Industry

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 Many men would have liked the gospel all the better, if it had entirely repealed the sentence, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread;” had it proclaimed a final emancipation from industry and turned our world into a merry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 The gospel has not superseded dihgence.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!

III. Those violate this precept, who have a lawful calling, a proper business, but are slothful in it. When people are in business for themselves, they are in less risk of transgressing this injunction; though even then it sometimes happens that the hand is not diligent enough to make its owner rich. But it is, when engaged in business, not for ourselves, but for others, or for God, that we are in greatest danger of neglecting this rule. The servant, who has no pleasure in his work, who does no more than wages can buy, or a legal agreement enforce; the shopman, wli does not enter heartily into his employer’s interest, and bestir himself to extend his trade as he would strive were the concern his own; the scholar, who trifles when his teacher’s eye is elsewhere, and who is content if he can only learn enough to escape disgrace; the teacher, who is satisfied if he can only convey a decent share of instruction, and who does not labour for the mental expansion and spiritual well-being of his pupils, as he would for those of his own children; the magistrate or civic functionary, who is only careful to escape public censure, and who does not labour to make the community richer, or happier, or better for his administration; the minister, who can give his energies to another cause than the cause of Christ, and neglect his Master’s business in minding his own; every one, in short, who performs the work which God or his brethren have given him to do in a hireling and perfunctory manner, is a violator of the divine injunction, “Not slothful in business.” There are some persons of a dull and languid turn. They trail sluggishly through life, as if some painful viscus, some adhesive slime were clogging every movement, and making their snail-path a waste of their very substance. They do nothing with that healthy alacrity, that gleesome energy which bespeaks a sound mind even more than a vigorous body; but they drag themselves to the inevitable task with remonstrating reluctance, as if every joint were set in a socket of torture, or as if they expected the quick flesh to cleave to the next implement of industry they handled. Slaving no wholesome love to work, no joyous delight in duty, they do every thing grudgingly, in the most superficial manner, and at the latest moment. Others there are, who, if you find them at their post, you will find them dozing at it. They are a sort of perpetual somnambulists, walking through their sleep; moving in a constant mystery; looking for their faculties, and forgetting what they are looking for; not able to find their work, and when they have found their work not able to find their hands; doing every thing dreamily, and therefore every thing confusedly and incompletely; their work a dream, their sleep a dream, not repose, not refreshment, but a slumbrous vision of rest, a dreamy query concerning sleep; too late for every thing, taking their passage when the ship has sailed, insuring their property when the house is burned, locking the door when the goods are stolen — men, whose bodies seem to have started in the race of existence before their minds were ready, and who are always gazing out vacantly as if they expected their wits were coming up by the next arrival: But, besides the sloths and the somnambulists, there is a third class — the day-dreamers. These are a very mournful, because a self-deceiving generation. Like a man who has his windows glazed with yellow glass, and who can fancy a golden sunshine, or a mellow autumn on the fields even when a wintry sleet is sweeping over them, the day-dreamer lives in an elysium of his own creating. With a foot on either side of the fire — with his chin on his bosom, and the wrong end of the book turned towards him, he can pursue his self-complacent musings

till he imagines himself a traveller in unknown lands — the explorer of central Africa — the solver of all the unsolved problems in science — the author of some unprecedented poem at which the wide world is wondering — or something so stupendous that he even begins to quail at his own glory. The misery is, that whilst nothing is done towards attaining the greatness, his luxurious imaorination takes its t#

possession for granted, and with his feet on the fender, he fancies himself already on the highest pinnacle of fame; and a still greater misery is, that the time thus wasted in unprofitahie musings, if spent in honest application aad downright working, would go very far to carry him M/here his sublime imagination fain would be. To avoid this guilt and wretchedness,

1. Have a business in which diligence is lawful and desirable. There are some pursuits which do »ot deserve to be called a business. iEropus was the king oi’ Macedonia, and it was his favx3urite pursuit t make lanterns. Prot)ably, he vlas very good at making them, but his proper business was to be a king, and therefore the more lanterns he made, the worse king he was. And if your work be a high calling, you must not dissipate your energies on trifles, on things which, though lawful in themselves, are still as irrelevant to you as lanternmaking is irrelevant to a king. Perhaps some are without any specific calling. They have neither farms nor merchandise to look after. They have no heu-schold to care for, no children to train and educate, no official duties to engross their time. They have an independent fortune, and live at large. I congratulate them on their wealth, their liberal education, their position in society, and their abundant leisure. It is in their power to be the benefactors of their generation; they are in circumstances to do an eminent service for God and finish some great work before their going hence. What that work shall be I do not attempt to indicate; I rather leave it for their own investigation and discovery. Every one has his own line of things. Howard chose one path, and Wilberforce another; Harlan Page chose one, and Brainerd Taylor another. Mrs. Fletcher did one work, Lady Glenorchy another, and Mary Jane Graham a third. Every one did the work for which God had best fitted them, but each made that work his or her business. They gave themselves to it; they not only did it by the bye, but they selected it and set themselves in earnest to it, not parenthetically, but on very purpose — the problem of their lives — for Christ’s sake and in Christ’s service, and held themselves as bound to do it as if they had been by himself expressly engaged for it. And, you must

40 the sarao. Those who do not need to toil for their daily bread, their very leisure ts a hint what the Lord would have them to clo. As you have no business of your own, he would have you devote ycHJrselvcs to his business. He would have you carry on, in some of its manifold departments, that work which he came to earth to do. He would have you ^0 about his Father’s business as he was wont to be about it, And if you sliJl persist in living to yourselves, you cauuot be iiappy-You cannot spend all your days in making pincushions,or reading newspapers, or loitering in club-rooms and coffee iwuses, and yet be happy. If you profess to follow Christ, this is not a Christian life. It is not a conscientious, and so it cannot be a comfortable life. And if th’C pin-cushion or the newsi)aper fail to make you happy, remember the reason — very good as relaxations, ever so great an amount of these things caa never be a business, and “wist j’e not that you should be about your Father’s business?”

2. Having made a v.’ise and deliberate selection of a business, go on with it, go through with it. Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable and unspeakably more useful than talented inconstancy. In the heathery turf you will often find a plant chiefly remarkable for its peculiar roots; from the main stem down to the minutest fibre, you will find them ail abruptly terminate, as if shorn or bitten off; and the silly superstition of the country people alleges, that once on a time it was a plant of singular potency for healing all sorts of maladies, and therefore the great enemy of man, in his malignity, bit off the roots in which its virtues resided. This plant, with this quaint history, is a very good emblem of many well-meaning but little-effecting people. The efficacy of every good work lies in its completion, and all their good works terminate abruptly and are left off unfinished. The devil frustrates their efficacy by cutting off their ends; their unprofitable history is made up of plans and projects, schemes of usefulness that were never gone about, and magnificent undertakings that were never carried forward; societies that were set a-going, then left to shift for themselves, and forlorn beings who for a time were taken up and instructed, and just when they were beginning to show symptoms of improvement, were cast on the world again. But others there are, who, before beginning to build, count the cost, and having collected their materials and laid their foundations deep and broad, go on to rear their structure, indifferent to more tempting schemes and sublimer enterprises afterwards suggested. The man who provides a home for a poor neighbour, is a greater benefactor of the poor than he who lays the foundation of a stately almshouse and never finishes a single apartment. The persevering teacher who guides one child into the saving knowledge of Christ, and leads him on to established habits of piety, is a more useful man than his friend, who gathers in a room-full of ragged children, and after a few weeks of waning zeal, turns them all adrift in the streets again. The patriot who set his heart on abolishing the slave-trade, and after twenty years of rebuffs and reviHngs, of tantalized hope and disappointed effort, at last succeeded, achieved a greater work than if he had set afloat all possible schemes of philanthropy, and then left them, one after the other, to sink or swini. So short is life that we can afTord to lose none of it in abortive undertakings; and when once we are assured that a given work is one which it is worth our while to do, it is true wisdom to set about it instantly, and when once we have begun it, it is true economy to finish it.