Labor may also contribute largely to the developing of Christian character. There would be no backsliding in our churches if those who profess the name of Christ would engage in his great enterprise of saving and redeeming the world. The growing spirit of indifference, that is paralyzing so many of our religious activities, could not be, had men not become idlers in the Kingdom. Business men look upon the church and say that it is weak because it has no program. This is true. We lacked a program, not because we had no program, but because we refused to follow the one that God gave us. The church is far from being dead. Those who have kept true to their Divine Lord, and have humbly, but earnestly worked his works, have been saved from all these temptations to sin and worldliness, and their ardor to-day is brighter than on the day they first gave their hearts to Christ.
Then let us get to work. Labor cannot save us from the penalty of sin. Nothing save the grace of God can do that for us, but it can save us from barren surroundings, from much of our sickness, from the deadening influences of sorrow, from the power of many of our most dangerous temptations, and aid us in spiritual development. Work with a good will. Let no man laugh you out of its benefits. Say to the world, “Yes, I am a laboring man.” Let no blush come to your cheek, unless it be because you are not a better and more earnest workman. Labor with the knowledge that while you are at your task you are ranked with the mightiest and most illustrious characters of the world. Labor adds to dignity. Hard, honest work gives self-respect. Toil saves one from the life of a parasite, enabling him to pay his own way, at the same time leaving the world brighter and richer because of his toil. The richest jewel that ever adorned the brow of man is not in the King’s crown. It is the beaded sweat that stands upon the tanned forehead of an honest laborer. Wear it with the dignity with which a king wears his crown of gold. In the light of God’s approving smile it will pale and make insignificant the crown jewels of all the nations.
XXI.
Above the Commonplace of Sin
Individuality is one of God’s ways of expressing his greatness. His voice penetrates the centuries like the sound of silver bells, but there is never an echo. No duplicates are ever found among the works of God’s creative power. He gives his gifts unto the world with boundless generosity, but through the centuries no single gift has ever found its counterpart. Everything coming from the hand of God is original, unique, entirely dissimilar to anything else in the realm of nature. No two oak leaves are alike. They may be cut from the same pattern, so that, no matter where you find them drifting in the winds, you instantly recognize them, saying, “These are oak leaves”; yet, of all the millions of leaves that have unfolded upon branches of the oaks of countless ages, no two have been identical in size or form or in the delicate tracery of the tiny veins which are as delicate as hoarfrost, yet strong as leaden pipes.
God never duplicates. The wild rose is a simple flower, possessing but five petals, held securely in the golden chalice of pollen-laden stamens. Nothing could possibly be more liable of duplication than this quaint flower of simple garb, yet of all the wild-rose blooms gathered by lovers’ hands and pressed to maidens’ lips, of all the wild-rose blooms that grace the old-fashioned gardens and trellis the fences of the country roads with their picturesque, sublime simplicity, no two are alike. God so respects the pretty things about which human sentiment revolves that no two are cast from the same mold. Consider the blossom that you once kissed, and pressing, stored away. It is hidden in a secret place, intended for no eyes save your own, and viewed only through the clear tears that memory revives. Guard it with the tenderest care, for God will never make another blossom just like it. He respects the tender affections of your heart that chose this blossom from a lover’s hand to be the sweetest, fairest blossom of your life.
When a mother stoops and plucks a blossom from her baby’s grave, covers it with mingled tears and kisses, and puts it away between the leaves of the family Bible, thus binding in one cover the sweetest sentiments of this world and the best hopes and aspirations of a better world, she does a beautiful thing, and our heavenly Father so honors her love and reverence for her precious dead that, though a thousand centuries come and go, he will never make another blossom just like that.
We love all mountains because of their rugged strength and majesty, yet no two mountains are alike, for to the mountains God has given personality. The Rockies stand like naked giants with knotted muscles ever ready to grapple with storms that smite their rugged sides, rejoicing, like strong men, at the ease with which they break the strength of their adversary, and hurl the whirlwind, like a helpless zephyr, into the mighty chasms at their feet. The Alps are like a procession of kings, bejeweled and berobed for coronation day. To see the Alps is to have a holiday and have one’s soul thrilled with boyhood’s wonderment and praise. The Catskills are a languid group of charming country folk with whom you can sit and chat, and feel the magic wonderment of childhood creeping through the soul, as you listen to quaint voices repeat their myths and legends. No two mountains are alike, for God likes versatility in heaped-up piles of rock as much as in fluttering leaves and blooming flowers.
No two sunsets are alike. The hanging tapestries of the west may be woven in the same looms of mist, and dyed in the same vats of scarlet, purple, red, and orange; they may be laced with the same golden strands of unraveled sunbeams; and their drapery may reveal the self-same angel touch, yet no two sunsets are alike, each having its own individuality, and living forever as a master painting to beautify the walls of memory. Well do youth and maiden stand with clasped hands as they face the sunset. Let them feast upon its gorgeous beauty until their hearts are filled with light and love, for they shall never see another sunset just like that. Returning to the valley’s old familiar paths, where they shall walk together amid their mingled lights and shades, they shall rejoice through many years because of the brilliancy of that one sunset which God made for them, and for them alone.
This love for originality is seen in the play of the wild waves’ crest whose molten silver falls into beads and necklaces and pendants of unequaled workmanship to fill the unseen jewel caskets of the deep.