I.—The Law of Labour.

"Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour." He goeth forth, mark you, not by his own choice—for man has little love for work. He goes forth in obedience to a law. The existence of this law can be proved from Scripture, from reason, and from necessity. I do not prove it here, because I have neither time nor need to do so. The character and obligation of this law may be seen from the following considerations:—

1. It is Divine. And we get some grand and cheering thoughts from the remembrance of this fact. Let all workers note it. By working you follow a divine example, and obey a divine law. Light up your places of toil and irradiate your common tasks with that reflection. See a higher model than the most skilful craftsman—see God working for evermore, doing all things well, making all things perfect. Obey a higher law than the law which comes from the lips of an earthly master—the law of Him page 7 whose name is Love, and whose nature is what His name declares. No man will see what dignity, what nobleness, what consolation there is in work, until he grasps that, until he feels: "I am doing, faultily, what He does perfectly, it is true—but still I am doing what He does. He has laid upon me no severer law than He obeys himself."

It is necessary, also, to free labour from that false association with the curse into which it has been wrongly dragged. Labour is not the result nor a result of the curse. Men do not work because Adam fell. Men would not have been free from labour if our first parents had kept their first estate. Adam was not an idler during those days at whoso cool eventide he heard the voice of the Almighty among the leafy lovelinesses of Eden. It is wholly a mistake to say we work because of sin. For in the 15th verse of the 2nd chapter of Genesis—before our common mother, who was the first in the transgression, was formed—it is written: "And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to dross it, and to keep it." Now the word there rendered "to dress" (ghabadh), is the root of the very word which in my text is translated "work." And by that word the meaning of the Hebrew would be more clearly expressed:—"The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to work it and to keep it."

It is not labour then that divides us from God, and it is not labour that marks the difference between man's state in innocency and man's state under condemnation. It is sin which has cut us off from God; and it is sin which has made labour a curse, so that that which before was man's pastime and privilege is now regarded as the sign and seal of his lapse, the irksome necessity of his lot. It was these words which flung a dark shadow upon toil and made it bitter: "Cursed be the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; .... in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground." There you have the cause of all man's weariness and dislike for work. Still, with the sweat beading upon the brow as a result, the law of labour is Divine. God has ordained it for us. It is His decree. And the organs, the faculties, the limbs with which we are endowed—the planning brain, the far-reaching mind, the cunning right hand—all confirm the written command, and teach that man was made "to go forth unto his work and to his labour."

If you need further proof, we have the law repeated in the New Testament: "If any man will not work neither shall he eat." If you need further attestation you have it in the fact that the "Father worketh hitherto," the Son toiled at his craft in despised Nazareth, the Holy Ghost intercedeth incessantly, and the angels, "are they not all ministering Spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?"

2. This law is Universal. All men work. Work is manifold—of page 8 many kinds. "We have contracted the meaning of the word work, until the hand-labourer is supposed to be the only working man. But' all men are workers. Even those we call idlers work. Their pleasure—the filling up of their aimless days and vacant hours—is a work indefinitely more wearying than that of the ploughman who walks in the furrow from day dawn to shut of eve; than that of the backwoodsman who wields his axe from morn till night against forest trees; than that of the brawny smith who swings the heavy hammer on the anvil, before a flaming forge. Idleness, indeed, is the hardest of all work.

But there are many toiling labourers besides those who work with their hands: and there is other sweat than that of the brow There are the men who work the mine of thought, who gather the wisdom of the ages, who solve life's problems, who unravel earth's mysteries, who plan our gigantic works, who lesson by artificial means the severity of toil, who manage our commerce, who write our books, who expose the false and teach the true. These are true workers though their palms are unhardened, and their brows are dry. They work with mental implements, and their sweat is the sweat of the brain. There are pitying ones, upon whom human sorrow rests as a burden, whose hearts yearn over the outcast and the destitute; on whom there rests a woe if they do not go forth redressing wrongs, striking off fetters, opening prison doors; if they are not devising how to teach the ignorant, lift up the fallen, and reclaim the criminal. Their hands are soft, and, thank God, their hearts are softer still. You will not refuse them an entrance into your ranks; you will not be ashamed to stand side by side with these gallant leaders of forlorn hopes, in your "lordly chivalry of labour"—for the sweat they sweat is the sweat of the heart, and the work they do is likest His who went about doing good. We are all working men—some with hand, some with brain, some with heart, some with all three combined. Let neither class despise the other, but like a triple-stranded cord, be all the stronger by being woven indissolubly together.

3. This law is Necessary. Some measure of physical work—to narrow the meaning—is needful for our general well-being. It is needful for the body else the sinews relax, the muscles become flaccid, the nerves grow over sensitive. It is needful for the mind else the over-wrought brain flags, and the tension of thought destroys the balance of the intellect. Every wise man, therefore, who wishes to keep a sound mind in a sound body works with his hands or his feet—for no better tonic can be found for the mind than physical fatigue. But labour is necessary for other reasons than these. If we are to get the good there is in nature, if we are to be surrounded with comforts, we must work for them personally or in order to pay those who have worked. Nature supplies man with material, but it is in the rough. She furnishes the elements, but they are uncombined. To combine page 9 and polish them is man's necessity, If man is to be fed, the soil must be broken up, the seed must be sown, the harvests must be reaped and garnered; the fruit-bearing bushes and trees must be planted and pruned; the flocks must be tended, the herds pastured. If man is to be clothed, the wool must be shorn from the sheep, the flax fibre and the down of the cotton plant must be collected, the cocoons of the silkworm must be preserved; the spinner must spin them, the weaver must weave them, the dyer must dye them, the sewer must sew them. If man is to be housed, the quarryman must quarry the stone, the woodman must fell the trees, the architect must plan, the builder must build. If man is to have in his house luxuries that delight the eye and charm the ear, the painter must paint, the sculptor must ply his chisel, the musician must construct the instruments of music, and the cunning workman must use his deft and nimble fingers to produce what the ingenious brain of the inventor has designed. It is most plain the law of labour is a necessary one. We cannot have what we need, what God has provided for us, without work.

4. This law is Beneficent. Labour is not only of divine institution, universal and necessary; but it is also the best law there could be for us, fashioned as we are and hemmed in as we are by other laws. Idleness is an evil, and the prolific cause of numberless evils besides itself. Wherever a man or nation of men has given up honest, earnest toil—wherever pleasure has been made the only work—it has invariably ended in ruin. Idle periods in nations' histories have always been improvident and vicions periods. An idle man with no occupation save the gratification of his restless spirit and hungry heart, is ever as unhappy as he is injurious. There is something both preservative of good and preventive of evil in the discipline of severe, faithful work, whether it be of the hand or the brain. It gives stability and width to the character, it checks the rank growth of evil that quickly overspreads the unoccupied mind, it gives a level beat to the heart, it gives an accurate skill to the motions of the hand, it gives a zest to needful food better than the best of tonics and more provocative of appetite than the choicest condiments, it gives a sweetness and a soundness to sleep which nought beside can furnish, so that the labouring man closes his eyes, and "tired nature's sweet restorer" folds him in her arms, and hushes him to a deep and dreamless slumber, upon a hard and an unpillowed couch, while pampered idleness tosses wearily upon eider down and within silken curtains. Let the idlers and workers both declare if the law of labour is not beneficent as well as divine, universal and necessary.

But—