Fellowship
The comradeship of work is an element which is rarely taken into account,
but which is of great importance from many points of view. Men who work
together have not only the same interests, but are likely to develop a
kinship of thought and feeling. Their association extends beyond working
hours, and includes their higher and wider interests. There seems to be
something in the putting forth of effort upon the same material or for the
same end which binds men together with ties which are not wholly the
result of proximity. Those who have given no thought to the educational
side of work, and who are ignorant that it has such a side, are,
nevertheless, brought within the unifying influence of a process which,
using mainly the hands and the feet, is insensibly training the whole
nature.
There is a deeper unity in the work of the world than has been clearly
understood as yet; there is that vital unity which binds together those
who are not only engaged in a common task, but who are also involved in a
common spiritual process. The very necessity of work carries with it the
implication of an incomplete world and an imperfectly developed society.
The earth was not finished when it was made ready for the appearance of
man; it will not be finished until man has done with it. In the making of
the world man has his part; here, as elsewhere, he meets God and co-
operates with him; the divine and the human combining to perfect the
process of unfolding and evolution. Until the work of men has developed
it, the earth is raw material. It is full of power, but that power is not
conserved and directed, it is full of the potentialities of fertility, but
there are no harvests; all manner of possibilities both of material and
spiritual uses are in it,--food, ore, force, beauty,--but these
possibilities must await the skill of man before they can be turned into
wealth, comfort, art, civilisation. God gives the earth as a mine, and man
must work it; as a field, and man must till it; as a reservoir of force,
and man must make connection with it; as the rough material out of which
order, symmetry, utility, beauty, culture may be wrought, and men must
unfold these higher uses by intelligence, skill, toil, and character. At
some time every particle of the civilised world has been like the old
frontier on this continent, and men have reclaimed either the desert or
the wilderness by their heroic sacrifices and labours. It is a misuse of
language, therefore, to say that the world is made; it is not made,
because it is being made century by century through the toil of successive
generations.
Now, this creative process, in which God and men unite, is what we call
work. It is not a process introduced among men as an afterthought or as a
form of punishment; it was involved in the initial creative act, and it is
part of the complete creative act. The conception of a process of
development carries with it the idea, not of a finished but of an
unfinished world; it interprets history not as a record of persons and
events separate from the stage upon which they appear, like actors on the
boards, but as the story of the influence of an unfinished world upon an
undeveloped race, and of the marvellous unfolding through which the hidden
powers and qualities of the material and the worker are brought into play.
Work becomes, therefore, not only a continuation of the divine activity in
the world, but a process inwrought in the very constitution of that world.
Growth is the divinest element in life, and work is one of the chief
factors in growth.
The earth is, therefore, in its full unfolding and its final form, the
joint product of the love and power of God and of the toil and sacrifice
of men; the creative purpose is not accomplished in a single act; it is
being wrought out through a long progression of acts; and in this
continuous process God and men are brought together in a way which makes
the labour of the hand the work also of the spirit. If one reflects on all
that this intimate cooperation of the divine and the human in the fields,
the factories, and the shops means, the nobility of work and its
possibilities of spiritual education become impressively clear. In this
fellowship men are trained in ways of which they are insensible; spiritual
results are accomplished within them of which they are unconscious. The
Infinite is nowhere more beneficently present than in the strain and
anguish of toil; and the necessity of putting forth one's strength in some
form of activity is not a hardship but a divine opportunity.
To well-conditioned men work is a joy; under normal conditions, for
healthful men, it is always a joy. The spiritual meaning behind the hard
face which toil wears makes itself dimly understood at times, and men sing
at their tasks not only out of pure exuberance of good spirits and sound
health, but because there is something essentially rhythmical and
harmonious in their toil. The song of the sailor at the windlass is a song
of fellowship; an expression of the deepened consciousness of strength and
exhilaration which come from standing together in a joint putting forth of
strength. When a man honestly gives himself to any kind of work he makes
himself one with his fellows in the creative process; he enters into
deepest fellowship with the race. And, as in the intimacy of the family,
in its structure and habit, there lies a very deep and rich educational
process, so in the community of work there lies a training and enrichment
which go to the very centre of the individual life. The ideal development
involves harmonious adjustment of the man to the world, through complete
development of his personality and through complete unity with the race;
and the deepest and most fruitful living is denied those who fail of
entire unfolding in either of these hemispheres, which together make up
the perfect whole. In genuine culture solitude and society must both find
place; a man must secure the strength and poise which enable him to stand
alone, and he must also unite himself in hand, mind, and heart with his
fellows. In isolation the finer parts of nature wither; in fellowship they
bear noble fruitage. To work in one's day with one's fellows; to accept
their fortune, bear their burdens, perform their tasks, and accept their
rewards; to be one with them in the toil, sorrow, and joy of life,--is to
put oneself in the way of the richest growth and the purest happiness.