^ John Hunter, De Profundis Claviavi, 238.
' J. Denney, The Epistles to the Thessaloniaiis, 29.
330 THE DAY'S WORK
Ah! brothers, let us work our work, for love
Of what the God in us prevails to do !
And if, when all is done, the unanswering void
And silence weigh upon our souls, remember
The music of a lonely heart may help
How many lonely hearts unknown to him !
The seeming void and silence are aware
With audience august, invisible.
Who yield thank-offering, encouragement,
And strong co-operation; the dim deep
Is awful with the God in whom we move.
Who moulds to consummation where we fail,
And saith, " Well done ! " to every faithful deed,
Who in Himself will full accomplish all.^
3. If work is ever to win its honour, it will be from out of the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. He was Himself the ideal worker. He Kved in the spirit of work, aware of the task set Him — lived to do the will of Him that sent Him ; conscious of the strain of the allotted limit — the twelve hours of the working day into which all the work must be crowded before the night fall, in which no man can work ; living ever among men as one that worketh; straining under the yoke as He felt the terrible pressure of His task; straitened until it was accomplished; consecrated to the work of glorifying the Father by doing the work which He gave Him to do; yielding Himself to death as soon as He could pronounce that work to have been done faith- fully and could say over it, " It is finished."
^ The highest soul this world has seen was a mechanic by trade. Behind His year and a half as a teacher lay long years in which He toiled in wood, " making ploughs and yokes," as one of the earliest Fathers says. And that was a preaching mightier perhaps than His mightiest word. It was the inauguration of labour's day. It was the shifting of the basis of esteem. In the age into which He came, work of that kind was under taboo. The Greek, the Eoman, thought it an occupation for slaves. And for long ages after, that continued the current view. It was endorsed by official Christianity. The Pope in the splendour of his Court forgot the tradition of the Carpenter. To-day we are beginning once more to remember it. The Eedeemer of our soul
* Roden Noel, Collected Poems, 354.
PSALM CIV. 23 331
is becoming the Redeemer of our economics, of our social state. The age-long blindness is passing away,^
Lord of the breeze, the rolling tide,
The rivers rushing to the sea, The clouds that through the azure glide, —
Well works the hand that works with Thee.
How finely toil, from morn till eve, Thy ministers of light and shade ;
How fair a web the sunbeams weave Of waving grass and blossoms made!
O Thou that madest earth and man
That man should make an earth more fair,
Give us to see Thy larger plan And Thy creative joy to share.
Had we but eyes, and hands of skill. Had we but love, our work would be
Wisely begun, and bettered still. Till all were perfected by Thee.
Work Thou with us, that what is wrought
May bring to earth diviner days, While in the higher realms of thought
A temple glorious we raise.''
IV.
WOKK AND EeST.
The strangest thing about work is the way in which all men praise it, and yet all men try to get away from it. There is no subject so popular as the blessedness of work. There is no theory so universal as that of the wretchedness of not being compelled to work. There is no man who does not feel a certain excited sense of admiration, a certain satisfaction, a certain comfort that things are right, when he stands where men are working their hardest, where trade is roaring or the great hammers are deafening you
* J. Brierley, Life and the Ideal, 24.
* "W. G. Tarrant, SoTigs Devout, 48.
332 THE DAY'S WORK
as they clang upon the iron. Everywhere work and the ap- proval of work ! and yet everywhere the desire to get away from work! Everywhere what all these men we see are toiling for is to make such an accumulation of money that they shall not have to toil any longer. Now, this double sense, this value of work and impatience with work as they exist together, seems to be the crude expression in men's minds of the conviction that work is good, that men degenerate and rust without it, and yet that work is at its best and brings its best results, is most honourable and most useful, only when it is aiming at something beyond itself. Everybody will bear witness that this is the healthiest feeling about any work that we have to do ; satisfaction and pleasure in doing it, but expectation of having it done some (liy and graduating from it into some higher state which we think of as rest.
1. If we look to the arrangements of nature for indications of what man's life is meant to be, we see at once that, bravely as she has provided for his work, she has not thought of him only as a working being. She has set her morning sun in the sky to tempt — nay, to summon — him forth to his work and to his labour, to make him ashamed of himself if he loiters and shirks at home ; but she has limited her daylight, she has given her sun only his appointed hours, and the labour and work are always to be only " until the evening." Eest as truly as work is written in her constitution. Eest, then as much as work is an element of life.