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.
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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.