship may be said 
 to be completed, it works almost auto- 
 matically. The laboriousness of any work 
 is lessened by the dexterity which comes 
 from habit. As we accustom ourselves 
 to the work, we gain power not only over 
 our material, but over ourselves. This 
 at least is certain, that nothing is per- 
 manently secured to us till it passes into 
 a habit. 
 
 A good rule is to do one's work for 
 each day, realizing that sufficient for the 
 day is its evil and its good. If we look 
 55 
 
.Al l III ran I rw j'fcii " i 
 
 THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 too far ahead at all the work that lies 
 before us, we lose courage and are apt to 
 despair of ever being able for it. This 
 is particularly true of any large subject 
 we have set before ourselves to master. 
 If we see too much we may give up 
 heart ; whereas the day's work can be 
 done, and with daily progress even the 
 longest journey is accomplished. The 
 triumph is the habit, not the goal to be 
 reached. One of the great lessons of 
 life is to learn not to do what one likes, 
 but to like what one does. Habit creates 
 this liking ; for when we do a thing well 
 and easily we cannot be robbed of a cer- 
 tain pleasure and satisfaction. 
 
 Another principle of the art of work- 
 ing is to accustom oneself to take advan- 
 tage of portions of time that seem too 
 small for serious work. The concentrH- 
 tion which habit induces makes it 
 possible to use even scraps of time for 
 some intellectual interest or for some 
 useful service. One of the secrets of Mr. 
 56 
 
 ::<XS;sa^^ 
 
 0^ 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 Gladstone's untiring activity was his 
 regularity and economy of time. His 
 motto seemed to be, Never be doing 
 nothing. At a railway station or at odd 
 times, when others would be waiting list- 
 lessly, out would come the inevitable 
 book to enrich his mind. In Newman 
 HalPs Autob'/ograpk/j an incident is told 
 of him ill 1864, when a Cabinet Minister 
 and one of the busiest of men. " The 
 rector of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields visited 
 one of his parishioners, a street sweeper, 
 who was ill, and being asked if anybodv 
 had been to see him, replied ' Yes, Mr. 
 Gladstone.' ' What, Gladstone ? ' 'Why, 
 Mr. Gladstone himself. He often speaks 
 to me at my crossing, and missing me, 
 he asked my mate if I was ill and where 
 I lived, and so came to see me and read 
 he Bible to me.' " It was the literal 
 r of the apostolic injunction, 
 " As we have therefore opportunity, let 
 us do good unto all men " ; but the oppor- 
 tunity needs to be seized, bought up 
 57 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 with the avidity of a merchant on the 
 alert for a good purchase. 
 
 Success in the art of working depends 
 I very much on method. It is not possible, 
 however, to dogmatize about what are the 
 right methods, as here more than any- 
 where else one man's food is another man's 
 poison. Anthony TroUope's methods of 
 working would drive some authors crazy. 
 He tells us in his Autobiography that 
 when he commenced a new book he pre- 
 pared a diary, and entered into it day 
 by day the number of pages he wrote, 
 so that if at any time he slipped into 
 idleness for a day, the record was there 
 staring him in the face and demanding 
 increased labor to supply the deficiency. 
 He allotted himself so many pages a 
 week and made every page contain two 
 hundred and fifty words, and prided 
 himself on completing his work exactly 
 within the proposed dimensions and 
 within the proposed time. Publishers, 
 editors, and printers would certainly have 
 58 
 
j^r^^^^ih 
 
 '?y7/\ 
 
 THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 a more peaceful time if all writers were 
 as methodical and as considerate as Trol- 
 lope ! He would not allow that there 
 was any difference in kind between author- 
 ship and any other craft, such as that 
 of the shoemaker. What the author 
 wants, along with every other workman, 
 is a habit of industry, and he states it 
 as his experience that a man can always 
 do the work for which his brain is fitted 
 if he will give himself the habit of re- 
 garding his work as a normal condition 
 of his life. " I venture," he concludes, 
 " to advise young men who look for- 
 ward to authorship as the business of 
 their lives, even when they propose that 
 that authorship be of the highest class 
 known, to avoid enthusiastic rushes with 
 their pens, and to seat themselves at 
 their desks day by day as though they 
 were lawyers' clerks ; — and so let them 
 sit until the allotted task shall be 
 accomplished." 
 
 There is, no doubt, much force and 
 59 
 
THE HABIT OF WORK 
 
 ■u^afyB-.L - . ■■ V ' . ' 
 "1 .' - ^ .'■•■• . 
 
 truth in the advice, but because such 
 methods suited Trollope it does not fol- 
 low that they should be accepted as 
 sacred principles to which all must bow. 
 There have been men whose whole capac- 
 ity to produce would be destroyed if 
 they had to conform to these methods. 
 The right metliod for a man is that 
 which will enable him to do his best 
 work. The one important thing is that 
 he should have a method of his own, 
 and should learn the lesson of industry. 
 From such instances of absorbing de- 
 votion to work as have been given in 
 this chapter, all kinds of workers can 
 learn the lesson of what the habit of 
 work can do for a man. 
 
 60 
 
i 
 
 XJ14 VE a lust for thine own work, and thou shalt 
 '•' safe. — St. HEamAS. 
 
IN the beautifal nature song (Psalm 
 civ.) one of the most vivid of all 
 the pictures is the contrast drawn 
 between night and day. " Thou makest 
 darkness and it is night ; wherein all 
 the beasts of the forest creep forth. The 
 ■young lions roar after their prey, and 
 seek their meat from God. The sun 
 ariseth, they get them away, and lay 
 them down in their dens. Man goeth 
 forth unto his work, and to his labor 
 until the evening." Man's place in the 
 divine purpose is as children of the day 
 walking and working in the light. The 
 contrast is very fine between the prowl- 
 ing beasts, fearful, restless, smitten to 
 their dens by a touch of the sun, and 
 the labor of man calm and cheerful, pur- 
 sued in the day-time. Peaceful habitual 
 63 
 
THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 work is in this picture accepted as the 
 natural lot of man, in which he is fhlfil- 
 ling the purpose of God with regard to 
 him. Man must work as a natural neces- 
 sity, and it is well that it is so to most. 
 It is the law of life that we must work to 
 eat. But work is not only a necessity to 
 most of us for obvious reasons, but for a 
 deeper reason is a necessity for all who 
 would live a sane life. 
 
 This does not mean the narrow limit- 
 ing of work to manual labor. Society is 
 an organism very complex, with many a 
 place to be filled. The world cannot dis- 
 pense with leaders any more in industry 
 than in politics and thought and reli- 
 gion. What we need in trade as well 
 as in statecraft is a conception of the 
 commonweal. There is the sweat of the 
 brain as well as of the brow. Does not 
 the scholar work, though he seem de- 
 tached fioiri men, if in the loneliness 
 of study he seek to find truth for the 
 life of the world.? Is not the artist a 
 64 
 
MORAL NIEED OF WORK^'^ 
 
 worker who tries to reveal the soul of 
 beauty for the world's joy ? Work must 
 be understood in its widest sense, but is 
 a moral necessity in some form or other. 
 In its deepest meaning it is service of 
 God and of man, and from that there is 
 no reprieve. If man must work in order 
 to live, it is also true that he must work 
 in order to live well. 
 
 It is a mistake to think that diligence 
 is too mundane a virtue and too worldly 
 a matter to receive such high treatment. 
 We cannot dismiss the subject thus easily, 
 as if it had no coimection with the moral 
 life. Both the value of a life and its 
 result are summed up in character ; and 
 character is built up by the manner of 
 doing ordinary work, and at the same 
 time finds its outlet in the doing of it. 
 Nothing in life is morally unimportant, 
 and few things are of more importance 
 than the great tract of life represented 
 by our work. It is foolish therefore to 
 look upon any form of industry as merely 
 65 
 
: A. Y'jig^ffT:?^ 
 
 t" 
 
 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK] 
 
 a matter of economics with little or no 
 relation to ethics, or as if it could be at 
 best only prudential morality. 
 
 The experience of all time teaches that 
 work is a law of life, not merely as a 
 practical necessity, but as a moral law. 
 A serious occupation diligently pursued 
 is necessary for a sane and wholesome and 
 happy life. Words of the Fourth Com- 
 mandment often overlooked are, " Six 
 days shalt thou labor and do all thy 
 work." They have an essential connec- 
 tion with the preceding injunction. 
 The day of rest is to be kept for the 
 sake of the six days of labor. Rest is 
 enjoined as part of the moral law, but 
 one of its functions is as a preparation for 
 the needful toil to follow. Work is part 
 of the commandment, closely connected 
 with the moral law, and the connection 
 is not an accidental one. Work is 
 moral, and serves a moral function in 
 the training of men. It is, indeed, the 
 great civilizing agency. The necessity 
 
 m 
 
ia 
 
 MORAL NEED OF WORKf 
 
 to work for daily bread is the root from 
 which all advancement, material, mental, 
 and spiritual, has sprung. Without this 
 necessity there would be no progress, but 
 constant retrogression to the animal 
 stage. All our arts and sciences and 
 inventions and knowledge are due to this. 
 We are driven on by our humau needs. 
 
 Negatively, there is moral need of work 
 in guarding against evil. Nothing can 
 avert the inevitable degradation which 
 follows idleness. Plenty without labor 
 is a curse both to individuals and to the 
 country. In climates where the earth is 
 bountiful and little labor is needed for a 
 subsistence, the race is enervated and 
 there is no spur to progress. The worst 
 forms of immorality are only nursed in 
 idleness. Life cannot be kept sweet and 
 true apart from the filling up of time by 
 usefid labor. An idle and luxurious life 
 has its penalty in the increasing burden 
 of finding new forms of amusement, and 
 67 
 
lEH 
 
 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 it is not to be wondered at if these forms 
 step over the line fixed by morahty. Mr. 
 Godkin in his Prohleins of Modern Democ- 
 racy speaks strongly of what he thinks 
 the inevitable connection of idleness with 
 immorality, when the chief aim of life is 
 a search for new forms of excitement and 
 amusement. " The murders, the duels, or 
 the elopements which every now and then 
 occui', impressive as they are, give but a 
 slight idea of the moral turmoil which 
 goes on below the surface. Every year 
 contributes its list of catastrophes of 
 which the world never hears, of work 
 made hopelessly repulsive on the very 
 threshold of life, of family peace destroyed 
 beyond recovery, of affections irretrievably 
 diverted from their old and lawful chan- 
 nels, of honest worth covered with ridicule, 
 of high aspirations quenched in a swash 
 of triviality or childish gaiety. The wor- 
 ship of wealth, in its coarsest and most 
 undraped form, too, that is, wealth as a 
 purveyor of meat, drink, clothing, orna- 
 68 
 

 MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 .^^^^ 
 
 mentation, wliich goes on in this milieii, 
 ' makes hay ' of all noble standards of 
 individual and social conduct." 
 
 When it becomes possible for a large 
 section of the community to dispense with 
 work, as in the late Roman Empire, when 
 the ideals of life have no place for honest 
 toil and when labor is looked on a.s a 
 humiliation, the degradation of that peo- 
 ple is instant and swift. Of course, ex- 
 cessive and improper work is evil, and one 
 of the lessons we have to learn as a com- 
 munity is that cheapness got at the 
 expense of all that is human in man is a 
 curse to the whole society. Even beauty 
 achieved by the degradation of men, as 
 some of the monuments of the art of an- 
 tiquity reared by slave labor, is never a 
 gain, but an unspeakable loss. The 
 greatest moral loss came upon those who 
 used such labor to give themselves ease. 
 When there is no necessity for work in the 
 sense of material necessity we soon find 
 that there is a moral necessity ; and men, 
 69 
 
^irEt^ 
 
 rHE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 who are not driven on by the spur of 
 material need, have to invent interests and 
 occupations with which to fill up their 
 lives. " Six days shalt thou labor and do 
 work ^ is a law written on the very physi- 
 cal constitution ; and a healthy man who 
 cannot find something better to do will 
 play cricket or golf all day if only for an 
 occupation. 
 
 Even for health of body work is neces- 
 sary, and highest in the list, instead of 
 lowest as we usually put it, manual labor 
 must be placed. Most men who have had 
 to do brain work all their lives have some- 
 time or other wished they had been 
 taught some trade, something they could 
 do with their hands. 'ITie wisdom of the 
 old Jews in teaching their children a hand- 
 icraft is acknowledged by all. Especially 
 when skill and art is possible, is such work 
 desirable for a contented, happy moral 
 life. Burton gives idleness credit as a 
 great cause of Melancholy, the evil disease 
 which he diagnosed and illustrated so 
 70 
 
 ^ 
 
THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 copiously. He calls melancholy a disease 
 familiar to all idle persons, an inseparable 
 companion to such as live at ease and have 
 no calling or ordinary employment to 
 busv themselves with. "As ferns erow in 
 unfilled grounds and all manner of weeds, 
 so do gross humors in an idle body. A 
 horse in a stable that never travels, a 
 hawk in a mew that seldom flies, are both 
 subject to diseases, which left to them- 
 selves are most free from any such incum- 
 brances. An idle dog will be mangy, and 
 how can an idle person think to escape .'' " 
 It is an accepted and proved doctrine 
 among us that health of body depends on 
 the proper exercise of our powers such as 
 work gives. For mere sanity idle men 
 must devise substitutes for work in sports 
 and recreations — pastimes we call them, 
 as if there were nothing to be done with 
 time except get it to pass agreeably. 
 
 We know how much health is depend- 
 ent on the natural exercise of all the 
 powers ; and if idleness can cause sickness 
 71 
 
ES 
 
 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 ^rii>:b..- ><mii^/&i- 
 
 of body, it is also responsible for much 
 sickness of soul. Many a sullen mood 
 and evil vapor and querulous temper 
 ■\\ould disappear through contact with the 
 realities of life — to say nothing of the 
 shameful sins and follies bred in a society 
 given over to pleasure, without the steady- 
 ing influence of any serious occupation. 
 The spur of poverty has not always been 
 an evil. It has often been a blessed 
 though sometimes a painful necessity. 
 It is a terrible calamity, though not 
 usually thought so, AX'hen a man is de- 
 prived of the necessity to work, if he is at 
 the same time too weak a man not to be 
 driven on by the moral necessity. A 
 nobleman, a fair amateur painter, once 
 showed a picture of his to Turner, who 
 said, " My lord, 3'ou only need poverty to 
 make you a very excellent painter." There 
 is some wisdom as well as wit in the 
 judgment. 
 
 If work usually means health of body, 
 much more does it mean health of mind. 
 72 
 
lEEM 
 
 f^,. !'^^e^:?e!TP^ 
 
 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 Objectless, effortless life is a poor thing. 
 Its aim is not to give something as a con- 
 tribution to the world's welfare, but to 
 get as much as possible for self. Even 
 when that seems possible through the 
 want of any pressing need for real work, it 
 is a failure. The most unhappy lives are 
 idle ones. " Life would be tolerable but for 
 its pleasures " is a cynical French saying, 
 the truth of which, however, is amply borne 
 out in the ennui of many ajaded pleasure- 
 seeker. This was the worst complaint of 
 Louis XIII. When asked about his 
 health he would say, " Bad ; I am bored." 
 He would sometimes take one of the 
 courtiers to a window and say, " Monsieur, 
 let us weary ourselves together." To a 
 healthy man work gives flavor to life, and 
 that is the reason why men often make a 
 toil of pleasure, seeking appetite and hap- 
 piness from sport, turning playing into 
 working. Idleness infallibly ends in dis- 
 gust, and only work of some kind makes 
 life truly livable. Young Prince Henry 
 73 
 
f\. Asr^??^^-5^ 
 
 MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 of Shakespeare's plays is set forth at first 
 as an idle and somewhat profligate youth 
 careless of his position, but when he is 
 wakened up to his folly and to the respon- 
 sibility which he should have, he is de- 
 scribed as getting sick of his useless life, 
 and declares, 
 
 If all the year were playing holidays, 
 To sport would be as tedious as to work. 
 
 It represents a young man whose heart 
 was right, realizing that there is a 
 man's part for him to play, that there 
 are interests and occupations which give 
 a happiness that idle pleasure-seeking fails 
 to give. 
 
 Some of the hardest-working men in 
 the world, though sometimes their work 
 is below the surface and unknown, are 
 men who do not need to work in the 
 ordinary sense. They are to be found 
 sometimes as public servants in political 
 life, or doing social and philanthropic 
 work, or as students and scholars, often 
 working so hard and so long as would 
 74 
 
 ">. 
 
THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 open the eyes of outsiders if they knew. 
 Motives such as ambition may come in, 
 but behind it there is that need of work 
 to make them and keep them strong and 
 true men. All of us, at least theoretically, 
 admit the value of work to redeem life. 
 It gives purpose and meaning of a sort, 
 if it does not give dignity. Even when 
 work is selfish in its motive, or when it 
 is forced by necessity and not by will, 
 it still carries with it a certain purifying 
 and steadying power. As Carlyle taught 
 his generation : " Idleness alone is with- 
 out hope. There is endless hope in work 
 were it even work at making money." 
 Amid all his lamentation he felt that the 
 hope for England lay in the fact that it 
 was peopled by a noble, silent, working 
 people, who only needed to be wisely led 
 to spend their busy practical genius on 
 worthy objects. 
 
 There is a moral danger of idleness 
 even to good people, making them undis- 
 
 75 
 

 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK I 
 
 f^ 
 
 ciplined and fussy, easily taken up with 
 petty things. St. Paul wrote in indigna- 
 tion to the Thessalonians, when he heard 
 that some of them had given up their 
 ordinary employments in the intensity of 
 their religious feelings, " When we were 
 with you, this we commanded you that if 
 any would not work neither should he 
 eat." Even in the interests of so-called 
 religion, to break off from the common 
 task and lot of man meant disorder and 
 unrest and all manner of evils. The 
 express purpose of giving up work was 
 to prepare by quiet contemplation for 
 the coming of their Lord, but strangely 
 enough the means taken for attaining 
 that purpose defeated itself. It was 
 found that those who gave up their 
 ordinary occupations, instead of becom- 
 ing more prayerful, and more peaceful in 
 their faith, became busybodies, meddling 
 with other people's business, flighty and 
 unsettled in their ways, a public nuisance 
 to their quiet neighbors who were doing 
 75 
 
Ee 
 
 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK' 
 
 
 their own immediate duty. It is one of 
 life's little ironies that this should be so, 
 and yet we see how naturally it comes 
 about. Having freed themselves from 
 the restraint and discipline of common 
 work, they only became more unsettled 
 in their habits. Though their special de- 
 sign was to have more opportunity to 
 grow more truly quiet in heart and life, 
 the practical result was that thev neither 
 became quiet themselves nor would allow 
 other people to be quiet. They became 
 censorious of others, whose holiness was 
 questioned since they went on with the 
 customary fulfilment of duty. Apart 
 from the subtle temptation which his- 
 tory shows us awaits all such attempts 
 to reach sanctity by retirement from daily 
 common work, there are many pressing 
 temptations from the mere idleness. St. 
 Paul knew well that all sorts of moral 
 disorders would arise from such a state 
 of affairs ; as the old couplet which was 
 instilled into us in our childhood has it 
 77 
 
iTHE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 with more truth than poetry, " Satan finds 
 some mischief still for idle hands to do " 
 — to say nothing of idle tongues ! Idle- 
 ness and fussiness indeed are commonly 
 seen together. If we have not found how 
 to possess our soul amid all the duties 
 of life, we will never find the secret by 
 merely resigning from the place of duty. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the chief 
 moral value of work is a negative one in 
 guarding against evil. It is a positive 
 necessity also in developing good. Work 
 is a great instrument for the discipline 
 of character which we cannot afford to 
 forego, and this discipline is not confined 
 to some special sort of work such as that 
 specially designated religious. It refers 
 to the ordinary duties and common tasks 
 of our daily occupation, the zeal and 
 energy and alertness and honesty and 
 uprightness of our business, the spirit 
 in which we work, the manner in which 
 we get through our days. Spiritually it 
 78 
 
SEl 
 
 MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 makes little difference what our work is ; 
 it is the manner of our doing it. A scav- 
 enger may be a truer public servant than 
 a cabinet minister. 
 
 It is of course well to seek the most 
 suitable spheres of action for our particu- 
 lar capacities, and well that our work 
 should be congenial and in keeping with 
 the bent of our inclination, if only be- 
 cause we will then do much better and 
 lasting work. There is always a danger 
 when men do not find pleasure in their 
 everyday work ; for there arises a con- 
 stant tendency to seek pleasure elsewhere, 
 a pleasure which is not so pure and whole- 
 some. But the moral value of work does 
 not depend on pleasure. Even when it 
 seems against the grain, if it be the fruit 
 of an ennobling sense of duty it brings 
 its own reward. There are men in busi- 
 ness, whose tastes lie entirely in something 
 else, who yet feel morally bound to it 
 through responsibility for others; and it 
 has been a discipline of character which 
 7.Q 
 
H^T^-j 
 
 } 
 
 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 has made men of them. After all, the 
 important thing is not the kind of work 
 a man does, but its effect on life and 
 character. 
 
 We often think that if we only had a 
 more suitable sphere, if we were rid of 
 some limitations with which we are ham- 
 pered, our lives and our work would be 
 better ; and sometimes we even fear that 
 we have mistaken our vocation. This is 
 often just a selfish longing or the craving 
 of personal ambition. With other oppor- 
 tunities we might make more of our lives 
 for our profit, but it does not follow that 
 we would make more of them for the 
 higher ends of existence. " I have wasted 
 my life in laboriously doing nothing at 
 all," said Hugh Grotius, the great Dutch 
 jurist, historian, and theologian. That 
 was only the true soul of the man coming 
 out, but even if by any chance he could 
 have made more of his life in some other 
 sphere it does not follow that it would be 
 a better life. Any life which is spent 
 80 
 
wii^dkm, 
 
 laboriously in service cannot be wasted. 
 To the very best and worthiest such a 
 fear of having mistaken his vocation can 
 come, Isaiah makes even the ideal ser- 
 vant of God exclaim, "I have labored 
 in vain ; I have spent my strength for 
 nought and in vain." But in spite of 
 that feeling, just because his work was 
 done truly and sincerely he was able to 
 continue, "yet surely my judgment is with 
 the Lord, and my work with my God." 
 
 When speaking of the moral duty of 
 labor we are met with a further theo- 
 retical difficulty which arises chiefly be- 
 cause of the subdivision and specialization 
 in all modern industry. Culture, we are 
 assured, is only possible to those who are 
 not dragged into the narrowing condition 
 of being compelled to do a special kind 
 of work. It is true that there is a cul- 
 ture from which the ordinary worker is 
 shut out, the sweetness and light which 
 come from an extended knowledge of 
 literature and art, the refinement of in- 
 6 81 
 
1 
 
 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK« 
 
 S^iiiir:MSiito'u.^iiiiii.wffy-"'f;ii 
 
 tellect and taste. But that after all is 
 only on the surface of life, the polishing 
 of an instrument. The culture of char- 
 acter and the culture of soul are not 
 confined to any such select class, and 
 indeed moral strength and true wisdom 
 will be found among the unlettered as 
 often as among the highly educated ; for 
 character is produced from the ordinary 
 materia] of life by the common tasks 
 and the daily duties. God does not 
 give us character, He gives us only time ; 
 He does not give us results, but only 
 opportunities. 
 
 The yoke of work is not merely a 
 moral preservative, but is also an occa- 
 sion for growth in gracious life. Faith- 
 lessness here not only opens the door to 
 evils we would have avoided, but also 
 deprives us of good. Sloth is one of the 
 seven deadly sins labelled by the Church ; 
 for it is recognized as one of the great 
 sources of mischief — " the Devil's cush- 
 ion," as an old writer calls it, inducing 
 82 
 
y 
 
 €^ 
 
 WEEl 
 
 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 rust of mind and depravity of soul to 
 all who fall victims to it. Its danger 
 lies in what we lose through it, as well 
 as what we suffer. An aimless, useless 
 life brings at the end poverty of soul, 
 with no work of faith and patience of 
 hope and labor of love meeting their 
 harvest and their harvest joy. The 
 slack hands tend to the empty heart, 
 with enough sense of need to desire but 
 nothing to .satisfy. "Have a lust for 
 thine own work and thou shalt be safe," 
 said St. Hermas, and many have been 
 able to add their testimony to the safety 
 given by a love of work. When ac- 
 cepted as part of the moral law it does 
 much more than offer safety from temp- 
 tations ; for it brings new sanctions and 
 a new motive. 
 
 Industry from this point of view be- 
 comes just another name for conscience. 
 Without this moral sense we so easily 
 fritter away our strength, and squander 
 our time, and have nothing left for our 
 83 
 
AL^^fStlii?^ ^jO 5''^C? j 
 
 THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 
 
 work but the dregs of our power. Con- 
 science has been abused by being limited 
 to speculative difficulties about right and 
 wrong, the settling of questions of cas- 
 uistry. It too often has lost its relation 
 to actual and common life. We need 
 more conscience put into our daily work, 
 and in this connection conscience is sim- 
 ply industry. Some men of delicate, re- 
 fined conscience in matters of abstract 
 morality are traitors to it in their every- 
 day work. If we are not making our 
 work a discipline for our character, if it 
 has no moral contents to us, our dili- 
 gence will be barren of real fruit. The 
 true nobility of life is honest, earnest 
 service, the strenuous exercise of our fac- 
 ulties, with conscience in our work as 
 in the sight of God who gives us our 
 place and our tools and our work. 
 
 
 84 
 
nnHE virtue of a man ought to he meas^i-red, not hy 
 his extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday 
 conduct. — Pascal. 
 
 ^ 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 IT might seem unnecessary to speak 
 of duty in this connection. We are 
 held in the grip of a great physi- 
 cal necessity, and to the great major- 
 ity at least there is no reprieve. What 
 is gained by proving that we ought 
 to work from a sense of duty, since we 
 do work, and some suffer from excessive 
 labor .'' We have got to work, and that 
 seems an end of it. This feeling is nat- 
 ural, especially to those who carry a 
 heavy load. But we might as well say, 
 Why speak of life ? — we have got to 
 live, and that is an end of it ; or of 
 death .'' — we have got to die, and that 
 is an end of it. True, we have got to 
 live and to die, but everything depends 
 on how we live and die. So, we have got 
 to work (most of us), but everything 
 87 
 
depends on how we work. There is vast 
 difference between blindly doing a thing 
 which is necessary and understanding the 
 reasons why it is necessary. We surely 
 should have some intelligent grasp of 
 such a universal fact as work, and be able 
 to bring to bear on it noble motives. 
 
 Even though we imagine it will not 
 make much difference to the work, it will 
 make a difference to the worker if his 
 motive and spirit be high or low. For 
 example, if we work as a matter of rou- 
 tine into which we were pushed when 
 young and which we carry on mechani- 
 cally, or if our only thought is to get a 
 living or to make money, these are all 
 different from working from a sense of 
 duty or for the sake of love. It is true 
 that the man who works even from a 
 lower motive is better than the man who 
 will not bestir himself, and who looks 
 upon himself as unfortunate because the 
 plums do not fall ripe into his open 
 mouth, and who hopes to catch larks if 
 88 
 
THE 
 
 OF WORK 
 
 the heavens will only oblige him by fall- 
 ing. The one has some notion of cause 
 and effect, and the other is living in a 
 false world without a glimpse of moral 
 law. So, in like manner the man who 
 works from a high motive enters a region 
 shut to him who may work as hard or 
 harder, but who has no vision of the inner 
 meaning of things. 
 
 Further, there is another temptation 
 which makes such a subject useful, the 
 temptation to consider our work as out- 
 side of our moral life. To many, work is 
 looked on as just a means of gaining a 
 livelihood, and the real life begins where 
 that ends. The result is that men live in 
 sections, with a compartment for religion, 
 and one for business, and one for home 
 and social relations. This is responsible 
 for much false thinking and false living, 
 and is responsible for many of the incon- 
 sistencies in good men which puzzle the 
 world and grieve the Church. It is not 
 merely a failure of religion, failure to 
 89 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 bring religion down to the details of busi- 
 ness, but it is a failure to see that busi- 
 ness and work are an essential sphere of 
 religion. Work to many is done to get 
 the wherewithal to live, instead of being, 
 as it should be, itself an appointed man- 
 ner of living, one of the activities of our 
 inner life. How common, for example, it 
 is for men to think that when they have 
 made a living they can then devote them- 
 selves to higher things ! Plato in the 
 Republic has two lines of dialogue illus- 
 trative of this. 
 
 "Have you heard of the saying of 
 Phocylides, that as soon as a man has a 
 livelihood he should practise virtue ? " 
 
 " Nay, he said, I think that he had 
 better begin somewhat sooner." 
 
 The true view of our livelihood is to use 
 it as a .sphere for developing virtue. A 
 man's character is often made or marred 
 by how he approaches his daily work ; 
 and his character is certainly revealed by 
 the spirit in which his work is done. We 
 90 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 are just the raw material out of which 
 men are made. We have to undergo the 
 process of making ; we have to submit to 
 the discipHne that fashions us to higher 
 ends ; and our daily work is an approved 
 instrument for this purpose. It is an 
 important part of the great moral train- 
 ing, how important we can see by think- 
 ing of the large place in our lives our 
 ordinary work takes up. It is absurd to 
 think that we can cut this out from the 
 region of moral duty without serious loss. 
 
 The first element then is the duty to 
 ourselves, not merely to gain an honest 
 subsistence and earn our living as we say, 
 but to gain our moral character, and 
 come under the sweep of the forces that 
 help to make men. Thus we must ac- 
 cept duty not for the sake of what we 
 can get or even give, but what we can 
 also become. To attain any great end 
 men willingly submit to the discipline 
 designed to achieve it. The athlete un- 
 91 
 
 liM 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 dergoes the long and strict regime ap- 
 proved for his special training. The 
 scholar can only become such by one 
 way, and there is no royal road to learn- 
 ing. The great end of character must 
 also be pursued by submitting to daily 
 discipline ; and work accepted as part of 
 moral training lifts the whole life to a 
 higher level. To achieve this, work must 
 not be done perfunctorily as if it did not 
 matter much how it was done, or as a 
 disagreeable physical necessity, but must 
 be looked on consistently as a means to a 
 moral end. 
 
 It is not possible to do justice to all 
 the rich contents of such discipline. It 
 has of course, as we have seen, a negative 
 value in warding off many evils, clearing 
 the mind of temptations, filling up an 
 otherwise empty life with occupations 
 and good habits. But there are posi- 
 tive blessings in the building of a stead- 
 fast character. By the very compulsion 
 against which we often kick we learn 
 92 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 Cl:: 
 
 what obligation is, since we are brought 
 face to face with the idea of must, which 
 should also lead us to the idea of ou^ht : 
 and that is a lesson which is cheaply got 
 at almost any price. We learn our limi- 
 tations and the limitations of our lot ; 
 and the first important step in the mas- 
 tery of life, as in the mastery of any art, 
 is to accept the essential limitations. 
 
 The discipline of our daily work should 
 breed in us habits of self-restraint, pa- 
 tience, faithfulness, obedience to law, an 
 ordered life. Even in a lot of drudgery 
 there are possible some valuable personal 
 virtues, such as integrity of mind, a real 
 independence in what seems a hopelessly 
 dependent state, generosity, and helpful- 
 ness. We cannot overlook the fact also 
 that strength of character can be pro- 
 duced by the untoward circumstances 
 enforced on a man against his will and 
 desire. A narrow corner of life, when 
 possessed by a supreme sense of duty, 
 may be an opportunity for a larger and 
 9S 
 
deeper moral achievement than would be 
 likely in a spacious lot under the sun- 
 shine of smiling fortune. Thus from this 
 high point of view, our daily work is first 
 of all a duty to self, for the sake of one's 
 own character and the discipline of life. 
 
 Another great and all-embracing prin- 
 ciple which we cannot forget without 
 hurting the best quality of our work is 
 that it should be also a duty to our 
 fellows. Our work must in some way be 
 related to what St. Paul calls " brotherly 
 love." In Thessalonica Paul was con- 
 fronted by a section of his converts 
 refusing to work through what they con- 
 sidered spiritual exaltation, giving them- 
 selves up to fervid expectations about 
 our Lord's coming. It was not fit, they 
 thought, that they should be wasting 
 their time and strength on the trivial 
 tasks by which they earned their bread 
 when they might be devoting themselves 
 to what seemed more religious duties. 
 94 
 
ps'x ./^ 
 
 THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 The results were as might be expected. 
 For one thing, it meant that those 
 who ceased working became a charge on 
 the rest of the Church. They were a 
 nuisance to their industrious brethren 
 and a tax on their good nature and their 
 faith. St. Paul sternly denounces their 
 conduct, and at the same time states one 
 of the principles by which he elevates the 
 whole subject of marfs work. He points 
 out bluntly that if they are not working 
 they are living off others. It simply 
 means that they are a burden on those 
 who are humbly going on with their or- 
 dinary duties. So, the principle he states 
 as in itself sufficient to justify work is 
 love of the brethren. It is a duty to 
 them to take their share of the bur- 
 dens of life and not to hamper others 
 needlessly. His appeal for industry is : 
 " Touching brotherly love, we beseech 
 you that ye do your own business and 
 work with your own hands, that ye may 
 walk honestly towards them that are 
 95 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 without and that ye may have lack of 
 nothing." No amount of sanctity which 
 might conceivably be attained by such 
 abdication of the duty of work could 
 make up for the selfishness of throwing 
 the burden of their support on their 
 fellows. This is the condemnation of 
 the whole monastic system which grew to 
 such proportions in the Roman Church. 
 The holiness reached thus by casting an 
 extra load on others is at bottom sel- 
 fishness, however religiously disguised. 
 Christian independence is the other side 
 of Christian charity. Charity has rights 
 as well as duties, and it is the right of 
 charity to demand that it be not called 
 on needlessly and wilfully. It is a shame 
 for Christians to shut up their hearts 
 against need ; but it is no less a shame 
 to impose on others. True brotherly 
 love is the cure for both of these sins. 
 Love opens hand and heart ; and love 
 will not cast a needless burden on the 
 brethren. 
 
 96 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 However laborious it be, there is no 
 honor in merely selfish work, designed 
 only to grasp and get and keep. Work 
 needs to be touched by the romance of 
 love to redeem it from ultimate barren- 
 ness. There is a great deal of nonsense 
 talked about the dignity of labor, often 
 by men who have never worked hard 
 enough to know the weariness and pain 
 of too much labor. Work does carry 
 with it the dignity of at least a measure 
 of independence, and brings the satisfac- 
 tion of a piece of work done to the best 
 of one's ability, and is a safeguard from 
 many an evil; but in itself it has no such 
 intrinsic beauty as is sometimes claimed 
 for it. It all depends on its motive and 
 its spirit. The work which has no other 
 end than to make money, for example, is 
 not a thing of dignity, even although it 
 brings some benefits in its train. The 
 toil also, that is done in soulless stupefy- 
 ing fashion from pure necessity, is not a 
 thing to rejoice over as a tribute to the 
 7 97 
 
nobility of humanity. We will never 
 have right ideas of social duty tiU we 
 recognize that work may be too hard 
 and may bend hearts as well as backs 
 too sorely, as in Burns's description of 
 the cottars, 
 
 Wha drudge and drive, thro' wet and dry 
 Wi' never-ceasing toil. 
 
 Labor which is only labor is vanity and 
 vexation of spirit. 
 
 In the last issue it is only love that 
 gives labor worth. This is true even in 
 the lowest and commonest spheres. To 
 raise work above grossness, to take the 
 sting out of its curse, the thought of 
 working for othei's must come in. It 
 must be done for love of others. Other- 
 wise, it is only soulless drudgery, or grasp- 
 ing materialism. Toil the most untiring 
 is a poor thing, if it is only inspired by 
 mammon worship, or some other form 
 of self-aggrandizement. On the other 
 hand many a life, which has had little 
 98 
 
success and seemingly little joy, has won 
 dignity because the inner source of all its 
 activity has been love. The strong must 
 bear the burdens of the weak, willingly, 
 lovingly, joyfully. St. Paul's noble boast 
 in his farewell address to the elders of 
 Ephesus touches on this motive as an 
 inevitable principle of Christian duty : 
 " Ye yourselves know that these hands 
 have ministered unto my necessities and 
 to them that were with me. I have 
 showed you how that so laboring ye 
 ought to support the weak." After all, 
 much of the world's work is done for 
 love, for wife and children, for the aged, 
 the frail, and the sick. It is the divine 
 tax levied on strength. The true and 
 only dignity of labor is that it be done 
 for love. 
 
 But this motive has not carried us far 
 if it only takes us the length of enduring 
 work for the sake of kith and kin. When 
 we say that work is a duty for the sake 
 of others, we mean a larger and wider re- 
 99 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 lationshjp. The Christian motive tran- 
 scends the ties of blood, and family, and 
 friendship. So work is a duty to society, 
 and not merely to a few individuals. We 
 owe all we have and are to our fellows, 
 and the only way we have of paying the 
 debt is to take our share of the burden. 
 An English statesman called the wealthy 
 idlers the " dangerous classes," and it is 
 true in every sense ; for they are the 
 great argument for socialism ; they do 
 more to unsettle the minds of workers 
 than all socialist propagandists put to- 
 gether ; and with their luxury and self- 
 indulgence they lower the tone of the 
 whole of society, and corrupt the life of 
 the country, making it weak in the time 
 of trial. The unemployed classes are the 
 dangerous classes at both ends of the scale. 
 Men cannot be idle with safety either to 
 themselves or to the community. We 
 want a higher ideal of social duty and 
 social honor, till all will admit the dis- 
 honor of offering no sort of service what- 
 100 
 
t' 
 
 THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 ever to the common weal. We need to 
 accept the social obligation to take our 
 share of the world's work. One element 
 of the duty of work is simply the duty of 
 sacrifice. It means making a contribution 
 of some sort to the good of the whole 
 body politic, giving a real service to 
 others by bending to the burden of all. 
 Work is a practical acceptance of the 
 truth that no man liveth to himself, 
 and that a self-centred life is a social 
 offence. 
 
 It applie.s also to the quality of our 
 work, its faithfulness and honesty and 
 trustworthiness. Shoddy work is not only 
 a wrong to a man's own personal integrity, 
 hurting his character ; but also it is a 
 wrong to society. Truthfulness in work 
 is as much demanded as truthfiilness in 
 speech. False and sham work of every 
 kind is a sin against brotherly love ; for 
 somebody suffers for it somehow. We 
 never can tell who must suffer, as when 
 a ship springs a leak through badly 
 101 
 
'f: 
 
 THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 driven rivets, or when cheapness is got 
 bj adulterating food. Truthfuhiess in 
 work applies all round and in all sorts 
 of work. Some men will steal their 
 master's time who would never steal his 
 money ; but perfect honesty has a wider 
 sweep than the narrow limits of our 
 common ethics. 
 
 Carlyle was fond of the phrase the 
 Chivalry of labor, by which he meant 
 his vision of the time when the leaders 
 of industry would be captains in the true 
 sense, organizing labor to fight against 
 need and poverty ; and the workers be 
 joined to them by something stronger 
 than cash-payment. What is this Chivalry 
 of labor but just a restatement of the 
 Christian motive of brotherly love ? Are 
 there any problems in the industrial 
 world which could not be solved by the 
 patient application of that principle? 
 Are there any difficulties so insuperable 
 that they could not be removed by 
 Christian brotherly love .'' 
 102 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 This is not a counsel of perfection, a 
 thing in the clouds which cannot concern 
 us practically. All our lives come into 
 touch with other lives at some point or 
 other. There is no one who cannot ren- 
 der some service or other to his fellows. 
 It only needs that we each should consider 
 that our conduct is ever affecting some. 
 It only needs that we take our life seriously 
 as a high opportunity, and that we should 
 let the thought of service sink into our 
 hearts, redeeming our lives from selfishness, 
 and making them the service of God and 
 of our brethren. Selfish labor is cursed 
 with futility. It cannot even bring happi- 
 ness when there is no love in it. Goethe 
 makes Faust begin his researches in the 
 magic which brought on the tragedy of 
 his life, because he realized that all his 
 previous labor and learning were useless 
 and gave him no peace of mind. He had 
 studied laboriously, explored philosophy 
 and science and law and medicine, poured 
 over deep theology, but all he knew or 
 103 
 
THlT DUTYT>F WORK 
 
 thought he knew seemed unmeaning to 
 him, because he had lost the hope and the 
 desire to instruct and elevate mankind. 
 It is a true touch. Philosophy, and law, 
 and medicine, and science, and theology, 
 and all work whatsoever, are barren 
 without this human relation. They 
 must all be learned and practised for 
 the sake of others. When they lose 
 their contact with life, they grow false, 
 and bring no saLisfaction even to the mind 
 of the learner or worker. 
 
 This thought of duty to others opens up 
 the region in which work must be done if 
 it is to be of any account. Brotherly love 
 must be one of the motives : it must be 
 done as service. That is the true dignity 
 of labor and the Chivalry of labor, done 
 with conscience because done as in the 
 sight of God, and done with grace because 
 done for others, and done with delight 
 because done for love. When we look 
 upon our daily tasks as playing a part, 
 however humble, in the great common- 
 104 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 r; 
 
 wealth, as our contribution to the world, 
 they are lighted up with a new light. 
 Common household duties, the routine of 
 shop or office or mill, the market-place, 
 the student's desk, the physician's round, 
 all cease to be meaningless drudgery, and 
 are all turned into something passing rich 
 and rare when they are transmuted into a 
 labor of love. At the end of life we shall 
 not be asked how much pleasure we had 
 in it, but how much service we gave in it ; 
 not how full it was of success, but how full 
 it was of sacrifice ; not how happy we 
 were, but how helpful we were ; not how 
 ambition was gratified, but how love was 
 served. Life is judged by love ; and love 
 is known by her fruits. 
 
 Further, we cannot overestimate the 
 dynamic introduced by the thought of 
 a vocation in life, when a man grasps the 
 situation with both his hands. When 
 duty inspires our ordinary occupations 
 and business, we feel that we are called to 
 105 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 do this as truly as ever prophet was called 
 to preach ; and so our duty to self in 
 this matter runs into our duty to God. 
 This is the third strand in the lope. 
 The Christian religion thus ennohles the 
 whole subject of work, cames it higher 
 and further as not only duty to our own 
 best selves and as duty to others, but also 
 as duty to God. It is this alone that 
 introduces the element of vocation into 
 our lives, something we are meant to do 
 and to be. We hold our gifts and our 
 capacities from God. Nothing but the 
 power of Christian sentiment is sufficient 
 to make us submit to the self-discipline 
 which we know to be necessary for true 
 working. It alone sets before us the 
 highest motive for action. When con- 
 duct is governed by love to God and to 
 man it gets a force to which no other is 
 comparable. 
 
 Christian principle in these three lines 
 of duty can alone control the self-inter- 
 ested motives which otherwise would rule 
 106 
 
The duty of work 
 
 supreme in the actual conditions of life. 
 When we come to see how faithfulness in 
 duty relates us not only to our fellow- 
 men but to God, we come to see that 
 work is not just a physical necessity, not 
 merely a part of the painful lot of man, 
 but part of the privilege. And the idler, 
 the selfish man, the man who thinks only 
 of himself and lives only for himself, is 
 self-condemned. As a duty which ^ve owe 
 to God who gave us our opportunities, 
 work is an obligation resting on every 
 man. If we have no need to work for 
 a living, there is all the more obligation 
 to offer our service to the public good 
 in other ways. Leism-e is an invalu- 
 able gift to a man who accepts his life 
 sacredly, and who is inspired with a 
 sense of duty to God. What splendid 
 examples we have had, and have, in our 
 own country of men giving their energies 
 to unrecompensed work in social, phil- 
 anthropic, and religious activity. The 
 mainspring of such devotion has been a 
 ]07 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 sense of duty to God, inspiring conse- 
 crated service. 
 
 To feel the full weight of this motive 
 we need only compaie it with many of the 
 ends which men set before themselves as 
 the inspiring object of all their labor. 
 The commonest of all motives of work 
 in our commercial days is the making 
 of money. That is a legitimate motive 
 enough so far as it goes ; but we have to 
 ask the question if it is adequate. In 
 questioning its worth we are going deeper 
 than merely reminding ourselves of the un- 
 stable tenure by which we hold all riches, 
 or of its powerlessness to buy love or cheat 
 death, its impotence before the rude shocks 
 that strike the heart of man. We are 
 asking ourselves if it can be called an ade- 
 quate motive for beings endowed as we 
 are, if we can be satisfied with the net 
 result of a life dignified by no higher 
 purpose. The life itself can be poverty- 
 stricken though the means of living 
 abound. All other selfish motives of la- 
 108 
 
 ■$' 
 
't 
 
 THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 bor are cursed with the same vanity, 
 whether it be the thirst for fame or repu- 
 tation, or to found a family, the pathetic 
 under-current of motive of some of Sir 
 Walter Scott's abundant labors, or any 
 other of the common aims of men. Many 
 of these motives are intermixed with much 
 good. Even the mere money-grubber 
 may have visions of the supposed happi- 
 ness the fruit of his toil will give to those 
 he loves. But how futile it all is to give 
 grace or beauty to life ! The spiritual 
 light thrown by religious duty is needed 
 to redeem work from meanness and from 
 ultimate fatuity. 
 
 The great moral education of life is 
 open to us all, if we will put duty before 
 pleasure, and if we will look upon our 
 whole lot in life as a school of divine 
 discipline. It is futile to attempt to 
 live in sections, separating business from 
 religion and work from faith. If, as we 
 bow our neck to the yoke of duty, we are 
 sure that it is appointed us of God, we 
 109 
 
THE DUTY OF WORK 
 
 will move towards high ends. What has 
 been sown in the long years of labor is 
 reaped in a gain to character. This high 
 doctrine of duty is alone worthy of us, 
 difficult though it be, and alone will make 
 our lives noble. Even when achieved in 
 weariness, when the tired soul would fain 
 lay down the burden, nothing will so 
 renew the strength like the thought of 
 duty. We are perhaps complaining of 
 the drudgery of our life, longing for a 
 larger lot with more of the world's 
 pleasure in it, with more of the uplifting 
 of success, with more beauty and joy and 
 freedom. We say — 
 
 I am so tired, so tired of rigid duty. 
 So tired of all my tired hands find to do, 
 I yearn, I faint for some of life's free beauty. 
 The loose beads with no straight string 
 running through. 
 
 Yet we know that to give our life mean- 
 ing and value it needs that straight string 
 of duty, and we know that to be false 
 110 
 
ONE of the many Proverbs which 
 inculcate industry does it by con- 
 trast between actual labor and 
 mere talk, between the man who works 
 steadily, honestly, seriously, and the man 
 of flighty and indolent nature copious of 
 suggestions and criticisms, who will not 
 put his hand to any definite task. " In 
 all labor there is profit : but the talk of 
 the lips tendeth only to penury." There 
 is a talk which is work, when behind it is 
 the toil of brain and heart. Indeed, the 
 highest and the hardest kind of work in 
 the world might be classed among that 
 of talk, the work of teacher whether by 
 speech or by writing. But we need very 
 little experience of the world and of men 
 to enable us to appreciate the irony of 
 the contrast between the worker and the 
 115 
 
THE FRUITS 
 
 talker. We know the man with brilliant 
 suggestions and acute criticisms and end- 
 less projects, but with never an ounce of 
 practical result. He spends all his en- 
 ergy in talk, and always means to be 
 doing but never does. The man of the- 
 ories and promises and words is known to 
 us all — theories without practice, prom- 
 ises without fulfilment, words without 
 work. The futility of this strikes us, 
 as it struck the old proverb-maker. In- 
 dustry of any kind he could honor, but 
 this industry of the tongue merely tired 
 him, as it tires us. Talk ! Talk will not 
 plough fields and gather harvests, will not 
 build houses and ships, will not carry on 
 business and provide for the needs of life. 
 When we say that in labor there is 
 profit, we naturally think of the mate- 
 rial return which labor earns, the gains 
 it receives ; and this just as naturally is 
 the chief thing in the mind of the prov- 
 erb-maker. Industry leads to prosperity. 
 It is good to assure ourselves what steady 
 116 
 
THE FRUITS 
 
 OF WORK 
 
 ■J -t. 'i^ .- 
 
 industry will do for us, to assure ourselves 
 that in labor there is certain profit. We 
 would not make too much of the nat- 
 ural fruits of work, the temporal good 
 it achieves, the material success we natu- 
 rally expect from it. To lay too much 
 emphasis on this is to put the emphasis 
 on the wrong thing; but on the other 
 hand it is stupid to despise such profit, 
 as if all life did not have any sort of phys- 
 ical basis. When we come to think of it, 
 we realize that all the material good of 
 the world is built on the profit of labor. 
 There are no fiuits of any kind in all our 
 civilization, which are not the fruits of 
 work. The things which are needful in 
 this life from a material point of view are 
 added to us through industry, and only 
 through industry. Neither talk, nor any- 
 thing else but work, will feed and clothe 
 and shelter. 
 
 In the life of the individual also it is a 
 silly affectation to rule out of account 
 as a motive the natural success which 
 117 
 
 1^ 
 
\r^*^^h^Mi4^' 
 
 THE FRUITS OF WO RK 
 
 comes from industry. The world is built 
 so that the idle and slothful cannot 
 make anything of it ; and the hand of 
 the diligent maketh rich. Still, this side 
 of our subject as a rule is self-evident, 
 and does not need to be elaborated. It 
 is part of ordinary worldly prudence 
 to direct the eyes of the young to 
 such common fruits of work as its 
 temporal good in at least affording a 
 living. But there are other fruits even 
 more important in the long run, other 
 things got by the way, of more lasting 
 worth than any material gains. The 
 great value of work is not for what it 
 earns, but for its education and training 
 of body and mind and soul. It reacts on 
 character, cutting deep into the nature 
 virtues like patience and self-control and 
 courage, establishing habits of concentra- 
 tion and persistence and foresight. 
 
 Even great mental gifts are rendered 
 comparatively useless, if they are not 
 tied down to definite tasks. There are 
 118 
 
 am 
 
 Mrii 
 
many brilliant men who sparkle and 
 shine with their lips, but who achieve 
 nothing of permanent worth, because 
 they have not bent to the daily discipline 
 of strenuous labor. We cannot accept 
 the famous definition of genius as an 
 infinite capacity for taking pains ; for no 
 amount of pains will itself accomplish the 
 highest creative work of genius : but 
 many a genius has brought no profit of 
 aiiy kind either to himself or to the 
 world, simply because he never submitted 
 to the drudgery of work. There have 
 been in England few men of such astound- 
 ing genius as Coleridge. This is the 
 testimony of all who knew him, and is 
 our testimony also from the brilliant 
 fragments of work he has left ; and yet 
 his life is almost tragedy in its barrenness. 
 Even the talk of his lips, though his 
 words were as gold, tended only to moral 
 penury. His plans, and schemes, and 
 endless prospectuses of books he meant 
 to write, his resolutions about the great 
 119 
 
 *«^\, 
 
THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 work he intended always to begin, make 
 a very pitiful story. It is like clouds and 
 wind without rain, as another proverb 
 has it, full of empty promise. His infirm- 
 ity of purpose grew on him till he lost all 
 power of decision and all capacity to 
 work ; and he died as he had lived, a nerve- 
 less soul. There had not perhaps been a 
 man of greater mind since Shakespeare ; 
 and yet in a prayer written by him near 
 the end of his life he had to lament, as 
 all the world has to lament, his unused 
 talents and neglected opportunities. 
 
 It is a common matter of observation 
 that the successful man is not always the 
 man with the most ability and the most 
 brilliant powers. These often carry with 
 them a disability, or at least a tempta- 
 tion, to trust to them and make up by 
 feverish haste what has been lost by slug- 
 gishness. But every truly great man has 
 in addition to his splendid gifts of mind 
 the still more splendid gift of industry. 
 It creates and strengthens the moral 
 120 
 
c 
 
 THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 qualities necessary for sustained work of 
 a high order. Method, perseverance, the 
 self-criticism which can only be satisfied 
 with the best, are only other names for 
 the quality of industry. No true and 
 lasting work can be done except as the 
 result of a long training in the best 
 methods of working. It does not mean 
 that any methods can be a substitute 
 for the original gift ; but it does mean 
 that even the greatest gifts need the dis- 
 cipline and development of hard work. 
 Ruskin says on this point : " During such 
 investigation as I have been able to give 
 to the lives of the artists whose works 
 are in all points noblest, no fact ever 
 looms so large upon me, no law reniains 
 so steadfast in the universality of its ap- 
 plication, as the fact and law that they 
 are all great workers ; nothing concern- 
 ing them is matter of more astonishment 
 than the quantity they have accomplished 
 in the given length of their life ; and 
 when I hear a young man spoken of as 
 121 
 
,-^ *t!S!0AslNMiii,'^' 
 
 T 
 
 THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 giving promise of high genius, the first 
 question I ask about him is always — 
 Does he work ? " 
 
 The ease with which greatness does its 
 work often deceives. The orator masters 
 his subject and his audience with ease ; 
 the artist transfers to the canvas his 
 vision of beauty without eiFort or seem- 
 ing strain ; the musician pours out his 
 melody spontaneous as a bird. Simplic- 
 ity and ease are the marks of all great 
 work, but behind it there are years of 
 toil and arduous learning to do with ease 
 what others cannot do at all. Capacity 
 to toil is necessary for the highest work. 
 This does not mean restless ambition, 
 but steady peaceful labor along the line 
 of his genius. The true reward of work- 
 ing is not the material wage it earns in 
 money or position or fame, but the in- 
 creased and facile power of working. 
 The fruits of labor can only be reaped 
 by steady, well-directed, faithful labor ; 
 and the fruits of work are capacity for 
 122 
 
THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 better work, but are also fruits of char- 
 acter. The richest gains are not in any 
 outward success, but in the result on the 
 man himself, giving him the habit of ap- 
 plic:atiori and discipline of thought, and 
 stiffening his power of will. In all labor 
 there is profit, though it cannot be put 
 down in terms of cash. It is profitable 
 to work though there should be no signs 
 of success, no fruits that appear to the 
 eye. 
 
 'r 
 
 For one thing — to mention some 
 actual benefits apart from this general 
 training of character — one of the fruits 
 of the habit of work is the independence 
 of mind it induces. In work we are taken 
 out of ourselves, removed from petty 
 annoyances and all the small personali- 
 ties that embitter life. No man can be 
 thoroughly miserable who has work to 
 do. Tlie direst misery is the result of 
 a self-centred life. Unhappiness cannot 
 exist in its keenest form where self is 
 123 
 
THE FRUITS OF 
 
 forgotten, and in all work worth doing 
 there is concentration of all the powers, 
 and a forgetfulness of everything except 
 how to do it well. True work means 
 independence of outside criticism and 
 outside interference. A worker has not 
 time to brood over fancied slights ; he can 
 forget the world in doing his duty. 
 
 Things done well. 
 And with a care, exempt themselves from fear. 
 
 We agitate ourselves with a host of petty 
 worries and chagrins, so petty sometimes 
 that we woxold be ashamed even to men- 
 tion the things that annoy us. No true 
 work was ever done in such a mood ; and 
 such a mood cannot live in the atmos- 
 phere of earnest, serious work. Forget 
 self, and rest comes ; we get at once out 
 into the calm. The heart's peace comes 
 of the heart's own bringing ; and the 
 way to bring it is to give ourselves to 
 duty simply and humbly. And at the 
 last there is nothing that gives such 
 124 
 
THE FRUlfSOFWORKt 
 
 satisfaction and independence as the sense 
 of having honestly striven to perform 
 duty. Sir Henry Lawrence, the hero of 
 Lucknow, ever remembered as a savior of 
 the British Empire at the Indian Mutiny, 
 when he lay dying of a mortal wound at 
 Lucknow, asked that his epitaph should 
 be, " Here lies Henry Lawrence, who 
 tried to do his duty."' The doing of 
 duty teaches courage and patience and 
 faith ; and these bring peace. It makes 
 a man morally independent, strong and 
 able to live his life to God and not to 
 man. Firm adherence to duty can enable 
 a man to do without praise, or encourage- 
 ment, or adulation from men. It is a 
 refuge from the strife of tongues, from 
 the inept criticisms and evil-speaking 
 of a censorious world. We read in the 
 biography of Robertson of Brighton that 
 at one period of his ministry his sensitive 
 soul was bruised with the opposition and 
 misrepresentation of detractors, and with 
 the no less officiousness of admirers ; and 
 125 
 
THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 so, shrinking from the stings of a pub- 
 licity he never sought, he gave himself up 
 to quiet and continuous work as a refuge. 
 He studied and preached and visited, and 
 sought to find a hidden way of life, and 
 by the very irksomeness of work tried to 
 rid himself of what to his temperament 
 was the worse irksomeness of fame. This 
 over-sensitiveness was the great weakness 
 of his character, and it could only be 
 overcome by withdrawing into the region 
 of duty. A touch of self-reliance is re- 
 quired to make the character truly bal- 
 anced ; and self-reliance is the result of 
 self-forgetfulness. A confirmed habit of 
 work gives an independence of mind 
 which enables a man to dispense with 
 many other supports, and enables him to 
 disregard many criticisms which would 
 distract the worker and weaken the work. 
 The petty worries of life can always be at 
 least mitigated thus. Emerson wrote in 
 his Journal what was almost part of his 
 faith : " To every reproach I know but 
 126 
 
i* THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 one answer, namely, to go again to my 
 work. ' But you neglect your relations.' 
 Too true, then I will work the harder. 
 ' But you have no genius.' Yes, then I 
 will work the harder. ' But you have 
 detached yourself from people : you must 
 regain some positive relation.' Yes, I 
 will work the harder." 
 
 Another of the fruits of this beneficent 
 habit along the same line is that it brings 
 habii for grief. Since it gives forgetful- 
 ness of self, it can be and is an antidote 
 to pain of heart. It often means the 
 only chance of surcease of sorrow. The 
 very routine and drudgery of daily work 
 have often saved a life from despair. 
 Adherence to duty is a way to attain 
 some measure of peace. However great 
 the sorrow, the needs of living and the 
 duties of living press in, and demand 
 attention. It is well that it should be 
 so ; for the very necessity is a lesson in 
 faith. When the cloud creeps over the 
 127 
 
[EFRUITS OF WORK 
 
 heart, when the way is obscured, when 
 the future is unknown and the past 
 seems a failure, when all else is dark, 
 duty is still a light to the feet. It can 
 be done meanwhile. When love itself 
 seems dead, the service of love remains ; 
 and to that we are called. 
 
 Of course there may be cowardice in 
 thus turning to work from the thought of 
 grief. It may be used as an opiate to 
 deaden pain and forget thought. We 
 use it wrongfully, when we do so faith- 
 lessly and bitterly. But when it is 
 accepted humbly as the will of God, it 
 gives peace to turn to something else, 
 which is also the will of God, namely, 
 daily duty. The very habit soothes and 
 heals the bruised heart. In all labor 
 there is this profit, that it gives patience 
 to grief. This is a poor thing if it is 
 taken as a means of forgetting, a narcotic 
 to dull and numb pain ; but our whole 
 path is transfigured if we see that we 
 are walking in the way of God's appoint- 
 128 
 
THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 ment, simply and sweetly performing His 
 will. 
 
 There are many instances in life and 
 literature of the power of work to assuage 
 grief. A son-ow will either unman, or it 
 will brace and nerve, and lift the life in a 
 new access of courage. Sir Walter Scott 
 used work to keep his mind from brood- 
 ing on the downfall of his life's great 
 scheme. His Journal is an unpretentious 
 record of a noble life, revealing his brave 
 true soul. The manner in which he 
 buckled to his task (sometimes when the 
 page he was writing waltzed before his 
 eyes), the manly way in which he faced 
 his trouble, and buried his grief, the pa- 
 tience with intruding visitors when all the 
 time he was aching to get back to work, 
 move us with mingled pity and admira- 
 tion. With pain of body and sorrow of 
 heart and sickness of soul he battled on, 
 and in his own conduct illustrated the 
 words which long years before he had 
 caused to be carved on his dial-stone at 
 9 129 
 
Abbotsford, "I must work while it is 
 called day ; for the night cometh when no 
 man can work." It is in such a trial 
 that a man's true character is revealed. 
 He who has always put conscience into 
 his work will not find the beneficent habit 
 of work fail him at the pinch. 
 
 Another of the assured fruits of work 
 is happiness. It is the experience of all 
 ages that to make happiness the end of 
 life, the one definite purpose towards 
 which a man strives, is infallibly to lose 
 it. It is bound to result in frittering 
 away life in trivialities, or swamping it in 
 grossness. Yet we cannot leave it out of 
 our scheme, since it is a demand of our 
 very nature. Experience teaches that 
 happiness is got by the way in pursuing 
 other ends, and not by pursuing itself 
 as an end ; and one of the accredited 
 means of attaining some measure of hap- 
 piness is by healthful activity of body and 
 mind. In every well-ordered life there 
 130 
 
THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 must, be serious occupation for any sort 
 of permanent happiness. The hajjpiest 
 people one meets are always the busy 
 people. The most miserable are those 
 who have to invent frivolous substitutes 
 for some serious employment. We are 
 reminded of the satire of Burns\s poem, 
 The Twa Dogs, where Luath, the poor 
 man's dog, asks Caesar, the rich man's 
 dog, if his master and his friends are not 
 the happiest people on earth. It is a 
 sly touch to put that question into the 
 mouth of the poor man's dog. Caesar 
 replies that he thinks they are not to be 
 envied. 
 
 A country fellow at the pleiigh. 
 His acres tilled, he 's right eneugh ; 
 A country girl at her wheel, 
 Her dizzen 's dune, she 's unco weel ; 
 But gentlemen, and ladies warst, 
 Wi' ev'n-doon want o' wark are curst. 
 
 The primal curse is felt by all, who accept 
 
 it humbly, to be a blessing in disguise. 
 
 Work is the very salt of life, not only 
 
 131 
 
THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 preserving it from decay, but also giving 
 it tone and flavor. Carlyle never wearied 
 in asserting this — it was one of liis best 
 messages to his age — as in these words 
 from his famous Inaugural Address, 
 " Work is the grand cure of all maladies 
 and miseries that beset mankind — • honest 
 work which you intend getting done." 
 Every man of knowledge and experience 
 who writes on happiness gives work as one 
 of the pure sources of enjoyment. This is 
 partly because of its intimate connection 
 with health of body ; and partly because 
 industry brings peace of mind. 
 
 We arc so easily led astray here, look- 
 ing for happiness from getting, rather than 
 from doing and being. Mere receptive 
 happiness, which comes from possessions, 
 from a present easy lot, from aesthetic en- 
 joyment, cannot last. The taste palls on 
 the jaded palate. It needs to be flicked 
 with ever stronger spices. Its end is the 
 hell of ennui, which is the inevitable dis- 
 ease of idleness. This receptive happiness 
 132 
 
T HE FR UITS OF WORK 
 
 is the kind we mostly look for, and ex- 
 plains why we are so sadly disappointed. 
 Happiness can only come from obedience 
 to the laws of life, and from the activity 
 which is recognized to be the natural and 
 healthy way of life. Perhaps the most 
 pessimistic, and certainly the saddest, 
 words Ruskin ever wrote are in his fine 
 lecture on the Mystery of Life and the 
 Arts, in which he shows how little real 
 guidance in the great mystery of life we 
 have received from even the wisest men, 
 poets and teachers and statesmen and 
 philosophers and the wise practical men ; 
 but one thing he is sure of is that industry 
 worthily followed gives peace. Other 
 paths lead to disappointment, but sincere 
 and honest labor means happiness. " Ask 
 the laborer in the field, at the forge, or in 
 the mine ; ask the patient, delicate-fiiigered 
 artisan, or the strong-armed fiery-hearted 
 worker in bronze and in marble and with 
 the colors of light ; and none of these who 
 are true workmen will ever tell you that 
 133 
 
»»« THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 ■■■-^ 
 
 ^r-'i<i*V« 
 
 i::^::£iai 
 
 they have found the law of heaven an un- 
 kind one — that in the sweat of their face 
 they should eat bread till they return to 
 the ground ; nor that they ever found it 
 an unrewarded obedience if indeed it was 
 rendered faithfully to the command — 
 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it 
 with thy might." 
 
 We just need to look at the facts of 
 our nature to see that man was made for 
 activity ; and to break this law is to 
 bring upon us a sui's revenge. Only our 
 artificial society with its false ideals could 
 blind us to the truth of this. No per- 
 manent happiness is possible which is 
 got at the expense of the laws of nature. 
 There may be, it is true, excessive labor ; 
 but when that is so, when work is done 
 with a sense of strain, it is a warning of 
 nature to desist. But more people err 
 on the other side, and look for happiness 
 from pleasure and ease rather than from 
 duty. It is a vain search. Never thus 
 has it been found, as can be seen at a 
 134 
 
THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 glance in the unhappy faces of the jaded 
 pilgrims to health-resorts and pleasure- 
 resorts, ever seeking what they never 
 find. It is part of the pathos of our 
 social situation that what the world im- 
 agines to represent happiness should cut 
 us off from an essential condition of hap- 
 piness. We envy those whose position 
 of affluence rids them of the necessity 
 of work ; while they find they must in- 
 vent things to take the place of woik, 
 before they can know any peace or true 
 pleasure. We must learn to look for 
 happiness not in our feelings but in our 
 activities, not in our pleasurable emotions 
 but in our service. 
 
 One thing is certain, that, though work 
 itself will not ensure happiness, yet with- 
 out it happiness is impossible. It is an 
 essential condition of a contented life. 
 This has been the experience of all, and 
 there is no more useful lesson for youth 
 to learn early. It will save him from 
 many an error and fi'om many a sorrow. 
 135 
 
THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 Alexander Dumas in his Memoirs thanks 
 a friend of his youth for teaching him 
 the value of work. " You said to me, 
 ' Be sure, my boy, there is something else 
 in life besides pleasure, love, sport, danc- 
 ing, and all the wild dreams of youth. 
 There is work : learn to work — learn, 
 that is, to be happy." You introduced 
 me to the only friend that consoles us, 
 the friend who is ever at our side, run- 
 ning up to help us at the first sigh, pour- 
 ing in his balm at the first tear — it was 
 you who made me to know work." There 
 is a little French bombast in these words, 
 but also much truth. Even patient 
 drudgery brings the joy of duty done, 
 and saves from repining and useless de- 
 spondency. It is perhaps natural that in 
 the great strain of life we should some- 
 times covet idleness and be envious of 
 the idle. Conditions of labor may be 
 too hard, especially when anxiety about 
 the future is added to it ; but idleness is 
 a heavier curse, and ends in sorer misery, 
 136 
 
THE FRUITS OF WORK 
 
 than the severest toil. There is some- 
 times a misplaced sympathy for the poor. 
 They need sympathy often, but not al- 
 ways for the things in their lot on which 
 the leisured classes sometimes spend their 
 pity. There can be found poor that are 
 rich in all the essentials of true life, and 
 rich that are poor. It i^ not the work 
 itself which is the hardness of the lot of 
 the poor, and not always the amount 
 of it. The languor of idleness is worse 
 than the worst weariness of toil. The 
 ennui and disgust, which sooner or later 
 attend on idleness, are a less enviable lot 
 than that of e\'en the heavily driven 
 worker. He at least is within the sweep 
 of the beneficent law which has ordained 
 work. 
 
 137 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK ll 
 
TTT'JTHOUT charity the mere outward work 
 profiteth nothing ; but whatsoever is done of 
 charity, be it never so little and contemptible in tlie 
 tight of the world, becomes wholly fruitful. For 
 Ood weigheth more with how much love a man 
 worketh than how much he dneth. He doeth much 
 that loveth much. — Thomas a Kempis. 
 
WE suffer both as individuals and 
 as a society from the lack of an 
 ideal in work. The socialist 
 criticism of existing conditions has much 
 point in it, and we must become ever 
 
 open 
 
 to that criticism so lonj; as we 
 
 attempt to do the world's business on a 
 merely economic basis. Poets and think- 
 ers have dreamed of a time when men 
 would be bound together by something 
 more worthy and more lasting than self- 
 interest, and there have been brief times 
 when the dream has been realized. 
 
 In one of the historical books of the 
 Old Testament there is depicted such a 
 time. After a long period of heathenism 
 in Judah, a reformation was attempted 
 by Josiah towards a purer and more spir- 
 itual worship. The temple had been 
 141 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 allowed to fall into disrepair, and Josiah 
 brought before the people the need of 
 restoring it. It was to be a national 
 work. The people were made to feel 
 that it was their concern, something they 
 were bound in honor to do, and not 
 merely a king's gift to them. When the 
 money was gathered the work was started, 
 properly organized with overseers. There 
 was so much zeal and enthusiasm, and 
 such a sense of responsibility resting on 
 all, that we read that the priests did not 
 need to keep accounts, nor jealously see 
 that they got their money's worth of 
 work. It was not a contract transaction, 
 each party on the watch lest they should 
 be cheated. Thev were able to trust each 
 other, the priests to go to their religious 
 duties, knowing that overseers and work- 
 men had larger thoughts than how they 
 might take advantage. They were bound 
 together by a closer and stronger bond 
 than any mere cash nexus could be. 
 There are things more binding than even 
 142 
 
i!;'%. 
 
 legal contracts. The world has some- 
 times been able to get its work done by 
 sweeter and nobler methods, and may per- 
 chance be able again when we come back 
 to God. In this old-world building oper- 
 ation, the one thing which is seen every- 
 where is faithfulness. The captains of 
 industry were faithful to the priests ; the 
 men were faithful to their masters ; and 
 for once Jew could trust Jew, The whole 
 gives the impression of a simpler time, 
 when men were in closer contact with 
 each other, and true heart could meet 
 true heart and keep each other true. 
 When the overseers get their meed of 
 praise, we read " and the men did the 
 work faithfully.^" 
 
 The words call up a scene very pleas- 
 ant to look on, and suggest dreams for 
 our future sweet to think of. We get 
 glimpses of hope of a time when all 
 hearts shall be as one in the inspira- 
 tion of a common cause. Cash payment 
 is not the sole relation between man. 
 143 
 
l^^-'^'^'-'^i 
 
 THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 Society cannot long exist on that ba-sis. 
 If it were not that there is more than 
 that in our midst, saving salt of nobler 
 thought and larger practice, it could not 
 have existed so long. No man can be 
 wholly paid in money for his work, if it 
 be true work. We cannot buy love, nor 
 pay for it ; and without love in all its 
 grades and forms our social life, and even 
 our business life — sacred though it may 
 seem to be to supply and demand — are 
 failures. There are things outside the 
 region of cash payment. Faithful dealing 
 between man and man cannot be bought 
 and sold. Such work is a spiritual thing 
 as well as a material, and money has no 
 currency in such trafficking. 
 
 We need an ideal to save our lives 
 from deadly dulness. We need the light 
 of the ideal to inspire us and to ennoble 
 our activities. Otherwise what poor petty 
 drudgery it all is, a meaningless bending 
 of the neck to the yoke. We must make 
 all our occupations truly religious, in- 
 144 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 spired by religious motive. The world's 
 one need is religion. We are perishing 
 for want of God : for want of Him our 
 lives are full of conflicting interests, and 
 selfish schemes, and disputes, and mis- 
 understandings. How are scamped work 
 and unfaithful dealing possible, except 
 because men think themselves out of 
 sight of God? 
 
 There are duties which we perform 
 lightly and with ease, extra duties, things 
 to which we are called by inclination and 
 which we perform with pleasure. To 
 most of us our work is usually begun like 
 that : it is our choice, and while our new- 
 born enthusiasm lasts it comes easy to us ; 
 but when it loses its novelty it does not 
 lose its demands on us. All true work 
 has drudgery in it. It becomes a weari- 
 ness, a lifeless routine with no spring in 
 it, unless it is redeemed by the spirit in 
 which it is done. When common labor 
 is seen to be religious work, then daily 
 drudgery can be glorified. Even the 
 10 145 
 
r^>^:^"''%% 
 
 THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 habit of work, which has so blessed men, 
 is but a makeshift without the ideal of 
 work. To a spiritual being like man 
 there is no detail of his life which has not 
 spiritual significance; and the failure of 
 our days is due to our neglect of the un- 
 seen in dealing with the seen, our forget- 
 fulness to live every common hour in the 
 power of an endless life. 
 
 Viewed practically, and put into simple 
 language, the ideal of work iafaithfulness, 
 work done according to a high standard 
 which the worker himself sets up. We 
 have such easy and elastic consciences, 
 and sucli low selfish standards ! What 
 will pass, what will do the turn, is often 
 all that we aim at. We do not put con- 
 science into our work. Speaking to a 
 riveter once about piecework, I asked if 
 the character of the work did not suffer 
 from the haste to get as much money 
 in as short a time as possible. He said 
 that there was an inspector. " Does that 
 146 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 mean," I asked, " that the standard is to 
 put in as many rivets as possible just in 
 such a way that you will not need to 
 come back and tighten them ? " " That 's 
 about it," he said honestly. 
 
 Our modern methods at least can'y the 
 danger of taking away from moral stamina. 
 Such work may be well enough done, be- 
 cause it does not pay to come back and 
 do it over again at the bidding of the 
 inspector, but that is to put the inspec- 
 tor in the place of conscience. No work 
 ever lasted without conscience. How is 
 it that Cremonese violins have had such a 
 repute in the world ? We must accept 
 Browning's explanation — 
 
 Antonio Stradivari has an eye 
 
 That winces at false worlc and loves the true. 
 
 The man comes out in his work ; the 
 character is revealed by conduct. We 
 would be all the better if we had a little 
 more fastidious taste about our own work. 
 We should find it harder to please our- 
 147 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 selves than to please others. The self- 
 respect which conies from a high standard 
 will sometimes keep a man true, when he 
 could satisfy the demands of others with 
 less. A great preacher once said that 
 his experience, after a considerable min- 
 istry, was that the people appreciated 
 most what cost him least. That would 
 represent a strong temptation to him. 
 It is true in everything that mere flashy 
 surface work often for a time puts the 
 genuine solid work out of the market. 
 Hence the mere market standard is not 
 sufficient. A man must never suifer him- 
 self to be unfaithful to his better self. 
 We have no safeguard if we have not 
 conscience in our work. 
 
 We may not be master of our daily 
 work, but we are at least master of the 
 spirit in which we do it. We can try 
 to be faithful, even when we cannot be 
 great, or when the work seems common- 
 place. The Louvre in Paris has one of 
 Murillo's pictures, which depicts the in- 
 148 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 terior of a convent kitchen, with angels 
 doing the ordinary kitchen work, washing 
 dishes, putting a kettle on the fire. The 
 business of cooking is done with such 
 grace that the menial tasks do not sug- 
 gest any degradation, but seem the fit 
 and proper work of angels, when they do 
 it so beautifully. Kitchen work is refined 
 by the dignity and sweet simplicity of 
 such workers. " It is not thy works, 
 which are all mortal, infinitely little, and 
 the greatest no greater than the least, 
 but only the spirit thou workest in, that 
 can have worth or continuance.'' 
 
 There are two opposite temptations 
 which beset us all. On the one side 
 there is the danger of the ideal, the 
 temptation to look only for large is- 
 sues, imposing duties, heroic enterprises, 
 neglecting the opportunities at our hand. 
 We can be unfaithful in the name of 
 God, because of what seems a large ideal. 
 We can seek what we conceive to be the 
 better part and refuse the common duties 
 149 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 and tasks. But to mean anything, the 
 ideal must be taken down into our 
 lives, and fashion itself in every act. 
 The danger of the ideal is to miss the 
 detail. 
 
 On tlie other hand, there is the clan- 
 ger of detail, making life a thing of 
 patchwork merely. However laboriously 
 stitched together, it is only patchwork at 
 the end. There are men to whom noth- 
 ing is great, who have low-souled con- 
 tentment wth the small. We can attend 
 punctiliously to duty and be faithful in 
 detail ; but never once have our hearts 
 fired by the inspiration of a large love. 
 " Thou art careful and troubled about 
 many things, but one thing is needful." 
 The danger of detail is to miss the ideal. 
 
 The proper attitude is the small for 
 the sake of the large, faithfulness in the 
 little because of faith in the great. Life 
 
 is of a piece, and before we can come to 
 
 anything like a true estimate, it must be 
 
 viewed as a whole. We cannot speak of 
 
 150 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 a man's character till it has gathered 
 some sort of consistency. Every section 
 of life must concur in our judgment 
 before we can speak of a character as 
 formed. This is why so many of our 
 common divisions in the life of man are 
 futile if not false, such as into the mor- 
 ally great and the morally small. All 
 life has spiritual significance. We are 
 tempted to think that we are not being 
 truly and fairly tested by the particular 
 experiences through which we have passed 
 and are passing, that this is only a day 
 of small things unworthy of our real 
 capacity. When we are forced to some 
 measure of self-judgment and are sick at 
 heart with a sense of the pettiness of our 
 lives, we lay the blame on our surround- 
 ings that we have never had a proper 
 chance ; and we look forward to a future 
 when some large opportunity will be given 
 us, feeling sure that we will rise to the 
 occasion when the occasion comes. But 
 who are the men who are made by an 
 151 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 occasion ? If we knew all the facts we 
 would see that they are the men who 
 have been using what occasions were 
 granted them before. The faults and 
 selfishness which come out in us now 
 would only be more apparent in the 
 larger sphere, unless the larger sphere 
 brought with it a larger ideal. Our 
 character conditions our future, and our 
 character is the fruit of all the past. 
 Judgment of our life is going on cease- 
 lessly, and records itself infallibly and in- 
 delibly on character. It is a vain dream 
 to think that any outside change would 
 in itself make any difference, and that we 
 can afford to neglect our small opportun- 
 ities with the comfortable thought that 
 nothing essential is altered, and that we 
 are open to make a great success of some 
 great opportunities that some day will 
 come. A simple and plain fact of moral 
 life is stated in the words, " He that is 
 faithful in that which is least is faithful 
 also in much." 
 
 152 
 
■i>wi-i>i»^«S<iL 
 
 ^^'^"'^^ 
 
 THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 A besetting temptation is to despise 
 our present opportunities in tiie vaulting 
 ambition for larger ones and in the ag- 
 grieved belief that we are worthy of 
 better things than are possible to us 
 now. No temptation is more common 
 than this and finds more victims. We 
 scorn the plain duties which are before 
 us, dreaming of wider and more honor- 
 able tasks, sure of our capacity if it were 
 but recognized and put to large tests. 
 The proverb speaks of the fool who has 
 his eyes on the ends of the earth and who 
 misses the facts and chances that stare 
 him in the face. The small suffers for 
 the sake of the great. Space would fail 
 to show how this temptation works havoc 
 in every branch of life, domestic and so- 
 cial, personal and public, the home life, 
 business life, political life, religious life. 
 We ourselves have a proverb, for exam- 
 ple, about those who are angels abroad 
 and devils at home. 
 
 It has sometimes been made a charge 
 153 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 against some women who take up public 
 work and are foremost in public causes 
 that tliey neglect their home duties. 
 Whether this be true or not, the temp- 
 tation at least is in line with this one to 
 which we are referring and lies pretty 
 close to human nature. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, the temptation finds easier victims 
 among those who do not attempt larger 
 public work but who merely dream of it 
 and meanwhile neglect plain and simple 
 duty. It is always the temptation of the 
 man of the one talent to hide it in the 
 earth. The special temptation of the man 
 of many talents is to misuse them, to 
 spend them on himself, or to be proud of 
 his capacity, and grow arrogant and sel- 
 fish. The special temptation of the one- 
 talent man is to despise his gift and to 
 bury it, either through false modesty, or 
 more often through wounded self-esteem. 
 The cause of his failure may be humility 
 or conceit, so close do opposites lie in the 
 strange heart of man, so easily may es- 
 154 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK j 
 
 tremes meet. Just because we have not 
 been intrusted with large concerns we 
 will not make the most of what is af- 
 forded us, either in a kind of petulance, 
 or in a sort of despair that nothing we 
 can do can amount to much, an equally 
 fatal though more worthy feeling. On 
 the whole, perhaps the petulant mood is 
 the commoner, as it is more usual for us 
 to over-estimate our claims than to un- 
 der-estimate them. We are discontented 
 with our present oppoitunities on the 
 score that we ought to be doing some 
 nobler work and merit a wider sphere ; 
 and so we let the judgment of life go 
 against us by default. 
 
 The inherent mistake of all such is the 
 failure to perceive that moral life is a 
 whole, an unbroken line, and not one 
 that can safely be left with gaps in 
 the communications. When the line is 
 broken it means weakness everywhere. 
 This is what St. James means when he 
 says that to break one commandment is 
 155 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 to be guilty of all. We cannot distin- 
 guish between the spirit with which we 
 look forward to large service and the 
 spirit with which we actually perform 
 the small services before us. We cannot 
 be faithful in some ideal way if there be 
 no faithfulness in our actual lives. A 
 test in the small sphere is as good as a 
 test in the large ; for the strength of the 
 chain is the strength of its weakest link. 
 
 Faithfulness is a moral quality, a thing 
 of the character, and not just a graceful 
 adornment which can be put on and off 
 without making much difference. It is 
 of the very stuff of character and comes 
 out as clearly in the little things as in 
 the great. If it exists at all it makes 
 its presence felt in everything ; if it 
 does not exist it will be seen in nothing, 
 neither the great nor the small. If there 
 be no faithfulness displayed in the doing 
 of small duties, the mere fact of having 
 more important ones presented will in 
 156 
 
t 
 
 THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 "Ifc- -^-^^^-^-v-^ 
 
 itself make no difference. A new and 
 great, opportunity may indeed be the 
 occasion for calling forth a new capacity 
 and may give the whole life a new bent 
 and the whole character a new strength. 
 But this has been in spite of, and not 
 because of, the previous failure ; and if 
 it is to survive it must be so assimilated 
 into the character that it will henceforth 
 affect the small as well as the great. 
 Trustworthiness is built up by being 
 faithful in that which is least. We all 
 know characters which have many fine 
 qualities, charm and sweetness and wis- 
 dom and grace, but which are spoiled 
 by the lack of this virtue. Men who 
 cannot be trusted are broken reeds, how- 
 ever gracefully they may sway in the 
 breeze, and it is a common enough ex- 
 perience to find out how useless such 
 reeds are for any human purpose. In 
 all regions of life, in handicrafts, in busi- 
 ness, in professions, what examples there 
 are of this inherent weakness ! 
 157 
 
^^Ji'f'/^. 
 
 THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 Is not faithfulness in little things the 
 virtue above all others we stand in need 
 of in our age ? Men and things that can- 
 not be depended on glut the market. 
 Business men say that they cannot get 
 the work done that used to be done, that 
 so much is slipshod and careless, and that 
 workmen do not take the same pride they 
 used to do in turning out a perfect work- 
 manlike job. When we think of the 
 patience and care and love and faithful- 
 ness spent on the old cathedrals and on 
 some of the old hammer-wrought iron 
 work, we feel inclined to sympathize with 
 Ruskin in his denunciation of machinery. 
 Most of our industrial difficulties, with 
 their consequent social dislocation, are 
 due to the breakdown of the good old- 
 fashioned virtue of faithfulness, of masters 
 to men, and men to masters, each trust- 
 ing each, the captains of industry and the 
 privates working for more than gain. 
 This is not the fault of any one section 
 exclusively, but the fault of all of us, the 
 158 
 
~-<^'^'/^. 
 
 THE IDEAL OF WORK i 
 
 demand for faithfulness and the supply of 
 it not being looked for by the community 
 as the chiefest need. Work has suffei-ed 
 because character has suffered. 
 
 How all-important faithfulness is in all 
 human relations, and not merely in trade 
 relations, we must surely see. Fidelity, 
 for example, is the first quality of soul we 
 look for in a friend. If a man is not 
 faithful, what matter what graces and 
 charms of manner be his ? Fickleness is 
 the opposite vice of mind, and is fatal to 
 any true relationship in life. Here also, 
 as elsewhere, it is in the little things the 
 test is keenest. Some friendships could 
 stand one supreme strain that could not 
 be relied on for human nature's daily 
 food. Everything relating to this great 
 virtue runs back in the long run to char- 
 acter. Faithfulness in the least things 
 pertaining to their art or their work, at- 
 tention to detail, has always been a mark 
 of the highest chai'actcr. All great men 
 have had it. 
 
 159 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 For one thing, it is the way to success, 
 not in the vulgar sense of the word suc- 
 cess, but in the true sense of gaining com- 
 plete mastery of the particular work. 
 Recklessness means ruin in business, and 
 recklessness is want of faithfulness in the 
 small things through which alone a man 
 is enabled to form correct estimates and 
 come to correct conclusions. Attention 
 to every item, patient care in every detail, 
 if they are combined with a large grasp of 
 things as a whole, bring triumphant suc- 
 cess in every kind of work. If this be so, 
 much more need is there for faithfulness 
 to achieve spiritual success. In view of 
 the end nothing is unimportant- To the 
 great general everything has significance, 
 every manoeuvre, every detail of discipline, 
 the veriest minuhia; of the commissariat 
 department, everything relating to his 
 soldiers down to the shoe-leather, every 
 rising ground and hollow in a proposed 
 field of battle. He never knows where 
 the weak spot may be, and the link be 
 160 
 
 mmM 
 
THE IDEAL 
 
 ..vMVV^^ 
 
 OF WORK 
 
 amissing in the chain of cause and effect. 
 Detail will overcome dash in the end. 
 There is some truth in the old nursery 
 rhyme that for the loss of the nail in the 
 horse's shoe the battle was lost. Simi- 
 larly, if life means to us the fight of faith, 
 then everything must have importance in 
 view of that. There will be no small 
 things, nothing of common duty that 
 we can afford to neglect, no part of life 
 that we can extract from the grasp of 
 faith. 
 
 Now, most of our unfaithfulness both 
 in life and in faith is due to our mistaken 
 standard as to the great and the small. 
 We so easily judge things by the eye 
 only. They are important to us accord- 
 ing to size, appearance, amount. But 
 great and small are only relative terms, 
 and depend altogether on the standard. 
 A huge money transaction on the stock 
 exchange may be a very large thing from 
 the point of view of the brokers, and a 
 11 161 
 
IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 pitiful triviality from any other point of 
 view whatever. The widow's mite was a 
 great money transaction in the eyes of 
 Christ. Things are great or small accord- 
 ing to the standard. If the eye is put 
 close enough to a molehill, it will look 
 like a mountain. We are so easily taken 
 in by appearance and are always ready 
 to judge men bv the splash they make, 
 and to rank affairs according to the noise 
 they raise in the world. The common is 
 looked on as the commonplace. Our 
 eye catches the italics on the printed 
 page, and the ideal book to us appears 
 to be the one printed altogether in 
 italics. We look for strenuous living, 
 with great interests perpetually occurring, 
 speaking at the pitch of our voice, living 
 at the pitch of our powers. Our oppor- 
 tunities seem poor and petty, compared 
 with this dream. We long for great 
 events, imposing duties, extraordinary 
 occasions. We could make something 
 of our life, we think, if only we had not 
 162 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 such small sordid cares and tasks. \Vliat, 
 an astonishing illusion all this is ! To 
 speak at the pitch of the voice continually 
 would take away all emphasis from speech 
 whatever. All low is as good as all loud 
 — and better. If we print all our tale in 
 italics, they just become as ordinary type 
 and cease to have the effect of exception. 
 In the constant and insane effort after 
 distinction we lose all chance of distinc- 
 tion. We must surely see the fallacy of 
 refusing: to be faithful in small thinji's 
 because we feel that faithfulness in large 
 things is alone worthy of us. 
 
 We asl: for heroic duties ; but the du- 
 ties that lie to our hand are heroic. 
 The so-called heroic occasions are after 
 all often easier, and therefore less heroic, 
 than the commonplace trials that daily 
 test the stuff of which we are made. 
 Many a man, who could be a martyr in 
 the stubborn zeal of fanaticism, is not 
 strong enough to be faithful in the small 
 things that cry for faithful treatment. 
 163 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 Religion is for daily life, not for mo- 
 mentous events merely. Life, after all, 
 is largely a matter of detail. It is filled 
 up to all of us with its routine of 
 small duties and usual tasks and trivial 
 acts. An hour is made up of moments ; 
 a day is made up of hours ; life is made 
 up of days. The number of our days is 
 the extent of our life ; and the character 
 of our days is the character of our life. 
 With such a conception of human life as 
 this, and of character in its influence on 
 human destiny, we can see that it is not 
 for us to pick and choose among the de- 
 tails of living, and not for us to think 
 that vce can label all the things we are 
 called on to do as either great or small. 
 We never know what are the great things 
 and what are the small. We never know 
 what demands faithfulness from its in- 
 trinsic worth and what is only a repeti- 
 tion of a formal act. We never know 
 what is big with issue to ourselves or 
 to the world. This stretch of the road 
 164 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 may seem mean and prosaic and not 
 worth traversing ; but we never know 
 at what turn of the road there will 
 break on us the gleaming towers of the 
 City of God. 
 
 All service ranks the same with God. 
 
 Say not " a small event " ! Why " small " ? 
 Costs it more pain that this ye call 
 A " great event " should come to pass 
 Than that ? 
 
 With God there is neither great nor small. 
 Every speck He has made is a little world. 
 The leaf of a tree, the petal of a flower, 
 the wing of a fly are as perfect as the 
 solar system. Faithfulness is a divine 
 quality, and the nearer we get to God 
 the more will we take on His attribute 
 of faithfulness. As a religious quality 
 faithfulness is just the result of faith. 
 It is the quality which faith has of af- 
 fecting and permeating the whole man. 
 Faith is not a mere intellectual assent to 
 doctrines : it is constancy of soul, persist- 
 165 
 
 a 
 
THE IDEAL OF WORK 
 
 ence in adhering to truth. The test of 
 the faith of our heart is the faithfulness 
 of our life. 
 
 If life is a discipline, if it is designed 
 as a probation, as the wisest and the best 
 of earth^s sons have ever felt it to be, then 
 it is folly to neglect our present actual lot 
 by dreaming of a time when we may be 
 called to what seems vi^ider service. To 
 fail in the small, to prove ourselves un- 
 faithful there, is as serious as to fail in 
 the great ; nay, it is more disastrous, for 
 the man who has failed in the great may 
 come down humbly to try again in the 
 small and qualify once more for promo- 
 tion, while to fail in the small is like 
 depriving ourselves of the last chance. 
 With a view to promotion in service, 
 which is a right and altogether noble 
 ambition, we must not weaken our claims 
 or our capacity by being careless of pres- 
 ent opportunity or contemptuous of it. 
 The small is the stepping-stone to the 
 great. It is the natural order and a 
 166 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
" ^ I ■^HE latest gospel in this world is, 
 I Know thy work and do it," says 
 Carlyle. It is also a pretty early 
 gospel, which has driven man by necessity, 
 assuring him that in the sweat of his brow 
 he must eat his bread. The Chi'istian 
 faith has ever made much of the duty and 
 even of the dignity of work, finding its 
 highest plea for this dignity in the thought 
 that God is the supreme Worker, and offer- 
 ing to man the thrilling motive to become 
 a fellow-worker with God. The earthly 
 activities are not despised, as in a religion 
 like Buddhism, but are set forth as 
 divinely appointed instruments of spiritual 
 discipline and occasions for growth in 
 grace, and are set forth also as the ap- 
 proved opportunities for service, the good 
 fruits of the good tree of faith. 
 171 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK I 
 
 Christianity lifts the whole subject in- 
 to the plane of religion by taking account 
 of the spirit in which all work is done 
 rather than the particular tasks themselves, 
 making the obligation of work universal 
 and offering to each man in his own place 
 and lot an ideal for himself. Even in the 
 monastic system, which was specially de- 
 signed for holiness, and which was at best 
 a one-sided and mistaken attempt, this 
 practical side was not neglected ; and 
 labor took its place beside prayer as an 
 equally necessary implement for religious 
 culture. The Christian standard of con- 
 duct is indeed set so high that the most 
 plausible objection to it is that it is im- 
 practicable. In Christian ethics duty 
 received a new meaning and point, and 
 was enforced by the highest sanctions. 
 Since life is a probation, the appeal for 
 faithfulness even in the trivial routine 
 comes home to the individual conscience. 
 Thus the gospel of work is implied in the 
 Gospel itself, and never has it found such 
 172 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 It has never been dig- 
 
 a commanding motive as 
 
 faith has given it. 
 
 nified with the name of a gospel in itself. 
 
 It has rather been accepted as one of the 
 
 facts of human life, and has been drawn 
 
 into the service of the highest interests of 
 
 men. 
 
 But the very phrase so common to-day, 
 the " Gospel of Work," suggests that iji 
 some quarters the subject is not looked 
 on from this Christian standpoint, but is 
 made a substitute for religion itself. It 
 is spoken of with something like relig- 
 ious enthusiasm. Christianity asserts that 
 faith without works is dead, but here we 
 seem to have works attempting to show 
 life without faith at all. There is a 
 modern preaching of a gospel of work 
 which slights faith and arrogates to it- 
 self something like the supreme place 
 of religion. " Properly speaking," says 
 Carlyle, " all true work is religion ; and 
 whatsoever religion is not work may go 
 173 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 and dwell among the Brahmins, Anti- 
 nomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it 
 will ; with ine it shall have no harbor. 
 Admirable is that of the old monks, 
 Laborare est orare, work is worship." In 
 many writers work is treated as if it were 
 enough for man, or at least it is assumed 
 that it is all there is for man. He is 
 called on to " fill and moralize the day," 
 in the French phrase of which Matthew 
 Arnold was so fond. The day is to be so 
 filled and moralized by work, because the 
 night Cometh when no man can work. 
 The pathos of life, with its uncertainty 
 and brevity, gives a sort of passion to the 
 preaching of the gospel of work. 
 
 We can see how this strenuous creed 
 should appeal to an earnest man who 
 realizes how short the time is. Indeed 
 it is interesting to notice how often our 
 Lord's phrase that the night cometh is 
 made the basis for the new Stoicism. 
 After all, the great fact of life to all men 
 is that the night cometh when no man 
 174 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 can work. However we look at it, what- 
 ever be our faith about the future, we are 
 brought up to this termination. There 
 may be, as Browning sang, " other heights 
 in other lives, Grod willing " ; but here 
 there is a limit to any earthly height, and 
 a swift descent into the dark. To the 
 wise man and to the fool, as the preacher 
 said in his irony, the selfsame end comes. 
 However the day is spent, the night at 
 last arrives. The active body, the think- 
 ing brain, the feeling heart, the aspir- 
 ing soul cease from action and thought 
 and feeling and aspiring on this plane 
 where these powers have hitherto acted. 
 Whether or not the kind of life we live 
 conditions death and after-death, it can- 
 not be denied that death conditions and 
 limits life. All philosophy must take ac- 
 count of it. To leave it out in any sys- 
 tem of thought that pretends to represent 
 human life is like Hamlet with the part 
 of the Prince of Denmark left out. Our 
 practical ethics must be affected by our 
 175 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 view of this dread subject. The whole 
 contents of life, what it is in essence, 
 what it is for, what it will become, are 
 determined by this. We cannot always 
 keep life and death in two distinct cate- 
 gories and arrange a handy little moral 
 code for the one without reference to the 
 other. We must ultimately co-ordinate 
 our thinking over the whole sphere of 
 human existence, and take into account 
 all the facts ; and the greatest fact of 
 life is death. The fact that the night 
 Cometh gives color and urgency to the 
 day. It fills it with meaning or turns 
 it into a farce ; touches it with pathos 
 or with tragedy. A day with a night 
 coming, scraping its heels as it follows, 
 can never be as a day with no night. 
 And what we mean by the term " night '' 
 will unfailingly influence our conception 
 of what the day is. If the night be a 
 sleeping to wake, or if it be a complete 
 and absolute end of light, our view of 
 the hours that fill up the day must be 
 176 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK. 
 
 different. Or assume that another day 
 will dawn and the shadows of night flee 
 away, much in our conception of the 
 value of life will depend on whether the 
 succeeding day has intimate relation with 
 the previous one or means the beginning 
 of a new existence. Creed and conduct 
 in this all-important matter must react 
 on each other. The Christian faith, 
 which lights up the fuLure with a great 
 hope, by that also gives an immense 
 motive power to ordinary life ; and any 
 form of materialism or even of agnosti- 
 cism which denies immortality must in- 
 evitably alter the practical ethics of men. 
 To put a meaning of despair into the 
 words " the night cometh when no man 
 can work " must consciously or uncon- 
 sciously affect daily life and the standards 
 and sanctions by which men live. To 
 take away the authority of religion and 
 the faith in the spiritual world around 
 and above and beyond us is bound to 
 create vast changes in the outlook of 
 12 177 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 life and the practice of life. It is absurd 
 to expect that faith can be eclipsed in 
 our midst and yet leave us where we 
 were. 
 
 Now it does not follow that the first 
 and only effect of such eclipse of faith 
 must be an immediate and universal re- 
 laxation of morality. It is indeed ac- 
 cording to historical analogy in similar 
 times, and according to experience of 
 our own time, to predict that it need 
 not be so. To many, if not to the 
 mass, it is true, the natural result of 
 the denial of God and immortality can 
 only mean the lowering of life all along 
 the line. If we are as the beasts that 
 perish and like them to-morrow we die, 
 then we cannot wonder if the simple 
 popular philosophy is accepted, " Let us 
 eat and drink ; let us snatch the day 
 ere it flies, for the night cometh soon." 
 We are expecting more of human nature 
 than human nature has hitherto meant 
 178 
 
 r^ 
 
1 THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 if we do not lay our account for such 
 easy reasoning. Thoughtless enjoyment 
 of the present becomes a feasible and 
 even a rational plan of life. Duty can- 
 not maintain her place of authority as 
 the stern daughter of the voice of God. 
 Can we ask men to deny themselves, to 
 live for the future, to follow the gleam, 
 to nurse high thought and noble effort, 
 if we tell them that the ideal is only a 
 malady of which men sicken and wear 
 out ? What is the use of struggling and 
 striving if there be no end to reach and 
 no standard of morality beyond tradition 
 or custom or convenience .'' Why make 
 a god of duty when every other god is 
 dethroned ? Why work to the highest 
 and fullest of a short strenuous day, 
 when there is nothing to add except 
 that the night cometh when no man 
 can work ? Such argument cannot be 
 answered except by an appeal to some 
 sense of obligation, which is after all 
 only a relic of religious sentiment or 
 179 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 education. We can say nothing further 
 to the man who draws out the bitter 
 conclusion of the eclipse of faith, " All 
 is vanity, and what profit hath a man 
 of all his labor under the sun ? " 
 
 At the same time it must be admitted 
 that this is not the only alternative to 
 one who accepts the full agnostic posi- 
 tion. Even here there is a better part 
 followed by the man who is in earnest 
 and serious. Such an one says that since 
 the night cometh when no man can work, 
 he will therefore work while it is day and 
 give himself to the best he can command. 
 Matthew Arnold, who knew well the 
 temptation to which men succumb when 
 faith is loosened, strikes this high note. 
 In his fine poem, The Better Part, after 
 statina: the common argument of the man 
 who has ceased to believe in Christ and 
 in eternal life, he goes on — 
 
 So answerest thou ; but whj' not rather say : 
 Hath man no second life ? Pitch this one high ! 
 Sits there no Judge in Heaven, our sin to see? 
 180 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 More strictly then the inward judge obey ! 
 Was Christ a man like us ? — Ah, let us try 
 If we then tuo can be such men as he ! 
 
 Of course it is a consequence of the 
 position to try to show that loss of faith 
 does not necessarily mean the impoverisli- 
 ment of moral life ; hence the attempt to 
 string men's conscience up to this high 
 pitch. But we must admit that the im- 
 mediate result of unbelief may be to do 
 so to the earnest-hearted. The modern 
 Gospel of work, which has such a place 
 in ethical writers, is to some extent a 
 direct consequence of the weakening of 
 faith. Because the night cometh when 
 no man can work, with its tragedy of a 
 broken life, let us shut our teeth and 
 straighten our back and go through with 
 it ; let us work while it is day : there is 
 nothing better than this, nothing more 
 worthy of man than stern unflinching 
 devotion to duty. Carlyle would not 
 have been so insistent on his gospel of 
 work if he had had a richer gospel to 
 181 
 
t THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 i 
 
 declare. It is a new version of the old 
 theological antinomy between faith and 
 good works, this time for the sake of 
 temporal instead of eternal salvation. 
 
 We can easily see how the tendency 
 works out. In the waning of spiritual 
 life the earnest soul tui-ns to duty, seeks 
 to slake the infinite thirst by labor. 
 The noble-minded whose creed is a denial 
 of the Divine can only look for peace by 
 stern repression of human needs, and seek 
 a gospel of work to dull the pain of what 
 is really a gospel of despair. Huxley, 
 both by precept and by example, sets 
 forth this virile consequence of his un- 
 faith. Just because the night cometh 
 when no man can work he was abundant 
 in labor, and in his Evolution and Ethics 
 he calls upon his hearers to play the man 
 and to attempt some work of noble note. 
 We remember the fine finish of that lec- 
 ture with its plain preaching of the new 
 Stoicism, summoning men to the great 
 moral task to cherish the good and to bear 
 182 
 
 ^ 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 the evil with stout hearts, striving ever to 
 
 diminish it ; calling us to be 
 
 strong in will 
 To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield. 
 
 Man who refuses any more to be lured on 
 by hope is to be driven on by despair. 
 There is a Christian gospel of work, as 
 we have seen, in which the meanest de- 
 tails of duty are glorified by being done 
 for love, and even drudgery is made 
 divine, and all the discipline of daily 
 work is used for the growth in grace and 
 character which are yet to blossom out in 
 fine flower under the smile of God. But 
 here is a gospel of work, which takes no ac- 
 count of such motives, which bends to the 
 tasks without being braced by the hope. 
 
 It is indeed a remarkable phenomenon, 
 a new form of works without faith, of 
 morality without religion. It is at best 
 only a counsel of despair, making the 
 best of a bad job, a poor enough substi- 
 tute for what is lost, but we must do 
 justice to the touch of nobility in it. 
 183 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 Romanes has a passage which illustrates 
 admirably some of the points insisted on, 
 in his A Candid Examination of TJieism, 
 in which he took up a position of agnosti- 
 cism and almost of materialism, a position 
 which he left in after years to come back 
 to his old faith in the gospel of Christ. 
 The passage is interesting too because it 
 lays stress on feelings of the heart rare 
 enough in philosophical writings of tlie 
 kind, and because it does not hide the 
 poverty of the new position. " And for- 
 asmuch as I am far from being able to 
 agree with those who affirm that the 
 twilight doctrine of the ' new faith ' is 
 a desirable substitute for the waning 
 splendor of ' the old,' I am not ashamed 
 to confess that with this virtual negation 
 
 of God the universe to me has lost its 
 soul of loveliness ; and although fi'om 
 henceforth the precept ' to work while it 
 is day' will doubtless gain an intensified 
 force from the terribly intensified mean- 
 ing of the words that ' the night cometh 
 184 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 when no man can work,' yet when at 
 times I think, as think at times I must, 
 of the appalling contrast between the 
 hallowed glory of that creed which once 
 was mine and the lonely mystery of 
 existence as now I find it, at such times 
 I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid 
 the sharpest pang of which my nature is 
 susceptible. For whether it be due to 
 my intelligence not being sufficiently ad- 
 vanced to meet the requirements of the 
 age, or whether it be due to the memory 
 of those sacred associations which to me 
 at least were the sweetest that life has 
 given, I cannot but feel that for me, and 
 for others who think as I do, there is a 
 dreadful truth in those words of Hamilton, 
 philosophy having become a meditation 
 not merely of death but of annihilation, 
 the precept hnow thyself has become 
 transformed into the terrific oracle of 
 Oedipus — 
 
 Mayest thou ne'er know the truth of what thou 
 art " 
 
 IS,") 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 .M 
 
 
 We have here again the gospel of work 
 as a pitiful substitute for the fuller, richer 
 gospel of the love of God. Out of all 
 the wreckage of the stranded faith the 
 only thing to him that can be called a 
 moral gain is the sterner necessity to lay 
 hold of present duty, the intensified force 
 of the precept to work while it is day 
 because of the lurid meaning of the night 
 that Cometh. Here also there is no 
 attempt to deny that it is a poor asset 
 to recover from such a tragic bankruptcy. 
 We must honor those who meet the 
 eclipse of faith in such heroic mood, in- 
 stead of weakly assenting to the softer 
 creed, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die " ; as in the decay of pagan faith we 
 honor the Stoics who preached a similar 
 doctrine of honor and duty as opposed to 
 the Epicurean alternative ; though from 
 the premises the one is as logical as the 
 other, and from some points of view is 
 even more rational than the other. But 
 will such a modern Stoicism last ? Will 
 186 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 such a gospel of work wear ? Will it not 
 be, as it was in Rome, a sort of luxury of 
 a few strong and noble souls who cling to 
 something stable when the foundation of 
 life is removed ? After all, why should 
 there be any sacredjwss in labor, which is 
 one of Carlyle's phrases in praise of it ? 
 And why should he protest so vehemently 
 against the gospel of happiness and against 
 the gospel of liberty, which he thinks 
 must ruin the best in life, when all he has 
 to offer is a painful gospel of work ? lie 
 thinks that the whole wretchedness and 
 atheism of man's ways in these generations 
 shadows itself for us in the pretension to 
 be what we call happy. " Every pitifulest 
 whipster that walks within a skin has his 
 head filled with the notion that he is, 
 shall be, or by all human and divine laws 
 ought to be, happy/' The strenuous 
 answer he offers to this demand for happi- 
 ness is " ' Happy ' my brother ? First of 
 all, what difference is it whether thou art 
 happy or not ? To-day becomes yesterday 
 187 
 
THE GOSPEL OFWORR 
 
 so fast, all To-moiTOWs become Yester- 
 days ; and there is no question whatever 
 of the happiness, but quite another ques- 
 tion." " It is, after all, the one unhappi- 
 ness of a man, that he cannot work ; that 
 he cannot get his destiny as a man fulfilled. 
 Behold the day is passing swiftly over, 
 our life is passing swiftly over ; and 
 the night cometh wherein no man can 
 work. The night once come, our happi- 
 ness, our unhappiness — it is all abolished, 
 vanished, clean gone : a thing that has 
 been." We need the noble scorn of such 
 words, as they are a strong moral tonic. 
 But even the pitifulest whipster has the 
 right to ask why work should be his 
 destiny as a man ; and if it makes no 
 difference whether he is happy or not, he 
 may ask what difference it makes whether 
 he works or not when the everlasting 
 night, with her silences and veracities, is 
 come ? We may despise the man who 
 chooses what appears to us the weaker 
 and lower alternative, but it is difficult 
 188 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 to see what grounds we have to condemn 
 him. 
 
 From the assertion of our modern 
 prophets of the vanity of hfe without an 
 adequate end of labor, we step to the 
 further assertion of the vanity of labor 
 itself -without an adequate end. We 
 naturally ask about any work, What is it 
 for ; what does it lead to ? After all, 
 however high our estimate of any achieve- 
 ment of man, the work which we can do 
 is of very little moment in the history of 
 the universe. A man may manufacture 
 cloth or build houses of the best material, 
 but neither garments nor houses can last 
 for ever. Even the longest-lived work, 
 which we call by the name of art, is in 
 itself not immortal. The canvas fades ; 
 the marble crumbles ; the language dies 
 and changes : so we can only speak about 
 painting or sculpture or literature as im- 
 mortal works of art in a very limited 
 sense. If labor is judged by actual pro- 
 189 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 duction, then all labor is vain. The test 
 of work, as it is the test of life itself, is 
 an inner one, the end that underlies it, 
 the spirit in which it is done, the motive 
 that inspires it. If work is needed to 
 dignify life, something is also needed to 
 dignify work. The mere habit of work 
 will do much for a man ; but in itself it 
 is morally neutral, and needs to be filled 
 by an ideal of some kind. Its real worth 
 depends on the end for which it is 
 designed. The true dignity of life is 
 secured when it is joined to the infinite. 
 Only the spiritual belongs to the eternal 
 world ; and so only the spiritual is des- 
 tined to live. This is the only i-edemp- 
 tion of work from meanness and ultimate 
 fatuity. 
 
 Certain it is that work divorced from 
 faith loses its great inspiring motive to 
 drive life into the high regions. The 
 true gospel of work, and the only one 
 that can apply to all, and be a force to 
 every man that believes, is that which 
 190 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 our Lord stated for Himself, " I must 
 work the works of Him that sent me 
 while it is day." It is the recognition 
 that life has a divine purpose and mean- 
 ing, and will have a divine judgment. 
 The night cometh, the end of the day of 
 opportunity and service comes ; and so 
 there is a note of urgency in it, not be- 
 cause that is all we have, but because if 
 we have lost the great opportunity of the 
 day of probation we have lost the oppor- 
 tunity of being and becoming and doing 
 and serving, growing in grace, and per- 
 forming the Father's Will. This faith in 
 God, and in God's future for us, adds a 
 glorious light to all service, however small 
 and petty it looks ; for it is not the work 
 in itself that counts, but the spirit in 
 which it is done, the manner of doing it, 
 and the lessons learned in doing. The 
 true ennobling of woi'k is by flooding it 
 with the light of eternity, and by color- 
 ing it with the glory of love. Work, 
 
 like everything else in life, needs to be 
 191 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 redeemed from vanity. Godless work is 
 blasted by the same essential condemna- 
 tion as Godless life. The night cometh 
 for it. It is only "in the Lord" that 
 labor is not in vain, done of faith and 
 done for love. 
 
 We cannot imagine a stronger motive 
 than such a living faith. A man living 
 in the power of an endless life would be 
 expected to become serious and responsi- 
 ble, to gain increasing insight into what 
 are the truly important things, to become 
 quick to recognize duty, and unflinching 
 in its fulfilment. His faith is a dynamic 
 to drive life with exhaustless energy. It 
 takes into time some of the force of eter- 
 nity. The man who tastes the power of 
 the world to come grows to the full stat- 
 ure of his personality, with ever-enlarging 
 outlook and ever-expanding faculties. 
 He should attain to virility and stability 
 of character. From the standpoint of 
 eternity the confused details of life should 
 fall into proper perspective ; the petti- 
 192 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 r: 
 
 ness and shiftlessness of ordinary life 
 should shrivel off. If such an absolute 
 faith in immortality were being daily 
 absorbed into the being of a man, it 
 would be an impulsive force that would 
 transform the whole of life, kindling 
 every power till it glowed, and yet steady- 
 ing the man with quiet intensity of pur- 
 pose. It would shed a light on his path, 
 that he might walk serenely in the way 
 of God, unallured by seductions on the 
 right hand and the left. It would give 
 him the necessary motive to attain mas- 
 tery of himself, and to spend himself in 
 the devoted service of God. The lesser 
 lights of earth, and the smaller loves of 
 the world, would wither before the maj 
 esty of his ideal. He would choose the 
 better part consistently and persistently ; 
 for the lower would lose its attraction. 
 Grant this faith in the Gospel of the 
 Resurrection as a hypothesis, and we 
 would not wonder at such a result. It 
 would be a moral dynamic, unsurpassed 
 13 193 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 as a motive for noble action and high 
 thinking. If it were possible to live in 
 the power of endless life, all life would 
 be suffused with meaning and with dig- 
 nity. Why should it not be possible ? 
 The world can be to a man not the poor 
 tinselled stage for low comedy which we 
 make it ; but an arena of action where 
 he plays his part before high heaven, at- 
 taining self-mastery, spending time and 
 talent and strength in devoted service, 
 with the blessed assurance that the labor 
 is not in vain. He lives in the spiritual 
 world already ; so that when the pilgrim- 
 age is ended there is not much of the life 
 to slough off. He enters the Kingdom 
 laden with the spoils of life. " Therefore 
 my beloved brethren be ye steadfast, un- 
 movable, always abounding in the work 
 of the Lord forasmuch as ye know that 
 your labor is not in vain in the Lord." 
 
 194 
 
^HEN the last dawm are fallen on gray. 
 And all life's toils and ease complete. 
 They know who work, not they who play. 
 If rest is sweet. — Symonds. 
 
 Return to thy rest, my soul. — Psalm cxvi. 7. 
 
MUCH has been said in praise of 
 work, but the heart of man 
 lonffs for rest. It is one of 
 
 o 
 
 the practical problems to all to adjust 
 correctly the relative position of these 
 two subjects in our life. They are 
 closely connected, as we know from ex- 
 perience. There can be no true rest 
 without work, and the full delight of a 
 holiday cannot be known except by the 
 man who has earned it ; while both the 
 work itself and the worker need rest. 
 Some men have never worked enough 
 to know the joy and the peace of rest 
 from work ; and, on the other hand, a 
 few habitually commit the sin of over- 
 work. Many endure the working days 
 for the sake of the holidays, and work 
 ever with an eye on the rest and recrea- 
 197 
 
 ^as 
 
REST AND 
 
 
 tion to follow ; while some wise men rest 
 for the sake of their work, looking upon 
 it as the needful preparation to enable 
 them to do their best. 
 
 We usually set the two words in anti- 
 thesis, as if work and rest were absolute 
 contradictories, the one implying the ab- 
 sence of the other. Alphonse Daudet, in 
 his sketch of Gambetta, speaks of the 
 shock he received on entering Paris dur- 
 ing the war, just before the siege. The 
 difference between the quiet of nature 
 and the stir and din of the excited city 
 was very marked. The swarms of people 
 in military uniforms, the resounding cry, 
 the mass which came to the surface be- 
 cause of the absence of the police, made 
 the city seem a dream, or rather a night- 
 mare. " I was returning from the coun- 
 try, a quiet nook in the forest of Senart, 
 the fresh odor of the leaves and of the 
 river yet in my nostrils. I felt myself 
 stunned ; it was Paris no longer, but a 
 huge fair, an enormous barrack holding 
 198 
 
 ^ 
 
 kl££ 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 revel." The contrast between rest and 
 work to most of us is like the contrast 
 between the quiet of the hills or the 
 solitude of the sea, and the busy bus- 
 tling city. When we compare the human 
 longing for rest with the heavy-laden lot 
 of so much labor, we understand why they 
 should be thought opposed to each other. 
 Perhaps more to-day than ever many 
 go to the very limits of labor. With 
 some it is temperament which makes them 
 too eager, and makes them tend to in- 
 crease the pace of their toil. With more 
 it is the pressure of modern life of which 
 we hear so much, the exacting nature of 
 business and the multiplying demands 
 for energy. Men get worn out, and com- 
 plain of being " run down," and need to 
 call a halt to stop the drain on the life's 
 resources. Rest is prescribed to recruit 
 the strength and restore the decaying 
 force. In proportion as we make much 
 of work in our social conditions, we make 
 much of holidays for the jaded workers, 
 199 
 
REST AND 
 
 when the diminished vitality can be re- 
 invigorated. Tliere is a ministry of phys- 
 ical rest to counterbalance the heavy load 
 of labor, a ministry in which Nature 
 brings her recuperative power and revives 
 the waning energies. The more the strain 
 of life, the more men need times of re- 
 freshment to repair the loss and make up 
 by rest the constant wear and tear of 
 work. 
 
 All who praise work and make it an 
 unmitigated blessing, with no shade of 
 curse in it, must take account of this deep 
 human longing for rest and for relief from 
 constant strain. We may hold up to ad- 
 miration the strenuous life with its end- 
 less activities and its almost reckless 
 labor ; but if work were in itself a suffi- 
 cient end for man, why should the heart 
 never be satisfied with it, and the sweet- 
 est souls look upon heaven as a place 
 of rest ? We all know moods when we 
 sympathize with Charles Lamb's protest 
 against the ever-haunting importunity of 
 200 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 business, with plough or loom or anvil or 
 spade, and worst of all, the " dry drudg- 
 ery at the desk's dead wood.'" 
 
 Who first invented work, and bound the free 
 And holiday-rejoicing spirit down ? 
 
 Who but the being unblest, alien from good, 
 Sabbathless Satan ! 
 
 There is something to be said on the side 
 of leisure as against the hurry and rush 
 and fever of toil ; if not a plea for idle- 
 ness, at least a plea for more time and 
 opportunity for quietness. There is 
 sometimes a " wise and masterly inactiv- 
 ity," which Sir James Mackintosh, surely 
 with some sarcasm, said was the usual sys- 
 tem of the British House of Commons. 
 Times of leisure are necessary, even in the 
 interests of work itself. 
 
 The need for rest is implanted in our 
 very nature. Experience and history and 
 
 relig 
 
 all 
 
 bh 
 
 com Dine 
 
 value of ceasing from labor, 
 201 
 
 insisting on the 
 We cannot 
 
REST 
 
 estimate what it has meant for the world 
 to have a day in the week of which it is 
 said, " In it thou shalt do no work." 
 The Fourth Commandment is one of 
 the world's safeguards, educating men in 
 the true ministry of leisure and in the 
 possibilities of leisure. It is the chief 
 means by which the primal curse has 
 been modified and the strain of toil has 
 been relieved. The greed and selfishness 
 of men have been kept in check by it. 
 The low materialistic theories of life have 
 been held at bay by the opportunities 
 given, and the suggestions of spiritual 
 things made possible, by the day sacred 
 to rest and to God. The Sabbath has 
 been a sanctuary for weary, heavy-laden 
 men and women, a breathing space from 
 ceaseless toil. It has also been a sanctu- 
 ary for the souls of men, pointing to a 
 higher life than the material, and to in- 
 terests larger than the meat that perish- 
 eth. It is a continual commentary on 
 the word of Christ that man shall not 
 202 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 live by bread alone. It has conserved 
 the spiritual for the race, preaching its 
 own eloquent sermon by its silence. It 
 brings us back to the great facts, for- 
 gotten and obscured by the world's din, 
 but emerging again to take their rightful 
 place in the life of man. It sets the key- 
 note of the music which should fill and 
 inspire all the other days. 
 
 This insistence on a day of rest has 
 been useful as a protest against imagin- 
 ing that life exists for the sake of work 
 instead of the opposite, that work exists 
 for the sake of life. We must not make 
 too much of mere work, and above all 
 must not let all our energies be absorbed 
 by material activities. There is a whole 
 side of life opened to us by Christ's call 
 to meditate on a great lesson of nature, 
 " Consider the lilies of the field how they 
 grow ; they toil not, neither do they 
 spin.'" A danger of the gospel of work 
 of our day is to judge everything by util- 
 ity, and to judge people also by their 
 203 
 
 ■K 
 
practical ability and usefulness. There is 
 a place for beauty, for flowers of the field, 
 though they neither toil nor spin. There 
 are some with the flower-nature, gracious 
 and sweet, but with little evident practi- 
 cal value to the world, unfit even for the 
 heavy labor in which others rejoice, hum- 
 ble and gentle, with a tender beauty of 
 character, unconsciously displaying the 
 lovely bloom of love itself. There is 
 a place for the lilies of the field, as well 
 as for the corn and the barley. The 
 flowers that gladden and console life 
 serve a function as high as the wheat 
 that sustains it. So, there are many lives 
 of the highest usefulness which never con- 
 tribute to what we call the means of liv- 
 ing. It is because we have such a narrow 
 view of what living is that we restrict its 
 means to material good. Poetry and art 
 and music are not among the things we 
 include in the necessaries of life and do 
 nothing to expedite business, but do they 
 make no contribution to society ? Would 
 204. 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 not the world be a sadder place and life a 
 poorer thing without them ? If we judge 
 of things by bare utility, are we to leave 
 no room for joy and beauty ? There are 
 some also of the flower-heart, of sweet 
 unselfish sunny nature, who are of little 
 active service, but whose ministry is of 
 endless blessing, and who for the world's 
 best life could less easily be dispensed 
 with, than many of the square-jawed, 
 masterful type of strenuous life, and who 
 toil and spin with uni-emitting labor. Some 
 of them may be among the weak and 
 sick or in some way incapacitated from 
 the hard work of life. The delicate, the 
 unfit, the simple-minded, those whom the 
 rough rude world calls the incompetent, 
 who cannot join in the bustle and stir and 
 take on them the burdens, or face gaily 
 the storms of life, need not be discour- 
 aged by their uselessness, if they are liv- 
 ing the flower-life in unrepining sweetness 
 and with the gracious comfort of love. 
 They need not grieve overmuch that they 
 205 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 do not toil or spin if they by their simple 
 love give rest and good cheer and new 
 heart to those who go out to the battle. 
 In like manner something is to be said 
 for the contemplative life as against the 
 practical. This is one of the chief les- 
 sons of the ministry of rest to us, and is 
 one of the great opportunities of Sun- 
 day. In times of leisure we lay aside 
 the practical cares and worries and rec- 
 ollect ourselves, gather ourselves again 
 at the centre, that we may calmly find 
 the right value of all our activities, and 
 thus also give them the right direction. 
 Leisure is needed for the richest and 
 deepest lives ; and occasions for silence 
 and repose come to all, or at least can 
 be made by all. " Remember the Sab- 
 bath day to keep it holy." It was de- 
 signed as a day of rest from secular toil ; 
 but holiness meant more than mere sep- 
 aration from everyday employment. It 
 meant the use of the day so that man 
 would be refreshed in his whole being. 
 206 
 
REST AND 
 
 Abstinence from worldly occupation and 
 cessation of work do not represent tlie 
 complete advantage of the day. There 
 must be a laying hold of the opportu- 
 nity for spiritual culture. We might 
 drop work and take to play, turn the 
 holy day into a holiday, bartering the 
 chance of real rest for the chance of 
 recreation, but that would be to lose 
 the great opportunity. 
 
 George Gissing, who cannot be called 
 a prejudiced observer, says in The Pri- 
 vate Papers of Henry Rey croft: " There 
 was a time when it delighted me to flesh 
 my satire on the English Sunday ; I 
 could see nothing but antiquated fool- 
 ishness and modern hypocrisy in this 
 weekly pause from labor and from bustle. 
 Now I prize it as an inestimable boon, 
 and dread every encroachment upon its 
 restful stillness. . . . When out of Eng- 
 land I have always missed this Sunday 
 quietude, this difference from ordinary 
 days which seems to affect the very at- 
 207 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 mosphere. . . . Think as one may of its 
 significance, our Day of Rest has a pecu- 
 liar sanctity, felt, I imagine, in a more or 
 less vague way even by those who wish 
 to see the village lads at cricket and 
 theatres open in the town. The idea 
 is surely as good a one as ever came 
 to heavy-laden mortals ; let one whole 
 day in every week be removed from the 
 common life of the world, lifted above 
 common pleasures as above common cares. 
 Sunday has always brought large good to 
 the generality, and to a chosen number 
 has been the very life of the soul, how- 
 ever heretically some of them understood 
 the words. If its ancient use perish from 
 us, so much the worse for the country." 
 Being a bit of a pessimist in this as in 
 other things, he thinks it will perish, 
 and with it will perish the habit of peri- 
 odic calm which is the best boon ever 
 bestowed upon a people. We may ask, 
 if it is such an undoubted blessing, why 
 should we let it perish.? Why should 
 208 
 
we allow the boon to be taken away from 
 us ? " With the decline of the old faith, 
 Sunday cannot but lose its sanction, and 
 no loss among the innumerable we are 
 suffering will work so effectually for pop- 
 ular vulgarization. . . . Imagine a bank- 
 holiday once a week ! " To some of us 
 it seems a very good argument in favor 
 of the old faith. It is surely reason why 
 we should strive to keep the day from 
 losing its sanction. 
 
 But we can never save the situation by 
 looking on Sunday as ministering to the 
 necessity for rest merely. We must see 
 that it ministers to a higher necessity 
 still. If its chief function is physical 
 rest, that may logically be extended to 
 include all sorts of recreation. We need 
 to lay stress on its spiritual opportunities. 
 The Church of Christ and the Sunday 
 stand or fall together ; and the Church 
 to-day, as ever, stands as an eternal pro- 
 test against the shallow surface life which 
 is ever in danger of withering away be- 
 14 209 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 cause it has no root. It is a constant 
 reminder of the need for the contempla- 
 tive life and the culture of the devotional. 
 It calls to prayer, to praise, to worship, 
 to shut the door on the world and forget 
 the distracting ambitions, and desires, 
 and works. It stands as the Sanctuary 
 of the race, for the weary and the heavy- 
 laden and all the beaten, broken lives of 
 men ; and it tells the strong and the 
 victors in the fight that away from God 
 their strength is spent for nought, and 
 their victories are empty and barren of 
 good. It asserts that even work without 
 worship is idle, the frantic beating of the 
 air. To learn truly to be active, we must 
 go back to the Sanctuary of life and gain 
 the inner sense of things. We need to 
 gather the soul again at the centre of rest. 
 If we would resist the encroachments on 
 the Sabbath it is not enough to make it 
 
 a day of cessation from toil, 
 make it what it should be, a unique op- 
 portunity for the refreshment of the whole 
 210 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 man, for worship, for thought, for com- 
 munion with God and His people. We 
 must guard and use it jealously to get 
 the true good from it, to make us better, 
 and stronger, and fitter for our daily 
 work. Worship rests the soul as sleep 
 rests the bod\'. 
 
 This leads us to notice the ideal in 
 connection with this subject, which 
 makes rest not a state dissevered from 
 work, but the very atmosphere in which 
 work is done. There is a rest which goes 
 deeper than mere physical repose, the 
 peace and quietness of mind and heart 
 which alone make the best work possible. 
 This is, as Matthew Arnold says, the lesson 
 of nature : 
 
 Of toil unsever'd from tranquillity ! 
 Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows 
 Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose. 
 Too great for haste, too high for rivalry ! 
 
 It is the lesson on the very face of nature 
 
 that growth is accompanied with deep- 
 
 211 
 
r 
 
 ing, but never hasting. There is a 
 masterful ease about all growth. Nature 
 does her work without strain or hurry, 
 with no jar of mechanism, but with the 
 resistless strength of quietness. In human 
 life also, in its own degree, this same 
 quietness is ever the mark of strength. 
 The master of any art does his work 
 easily, with sure, swift touches, lying back 
 of which is sleepless toil. He has no 
 need for the display of vulgar melodrama, 
 but can create his effects with delicate 
 touch. In the art of life a man must 
 study to be quiet that he may be able to 
 work well. It means a spirit of rest per- 
 vading all the channels of thought, and 
 feeling, and action. 
 
 If this is true of the art of life, much 
 more true is it of the great task of Chris- 
 tian life. That means a spirit of faith 
 radiating out through these same chan- 
 212 
 
t 
 
 nels. " What is tlie use of the cloister 
 in the midst of society," says Fra Mar- 
 che.se, " if it is not a focus and centre 
 of morality and religion, diffusing and 
 planting deeply in the hearts of the 
 people ideas of honesty, justice, and 
 virtue, in order to temper and hold in 
 balance the brutal force of the passions 
 which threaten continually to absorb all 
 the thoughts and affections of men ? " 
 It is a noble ideal for a moneistery, which 
 has sometimes been achieved ; and in the 
 individual life faith is a cloister in the 
 heart, a quiet vital force making a centre 
 which diffuses strength and inspires every 
 activity. The truth of Quietism and all 
 kindred mysticism is self-evident to every 
 religious mind. It is that through faith 
 the soul can attain a repose which makes 
 it independent of external things and can 
 say in sweet humility with the Psalmist, 
 " Surely I have behaved and quieted my ■ 
 self as a child that is weaned of his mother : 
 my soul is even as a weaned child." There 
 213 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 is a detachment of soul from the world, 
 an inward aloofness which puts things in 
 their rightful place and makes a man sit 
 loosely to all earthly good. 
 
 Some socialists make enmity to Chris- 
 tianity part of their system because they 
 see how Christian faith gives quiet con- 
 tent, and they look for discontent to 
 give them a lever for the upheaval of 
 social conditions. Of course, their con- 
 tention is false and neglects the other 
 side of the facts, namely, that Christian 
 faith being rooted and grounded in love, 
 has been, and is, the greatest force in the 
 world against wrong and injustice. But 
 in so far it is true and is the glory of the 
 faith, that it teaches men both to be 
 abased and to abound. The escape from 
 all the fret and fever and hurry and un- 
 rest of the world is to be achieved not 
 by running away from the difficulties, but 
 by deepening the life. " Seek not much 
 rest but patience,"" .said Thomas a Kempis, 
 and patience means not quiescent waiting 
 214 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 and passive endurance, but the humble 
 acceptance of duty. 
 
 True and complete rest is not got by 
 quietude ; it is rather a spirit which 
 should pervade the labor. It is some- 
 thing at the centre of life issuing in 
 strength for all the needful activities. It 
 is rest in the midst of the labor, quiet 
 for the sake of the work. The two must 
 go hand in hand, the meditative life and 
 the practical, or both will suffer from the 
 separation. The only peace a true man 
 asks is peace to do his work well, not to 
 be allowed to lay down his arms, but to 
 be inspired to fight the good fight. He 
 is not very much concerned about what 
 is after the work is done, if only he is 
 permitted to get it done, as with the lover 
 in the ballad : 
 
 Make me your wreck as I come back. 
 But spare me as I gang. 
 
 We are reminded here of the essential 
 difference between happiness and peace. 
 Happiness comes from the outside, pleas- 
 215 
 
,./^ ^C^irf?; 
 
 ant experiences, satisfaction with our en- 
 vironment. Happiness comes to us ; 
 peace must be in us. Most of our hap- 
 piness, or what we call happiness, is a 
 series of distractions, surface gaiety, out- 
 side amusement, dependent on circum- 
 stances. It languishes with a frown 
 and revives with a smile. The thirst 
 for happiness grows by what it feeds 
 on, and becomes insatiable in its de- 
 mands to satiate itself. We are loath 
 to give up our feverish attempts to reach 
 peace by outside means, and think that 
 all our dissatisfaction and unrest are due 
 to our uncongenial environment. In cities 
 we think that if we lived amid the silent 
 testimony of the hills we would be differ- 
 ent, as in the country men think the 
 same if they lived the larger life of the 
 city. 
 
 We think this spirit of rest impossible 
 in our present surroundings with our dis- 
 tractions and work. It is something 
 which might be had from the cloister but 
 216 
 
REST AND WORK 
 
 cannot survive in the bustle of life. 
 There is a sweet little monastery in Flor- 
 ence, frag]-ant with sacred memories, lich 
 with blessed history. To the religious 
 soul its very dust is dear ; for there the 
 saintly bishop Antonino lived his Christ- 
 like life, and there the prophetic prior 
 Savonarola wore out his noble heart, and 
 there the pious painter Fra Angelico 
 painted, and the only less famous Fra 
 Bartolommeo. It stands the forlorn relic 
 of a dream, but even yet it breathes of 
 the true monastic peace, with secluded 
 cloisters where the noise of the city is 
 hushed, with little cells whose bare white- 
 washed walls are glorious with the pure 
 delicate frescoes of the Angelic painter — 
 a reflection of his own pure soul. In the 
 centre of the quadrangle is a little garden 
 kissed by the sunshine, and up from it 
 is seen the deep blue of the Italian sky 
 speaking of eternal peace. It is natural 
 to think that one might cultivate the 
 soul there, might there forget the world, 
 217 
 
REST AND 
 
 WORK 
 
 its hot ambitions and its fierce passions. 
 It even seems the ideal for a servant of 
 the Church to live quiet prayerful hours 
 in some such retreat and then to go to 
 the restless city with the message of the 
 gospel of peace. It is a dream ; and the 
 Church had to go through much scourg- 
 ing before she gave up her dream. 
 
 Peace is independent of place, as it 
 is independent of fortune. It can be 
 possessed in a narrow corner of life, or 
 amid distractions and labors, or through 
 fiery trials and temptations, or even with 
 sorrow and tears. It cannot be gotten 
 for gold, nor lost through poverty. The 
 world cannot give it, nor take it away. 
 This is the message of the faith. Peace 
 is to be sought in the soul, and is to be 
 found by losing of self, in love of God 
 and service of man. It comes over our 
 tumultuous lives, and settles on the soul 
 as rain on thirsty land. With the roar 
 of life in ears and brain and heart we 
 can still be calm. In the busy market- 
 218 
 
■f 
 
 REST AND WORK 
 
 place and the crowded street, in the mul- 
 titude of our cares and thoughts and 
 activities, amid the strife of tongues and 
 the weary ways of men, we can be at 
 peace because our hearts are fixed. Over 
 the broken waters of our restless life 
 there hovers the golden glory of God's 
 eternal peace. 
 

 ~^'E are not ymir own; for ye are hougM with, a 
 price : thm'efore glorify God in your body and 
 in your ajjiriC^ uohick are God^a. — 1 Cor. vi. 20. 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 THE redemption of work can only be 
 permanently secured when it passes 
 into the consecration of work. Re- 
 ligion demands that the whole life should 
 be imbued by the religious spirit. " It 
 is as when a man sojourning in another 
 country, having left his house and given 
 authority to his servants, and to each one 
 his work, commanded also the porter to 
 watch." This short parable suggests the 
 Christian view of life as a trust given to 
 man, by which he is put upon his honor 
 in his Master's absence. Each has author- 
 ity given him ; each has special business 
 to transact ; none is without his appro- 
 priate task. It is left to the conscience 
 of each to perform his duty till his Mas- 
 ter returns. Be it soon or late, the 
 servants are expected day by day to dis- 
 223 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK. 
 
 charge faithfully the affairs intrusted to 
 them. Authority is given to them, to 
 every man his work. There are great 
 moments in religion, moments of decision 
 and of emotion, times when the soul is 
 lifted in some great spasm of feeling, but 
 these moments are only valuable when 
 tlieir inspiration is carried down into the 
 details of everyday action. We c^iiinot 
 live by spasms ; and our faith must be 
 judged in the long-run by how it issues 
 in life, how we use the authority in- 
 trusted us, and how we acquit ourselves 
 in the complete task of living. The 
 religion which leaves out of account 
 the large tract we call secular is imper- 
 fect and false, however high the emotion 
 at times, and however magnificent the 
 spasms. 
 
 There is distinctively religious work, 
 the work of the Church, the work of 
 personal testimony to the truth, extend- 
 ing the bounds of the Kingdom. We 
 ought to have more of this, a franker 
 224 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 and nobler witness of ail the members 
 of the Church, and a wider acceptance 
 of duty towards them that are without ; 
 for the work of the Church is committed 
 to us, put into our hands as representa- 
 tives of our Master, There is a place 
 for each of us, a demand for the service 
 of all. From the point of view of dis- 
 tinctively religious work it is as when a 
 man sojourning in another country, hav- 
 ing left his house and given authority to 
 his servants, and to each one his work, 
 commanded the porter also to watch. 
 Could anything more fitly describe the 
 urgency of religious duty both for our- 
 selves and for others, and more strongly 
 impress us with a sense of responsibility 
 for our share in the great task of the 
 world's redemption ? VVe are expressly 
 delegated for this purpose, with authority 
 given us and a place of service, and to 
 every man his work. 
 
 But we greatly err if we confine the in- 
 terpretation of this parable to what we 
 IS 225 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 call distinctively religious work, if we' 
 divide our life into a little snippet that 
 we call sacred with imperative sanctions, 
 leaving the major part of it as outside the 
 scope of religion. The common division 
 of life into things sacred and things secu- 
 lar is false. We cannot draw a hard- 
 and-fast line between religious duty and 
 worldly business, between the work of the 
 Lord and common work. We are tempted 
 to think that we are judged by our creed 
 and profession and worship, and that all 
 the rest does not count. But what we call 
 secular affairs make up so much of our 
 common life, that the manner in which we 
 deal with these really represents the per- 
 sons we are more correctly than how we 
 comport ourselves in the odd moments of 
 sacred devotion. If our religion is not 
 elevating and inspiring our daily life, our 
 daily life will drag down our religion to 
 its own level. We surely see the incon- 
 sistency of strictness in devotion, and 
 laxity in the disposal of everything else, 
 226 
 
 7W:^i^ 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 time, and talent, and money, and daily 
 work. If we offer anything to God we must 
 offer everything. Prayer that is unrelated 
 to the rest of life is just barren wishing, 
 of no higher rank than the superstitious 
 use of pagan charms. All our actions 
 must be governed by religion as truly as 
 the little section we cut off and label 
 sacred. Religion to be real and vital 
 must penetrate to every detail, our whole 
 manner of thinking, and acting, and living, 
 our behavior to our fellows, our way of 
 transacting business. 
 
 Christianity has as one of its ideals the 
 complete consecration of the secular life, 
 making daily duty subserve the best in- 
 terests of character and elevating the 
 ordinary vocation into a sphere of ser- 
 vice. Wc will never be right till we 
 bring everything into the sweep of re- 
 ligion, money matters, business matters, 
 and all the complex relations of our ac- 
 tual life. It may be difficult — it is diffi- 
 227 
 
m 
 
 THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 cult — but it is the Christian task. The 
 Christian tone and temper must appear 
 in the common duties of ordinary life, in 
 the way we caiTy ourselves in our several 
 states and employment in the world. 
 Faith cannot reach its perfect end till 
 it works itself out in practice. What 
 has our faith done for us if it has no in- 
 fluence on our secular affairs, no effect on 
 our mind and temper ? There is some- 
 thing surely amiss if Christian devotion 
 has no outcome in a sense of Christian 
 service. 
 
 Consecration is needed to save our lives 
 from ultimate failure. To " consecrate ^ 
 meant in the Old Testament to set apart, 
 dedicate, separate from common to sacred 
 use ; and in the New Testament the word 
 kept this meaning and only took on a 
 deeper color with a more inward and 
 more .spiritual conception of what sanc- 
 tity meant. Its essence is the simple 
 dedication of self to God, so that the 
 whole life is fiUed with the sense of 
 228 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 11 , 1 ir ■ i 
 
 possession, as belonging to Him. This 
 Christian consecration is expressed ftiily 
 in the great words, " Ye are not your 
 own ; ye are bought with a price. There- 
 fore glorify God in your body and in 
 your spirit which are God's." 
 
 The state of our life registers itself 
 automatically on our work. Our good 
 activities cannot keep themselves alive. 
 That is why we ever need revivals of 
 religion, renewals of living faith. The 
 organization we call the Church will keep 
 itself going for a libtle by its old momen- 
 tum in a dull and blundering fashion ; 
 but that cannot last for long, and even 
 when it lasts it docs not amount to much 
 — a name to live when it is dead. A 
 man may sometimes seem to be able to 
 make up in zeal what he lacks in faith ; 
 but it soon becomes sound and fury sig- 
 nifying nothing. When passion at the 
 heart grows dull, when spiritual life 
 ceases to be true and fervent, the tide 
 of work wanes out on its long ebb. This 
 229 
 
is the explanation of many a failure, the 
 neglect of the centra] fire which alone 
 can supply heat for motive energy. We 
 may fill our hands full of larger work and 
 he constantly extending our interests and 
 be giving our aid to all good causes ; but 
 if our own soul is all the time growing 
 arid and lifeless, our service will lose its 
 point and all our activities become hol- 
 low. Everything in religion comes back 
 inevitably to this personal appeal to have 
 the heart and will and conscience re- 
 newed at the feet of God, to submit the 
 soul in a new abandonment to its Master, 
 to rekindle the love at the altar and in- 
 crease the faith by communion in order 
 that our service may be acceptable and 
 truly successful. 
 
 The Christian faith brings the rein- 
 forcement of a new and holy motive to 
 the universal law of work. We are to do 
 our business not because we must by phys- 
 ical compulsion, but because it is God- 
 given, assigned to us as a sphere wherein 
 230 
 
 1 
 
^^THE CONSECRATION OF WORK '^ 
 
 iii<<fliifci "• 'ii 
 
 
 AuOBb 
 
 we can glorify Him and serve Him. Noth- 
 ing else will ennoble the petty drudgery 
 and glorify the narrow corner. We are 
 set there for a great end — an oppor- 
 tunity afforded us to display zeal and 
 faithfulness and probity. 
 
 Russell Lowell in his poem, " A Glance 
 behind the Curtain,^' makes Cromwell 
 stand in doubt before the temptation to 
 leave England to her fate while he seeks 
 peace in a land beyond the sea, and then 
 makes him decide by the thought of im- 
 perious duty demanding him to play the 
 man where he is. The thought of work 
 assigned to him sways the balance. 
 
 No man is born into the world whose work 
 Is not born with him. There is always work 
 And tools withal, for those who will. 
 And blessed are the horny hands of toil ! 
 
 There is something of the same assurance 
 in the life of every noble man who has 
 bent his neck to the yoke which he was 
 convinced was given by God. It adds a 
 231 
 
 7i 
 
^f^^^xs^?^.-^"^^ 
 
 THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 ^ 
 
 new and sacred sanction to the old neces- 
 sity, if we accept our daily work as di- 
 vinely appointed discipline. From the 
 beginning God assigned work to man, 
 " He put him into the garden of Eden to 
 dress it and to keep it " ; and He puts us 
 into our lot to serve the highest ends 
 both for ourselves and for the world. 
 Christians are meant to enter into all the 
 world's activities, and inspire them with 
 the spirit of the faith. 
 
 What will so penetrate every nook and 
 cranny of our being that such complete 
 consecration is possible ? A sense of 
 duty is not enough. It is not enough to 
 realize that duty demands unflinching 
 adherence to the ordinary tasks to which 
 we are already tied. It is not enough 
 even to accept our lot as the will of God. 
 That may produce resignation and fidelity, 
 but it will not transform work and lift it 
 into a region where spiritual power rein- 
 forces the ordinary necessity for labor. 
 232 
 
I 
 
 THECONSEC^TION OF WORK 
 
 A man will go on the more doggedly if 
 he believes that he is living and working 
 as " in the great Taskmaster's eye " ; but 
 it will not necessarily bring an enlarge- 
 ment of life and a fresh buoyancy to all 
 his powers. 
 
 True consecration comes from a new 
 inspiring personal relation. It has its 
 source in God's love, and its driving- 
 power is the simple desire to please Him 
 and do His will. William Law in his Seri- 
 ous Call has a chapter on an inquiry into 
 the reason why the generality of Christians 
 fall so far short of the holiness and de- 
 votion of Christianity, and his answer is 
 that men have not the intention to please 
 God in all their actions. He gives instances 
 to show how such a distinct and serious in- 
 tention would affect different classes. He 
 shows how the desire to please God will 
 make a tradesman a saint in his shop. He 
 will buy and sell, and labor and travel, not 
 merely that he may do good to himself 
 and others, but also that he may make 
 233 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK] 
 
 his worldly business acceptable to God 
 and turn a life of trade into a life of 
 holiness and devotion and piety. 
 
 The same desire will keep a gentleman 
 of birth and fortune from living in idle- 
 ness and indulgence, in sports and gam- 
 ing, in pleasures and intemperance, in 
 vain expenses and high living. It is a 
 simple rule by which every one can exam- 
 ine and judge his life ; and Law appeals 
 to intention expressly because it is so 
 simple, and every one who has a mind 
 can see how he stands by looking into his 
 own heart. " For it is as easy for every 
 person to know whether he intends to 
 please God in all his actions, as for any 
 servant to know whether this be his in- 
 tention towards his master." Now, that 
 Christians should have such a desire and 
 intention is not only reasonable, but 
 should be inevitable. The transforma- 
 tion of life comes easily from the trans- 
 formation of character ; and that is what 
 faith in Christ can do for a man, giving 
 234 
 
IHE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 him a new motive and setting him in a 
 new environment. What fine examples 
 we have had in all classes of merchants 
 and professional men and tradesmen, con- 
 secrating their talents and their worldly 
 work — living commentaries of the apos- 
 tolic injunction, " not slothful in business, 
 fervent in spirit, serving the Lord ! " 
 
 The one word which best expresses this 
 aspect of religion is the word Service, 
 which implies the consecration of all gifts 
 and of life itself. It means the sense of 
 possession by God, that we belong to 
 Him, and He has rights over us which we 
 are proud and glad to own. We are to 
 serve Him everywhere and in everything, 
 dedicating our practical life as well as our 
 spiritual life. A further strong and ten- 
 der motive is added when we see that con- 
 secration is to be made in the power of 
 love. " For their sakes I consecrate Mv- 
 self,^' said our Lord, revealing in the word 
 the secret of the cross and the secret of all 
 His life. If that could be in any sense a 
 235 
 
p 
 
 motive with Christ, how much 
 should it be with us ! The words carry 
 to us an appeal to offer ourselves in the 
 same high spirit for the sake of others. 
 
 Theoretically, we are all convinced of 
 social duty in some form or other. We 
 realize how we are bound together in the 
 same bundle of life, how we depend on 
 each other, how we owe everything to 
 others in the past and the present. Social 
 indebtedness is, more than ever it has 
 been, an accepted article of creed, but it 
 is not such a power in life and conduct as 
 we would expect from such universal ac- 
 ceptance. There will never be much 
 practical result of the creed except 
 through the power of a religious motive. 
 A first principle of Christian ethics is the 
 dedication of gifts in the service of others. 
 There can be no real consecration which 
 does not include consecration of gifts. 
 Men possess varying endowments and dif- 
 ferent advantages. These may be in 
 236 
 
 ■i^i. 
 
i^ ^ 
 
 THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 many different forms, gifts of eye or hand 
 or brain, special capacity in some particu- 
 lar line. To one manual skill, to another 
 artistic feeling, or inventive brain, gifts 
 of temperament and nature, and advan- 
 tages of training and education. 
 
 All gifts have an inherent right to be 
 developed and increased. It is a duty to 
 exercise and train them by wise and con- 
 stant use. But this duty is not exhausted 
 by giving the special endowments as good 
 opportunities of development as possi- 
 ble. Selfish employment will only min- 
 ister to evil, and will bring loss to the 
 gifts themselves. They must be exer- 
 cised not for their own sake at all, but 
 as our contribution to the world, to 
 which we owe so much that we can 
 never otherwise repay. Selfish use is a 
 perversion of the gift. It is, after all, 
 no credit to us that we possess any gift. 
 If we have it, it is because we have re- 
 ceived it. The only possible credit is 
 that we have used it well, and that iin- 
 237 
 
::^^f5 
 
 THE CONSECRATION OF WORK] 
 
 plies employment on behalf of others. 
 We are debtors to all, and if we make 
 no attempt to pay our debt and even 
 refuse to own our obligation, it is like 
 receiving something under false pretences. 
 Such gifts as leisure, position, wealth, ac- 
 quirements of culture, are all as trusts on 
 behalf of others. They must be accepted 
 in the light of social stewardship, or we 
 lose even the right to possess them. 
 They are opportunities and capacities of 
 influence. 
 
 It is not just that our gifts should be 
 tithed, and a poi-tion given over to higher 
 and larger use. That in itself is a poor 
 thing, appeasing conscience by a pittance 
 that we may be allowed to squander tlie 
 rest on self. The gifts themselves must 
 be dedicated, used reverently and sacredly. 
 Any true view of social stewardship de- 
 mands the offering of personal service. 
 All advantages must be accepted, not as 
 occasions for selfish use or for personal 
 vanity, but for better service, a means for 
 238 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 a wider ministry. This social office can 
 only be truly fulfilled by individual con- 
 secration. The complete dedication of 
 gifts will only be secured by first of all 
 offering them to God. Anything else 
 means misuse. No mere social fervor 
 will last which is not rooted in a deep 
 sense of responsibility to God the Giver. 
 Such consecration ensures the large and 
 generous dedication of all capacities. It 
 alone will guard and hallow our work, and 
 save it from selfishness and from failure. 
 
 This implies more than a high aim, 
 more than an unselfish motive, more than 
 the .sincere desire to use our faculties to 
 the best advantage even for others. To 
 secure this infallibly and to make it a 
 permanent purpose we need the element 
 of conseci'ation. That is a more interior 
 thing than merely dedicating gifts. It 
 means not only consecrating what we 
 have, but consecrating ourselves. What 
 we are is of more ultimate importance 
 than what we do. The value of our 
 239 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 actions is conditioned by what we are in 
 heart and spirit. It is little to offer a 
 compartment of life, a portion of our 
 capacities, if we keep back ourselves. 
 Consecration is the one and only effec- 
 tive way of serving ; for it uses the whole 
 life. Most of our lives, for example, are 
 taken up by routine, so that everything 
 depends on the spirit that animates and 
 inspires the routine. The common round 
 makes up the staple of our lives for most 
 of us, and if that be divorced from relig- 
 ion, it means that by far the major part 
 is left outside. But when self is given up 
 to God, the ordinary interests and occupa- 
 tions easily and naturally become methods 
 of service. One final act of self-surrender 
 quickens a sense of duty all round ; for 
 self-devotion manifests itself in active ser- 
 vice ; holiness finds its complete expression 
 in love ; the practical goal of consecration 
 is its effect on conduct. When the heart 
 is devoted to God, devotion is the natural 
 attitude of the whole life. 
 240 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 In common language, we limit devotion 
 to what we call worship ; but devotion is 
 a larger thing than worship. Devotion is 
 the end of which worship is the means. 
 Worship is only designed to feed devotion ; 
 for devotion is the state of being devoted 
 to God. And this is the beginning and 
 the middle and the end of religion. Our 
 Christian religion is not a matter of ob- 
 servances. It is the hallowing of all life, 
 taking in its sweep all interests and all 
 conduct and all thought and all intention. 
 When a man can say with a sincere heart, 
 "I consecrate myself,'' all the oulgoings 
 of self, all the activities of self, all the 
 affairs of self become suffused by the same 
 spirit. The consecration of gifts is in- 
 volved in the consecration of self. It is 
 the leaven that leavens the whole lump of 
 life. The principle becomes comprehen- 
 sive, from the centre to the circumference, 
 filling the whole circle. " Whether ye 
 eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all 
 to the glory of God." 
 
 16 24.1 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORKj 
 
 The world to-day, as always, is face 
 to face with social difficulties, with urgent 
 problems, haunted by the evils and accu- 
 mulated miseries of a dangerous social 
 condition. What is our duty in the many 
 difficult situations ? Have we to offer 
 whatever gifts we possess as our share of 
 the common good ? Surely. But the 
 way to take part in the redemption of 
 society is that a man should purify him- 
 self, should consecrate himself. The 
 giving of anything he has apart from 
 himself will not do much. At the best it 
 could only be a palliative. There is no 
 other secret of power and lasting influence. 
 " The gift without the giver is bare " ; for 
 our social difficulties are more than eco- 
 nomic difficulties. They have all moral 
 roots, and what will bring no moral and 
 spiritual help is healing the hurt slightly, 
 saying Peace, when there is no peace. 
 
 Consecration is the first secret of power. 
 It gives influence a true direction and an 
 unerring aim. We can see how it should 
 242 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 t 
 
 do so ; for it purifies ambitions and mo- 
 tives, and strips the soul of all that hin- 
 ders and retards. To give self up to 
 God, that He may take us and make us 
 and use us, to have done with self-inter- 
 est and self-seeking, creates opportunities 
 of influence. This consecration of char- 
 acter is much more far-reaching than any 
 desultory consecration of gifts, even if 
 that were possible by itself. It induces 
 and implies self-scrutiny, the examination 
 of motives. It destroys pride and sloth, 
 and moves a man to bend to his share of 
 the burden. Think what power would 
 be unloosed if we each submitted to this 
 process of consecration, this daily dedi- 
 cation, opening up heart and life to the 
 guidance of God. Is there any problem 
 too hard, any situation too difficult, any 
 evil too deep-rooted for a consecrated 
 Church to face and conquer ? If in 
 humility and sincerity we offered our 
 service, what instruments of good would 
 lie ready to the hand of God. 
 243 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 ^i^ai 
 
 This is where we are weak. Self or 
 pleasure or thoughtlessness has blunted 
 the edge or misdirected the aim, so that 
 the stroke makes no impression. Our 
 Master is so badly served by us, so poorly 
 represented, so languidly followed. His 
 purposes are so feebly supported, His 
 light so dimly shown, His mind so blun- 
 deringly understood. The Church makes 
 so little impact on the world, just be- 
 cause it has so little consecration, so little 
 submission to the complete will of God. 
 Yet there is no power in all the world so 
 potent as the power of personal holiness, 
 the power of a consecrated life. 
 
 It is also the greatest missionary agent, 
 A religion spreads not by intellectual con- 
 viction but by moral sua.sion, by the per- 
 sistence of a type that impresses men in 
 spite of themselves. It creates a type of 
 character and life, and ultimate victory 
 lies with the higher type. The Church 
 must convince the world of God, not by 
 Christian logic, but by Christian love, by 
 244 
 
THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 
 
 the fruits of faith in a winsome personal- 
 ity, by the persuasive power of a tender 
 and true and honorable and faithful life. 
 The Christian faith of the early centuries 
 spread not by the force of its logic, but 
 by the attraction of its piety, because 
 men saw the beauty of holiness. The 
 first apologists never missed the weight 
 of this great argument. They pointed 
 confidently to the Christian life as the 
 overwhelming evidence of the Christian 
 faith. They pointed to the probity and 
 courage and faith and purity and devo- 
 tion of Christ's people. A Christian 
 made a better servant, a better master, 
 a better workman, more faithful to duty, 
 more reliable in all the relations of life. 
 They were better husbands and wives and 
 parents and children, better citizens also, 
 as it came to be seen even against the 
 mass of prejudice in the minds of rulers. 
 We are missing a great opportunity if 
 we do not follow out the practical impli- 
 cation of our faith, \\'Tiat do ye more 
 245 
 
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