By James Stalker
THERE are two ideals as to work - the one to do as little, and the other to do as much, as possible. The former may be called the Oriental, the latter the Occidental, ideal. The child of the East, living in a warm climate, where movement or exertion soon tires, counts idleness the height of enjoyment, and passes his time, if he can, in a lazy dream. His very clothing is an index of his tastes -the capacious garment, the loose slipper. The son of the West, on the contrary, is apt to be a stirring being; he likes the excitement of endeavour and the exultation of achievement. His clothing is the least elegant in the world, but it has one virtue, which in his eyes is a sufficient compensation: it is suitable for movement and work. His very pastimes are strenuous: whilst the Oriental after work stretches himself on a divan, the Briton spends his leisure in football or hunting.
Even in the West, indeed, there are great differences in the tastes of individuals. People of lethargic temperament are slow to work and prone to laziness, whilst those of the choleric temperament sometimes carry the enthusiasm for exertion to such extremes that they do not feel right unless they are in a kind of tempest of occupation. Among certain classes the goal of ambition is to be in a position to be able, if you choose, to do nothing; this is called being a gentleman. But the shrewder heads perceive that the pleasures of such a position, when it is won, seldom come up to the expectations of its possessor, unless, when released from a bread-winning calling, he voluntarily devotes himself to some of those in valuable services to the community or the Church which the leisured can best discharge, and on which the welfare of modern society so much depends.
Such are the differences which prevail amongst men when choosing only according to taste or temperament; but on this subject, as elsewhere, our Lord has set before us, in His teaching and example, the will of God.
I.
In its bearing on this question there is endless significance in the fact that Jesus was born in the cottage of a working man and spent the greater part of His life doing the work of a village carpenter. It is impossible to believe that this happened by chance; for the minutest circumstances of the life of Christ must have been ordered by God. The Jews expected the Messiah to be a prince; but God decreed that He should be born a working man. And so Jesus built the cottages of the villagers of Nazareth, constructed the waggon of the farmer, and mended perhaps the plaything of the child.
This sheds immortal honour upon work. The Greeks and the Romans despised manual labour, accounting it only fit for slaves; and this pagan notion easily slips back into the minds of men. But the example of the Son of man will always protect the dignity of honest labour; and the heart of the artisan will sing at his work as he remembers that Jesus of Nazareth stood at the bench and handled the tools of the carpenter.
The virtue of work is manifold. It stamps the brute earth and the raw materials taken out of it with the signature of mind,* which is the image and superscription of Him who is the Supreme Reason. It is a contribution to the happiness of the race, and it brings the individual into co-operation with all his fellow-creatures in the common task of taking possession of their habitation. It reacts too on the worker. It is a daily school of patience, sympathy and honesty. The man who scamps his work degrades himself.
Our age has learnt these truths well, because they have been expounded to it by several of its favourite and wisest teachers; and there is no healthier element in the literature of our century than this Gospel of Labour, as it is called. It has taught many a man to do his work thoroughly, not merely because he is paid for it, but because he delights in it for its own sake and respects himself too much to pass off for work what he knows to be sham.**
II.
Although the commonest work well done is honourable, every kind of work is not of equal honour. There are some callings in which a man can contribute far more directly and amply than in others to the welfare of his fellow-creatures, and these stand highest in the scale of honour.
It was on this principle that Jesus acted when He quitted the bench of the carpenter to devote Himself to preaching and healing. Than these two there are no callings more honourable, the one ministering directly to the soul and the other to the body. By adopting them, however, Jesus stamped a fresh dignity on the work both of the preacher and of the physician; and, ever since, many in both professions have gone about their duties with intenser ardour' and enjoyment because they have been conscious of walking in His footsteps.
But, though His work had changed, He was not less a worker than He had been before. It is a common theme of discussion between manual and professional labourers whether the toil of the hand or that of the brain is the more severe. The artisan thinks that his well-clothed neighbour, who does not need to touch rough materials or lift heavy loads, has an easy time of it; whilst the professional man, harassed with anxiety and responsibility, sighs for the regular hours, the well-learnt task and the freedom from care of the working man. This is a controversy, which will never be decided. But it is certain, in the case of Jesus at least, that it was when He entered on His new career that the real hard work of His life began. His three years of work as preacher and healer were years of unexampled toil. Wherever He went multitudes followed Him; when He went into any new region, they sent into all the country round about and brought unto Him all that were diseased in mind or body; the crowds about Him sometimes swelled to such dimensions that the people trode one upon another; and sometimes He had not time even to eat. Such was the pressure and congestion of work with which He was beset. It is the kind of life, which many have to live in this busy age; but we can look to Jesus and see in what spirit to carry the burden.
III.
In Christ's teaching there are many sayings on the responsibility of devoting our time and strength to the work of the world. We are servants, to every one of whom the Divine Taskmaster has given his own work; and, when He returns, He will rigidly require an account of whether or not it has been done.
The most solemn utterance of this kind is the great Parable of the Talents. The master, going into a far country, leaves each of his servants with a certain amount of money, one with more, another with less; it is to be well employed in his absence; and, when he comes back, he looks to receive not only the principal, but the additional money it has gained. Those who have made use of their trust diligently enter into the joy of their lord; but the servant who has done nothing with his talent is cast into outer darkness. It is a parable of truly awful solemnity. It evidently means that at the last judgment God will expect us to produce work done equivalent to the talents and opportunities He has conferred upon us; and merely to have done nothing with them, as the man with one talent did, will be enough to condemn us. It is not necessary to waste our time and squander our strength, money and other gifts on bad objects: merely to have failed to expend them on the work of life will incur the extreme penalty of the law.***
This is an exceedingly severe view of life; but it is the view by which Jesus lived Himself. He did not preach what He did not practise. He was doubtless conscious of possessing vast powers and of being capable of exerting an influence, which would, produce enormous changes both on individuals and in history. But the time allowed Him for putting this influence forth and impressing it on the world was very brief. He knew this, and He always acted like one who has a great work to do and little time to do it. Every hour of His time seemed to be apportioned to its own part of the task, for, when asked to do anything sooner than He intended, He would say, "Mine hour is not yet come." Everything with Him had its own hour. He knew that He was immortal till His work was done. As He said, there are twelve hours in the day of a human life, and, till these are spent, a man walks in safety beneath the shield of Providence. The edge of earnestness on His spirit grew keener as time went on; the purpose of life burned more within Him, and He was straitened till it should be accomplished.
On His last journey to Jerusalem, as He went before His disciples in the way, " they were amazed, and, as they followed, they were afraid." " I must work the work of Him that sent Me," He would say, " while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work."
IV.
There is intense joy in work when it is done and well done. The humblest mechanic feels this pleasure, when he sees the article he has been making passing out of his hands perfect. The poet surely feels it when he writes Finis at the end of the work into which he has poured the full force of his genius. What must it have been to William Wilberforce to hear on his deathbed that the cause to which he had devoted the toil of a lifetime had triumphed, and to know that, when he died, there would not be a single slave breathing in any of the dependencies of Britain!
Jesus drank deeply of this well of pleasure. The work He was doing was done perfectly at every stage; and it was work of the most beneficent and enduring kind. As He saw part after part of it falling accomplished behind Him, as He saw hour after hour receding into the past filled with its God-appointed work, He whispered to Himself, " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." And in the article of death, as He saw the last fold of the grand design unrolled, He passed out of the world with the cry on His lips, " It is finished!" He uttered this cry as a soldier might do on the battlefield, who perceives, with the last effort of consciousness, that the struggle in which he has sacrificed his life has been a splendid victory. But the triumph and the reward of His work never come to an end; for still, as the results of what He did unfold themselves age after age, as His words sink deeper into the minds of men, as His influence changes the face of the world, and as heaven ills with those whom He has redeemed, " He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied."
V.
Rest is as necessary a part of life as work. Even for work's sake it is necessary; for it restores the worker to himself, putting him in possession of all his powers and enabling him to do his best.
Jesus knew how to rest as well as how to work. Though there was constant haste in His life, there was no hurry; though there was much pressure, there was no confusion. Nothing was more conspicuous in Him than His unvarying dignity, calmness and self-possession.
He never did anything unprepared. As He never did anything before the time, so He never did anything after it. One-half of the worry and confusion of life arises from doing things at the wrong time, the mind being either weakened by borrowing to-day the trouble of tomorrow or exhausted by having on hand not only today's work but that which ought to have been done yesterday. God never wants us to do more in a day than we have time for; and the day will be found to have room enough for its own work if it is not encumbered with the work of the day past or the care of the day to come.****
Jesus was ready for every duty because He came up with it strengthened by the perfect discharge of the duty preceding it. His work in the carpenter's shop was a preparation for the work of preaching. It acquainted Him with human nature and human life, initiating Him especially into the joys and sorrows of the poor, to whom it was afterwards His boast to preach. Many a preacher misses the mark because, though he knows books, he does not know men. But Jesus " knew what was in man, and needed not that any should teach Him." He did not quit this school of experience till He was thirty years of age. Eager as He must have been for the work which lay before Him, He did not rush into it prematurely, but waited hidden in the country, till mind and body were mature and everything fully ripe; and then He came forth travelling in the greatness of His strength and did His work swiftly, surely, perfectly.
But in the midst of His work also He took means to preserve His independence and peace of mind. When the multitude pressing on Him grew too large and stayed too long, He withdrew Himself into the wilderness. Neither the desire to go on preaching nor even the appeals of the sick and dying could detain Him when He felt He needed to preserve His own calmness and self-possession. After days of too crowded work He would disappear, to refresh His body by casting it on the breast of nature and His soul by casting it on the bosom of God. When He saw His disciples becoming exhausted or excited, He would say, " Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while." For even in the holiest work it is possible to lose oneself. One may resign oneself so completely to the appeals and needs of men as to have no leisure for communion with God. The enthusiastic minister, consumed with zeal and willing to please everybody, neglects his study and allows his mind to become starved; and the result is inevitable. He becomes stale, flat and unprofitable; and those whose importunities have induced him to sacrifice his true self are the first to turn round and complain that he has disappointed them.
For the great mass of the world's workers the principal opportunity of rest is the Sabbath.***** Jesus threw His shield over this institution, maintaining that it was made for man, and therefore none had the right to take it from him. In His day those who tried to take it away were the Pharisees, who converted it from a day of sacred delight into a day set with thorns to wound the conscience. This danger is not yet past; but in our day the attack comes more from the other side-from the Sadducees rather than the Pharisees. The movements against the Sabbath originate at present almost entirely with the idle rich, who naturally, after spending six days in a round of pleasure and dissipation, have no taste for a day of quietness, when they might have to look within and face themselves. If they obeyed the first part of the fourth commandment, " Six days shalt thou labour," they would have more comprehension of the second. They generally profess, indeed, to be acting in the interest of the poor; but they take the name of the poor in vain, for the poor know better. They know that, wherever the sacredness of the Sabbath is overridden, the poor man has seven days to toil instead of six. Wherever the continental Sunday prevails, the noise of mill and foundry is heard on Sabbath as well as Saturday; and, should the working classes of this country ever yield to a movement for secularising the Lord's Day, they will find it true that, whilst they that honour God are honoured, those who despise Him shall be lightly esteemed.
It is, however, a problem always requiring fresh consideration, as the conditions of life change, how to observe the Sabbath. The day of rest is not rightly spent unless it is a delight to man as well as holiness to the Lord. But surely the best security for reaping all the fruits it was intended to yield is to spend it in the spirit and the company of Him after whom it is called the Lord's Day.
* Compare Schleiermacher's definition of Ethics, as " the collective operation of active human reason upon nature," and of the aim of moral effort as "the perfect inter-penetration of reason and nature, a permeation of nature by reason."-WUTTKE, Christian Ethics, vol. i, p. 48 (translation). ** "'Who draws a line and satisfies his soul,
Making it crooked where it should be straight?
An idiot with an oyster-shell may draw
His lines along the sand, all wavering,
Fixing no point or pathway to a point;
An idiot one remove may choose his line,
Straggle and be content; but, God be praised,
Antonio Stradivari has an eye
That winces at false work and loves the true,
With hand and arm that play upon the tool
As willingly as any singing bird
Sets him to sing his morning roundelay,
Because lie likes to sing and likes the song.'
Then Naldo: ' Tis a pretty kind of fame
At best, that comes of making violins;
And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go
To purgatory none the less.'
But he:
'Twere purgatory here to make them ill;
And for my fame-when any master holds
'Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,
He will be glad that Stradivari lived,
Made violins, and made them of the best.
The masters only know whose work is good:
They will choose mine; and, while God gives them skill,
I give them instruments to play upon,
God choosing me to help Him'
'What! were God
At fault for violins, thou absent?'
Yes;
He were at fault for Stradivari's work,'"
GEORGE ELIOT, Stradivarius.
*** "And who art thou that braggest of thy life of Idleness; complacently showest thy bright gilt equipages; sumptuous cushions; appliances for folding of the hands to mere sleep? Looking up, looking down, around, behind or before, discernest thou, if it be not in Mayfair alone, any idle hero, saint, god, or even devil? Not a vestige of one. In the Heavens, in the Earth, in the Waters under the Earth, is none like unto thee, Thou art an original figure in this Creation; a denizen in Mayfair alone, in this extraordinary Century or Half-Century alone! One monster there is in the world: the idle man. What is his ' Religion '? That Nature is a Phantom, where cunning beggary footnote continued: or thievery may sometimes find good victual. That God is a lie; and that Man and his life are a lie. Alas, alas, who of us is there that can say, I have worked? The faithfullest of us are unprofitable servants; the faithfullest of us know that best. The faithfullest of us may say, with sad and true old Samuel, 'Much of my life has been trifled away!' But he that has, and except on public occasions professes to have, no function but that of going idle in a graceful or graceless manner, and of begetting sons to go idle...on what iron spikes is he rushing?" Carlyle, "Past and Present".
On this subject the professional philosophers are no less severe. See DORNER, Christliche Stifenlehre, p. 460.
**** "Aesthetically we may say that want of time is want of genius; for genius accomplishes in a very short time, and in right time, what others cannot accomplish in an unlimited time. But ethically expressed, it is this: want of time is want of moral energy and wisdom."-MARTENSEN, General Ethics, p. 426.
***** "The importance to a statesman of refusing to be hurried was recognised by Talleyrand He had drawn up a confession of faith, which was to be sent to the Pope on the day of his death. On the day before he died he was supposed to be at the point of death, and he was asked whether the paper should be sent off His reply was addressed to the Duchesse de Dino, who repeated it to the first Lord Ashburton, from whom I heard it: 'Attendez jusqu'a demain. Toute ma vie je me suis fait une rigle de ne jamais me presser, et jai toujours ete a temps.' " With a view to promote thorough calmness, orderliness, -and with higher views also, though these have respect to the man rather than exclusively to the statesman, -it were to be wished that he should set apart from business, not only a sabbatical day in each week, but, if it be possible, a sabbatical hour in each day I do not here refer to his devotional exercises exclusively, but to the advantage he may derive from quitting the current of busy thoughts, and cutting out for himself in each day a sort of cell for reading or meditation-a space resembling one of those bights or incurvations in the course of a rapid stream (called by the Spaniards resting-places), where the waters seem to tarry and repose themselves for a while This, if it were only by exercising the statesman's powers of self-government-of intention and remission in business, of putting the mind on and taking it off-would be a practice well paid, for it is to these powers that he must owe his exemption from the dangers to mind, body, and business of continued nervous excitement. But to a statesman of a high order of intellect such intermissions of labour will yield a further profit, they will tend to preserve in him some remains of such philosophic or meditative faculties as may be crumbling under the shocks and pressures of public life. One who shall have been deeply imbued in his early years with the love of meditative studies, will find that in any such hour of tranquillity which he shall allow himself, the recollection of them will spring up in his mind with a light and spiritual emanation, in like manner (to resume the similitude) as a bubble of air springs from the bottom of the stayed waters.'-SIR HENRY TAILOR, The Statesman, pp. 275, 276.
