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Labour.

Labour omnia vincit, and may be divided into bodily, mental, moral, and religious.

Without food for the body men would die, hence labour must be bodily and with the hands.

To direct this labour aright, we have mental or head labour.

To direct the fruits of labour and guard the labourer, we have, and require, moral labour.

To sustain and direct moral labour, we have religious labour, which teaches the necessity of pleasing God, and the great and important truths of immortality. Labour would become insupportable to us unless our spiritual nature had some concern in it, and unless the labourer knows that the Great Ruler is kindly affectioned to him. Religion also consoles for, and so repairs, the blunders made in other kinds of labour. But revealed religion only does this. Natural religion fails absolutely, or very nearly so.

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Idleness is an evil to man. The vital forces then spend themselves dangerously to him. Hence says the Command—" Six days shalt thou labour." Of the labours of God in nature, who shall discourse? His labours by the sun, the moon, the stars, and this our globe, with its winds and seas, its animal and vegetable life! Of the labours of God's Spirit who can understand or fathom, when in contact with man's?

Some philosophers lately have thought "force' is a better term for some of the labours I have alluded to. I do not think so. If the world were ruled by laws, and the Ruler bound by them also, "force" as a term might be good enough. But where a personal author and monarch, is existent, something expressive of more activity and intelligence, seems required.