The Bible and Life

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rmine the working value of any particular individual. It declares that "the laborer is worthy of his hire," and it leaves the details to be wrought out by men whom it summons to the spirit of justice and love. Interested as we may be in the economic problems of our day, we must still rejoice that the Bible does not surrender its work of inspiration in an effort at mechanical guidance. The wag

previous days. One of the victories of life is to be a worker and not to be a drudge. We have all known people who have not won that victory. Their work is a grim necessity. It is not acquainted with poetry or with music. When the idealist speaks of the man who sings at his toil, they sneer at his sentimentalism or they doubt his sincerity. Work is a ceaseless grind; it is a dreary round; it is a hard compulsion. The poet who wields a pen may tell the man who wields a pick that work is joy and ref

ate of the sluggard. The earnest expectation of a groaning and travailing creation does wait for the revealing of the sons of God. Discontent puts its evil reflex on the muscles. The rebellious worker is ever the tired worker. But even the literal story of Eden does not give the ideal of worklessness. Adam had been placed in the garden "to dress it and to keep it." Wherever God places the man, he places the task for the

s much of this comes from maladjustment. Some idealists believe that if every man were given his own task, every man would be happy at that task. Kipling so states it in the "L'Envoi" of "Th

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ands for genuine achievement often becomes not only a pleasure but a veritable passion. Where a spiritual motive allures, work frequently becomes the gladness of life. Agassiz declined to accept the remunerative call to lecture by saying, "I am only a teacher. I cannot afford to make money." Wesley poured back into his work all the re

h hand pointing at the wonderful cathedral. "What did you do?" he asked the man. The reply was, "I mixed the mortar for several years." The tale was told by the thoughtless as being humorous. It is, however, serious and beautiful. That workman had gotten the vision of himself as a partner in a plan that covered centuries of grand toil. He was a helper of God in the fashioning of his temple. In reality he had joined the company of Hiram and of Solomon. Now all honest work must have a direction that is both long and high. It reach

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r is his spirit impossible in the day that now is. The men who regard work as a blessing, and not as a penalty and a curse, are found in many trades and professions. They are the forerunners of

in the fields, in her pathetic effort to care for her widowed mother-in-law and herself, when she found her way into happiness and into the ancestry of our Lord. Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press when he was drafted for the campaign that was to break the power of the Midianites. Elisha was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen when the mantle of Elijah was cast over his shoulders. Nehemiah was serving as cupbearer to the king when he evoked from Artaxerxes the permission to return and reb

oice on the shore and pulled their boat over the blue waves that they might become fishers of men. The shepherds were in faithful watch over their flocks by night when they heard the evangel of song and were startled by the message of peace. The illustrations make us feel that the favorite meeting place of God wi

a fisherman and his net; a husbandman and his vineyard; a merchant traveler and the intrusted talents. Where his words were used as deft and quick illustrations rather than as lengthy and formal parables, he gathered his material from the realms of toil. The builder and the house; the shepherd and the sheep; the axman and the tree; the tailor and the cloth; the housewife and the coin; the rich man and his steward; the woman and her grinding; the man and his plowing; the watchman and his vigil; the husbandman and the vine; all these entered into his speech as showing what God would expect of men. Here we have almost a cyclopedia of labors. Inasmuch as Jesus commended the qualities shown in these various phases of service, we are allowed to think that he regarded the legitimate occupations of everyday life as both representing and fulfi

omething that he had outgrown. His backward look toward the occupation of his youth betrays no condescension, like to that occasionally seen in so-called self-made men! After he had left the carpenter's bench he said, "I work." When he saw the night closing down about him, the brevity of the working day became an incentive to more work, and he said, "I must work." Even in the agony we can catch the exultation of the cry, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." I

toward all the channels by which the good of life can flow in upon us. This same characteristic of universality appears in the work of Christ. As a carpenter he worked upon material things. As a healer he worked upon the bodies of men. As a teacher he worked upon the minds of men. As a preacher he worked upon the souls of men. All the workers of the world can be brought into one of these divisions, and

ontrasts. As he experienced all the general forms of labor, so did he honor all forms. In his view they were all good and all cooperative. On the surface they may seem to be rivals, but in the center they are actual partners in the divine program. Hence Jesus passed from one realm of work to another with little sense of transition. Carpenter, Healer, Teacher, Preacher, he was ever the servant of the Kingdom. Faithfulness, honor, industry, efficiency, pa

nt in our faith that all his work was done faithfully and well. Holman Hunt's "Shadow of the Cross" relates Jesus's work in the shop to his sacrificial character. At the end of a weary day the Nazareth Carpenter extends his arms to relieve his weariness. The sunshine coming through the window casts his shadow on the wall in the form of a Cross. His mother glancing in through another window sees the Cross foreshadowed there and gets her glimpse of the sword that should enter her own heart. Nor did Jesus escape hardship and exhaustion when he became

ere, he sought the desert and in its quiet restored himself for the new labors. He bade his weary disciples to come apart to the spot of respite. He was the exemplar of proper rest even as he was the exemplar of proper work. Industrious men often need one lesson even as lazy men need the other. There are persons who are greedy of toil. They are as avaricious for it as the miser is for gold. They a

raveling in many lands, finally finds the holy grail in the cup which he had filled for a way-side beggar, while the more personal presence of Jesus is discovered in the beggar himself to whom the searcher has given alms. The characteristic of the new day is seen in Van Dyke's "The Toiling of Felix." The hero of this later poem, after seeking the direct vi

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e he was a worker rather than a recluse. The attitude toward monasticism among the healthier and more energetic peoples goes further than this: there is a feeling that in the last analysis the religious hermit is spiritually selfish. That is deemed a poor kind of religion which forsakes a world in order to save one's soul. The argument that the recluses may render the world the service

aching. Paul said that the man reaps the harvest of his own sowing. Jesus said, "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." This is much as if he had said that in the upper realms of living action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions. He told his disciples that, if they pronounced the

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se he does his work well, and the return of his work makes him better still. Just as physical work reacts on the muscles, so that sometimes men exercise without any outward object in view, even so does the moral

y's pay without the day's work. In the latter case the man loses both independence and self-respect, while in the former case he keeps both of these and gains in addition the rebound of faithful labor. The tramp, or the man with the heart of a tramp, always fails. Outwitting others, he outwits himself more truly. He plays tricks on his own soul. The weakness of his

workman there is no real failure. The house that he has builded may go up in smoke and flame, but the industry and honor that fashioned its walls and fashioned themselves in the making of the walls cannot be destroyed. The fortune that he has gathered may take wings and fly away, but the deeper treasures that have been garnered

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his philosophy, but his ship sailed on anyhow; he wanted fame; but he discovered the secret of greatness without it; and so he adds the line

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elps to make the good man; and the good purpose that expresses itself in work is sure of the inner reward. This conception may be twis

n a good example to the ancient mechanic or merchant. He saw good men as his colaborers with God. He saw the men that he helped to make good as a husbandry that he was cultivating for the Lord, as a building that he was fashioning for Christ's sake. The cure for thieving was work. He that stole was to steal no more, but was to work with his hands the thing that was good; and the benevolent motive was to impel to work that the former thief might have something to give to the needy. It was of the hard toil

before his death Mark Twain published in a magazine a satire on the usual idea of heaven. Introduced in a dream to the city of our hope, he was told by an attending angel to take his seat on a cloud and to occupy himself by wearing a crown and holding a harp. Soon becoming weary of this do-nothing life, he came down to the golden streets. He was asked to keep for a time the crowns and harps of the passers-by, and he noted that the way was strewn with these rejected ornaments! Some good people may have been offended by the satire; and some whose life has been filled with weariness will insist that heaven must

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le the biblical ideal for heaven breaks its reserve sufficiently to sh