Life in Earnest

Two things are very certain, — that we have all got a work to do, and are all, more or less, indisposed to do it. In oiher words, every man has a calling, and most men have a greater or less amount of indolence, -which disinclines them for the work of that calling. Many men would have liked the gospel all the better, if it had entirely repealed the sentence, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread;” had it proclaimed a final emancipation from industry and turned our world into a merry play-ground or luxurious dormitory. But this is not what the gospel does. It does not abolish labour; it gives it a new and a nobler aspect. The gospel abolishes labour much in the same way as it abolishes death; it leaves the thing, but changes its nature. The gospel sweetens the beUever’s work: it gives him new motives for performing it. The gospel dignifies toil: it transforms it from the drudgery of the workhouse or the penitentiary, to the affectionate offices and joyful services of the fire-side and the family circle. It asks us to do for the sake of Christ many things which we were once compelled to bear as a portion of the curse, and which worldly men perform for selfish and secondary reasons. “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God; and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for yc serve the Lord Christ.” The gospel has not superseded dihgence. “Study to be quiet and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you. If any man will not work, neither let him eat.” It is mentioned as almost the climax of sin, “And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also, and busybodies, speakingthings which they ought not:” as, on the other hand, the healthy and right-conditioned state of a soul is, “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”

I. This precept is violaled by those who have no business at all. By the bounty of God’s providence, some are in such a situation, that they do not need to toil for a subsistence; they go to bed when they please, and get up when they can sleep no longer, and they do with themselves whatever they like; and though we dare not say that their’s is the happiest life, it certainly seems to be the easiest. But it will neither be a lawful life nor a happy one, unless it have some work in hand, some end in view. Those of you who are familiar with the shore, may have seen, attached to the inundated reef, a creature, (wht4lier a plant or animal you could scarcely tell,) rooted to the rock as a plant might be, and twirling its long tentacula as an animal would do. This plant-animal’s life is somewhat monotonous, for it has nothing to do but grow and twirl its feelers, float in the tide, or fold itself up on its foot-stalk when that tide has receded, for months and years together. Now, would it not be very dismal to be transformed into a zoophyte? Would it not be an awful punishment, with your human soul still in you, to be anchored to a rock, able to do nothing but spin about your arms or fold them up again, and knowing no variety, except when the receding ocean left you in the daylight, or the returning waters plunged you into the green depths again, or the sweeping tide brought you the prize of a young periwinkle or an invisible star-fish? But what better is the life you are spontaneously leading? What greater varietymarks your existence, than chequers the life of the sea-anemone? Does not one day float over you after another, just as the tide floats over it, and find you much the same, and leave you vegetating still? Are you more useful?

What real service to others did you render yesterday? What tangible amount of occupation did you overtake in the 1G8 hours of which last week consisted? And what higher end in living have you than that polypus? You go through certain mechanical routines of rising, and dressing, and visiting, and dining, and going to sleep again; and are a little roused from your usual lethargy by the arrival of a friend, or the effort needed to write some note of ceremony. But as it curtseys in the waves, and vibrates its exploring arms, and gorges some dainty medusa, the sea-anemone goes through nearly the same round of pursuits and enjoyments with your intelligent and immortal self. Is this a life for a rational and responsible creature to lead?

11. But this precept is also violated by those who are diligent in trifles, — whose activity is a busy idleness. You may be very earnest in a pursuit which is utterly beneath your prerogative as an intelligent creature, and your high destination as an immortal being. Pursuits which are perftctly proper in creatures destitute of reason may be very culpable in those who not only have reason, but are capable of enjoyments above the range of reason itself. We just now imagined a man retaining all his consciousness transformed into a zoophyte. Let us imagine another similar transformation. Fancy that instead of a polypus you were changed into a swallow. There you have a creature abundantly busy, up in the early morning, for ever on the wing, as graceful and sprightly in his flight as he is tasteful in the haunts which he selects. Look at him, zigzagging over the clover field, skimming the limpid lake, whisking round the steeple, or dancing gayly in the sky. Behold him in high spirits, shrieking out his ecstasy as he has bolted a dragon-fly, or darted through the arrow-slits of the old turret, or performed some other feat of hirundine agility. And notice how he pays his morning visits, alighting elegantly on some house-top, and twittering pohtely by turns to the swallow on either side of him, and after five minutes’ conversation, ofl” and away to call for his friend at the castle. And now he is gone upon his travels, gone to spend the winter at Rome or

Naples, to visit Egypt or the Holy Land, or on a pilgrimage to Spain or the coast of Barbary. And when he comes home next April, sure enough he has been abroad; — charming chmate, — highly delighted with the cicadas in Italy, and the bees on Hymettus; — locusts in Africa rather scarce this season; but upon the whole much pleased with his trip, and returned in high health and spirits. Now, this is a very proper life for a swallow, but is it a life for you? To flit about from house to house; to pay futile visits, where, if the talk were written down, it would amount to little more than the chattering of a swallow; to bestow all your thoughts on graceful attitudes and nimble movements and pohshed attire; to roam from land to land with so little information in your head, or so little taste for the subUme or beautiful in your soul, that could a swallow pubhsh his travels, and did you publish yours, we should probably find the one a counterpart of the other; the winged traveller enlarging on the discomforts of his nest, and the wingless one, on the miseries of his hotel or his chateau; you describing o the places of amusement, or enlarging on the vastness of the country, and the abundance of the game; and your rival eloquent on the self-same things. Oh! it is a thought, not ridiculous, but appalling. If the earthly history of some of our fellow-creatures were written down; if a faithful record were kept of the way they spend their time; if all the hours of idle vacancy or idler occupancy were put together, and the very small amount of useful diligence deducted, the life of a bird or quadruped would be a nobler one; more worthy of its powers and more equal to its Creator’s end in forming it. Such a register is kept. Though the trifler does not chronicle his own vain words and wasted hours, they chronicle themselves. They find their indelible place in that book of remembrance with which human hands cannot tamper, and from which no erasure, save one, can blot them. They are noted in the memory of God. And when once this life of wondrous opportunities and awful advantages is over — when the twenty or fifty years of probation are fled away — when mortal existence, with its facihties for personal improvement and serviceablencss to others, is gone beyond recal — when the trifler looks back to the long pilgrimage, with all the doors of hope and doors of usefulness, past which he skipped in his frisky forgetfulness — what anguish will it cause to think that he has gambolled through such a world without salvation to himself, without any real bcnefic to his brethren, a busy trifler, a vivacious idler, a clever fool!

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