* T. A. Seed, John and Mary Fletcher, 108.
' Letters on Church and Religion of William Ewart Gladstone, ii. 164.
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11.
With thy Might.
"Do it with thy might."
1. " Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well," is a homely proverb of the 'practical man. The most successful workers in the world are ever the most earnest. Search the history of those men of name immortal who have spoken so eloquently to mankind through their paintings, tuned the soul to melody by their music, and fired its latent energies with their poetry — men who have shone as suns in their day and generation, whose peerless minds have enabled them to soar to heights as far above their grovelling fellows as those in which the majestic eagle sweeps and circles above the distant earth. .They were all men who worked with their might. Despite the fact that some people are more highly gifted with brain and skill than others, still in most cases the difference between first-rate and second- rate work is due (at least to a large extent) to the greater pains and time bestowed upon the first-class work.
^ One of Mrs. Gaskell's favourite texts was : " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, that do with all thy might." " Just try for a day to think of all the odd jobs, as to be done well and truly in God's sight — not just slurred over anyhow — and you'll ao through them twice as cheerfully, and have no thought to spare for sighing or crying," was her practical way of explaining this text.^
^ My father's mental characteristics, if I may venture on such ground, were clearness and vigour, intensity, fervour, concentra- tion, penetration, and perseverance. This earnestness of nature pervaded all his exercises. A man of great capacity and culture, with a head like Benjamin Franklin's, an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, came every Sunday afternoon, for many years, to hear him. I remember his look well, as if interested, but not impressed. He was often asked by his friends why he went when he didn't believe one word of what he heard. " Neither I do, but I like to hear and to see a man earnest once a week about any- thing." It is related of David Hume, that having heard my great-grandfather preach, he said, "That's the man for me, he
> Mrs. E. H. Chadwick, Mrs. Gaskell: Haunts, Homes, and Stories, 172.
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means what he says; he speaks as if Jesus Christ was at his elbow." 1
2. So highly do we reckon the excellence of strength and effort that there is a sense in which, by way of paradox, we assert that from the strenuous sinner there is more to be hoped for than from the flabby and feeble man of virtue, as if all the glorious potentialities of human nature were directly associated with and conditioned by effort and eagerness and strength. If we do not force ourselves to remember that a man may be zealous in evil as well as in good, we should be inclined off-hand to allow that strenuousness was one of the most obvious, as well as one of the most essential, of human virtues. Whether the good angel is strenuous may be argued ; that the good man is strenuous admits of no doubt. It is a fact of experience that slackness almost changes virtue into vice, while strenuousness almost changes vice into virtue.
% The Hon. Charles Howard, M.P. for East Cumberland, says of him : " It always seemed to me that Mr. Moore was the most thorough man I knew in all that he undertook; and whatever was the object, whether it was business, fox-hunting, canvassing at elections, acts of charity, or services of devotion, his heart was always in his work. He was never satisfied until he had accomplished all that he had proposed to do. I have no doubt that this quality of earnest perseverance and shrewdness of character accounted for George Moore's success in life ; but they would not have gained for him the love and affection that all felt for him, were it not for his warm heart and his genial nature." *
3. Again, the words of the text might be taken as a motto for the Christian life. We do not want to be like the man whose son was asked whether his father was a Christian. " Yes," said he, " he is a Christian, but he hasn't been doing much at it lately." Christian service demands the strenuous and constant application of hand, head, and heart. The people who throw themselves thus into their labours belong to the class termed enthusiasts ; but we may be reminded, for our encouragement, of Emerson's remark that " every step in the progress of the past has been a triumph
^ Dr. John Brown, Borce Subsecivce, ii. 60.
' S. Smiles, George Moore, Merchwnt and Philanthropist, 506.
384 DO IT WELL AND DO IT NOW
of enthusiasm." It is one of the secrets for bringing heaven near us, for feeling the Infinite with us and within us, to be whole-hearted in the present task. Thinkers have often noted this strange fact: that great enthusiasms tend to become religious. Let a man be mastered by any great idea, and sooner or later he will find the shadow of God on it. But that is true not of great enthusiasms alone ; it holds of whole-heartedness in every sphere. When Luther said, " Ldborare est orare " — " to labour is to pray " — you may be sure that that great soul did not mean that work could ever take the place of prayer. He knew too well the value of devotion, and the blessed uplifting of the quiet hour with God, ever to think that toil could take its place. But just as in earnest prayer the heavens are opened to us, and we are led into the presence and glory of the King, so in our earnest and whole-hearted toil, clouds scatter, the mists of feelings and passions are dispelled, and we are led into a peace and strength and sweet detachment without which no man shall see the Lord. It is in that sense that to labour is to pray. To be whole-hearted is to be facing heavenward. And the great loss of all half- hearted men and women is this, that above the dust and the stress and strain of life, above the fret and weariness of things, they catch no glimpse of the eternal purpose, nor of the love, nor of the joy of God.