By J.R. Miller
"It must be done by both; God never without me,
I never without God."
--JOHANNES SCHEFFLER.
"Faithful servant" will be the commendation on the judgment-day of those who have lived well on the earth. Not great deeds will be commended, but faithfulness. The smallest ministries will rank with the most conspicuous, if they are all that the weak hands could do. Indeed, the widow's two mites were more in value than the rich men's large coins.
"Two mites, two drops, but all her house and land
Fell from an earnest heart but trembling hand;
The others' wanton wealth foamed high and brave;
The others cast away, she only gave."
Yet faithfulness as a measure of requirement is not something that can be reached without effort. It does not furnish a pillow for indolence. It is not a letting down of obligation to a low standard, to make life easy. It is indeed a lofty measurement. "Thou hast been faithful" is the highest possible commendation.
It may not be amiss to look a little at the meaning of the word as a standard of moral requirement. In general, it implies the doing of all our work as well as we can. All our work includes, of course, our business, our trade, our household duties, all our daily task-work, as well as our praying, our Bible-reading, and our obeying of the moral law. We must not make the mistake of thinking that there is no religion in the way we do the common work of our trade or of our household, or our work on the farm, or in the mill or store. The faithfulness Christ requires and commends takes in all these things. Ofttimes, too, it would be easier to be faithful in some great trial, requiring sublimity of courage, than in the little unpicturesque duties of an ordinary day. Says Phillips Brooks: "You picture to yourself the beauty of bravery and steadfastness. You let your imagination wander in delight over the memory of martyrs who have died for truth. And then some little, wretched, disagreeable duty comes, which is your martyrdom, the lamp of your oil; and if you will not do it, how your oil is spilt! How flat and thin and unilluminated your sentiment about the martyrs runs out over your self-indulgent life!"
Lovers of the violin are familiar with the name of Stradivarius, the old violin-maker of Cremona. He has been dead nearly two hundred years, and his violins now bring fabulous prices. George Eliot, in one of her poems, puts some noble words into the mouth of the old man. Speaking of the masters who will play on his violins, he says:--
"While God gives them skill,
I give them instruments to play upon,
God choosing me to help him."
Referring to another violin-maker, his rival, he says:--
"But were his the best,
He could not work for two.
My work is mine,
And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked,
I should rob God--since he is fullest good--
Leaving a blank instead of violins.
I say, not God himself can make man's best
Without best men to help him.
'Tis God gives skill,
But not without men's hands.
He could not make
Antonio Stradivari's violins
Without Antonio."
At first reading these words may indeed seem heretical and irreverent, but they are not. It is true, indeed, that even God cannot do our work without us, without our skill, our faithfulness. If we fail or do our little duty negligently, there will be a blank or a blur where there ought to have been something beautiful. As another says, "The universe is not quite perfect without my work well done."
One man is a carpenter. God has called him to that work. It is his duty to build houses, and to build them well. That is, he is required to be a good carpenter, to do the very best work he can possibly do. If, therefore, he does careless work, imperfect, dishonest, slurred, slighted work, he is robbing God, leaving only bad carpentering where he ought to have left good. For even God himself will not build the carpenter's houses without the carpenter. Or, here is a mother in a home. Her children are about her, with their needs. Her home requires her skill, her taste, her refinement, her toil and care. It is her calling to be a good mother, and to make a true home for her household. Her duty is to do always her very best to make her home beautiful, bright, happy, a fit place for her children to grow up in. Faithfulness requires that she do always such service as a mother, that Jesus shall say of her home-making, "She hath done what she could." To do less than her best is to fail in fidelity. Suppose that her hand should slack, that she should grow negligent, would she not clearly be robbing God? For even God cannot make a beautiful home for her children without her.
So we may apply the principle to all kinds of work. The faithfulness which God requires must reach to everything we do, to the way the child gets its lessons and recites them, to the way the dressmaker and the tailor sew their seams, to the way the blacksmith welds the iron, and shoes the horse, to the way the plumber puts the pipes into the new building and looks after the drainage, to the way the carpenter does his work on the house, to the way the bridge-builder swings the bridge over the stream, to the way the clerk represents the goods, and measures or weighs them. "Be thou faithful" is the word that rings from heaven in every ear. God's word for the doing of every piece of work that any one does. How soon it would put a stop to all dishonesty, all fraud, all scant work, all false weights and measures, all shams, all neglects or slightings of duty, were this lesson only learned and practiced everywhere!
"It does not matter," people say, "whether I do my little work well or not. Of course I must not steal, nor lie, nor commit forgery, nor break the Sabbath. These are moral things. But there is no sin in my sewing up this seam carelessly, or in my using bad mortar in this wall, or in my putting inferior timber in this house, or a piece of flawed iron in this bridge." But we need to learn that the moral law applies everywhere, just as really to carpentry, or blacksmithing, or tailoring, as to Sabbath-keeping. We never can get away from this law.
Besides, it does matter, for our neighbor's sake, as well as for the honor of God's law, how we do our work. The bricklayer does negligent work on the walls of the flue he is putting in, and one night, years afterward, a spark creeps through the crevice and reaches a wooden beam that lies there, and soon the house is in flames and perhaps precious lives perish. The bricklayer was unfaithful. The foundryworker, in casting the great iron supports for a bridge, is unwatchful for an instant, and a bubble of air makes a flaw. It is buried away in the heart of the beam and escapes detection. One day, years later, there is a terrible disaster. A great railroad bridge gives way beneath the weight of an express train and hundreds of lives are lost. In the inquest it is testified that a slight flaw in one beam was the cause of the awful calamity which hurled so many lives into eternity. The foundry workman was unfaithful.
These are but suggestions of the duty and of its importance. No work can be of so little moment that it matters not whether it be done faithfully or not. Unfaithfulness in the smallest things is unfaithfulness, and God is grieved, and possibly sometime, somewhere, disaster may come as the consequence of the neglect. On the other hand, faithfulness is pleasing to God, though it be only in the sweeping well of a room, or the doing neatly of the smallest things in household care. Then faithfulness is far-reaching in its influence. The universe is not quite complete without each one's little work well done.
The self-culture that there is in the mere habit of faithfulness is in itself a rich reward for all our striving. It is a great thing to train ourselves to do always our best, to do as nearly perfect work as possible. Said Michael Angelo: "Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives for it, strives for something that is Godlike." The habit, unyieldingly persisted in, of doing everything with the most scrupulous conscientiousness, builds up in the one who so lives a noble and beautiful character.
