Work was ordained before the Fall, and, this being so, it must be a necessity of life, for in those happy days there was no super- fluity. The man who is for ever absorbing and never spending in work must either cease to live or live viciously. When Alexander conquered the Persians he said he learnt among other things that there was " nothing so servile as idleness, nothing so noble and princely as labour." Labour gives a wonderful satisfaction to man, and there are few forms of human satisfaction more enjoyable
38o DO IT WELL AND DO IT NOW
than the completion of toil. Whatever be the form of our labour, the satisfaction produced by the completion of an allotted task is difficult to parallel. In itself, apart from its final results, work satisfies a great need of human nature, so that there are few men more thoroughly miserable than those who will not work. Life is worth living in any case, from its abundant interests, but life is tenfold more enjoyable when it is largely spent in strenuous labour.
^ " Every good that is worth possessing," says Professor James, "must be paid for in strokes of daily effort." And so, as one of his practical maxims about life and habits, he offers this : "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day." ^
^ He would have fully accepted the doctrine upon which Mr. Herbert Spencer has insisted, that it is a duty to be happy. Moreover, the way to be happy was to work. Work, I might almost say, was his religion. " Be strong and of a good courage," was the ultimate moral which he drew from doubts and diffi- culties. Everything round you may be in a hideous mess and jumble. That cannot be helped: take hold of your tools man- fully ; set to work upon the job that lies next to your hand, and so long as you are working well and vigorously, you will not be troubled with the vapours. Be content with being yourself, and leave the results to fate. Sometimes with his odd facility for turning outwards the ugliest side of his opinions, he would call this selfishness. It is a kind of selfishness which, if everyone practised it, would not be such a bad thing.^
2. What is true of the body and mind is no less true of the spirit. The care of the soul is the " one thing needful," and, if our souls be neglected, our hands are doing nothing as they ought. The wonder is that people do not see the necessity of work in religion. They will work for the world, but not for God ; they will labour to enter in at the gate of success, but not at the gate of Heaven. They will toil hard in the world's vineyard, and stand idle in God's. They will lay up treasure for the body, and leave the soul to starve. They will rise early and so late take rest for the sake of a short life, and neglect eternity altogether.
> C. G. Montefiore, Trulk in Religion, 138.
* Leslie Stephen, The Life of Sir James Fitzjaines Stephen, 453,
ECCLESIASTES ix. lo 381
^ Mary Fletcher could not be content to walk with Christ in white and spend her widowhood in a life of contemplation and of hope. She could not be contented even in a life of Christian culture. Hers was an eminently practical and sympathetic nature. Her piety must find expression in loving ministries of deed and word. When tempted to desire release from toil and suffering, longing to depart and be with Christ, the words rang in her ears, " Would a Christian be in the meridian of glory ? Would he have his robes shine bright ? Let him stay here and do service." This fine old Puritan advice bore precious fruit in Mrs. Fletcher's later years. With unflagging zeal and constant assiduity, she devoted herself to the service of the people who, with her, had been so bitterly bereaved. " It is this part of her life and labours," says Mr. Macdonald, " by which she is chiefly remembered. There are, indeed, few pictures, in modern Christian history at least, more impressive than that in which she is the central figure, a saintly woman of great and varied gifts, in whom Quaker-like calmness and self-control were joined with Methodist fervour, for a whole generation a preacher of the gospel and a witness for Christ among the people of Madeley and the neigh- bourhood." ^
3. This is the world of service. This is the world of probation and of preparation for eternity. We are here upon business. And what is our business ? We are to do whatsoever " our hand findeth" — whatsoever is the duty allotted to us daily by Him whose we are. Opportunity must direct and quicken our duty. That is to be done which our hand findeth to do, that which occasion calls for. Every moment brings its own responsibilities. We are all members of one vast body ; and the Lord has set us, as so many different agents, in that body, as it hath pleased Him.
^ As you grow older you will find more and more how full the world and our life are of opportunity, and how impossible it is that, unless by our own fault, they should seem to present a blank. The real discouragement of life is in our insufficiency for the duties that crowd in on every side, and are still crying out, as it were, that they remain undone. But the consoling and power- ful remedy is that nothing is asked of us beyond our power, and that, if more is offered than we can do, it is by way of gracious help to exercise our energies, and so to raise them to the best and highest state of which they are capable.^