THE BIBLE AND WORK
The frank purpose of the present lecture is to discuss the relation of the
Bible to the moral and spiritual aspects of work. The aim is not a study
in economics. Without doubt the Bible stands for justice; and without
doubt, also, the intent of the Bible is to make just men. But the great
Book does not give an infallible table of wages; neither does it offer any
sure rules whereby we can determine the working value of any particular
individual. It declares that "the laborer is worthy of his hire," and it
leaves the details to be wrought out by men whom it summons to the spirit
of justice and love. Interested as we may be in the economic problems of
our day, we must still rejoice that the Bible does not surrender its work
of inspiration in an effort at mechanical guidance. The wage scale must
necessarily vary with the conditions of living; and, therefore, a textbook
of money wages would have made a cumbersome volume with most of its pages
as lifeless as the Book of the Dead. The very suggestion ends in
ridiculousness. The effort of the Bible is not to give directions for
working machines, but to give motives to working men. It is not a
taskmaster, but a task-inspirer.
True toil of whatever sort is in need of inspiration. It must go by system
and by schedule, and the element of monotony makes itself felt. The man
leaves his home six mornings of the week and takes up his accustomed task.
The bell calls him to work at an appointed hour, and it dismisses him by
the demand of the clock. The husband goes to the store or office or
factory to do the same things again and ever again, while the wife goes
about the household duties that have engrossed her on thousands of
previous days. One of the victories of life is to be a worker and not to
be a drudge. We have all known people who have not won that victory. Their
work is a grim necessity. It is not acquainted with poetry or with music.
When the idealist speaks of the man who sings at his toil, they sneer at
his sentimentalism or they doubt his sincerity. Work is a ceaseless grind;
it is a dreary round; it is a hard compulsion. The poet who wields a pen
may tell the man who wields a pick that work is joy and refreshment and
liberty, but the sour toiler will regard his teacher as a condescending
comforter. The complaint of many people is not simply that they must make
bricks without straw, but that they must make bricks at all. In their
vocabulary pleasure contrasts with labor because labor itself is pain.
They are weary in their work and weary of their work. The only ideal for
this sort of laborer is that he may labor so successfully as to be able
some day to get on without labor. This man is the drudge.
Oddly enough, he has had his theological partners. There have been Bible
students who have held that all work is a penalty of the Fall. They say
that when God said to Adam, "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat
bread," he entered toil among the punishments of life. Undoubtedly sin
adds to the hardship of work, especially if the sin be the sin of a wrong
attitude. Thorns and thistles do prosper more around the broken gate of
the sluggard. The earnest expectation of a groaning and travailing
creation does wait for the revealing of the sons of God. Discontent puts
its evil reflex on the muscles. The rebellious worker is ever the tired
worker. But even the literal story of Eden does not give the ideal of
worklessness. Adam had been placed in the garden "to dress it and to keep
it." Wherever God places the man, he places the task for the man. Any
other conception of life is unworthy and utterly irreligious. A silly
theology that puts a premium on idleness is not born of the God that
"worketh hitherto." Still the view that work is a curse persists even
after the theory that encouraged the view has gone to the discard. The
sanctified escape the fret of work, but they do not escape its fact. The
Perfect Life, as we shall later see, was the life of a Worker.
Admitting, as we all must, that work is sometimes tragic because it lacks
its proper outer reward, we may still contend that often its deepest
tragedy is a wrong attitude of spirit. Doubtless much of this comes from
maladjustment. Some idealists believe that if every man were given his own
task, every man would be happy at that task. Kipling so states it in the
"L'Envoi" of "The Seven Seas." He sees the good time when there shall be
an adjustment between man and his task. The lower motives for work shall
all be done away, and the one satisfying motive shall abide.
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame,
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each in his separate star,
Shall draw the thing as he sees it, for the God of things as they are.
Ideal as this is, it gets a response from us all. Besides there are some
foretokens of this age of joyful toil. Usually these are seen most clearly
in work that has a relation to beauty. The woman works cheerfully at her
fine embroidery, and she works just as cheerfully over the flowers in her
garden. With men the form of toil that stands for genuine achievement
often becomes not only a pleasure but a veritable passion. Where a
spiritual motive allures, work frequently becomes the gladness of life.
Agassiz declined to accept the remunerative call to lecture by saying, "I
am only a teacher. I cannot afford to make money." Wesley poured back into
his work all the results of his work and died a poor man whereas he might
have become rich. In America college professors have been known to save
their meager salaries in order that they might return their slight estates
to endow more fully the institutions for which they labored. They received
from their work so that they could give back to their work.
The more we study cases of this fine sort, the more will we be impressed
that the workers labored under the biblical sense of life. The men just
mentioned were all profound believers in God, and they lived their lives
as under his eye. Hence they saw their portion of work as a part of the
infinite whole that makes for the kingdom of God. There is a story of a
workingman who, standing on the street opposite the Cathedral of Cologne,
was overheard saying, "Didn't we do a fine job over there?" Turning about,
the listener saw a rough hand pointing at the wonderful cathedral. "What
did you do?" he asked the man. The reply was, "I mixed the mortar for
several years." The tale was told by the thoughtless as being humorous. It
is, however, serious and beautiful. That workman had gotten the vision of
himself as a partner in a plan that covered centuries of grand toil. He
was a helper of God in the fashioning of his temple. In reality he had
joined the company of Hiram and of Solomon. Now all honest work must have
a direction that is both long and high. It reaches down into the years of
men. It reaches upward into the heart of God. Precisely this idealism is
needed in order that toil may be redeemed from its drudgery. George Eliot
gives us a striking illustration of it in her tribute to Stradivari, the
maker of violins. This immortal mechanic is said to have had a reverence
for his labor. He felt that, whereas God gave men skill to play, God
depended on Stradivari to furnish the instruments. He was the partner of
the Most High. God had chosen Stradivari as a helper. Hence he could say,
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 he likes to sing and likes the song.
We may not all have this attitude toward our work, but we are all
idealists enough to wish that we felt just that way. The singing workman
is not altogether a figment of the imagination; neither is his spirit
impossible in the day that now is. The men who regard work as a blessing,
and not as a penalty and a curse, are found in many trades and
professions. They are the forerunners of the Eden life. Certainly the main
teaching of the Bible, that labor is designed to aid in the bringing in of
the kingdom of God, must give to the honest laborers in every realm an
exalted joy.
This primary consideration is joined by the human examples of the Bible.
We find in its pages a procession of workers, and from this procession God
selects many of his chosen leaders. Moses was tending his flock on the
hillside when the voice of the Lord summoned him to his manifold
leadership. Saul was seeking his father's cattle when he found the kingdom
of which he was to be king. David was busy in the sheepfold when the
prophet called him to his work as warrior and monarch. Ruth was gleaning
in the fields, in her pathetic effort to care for her widowed
mother-in-law and herself, when she found her way into happiness and into
the ancestry of our Lord. Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press
when he was drafted for the campaign that was to break the power of the
Midianites. Elisha was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen when the mantle of
Elijah was cast over his shoulders. Nehemiah was serving as cupbearer to
the king when he evoked from Artaxerxes the permission to return and
rebuild the walls of his beloved city. Amos was among the herdsmen of
Tekoa when the word of God took him captive and sent him to his prophetic
career. These are the instances in the Old Testament where mention is made
of the form of toil from which God called men to some spiritual service.
Without doubt the full record would show that other signal servants
received their commissions while they were faithfully performing their
duties on threshing floors, out in the fields, and within counting-rooms.
The New Testament is less specific in its descriptions, but it often gives
us the like hint. Matthew was at the seat of custom when he was invited
into the fellowship of the disciples that he might tell men of the eternal
exchange. James and John were engaged in their occupation as fishermen
when they heard the voice on the shore and pulled their boat over the blue
waves that they might become fishers of men. The shepherds were in
faithful watch over their flocks by night when they heard the evangel of
song and were startled by the message of peace. The illustrations make us
feel that the favorite meeting place of God with man is the meeting place
of man with his work. A motto says that "the best reward of good work is
more good work to do." The providence of God upholds the motto. The Bible
shows a preference for the workers as against the shirks. It puts the
premium on industry, whether the type of toil be manual or spiritual.
Here, as in all other themes of real life, we come to Christ for our
highest teaching and our best example. We have noted elsewhere that he
made the home the illustration of our relations with God; and we now note
that he made the common work of earth the illustration of our
responsibility for service to God. This he did so often and so urgently
that we are driven to feel that work was not only the form of illustration
but also the form of service itself. How many parables did he gain from
the ways of toil? He would say, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto--,"
and straightway his hearers' minds were sent to the places where men
wrought for their daily bread. In most places the blanks can be supplied
by some form of employment. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto--" a
merchant and his pearls; a sower and his field; a woman and her leaven; a
fisherman and his net; a husbandman and his vineyard; a merchant traveler
and the intrusted talents. Where his words were used as deft and quick
illustrations rather than as lengthy and formal parables, he gathered his
material from the realms of toil. The builder and the house; the shepherd
and the sheep; the axman and the tree; the tailor and the cloth; the
housewife and the coin; the rich man and his steward; the woman and her
grinding; the man and his plowing; the watchman and his vigil; the
husbandman and the vine; all these entered into his speech as showing what
God would expect of men. Here we have almost a cyclopedia of labors.
Inasmuch as Jesus commended the qualities shown in these various phases of
service, we are allowed to think that he regarded the legitimate
occupations of everyday life as both representing and fulfilling the
kingdom of God. Nor will reverent thought be satisfied with any less
comprehensive view. There would be a dread of living if we were made to
feel that the work which we must do, both to meet our own sense of
self-respect and to provide for the needs of ourselves and our beloved,
was either in opposition to the grace of God or stood for neutral
territory between the realms of good and evil. The teaching of Jesus saves
us from that practical atheism. He allows every honest man to take the
oft-repeated phrase, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto--," and to
complete a portion of its meaning from his own form of labor. If a man is
engaged in any task that makes sacrilege and blasphemy when it is used to
fill out the sentence, then let that man look well to his own heart and
life. Every man's work should serve as a parable of Christ.
But Jesus was not simply the doctrinaire of toil; he was its exemplar. The
emphasis here is usually placed upon the fact that Christ was a carpenter.
He transformed crude materials into useful tools. An overdone stress on
this point is itself a confession that manual toil needs an apologist! The
significant thing is that such a stress is wholly absent from the speech
and attitude of Jesus. With him carpentry seems to have been a natural
part of life. He never refers to it as something that he had outgrown. His
backward look toward the occupation of his youth betrays no condescension,
like to that occasionally seen in so-called self-made men! After he had
left the carpenter's bench he said, "I work." When he saw the night
closing down about him, the brevity of the working day became an incentive
to more work, and he said, "I must work." Even in the agony we can catch
the exultation of the cry, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me
to do." It was his meat to finish his "work." Jesus did the appointed task
for each period of his life. Then he passed on to the task of the next
period without the least hint that the varying tasks were not joined in
the harmony of the divine purpose. The work of his life was like his
garment; it was all of one piece. From the building of the Nazareth
cottage on to the building of the "many mansions," there is no
consciousness of contradiction. With Jesus the working life was a unity.
And at the risk of being mechanical in the use of bungling divisions we
may declare that Jesus entered into all the large divisions of toil. The
note of universality is seen here as it is seen elsewhere. We have been
told that the three forms of temptation that Jesus encountered on mountain
top and temple pinnacle exhaust all the types. It has been said, too, that
the thankfulness of Jesus is directed toward all the channels by which the
good of life can flow in upon us. This same characteristic of universality
appears in the work of Christ. As a carpenter he worked upon material
things. As a healer he worked upon the bodies of men. As a teacher he
worked upon the minds of men. As a preacher he worked upon the souls of
men. All the workers of the world can be brought into one of these
divisions, and so all true workers can enter into partnership with Jesus.
We call him the Carpenter, the Great Physician, the Greatest Teacher, the
World's Saviour! The manual toilers claim him. The doctors claim him. The
teachers claim him. The evangelists claim him. He is at home in the shop,
in the hospital, in the schoolroom, and in the temple. All the classes of
toilers can appeal to the sanction of his example.
Still we must again assert that these clumsy divisions were not emphasized
by Jesus himself. There has been an age-long debate, ofttimes degenerating
into a wrangle, as to the relative hardships of the different forms of
labor. Men who cling to their occupations will still declare that those
occupations have trials beyond all others. Into this debate Jesus did not
enter. He never set one form of toil against another by entering into any
comparisons or contrasts. As he experienced all the general forms of
labor, so did he honor all forms. In his view they were all good and all
cooperative. On the surface they may seem to be rivals, but in the center
they are actual partners in the divine program. Hence Jesus passed from
one realm of work to another with little sense of transition. Carpenter,
Healer, Teacher, Preacher, he was ever the servant of the Kingdom.
Faithfulness, honor, industry, efficiency, patience--in short, all the
virtues were possible in any good way of work. The life of Jesus unites
all our types of labor in a divine purpose and rebukes that quarrelsome
spirit which so often sets the manual laborers and the mental and moral
laborers in opposition. The hand cannot say to the head, "I have no need
of thee," nor can the head utter the like speech of egotism and
self-sufficiency. The workers are all one body, and every one members of
another.
So do we find Jesus putting himself with willing sacrifice into his
varying tasks. He had said to his parents in Jerusalem, "Wist ye not that
I must be amid my Father's matters?" and then he went into what men call
the silent years. But they were not wholly silent. The attentive can hear
the sound of the hammer. The point is that in passing from the Jerusalem
temple to the Nazareth shop Jesus did not depart from his Father's
business. We may all resent the particular descriptions of the quality of
his work as a carpenter; and we may be quite content in our faith that
all his work was done faithfully and well. Holman Hunt's "Shadow of the
Cross" relates Jesus's work in the shop to his sacrificial character. At
the end of a weary day the Nazareth Carpenter extends his arms to relieve
his weariness. The sunshine coming through the window casts his shadow on
the wall in the form of a Cross. His mother glancing in through another
window sees the Cross foreshadowed there and gets her glimpse of the sword
that should enter her own heart. Nor did Jesus escape hardship and
exhaustion when he became a healer and teacher of the people. The crowds
thronged him wherever he went. The hillside became like an open-air
hospital. The multitudes hung upon his words of instruction. Some have
said that one reason why he commanded men who were healed or who were told
the deeper secret of his nature that they "should tell no man," was that
he might avoid the greater press of the throngs. Be that as it may, we are
surely justified in saying that he gave himself lavishly to the work of
each period. In each section of his life his action said, "I must work."
It would be easy, however, to overstate Jesus's relation to work. He did
not labor all the time. Knowing how to toil he knew likewise how to rest.
Men may plead the example of Satan against a vacation season, but they
cannot plead the example of Christ! He rested after he had worked and in
order that he might work again. When the crowd became importunate and the
drain upon his power had become severe, he sought the desert and in its
quiet restored himself for the new labors. He bade his weary disciples to
come apart to the spot of respite. He was the exemplar of proper rest even
as he was the exemplar of proper work. Industrious men often need one
lesson even as lazy men need the other. There are persons who are greedy
of toil. They are as avaricious for it as the miser is for gold. They are
what Carlyle would call "terrible toilers." They die before their time
because they work after their time. Jesus knew this danger. He wished to
guard against it by keeping the Sabbath for man. He wanted to save the
resting place between the weeks because he wanted to save man to his best
self and work. He prescribed the working day and the shop, and he
prescribed the resting day and the desert.
We need not be surprised, then, to find that the new day puts the emphasis
on the sanctification of common work. Professor Peabody gives the contrast
between two well-known poems as illustrating a change that has come over
the personal side of the social question. A generation since Lowell gave
us his "Vision of Sir Launfal." The hero of this poem, after traveling in
many lands, finally finds the holy grail in the cup which he had filled
for a way-side beggar, while the more personal presence of Jesus is
discovered in the beggar himself to whom the searcher has given alms. The
characteristic of the new day is seen in Van Dyke's "The Toiling of
Felix." The hero of this later poem, after seeking the direct vision of
his Lord in caves and deserts of idle contemplation, at last secures the
coveted revelation as he enters gladly into a life of toil and
particularly as he flings himself into the swollen river to rescue a
fellow laborer. Felix finds that there is a holy literalness in the words
which he found on the piece of papyrus as a recovered gospel of Christ:
Lift the stone, and thou shalt find me;
Cleave the wood, and there am I.
The ranks of labor are "the dusty regiments of God." The Lord, being a
worker, is mindful of his own:
Born within the Bethlehem manger where the cattle round me stood,
Trained a carpenter of Nazareth, I have toiled and found it good.
The good work of the world is the work of Christ. There is really no
contrast between sacred and secular; the actual contrast is between the
sacred and the wicked.
They who tread the path of labor, follow where Christ's feet have trod,
They who work without complaining, do the holy will of God.
* * * * *
This is the Gospel of labor--ring it, ye bells of the kirk,
The Lord of Love came down from above to live with the men who work.
The inevitable drift of this emphasis on the working experience of Jesus
has swept admiration away from the monastic life. The "religious" are not
those who shun the world of toil in order that they may gain the world of
personal peace and salvation. The modern saint is not a Simon the Stylite.
Saint Francis of Assisi projects himself into the admiration of the
twentieth century because he was a worker rather than a recluse. The
attitude toward monasticism among the healthier and more energetic peoples
goes further than this: there is a feeling that in the last analysis the
religious hermit is spiritually selfish. That is deemed a poor kind of
religion which forsakes a world in order to save one's soul. The argument
that the recluses may render the world the service of constant prayer does
not appeal to those who know that work is itself a form of prayer; and
that in Jesus prayer and work lived together in harmony. A better
understanding of the religion of Christ demands that its followers shall
be socially efficient. If Jesus is to be the world's example, more and
more men and women will find in their legitimate toil one of the
sacraments of life.
Already we have come to feel that the Bible doctrine of work, especially
as that doctrine is incarnated in Christ, lays stress upon the man as well
as upon his task. It asks, "What is the man doing with his work?" It also
asks, "What is the work doing with the man?" The reflexes of activity
often become a topic of teaching. Paul said that the man reaps the harvest
of his own sowing. Jesus said, "With what measure ye mete, it shall be
measured to you again." This is much as if he had said that in the upper
realms of living action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions.
He told his disciples that, if they pronounced the benediction of peace
upon a house unfit or unwilling to receive it, the benediction should
return to them again. The meaning is that no work done with the right
spirit can really fail. The poets give this idea currency. George Herbert
declares that a servant with the proper clause in his creed makes
"drudgery divine":
Who sweeps a room as to thy law
Makes that and the action fine.
He had already implied that such a servant made himself fine. Mrs.
Browning emphasizes the need of a serious purpose in work when she uses
her picturesque description:
I would rather dance at fairs on tight rope
Till the babies dropped their gingerbread for joy,
Than shift the types for tolerable verse, intolerable
To men who act and suffer. Better far
Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means
Than a sublime art frivolously.
It is "better far" because our seriousness comes back to dwell with us;
and our frivolousness does the same. Many of the parables get their
meaning from this certainty of reaction. The good shepherd is good because
he does his work well, and the return of his work makes him better still.
Just as physical work reacts on the muscles, so that sometimes men
exercise without any outward object in view, even so does the moral spirit
of work come back to dwell with the man and to make his last estate either
better or worse. Our bodies are built into strength by a series of
reactions, and our spirits evermore receive their own with usury.
This idea, as we have observed in another connection, has wrought some
marked changes in the social program. It has largely superseded
almsgiving by workgiving. Scientific charity seeks to remove the causes of
poverty, knowing that this is the sure way to remove poverty itself. The
conviction is that a day's work with a day's pay is far better for the man
than a day's pay without the day's work. In the latter case the man loses
both independence and self-respect, while in the former case he keeps both
of these and gains in addition the rebound of faithful labor. The tramp,
or the man with the heart of a tramp, always fails. Outwitting others, he
outwits himself more truly. He plays tricks on his own soul. The weakness
of his life settles back into his spirit. He drags with him always his
evasions and neglects. Scamping his toil, he scamps his own soul. All
shoddy material gets built into his own being. He erects a dishonest house
for another, but with it he erects an evil structure in which he himself
must live. So it is that a man's work may be his blessing, or it may be
his vengeance.
While this idea has its terrible side, it has also its side of glory and
comfort. It provides amply for the failure of the faithful. Goldsmith says
that "Good counsel rejected returns to enrich the giver's bosom," just as
Jesus says the declined benediction of peace comes back to the true
disciple. It follows that for the good workman there is no real failure.
The house that he has builded may go up in smoke and flame, but the
industry and honor that fashioned its walls and fashioned themselves in
the making of the walls cannot be destroyed. The fortune that he has
gathered may take wings and fly away, but the deeper treasures that have
been garnered by fair-dealing in the marketplace abide in the deposit of
the heart. Jesus said, "Your hearts shall rejoice, and your joy no man
taketh from you." We see here that there are possessions that human power
cannot remove. They have been woven into the self. The treasure house is
too deep for the touch of man. A minor poet tells us:
I've found some wisdom in my quest
That's richly worth retailing;
I've found that when one does his best
There's little harm in failing.
He corrects this mild statement in his concluding verse. He wanted riches,
but he was rich without them; he wanted to sound the depths with his
philosophy, but his ship sailed on anyhow; he wanted fame; but he
discovered the secret of greatness without it; and so he adds the lines
which declare that the failing of the faithful not only does "little
harm," but even that it furnishes its own enrichment of the real life:
I may not reach what I pursue,
Yet will I keep pursuing;
Nothing is vain that I can do;
For soul-growth comes from doing.
David "does well" that it is in his heart to build the Lord's house, even
though the honor be passed on to another. The good purpose helps to make
the good man; and the good purpose that expresses itself in work is sure
of the inner reward. This conception may be twisted into a soft gospel for
the inefficient; but the evident purpose of the Bible is to offer it as a
comforting gospel for the faithful.
It would be easy to follow the guidance of the Concordance as it notes the
word "work" in the Epistles. All of the conceptions that have thus far
been treated reappear in the apostolic writings. The symbol of everyday
work is constantly lifted to the highest. We do not need to see Paul
bending over the sailcloth and thrusting his needle into the canvas ere we
know that he is a worker. His whole life was one of toil. He was not
slothful in his apostolic business; and the fervor of his spirit would
have been a good example to the ancient mechanic or merchant. He saw good
men as his colaborers with God. He saw the men that he helped to make good
as a husbandry that he was cultivating for the Lord, as a building that he
was fashioning for Christ's sake. The cure for thieving was work. He that
stole was to steal no more, but was to work with his hands the thing that
was good; and the benevolent motive was to impel to work that the former
thief might have something to give to the needy. It was of the hard toil
of servants that Paul said, "Whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same
shall he receive of the Lord." It is the idea of reaction again; God
suffers no faithful worker to lose his reward. The apostolic rule is very
thoroughgoing in dealing with laziness. "If any will not work, neither
shall he eat." This rule may be an offense to the idle rich, but it
appeals to the sense of justice. Perhaps some day society will be skillful
enough to starve its tramps and shirks until they flee to toil as to a
refuge.
It is peculiar that the end of the Bible should have been misconceived,
even as the beginning, in its teaching concerning work. We have discussed
the heresy that declares that work is a penalty of sin. There is another
heresy which pictures heaven as a place of everlasting idleness. If we
select certain of the descriptions of Revelation, it is easy to see how
the error arose. Yet in each of the weird pictures of the eternal city
there is one sentence at least that hints at heavenly service. For
energetic souls no other conception will be satisfying. Surely inactivity
is not the goal of a redeemed race. Shortly before his death Mark Twain
published in a magazine a satire on the usual idea of heaven. Introduced
in a dream to the city of our hope, he was told by an attending angel to
take his seat on a cloud and to occupy himself by wearing a crown and
holding a harp. Soon becoming weary of this do-nothing life, he came down
to the golden streets. He was asked to keep for a time the crowns and
harps of the passers-by, and he noted that the way was strewn with these
rejected ornaments! Some good people may have been offended by the satire;
and some whose life has been filled with weariness will insist that heaven
must offer rest. So indeed it must. One suggestive passage says concerning
the souls of those that were slain for the testimony of Christ that they
should "rest yet for a little season." Those that have come out of great
tribulation are given service as a reward of their tribulation. "Therefore
are they before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his
temple." In the later description the land of rest is seen as a land of
work, and "his servants shall serve him." The race does not look back to a
workless Eden; neither does it look forward to a workless heaven. Kipling
puts it well for either here or there:
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it,
Lie down for an eon or two,
Till the Master of all good workmen
Shall set us to work anew.
The ideal of the Bible is service, and that ideal is not rejected when
life comes to its crowning.
One of the great hymns of the church gives to the worshipers in a
sanctuary the Bible's Gospel of Work:
Yet these are not the only walls
Wherein thou mayst be sought;
On homeliest work thy blessing falls
In truth and patience wrought.
Thine is the loom, the forge, the mart,
The wealth of land and sea;
The worlds of science and of art,
Revealed and ruled by thee.
Then let us prove our heavenly birth
In all we do and know,
And claim the kingdom of the earth
For thee, and not thy foe.
Work shall be prayer, if all be wrought
As thou wouldst have it done;
And prayer, by thee inspired and taught;
Itself with work be one.
The biblical ideal for earth sends men forth to their daily tasks, while
the biblical ideal for heaven breaks its reserve sufficiently to show us a
City wherein the saints at rest are likewise the saints at work.