God is very good to a man when that man is true to his vocation. To be content in one’s work is almost happiness. To do one’s work for the eyes of God is to be as near happiness as any creature can come to it in this world. Fortunate are they who, like the old sculptors of the roof of “the cathedral over sea,” learn early in life, as Miss Eleanor Donnelly puts it,—
“That nothing avails us under the sun,
In word or in work, save that which is done
For the honor and glory of God alone.”
Direction and coercion are two different things. The parents who mistake one for the other make a fatal error. Direction is the flower, coercion the weed that grows beside it, and kills its strength and sweetness.
The true gospel of work begins with the consideration of vocation, and the prayers and the appeals to the sacraments that ought to accompany it. This is the genesis of that gospel. It is true that if a man can be helped to take care of the first twenty years of his life, the last twenty years will take care of him. Those who find their vocation are blessed—
“And they are the sculptors whose works shall last,
Whose names shall shine as the stars on high,
When deep in the dust of a ruined past
The labors of selfish souls shall lie.”