+I. Here is a general prohibition of theft.+--This supposes distinct
rights and separate properties. Stealing is taking and carrying away
another's goods in a secret manner and without his consent. The
prohibition relates to every unfair, indirect, dishonest way by which
one may transfer to himself the property of another.
+II. This prohibition of theft is a virtual injunction of
labour.+--If a man may not live at the expense of others, he must
live at his own; and if he has not the means of subsistence, he must
labour to acquire them. No man has a right to live on charity so long
as he can live by labour. The obligation to labour is not confined to
the poor; it extends to all according to their several capacities.
+III. Every man must choose for himself an honest calling, and must
work that which is good.+--A work in which a man makes gain by the
expense and enriches himself by the loss of others is theft
embellished and refined. Gaming, when it is used as an art to get
money, is criminal, because it is unprofitable, and what one gains by
it another must lose.
+IV. In all our labours we should have regard to the good of
others.+--The man who is poor should aim to mend his circumstances
and to provide not only for his immediate support but for his future
necessities. The condition which subjects us to labour does not
exempt us from obligations to beneficence. We must confine ourselves
within our own proper sphere, for here we can do more good than
elsewhere. In all our works, secular or spiritual, charity must
direct us. Love is an essential principle in religion, and as
essential in one man as another.--_Lathrop._
_St. Paul's Exaltation of Labour._
+I. St. Paul often recurs to the plain and quiet work of humble
life.+--He enforces not only the duty of it, but how high the duty
ranks; and if it is well done, how it raises those who do it. Having
worked with his own hands, he appreciated the sterling test of honest
attention to work. He knew what temptations there were to relax and
to give in to the sense of tediousness day by day and hour by hour.
St. Paul, who honours the industry of a slave, will not allow it to
be dishonoured by the slave himself thinking himself superior to it,
and discourages all high flights which set him at enmity with his
work and draw him away from the sterling Christian yoke of humble
labour to which he has been called in God's providence.
II. At the same time the apostle +does not honour all industry;+ far
from it. He always reprobates the covetous, money-getting spirit. He
admires industry, but it must be industry which is consecrated by the
motive; and the motive which he requires for it is that of duty--when
a man fulfils in the fear of God the task which is allotted to him.
Men form their religious standard by two distinct tests: one the law
of conscience and obedience to God, the other what is striking to
man. St. Paul's standard is seen in his sympathy with the work of the
ruler of a household, with the work of a father or mother of a
family, the work of hospitality and attention to strangers, the work
of common trades and callings, the work even of the slave in doing
his assigned daily tasks.
III. We see the spirit of this great apostle--how +it embraced the
whole appointed lot of man,+ from his highest to his most humble
field of employment. He rejected nothing as mean or low that came by
God's appointment; all was good, all was excellent, all was
appropriate that He had commanded. The heathen valued all labour by
which men became eloquent or became able soldiers or statesmen; but
they had not the slightest respect for the ordinary work of mankind.
They thought this world made for the rich. How different is St.
Paul's view! No work allotted to man is servile work in his eyes,
because he has an insight into what faithful labour is--what strength
of conscience it requires, what resistance to temptations and snares
it demands. The Word of God consecrates the ordinary work of man--it
converts it into every one's trial, and as his special trial his
special access to a reward also.--_J. B. Mozley._