II.
We are Fellow- workers for God.
1. Every Christian man and woman is invested with the power, and is therefore burdened with the honourable obligation to work for God. Man's communion with his Maker is not only a fellowship of worship but also a fellowship of service.
][ What were Buskin's methods in his other and more general manners, when he had the single view of making himself under- stood and said what he desired in the best words he could find for it ? What was his secret ? He would have told us, I think, what he reported Turner as saying, " I know of no genius but the genius of hard work." There is no writer who gives a stronger impression of ease than Cardinal Newman — a great
1 0. B. Keenleyside. 2 Life of Bishop Wilkinson, ii. 288.
8 E. T. Cook, The Life of Jluslcin, ii. 164.
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master of simple and lucid English, greater in these particular respects, if we take the whole body of their writings, than Buskin. Yet even Newman said : " I have been obliged to take great pains with every tiling I have written, and I often write chapters over and over again, besides innumerable corrections and interlined additions." Buskin's method was the same. The search for the right word, for the fitting sentence, was often long; and paragraphs and chapters were written over and over again before they satisfied him. And this applies equally to his most simple writing, such as is to be found, for instance, in The Elements of Drawing ; and to his most elaborate passages, such as the exordiums and perorations in Modem Painters, The Seven Lamps, and The Stones of Venice. He carried on the process to the stage of proofs, revises, and re-revises. Facsimiles of pages re-written on the printed proof are included in the Library Edition, and in this connection Dr. Furnivall gave me an anecdote. To Buskin's father the publisher came one day exhibiting a thickly scored final revise and explaining that continuance in such practices would absorb all the author's profits. " Don't let my son know," said the old gentleman ; " John must have his things as he likes them ; pay him whatever would become due, apart from corrections, and send in a separate bill for them to me." Few authors, it may be feared, are blessed with so indulgent a parent.1
Be strong ! We are not here to play, to dream, to drift. We have hard work to do, and loads to lift. Shun not the struggle ; face it. 'Tis God's gift.2
2. There is a sense in which every man is a worker for God. We cannot help fulfilling His purposes. All things serve Him, and He maketh even the wickedness of men work out His will.
(1) Through human agency the ancient miracle of creation is repeated. One great teaching of modern knowledge says nothing above a certain low level of excellence comes by natural law unaided by man ; all best things in the world of nature are the result of his thought and toil. It is true that man can do absolutely nothing without God. He can create no new forces. All the material with which he works Nature has furnished. But what can he not do with it, and what has he done ? He has modified
1 E. T. Cook, The Life of Buskin, i. 358.
2 Maltbie D. Babcock.
i CORINTHIANS in. 9 77
climate, made the rivers change their course and even the ocean its shore, made forests grow and made new ground. for them to grow in, made the parched ground a pool and the thirsty land springs of water. Eight hundred years ago there was no such country as the Holland of to-day; God had not made it. He made it possible, but man had to give it actual frame and form. The map of Holland is not even now what it was at the beginning of the last century; it has 120,000 more acres of land than it had then.
If I was deeply impressed by what a gardener once said to me concerning his work. " I feel, sir," he said, u when I am growing the flowers, or rearing the vegetables, that I am having a share in creation ! " I thought it a very noble way of regarding his work.1
(2) In the realm of outward nature man works for God. It is man's part in evolution that has developed the moss-rose out of the wild-briar, the fine wheat out of the wild grasses. And in the animal kingdom the same thing is seen still more strik- ingly. The famous breeds of horses and cattle are man's creation — by development. Compare your sheep-dog or your setter with the wild canine stock. Association with man has evolved in them something almost of human intelligence and feeling. God gives man all things in the rough, as it were, and leaves him to develop them further; and without man's part faithfully performed, there could not be a loaf of bread evolved out of a wheat field, or a woollen coat out of a sheep's fleece.
If Nature knew enough to make textile fibres, but never knew enough to weave a piece of cotton. It never brought out a yard of broadcloth. Nature knew how to make a worm, and the worm knew how to make a garment of death for itself, but nature never made silk. Nature made iron, but never made a tool — not one ; and yet, what are the hands of man without tools ? Men could not have risen above barbarism but for them.2