The Bible and Life Part 4

As the life of the chosen people reaches more definite form, the place of education is more plainly seen. Doubtless most men would agree that Moses was the arch figure of the Old Testament. He is represented, both by the Scripture and by the tradition given among the Jewish historians, as having the best mental furnis.h.i.+ng of his day. The book of the Acts says of him that he "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." Clemens Alexandrinus records that Moses had the finest teachers in Egypt, and that the choicest scholars were imported from Greece and a.s.syria to instruct the adopted prince in the arts and sciences of their respective countries.

Perhaps we must allow something for the idealizing habit here; but it is significant that both sacred and secular history unite in declaring that the Lawgiver was learned.

In the era of Prophecy we find the same development, only it is more speedy. Elijah may have been the crude and forceful son of mountain and rock, but his successor is the product of one of the numerous "schools of the prophets." Although intellectual training might be presumed to have little to do with the stern function of Old Testament prophesying, the "school" arrived quickly and began the training of the young men.

Criticism has not attacked the view that the book of Isaiah bears marks of high culture. If that book had two authors, the ancient world is ent.i.tled to the credit of a second scholar. When the radical is done with the story of Daniel we have left at least the schoolroom in which the youthful prophet gained his superior wisdom. It would appear that the examples of the worthies of the Old Testament give slight encouragement to the idea that any type of selection or any mood of afflatus may not be supplemented by trained intellect in the kingdom of G.o.d.

We need not halt long with the like lesson from the New Testament. Much has been made of the fact that the twelve apostles were uneducated men.

Doubtless we often do their intellectual life scant justice. Desiring to score in an argument, we give it out as an evidence of the divinity of the faith that it conquered in spite of the disciples' lack of education. The truth is that the New Testament does not warrant the application to the apostles of such words as "illiterate." Some of them wrote books that have moved the ages. But, whatever the fact be here, he would be wild indeed who would find in ignorance any explanation of the gospel's victory. Let us remember, moreover, that, when the "unlettered" Twelve were cramping the universal faith into a local religion, the corrector of their blunder was the "lettered" Paul. In his statement of experience he was ever ready to say that he had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the greatest Jewish teacher of the day. After Christ Paul is the colossal figure of the New Testament; and there are those who would confidently declare him the greatest man who has walked the earth since Calvary. For a review of his education, let anyone read a standard Life of the Apostle. We thus gather the one result from both the Old and the New Testament. Moses was the mightiest personality of the one, and Paul was the mightiest human personality of the other; and both were highly educated. The signal examples of the Bible range themselves on the side of education.

As in all things else, so in the relation of the Bible to the intellectual life we reach the climax only when we come to Christ. Here, too, we find in the life of Christ that same element of paradox that we often find in his words. That saving was losing, giving was getting, and dying was living were apparently contradictory statements that real life proved to be true. Where words seemed to fight each other, the deeper facts were found to live in peace. So Jesus in his personal influence was ever reaching goals of which the paths did not give promise. This is seen peculiarly in his relation to the intellectual life. He left no ma.n.u.scripts. The only time he is represented as writing was when he wrote the sentence of the sinning woman on the forgetful sands of the earth. Yet he who wrote no books has filled the world with books. Something in him quickly evoked Gospels and Epistles which were forerunners of a marvelous literature. Even this moment thousands of pens are being moved by him. He wrote no books, and still he writes books evermore.

It was so with his relation to the schools. Men tell us that the incarnation imposed a limitation on intellect--that it involved a kenosis, an emptying of knowledge even as of power. Be that as it may, our human explanations do not easily reach the mystery of his influence on the schools of the world. Did the boy Jesus go to school in Nazareth? Was his mother his only earthly teacher? Did his neighbors speak literal truth in the question, "Whence hath this man wisdom, having never learned"? The silent years give no answer to the questions. But this we do know: He who went to school slightly or not at all has sent a world to school. He who founded no immediate inst.i.tution of learning has dotted the planet with colleges. His schoolroom was itinerant and unroofed. It moved quickly from town to city, from capital to desert, from mountain to seash.o.r.e. We have dignified it with a great name. The school of Jesus, whose plant and endowment and faculty all centered in one life, is named "the College of Apostles."

He said to them, "Go, teach." They went and they taught. They were not deliberate founders of schools. But the heart of Jesus contained schools, and they, having gotten their hearts from him, carried schools with them.

When the gospel reached England and Germany, education reached those countries and began to thrive. The vast majority of the first one hundred colleges founded in America were builded by the followers of the Great Teacher.

Now, this unique relation of Jesus to the educational life of men is not accidental. Subtle as are the laws which determine it, those laws work effectively. They are elusive, but once in a while we glimpse their ways and meanings. The New Testament seems to feel their presence. It calls Christ a Teacher. Forty-three times it uses his name in connection with the word "teach" in its various forms. The world gets the same impression.

It persists in calling Jesus the Greatest Teacher. It must note the schoolroom phrases with which the account of his life is filled. The prologue of his wonderful message on the Mount ill.u.s.trates this. "And seeing the mult.i.tudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him; and he opened his mouth, and taught them."

The posture of Jesus was that of the teacher. His audience was made up of "disciples," that is, of pupils. He "taught" them. All this might be called a superficial play upon mere words. But we may go further and discover that the method of Jesus was the method of the teacher. He put his effort into other lives in order that these lives might, within their various limitations, duplicate his own. His work was largely devoted to the preparation of a select few. Often he left hundreds and thousands that he might be alone with Twelve. He poured himself into his disciples, his scholars. He thus did what every true teacher must do: He committed the cause of his life to those whom he schooled into faith and character and power.

Nor did the teaching method halt here. The good teacher makes the things of the earth serve as approaches to the highest developments. This Jesus did supremely. Long before men made "nature study" an educational fad, Jesus made it an ethical and spiritual service. He pressed flowers, mustard seeds, grapes, wine, thistles, corn, figs, into the lessons of his roving school. He made nature study so effective that along a path of lilies men walked to G.o.d. When it was necessary to individualize in order to come to this high result, Jesus took up that burden of teaching. His school, like all other schools since its day, enrolled "a son of thunder."

It took the love that suffered long to make John, the son of thunder and lightning and vaulting ambition, into the son of tender love. It took the patience that knows no failure to change the s.h.i.+fting sand of Simon's nature into the rock of Peter's character. All these considerations will convince us that we may go to Christ with the pedagogical, as well as with the religious motive. We do not wonder that a man should have crept to him in the darkness and should have said, "We know that thou art a teacher."

There is yet another side of the subject that calls for emphasis. The Bible and Jesus give the ideal of the intellectual life, an omniscient G.o.d. The G.o.d who is perfect in character is often lifted before us. We hear the voice saying, "Be ye holy; for I the Lord your G.o.d am holy." Yet we interpret the call narrowly. Christ has come to us with the call to purity. To the attentive he comes just as truly with the call to knowledge. He has given us a gospel for the body, and that gospel teaches that drunkards and other defilers of the human temple of G.o.d cannot inherit his kingdom. He has given us a gospel for the spirit, and that gospel commands that the inmost realm of life be given to his sway. He has likewise given us a gospel of the mind, and that gospel cannot be omitted from the fullness of the blessing of Christ. The G.o.d revealed in Christ knows all things. He counts the hairs of our heads. He marks the petals of the flowers. He notes the fall of the sparrows. He is all-knowing and all-wise.

Even though the ideal be a staggering one, we are still told to be like G.o.d. Some day we shall appreciate more the duty that speaks to us in Jesus's revelation of an omniscient G.o.d. As yet we hardly dare press to its full meaning the call implied in that revelation. We have said that the man who neglects and stunts and poisons his body is a sinner. We have said that the man who dwarfs and represses his spirit is a sinner. Are we ready to say that the man who gives his mind no chance, the man who fails to move on to the ideal of an omniscient G.o.d, is likewise a sinner? Is G.o.d's perfect spirit a goal for his children, and is G.o.d's perfect mind removed from our vision of duty? If we are to start on the endless march that leads to the purity of G.o.d, are we freed from the obligation of starting on the endless march that leads to his knowledge? We may shrink from the conclusion that is here involved; and our shrinking may be only an added evidence that we have omitted one element from the divine ideal.

Just here we are struck with the consciousness that we shall need some great dynamic, if we are ever to start toward this unspeakable goal.

Evidently we have not reached the last thing in Christ's relation to education. Confucius was a great teacher, but his system has not produced schools. Mohammed was a great teacher, but his system has left his followers wallowing in ignorance. Though Mohammedanism has proclaimed an omniscient G.o.d, somehow that beacon on the infinite height has not coaxed the Turk on to its s.h.i.+ning. Mohammedanism has offered the ideal, but it has lacked the power. On the contrary the system of Jesus seems to have had a genius for diffusing education. It has been a vast normal school.

The purer and freer and more spiritual its form, the mightier has it been as an educational force. If we list the nations of the earth in cla.s.ses with reference to literacy and illiteracy, we shall find that the farther the nations are from the Bible, the more dense is their ignorance. We shall find, too, that where the people are the freest in their relation to the Bible, there the ignorance is least. Plainly the Bible with its crowning revelation in Christ does furnish something of a dynamic toward education. The school has been the inevitable companion of the church.

This is because the church, in addition to giving a list of inspiring examples, and in addition to lifting up the uttermost ideal, has also emphasized an obligation under the leaders.h.i.+p of the ever-present Spirit.

It remains to show the nature of the obligation which the Spirit has enforced with reference to knowledge. Perhaps this can be done more clearly by taking the att.i.tude of the Scriptures toward slavery as ill.u.s.trating their att.i.tude toward ignorance.

When Jesus faced his audiences he looked upon men who were in bondage as well as upon men who were in ignorance. It is frequently said that Christ did not attack slavery. In the days before the war the biblical literalist, who believed in freedom, had a hard time with his Bible. He found that the Bible did not condemn slavery, but that the Bible did give concerning it certain regulations. The pro-slavery orators made good use of the letter to Philemon. The people who believed in human liberty, and who likewise believed in a mechanical and verbal theory of biblical inspiration, pa.s.sed through intellectual agony in the period of anti-slavery agitation. If human bondage was the sum of all villainies, why did not Jesus condemn it with unsparing invective? Why did not the apostles enter upon an immediate crusade for its downfall?

The answer is that Christ in the deepest way did condemn slavery, and that the apostles in the realest way did begin their crusade. They gathered no visible army, and they enforced no written statute, but Christ stated and his followers promulgated a conception of humanity that prophesied the melting of all chains. Usually the claim is that the Golden Rule was the primary foe of slavery, but the Golden Rule is of little force, apart from that doctrine of human personality that pervades the New Testament. Give that doctrine power, and it would refuse to live in the same world with slavery. That doctrine, under a Captain, was a delivering army. That doctrine, under a King, was an Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. The Golden Rule had been given in negative form by Confucius, and it went to sleep in his maxims. That rule had been uttered negatively by Plato, but it nestled quietly in his poetry. Hillel approached the positive statement of the rule, but he does not get credit for being its author. The glory of a truth lies with the one who gives it power. Jesus made the Golden Rule leap to its feet. He turned it into a most effective traveler. It praised G.o.d on its wide journeys. It began to work wonders.

That work was slow, but it was both sure and thorough. The Rule had power behind its saying. At length the Spirit carried that gracious weapon over the seas and laid it in the hearts of Clarkson and Wilberforce. Soon the English flag floated over freemen everywhere. Again the Spirit carried the doctrine over other seas and lodged it in the hearts of Lovejoy, Phillips, and Garrison. Directly four million sable faces were glowing with the light of liberty. Jesus had said, "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." The word had essentially a spiritual meaning, but it was worked out, also, in a splendid literalness. The Son made men free, not primarily by the force of law, nor yet primarily by the violence of armies, but rather by the conquest of disposition. The honor of the victory is with the Bible theory of humanity, made strong with the power of Christ.

Now what the truth of the Bible did in tearing down slavery, it is continually doing in routing ignorance. The connection is subtle, but it is vitally real. The doctrine of personal responsibility is atmospheric in the Bible. It is equally comprehensive. Men are held responsible for their bodies. Drunkenness, adultery, and all forms of sensuality are condemned. This is at the bottom of life. But at the top of life firmer stress is placed. The spirit of man is made a field of reckoning. The divine dominion over motive is strongly a.s.serted. And that comprehensive responsibility claims the mind. The first great commandment of the new dispensation is that we must "love G.o.d with all the strength, with all the soul, with all the _mind_." Men may differ about the precise meaning of the mind's love for the Lord, but the Christian sense of duty has a.s.serted it in strange fas.h.i.+ons. From vast revivals young men and women have gone forward intellectually and have sought the higher education. Conversion has set free their intellects and has made them feel the duty of intellectual development. The pressure of the Christian ideal has been on them. They have answered the call of the G.o.d who is infinitely good, and they must now answer the call of the G.o.d who is infinitely wise. An elusive intellectual law is written sure and large in the code of the Great Kingdom. It is as certainly a commandment of G.o.d as if it had been thundered among the crags and lightnings of a new Sinai.

The conviction of the church at this point has not always come to definition; nor has it always risen even to consciousness. For all that, it has risen to practical life and has struggled always for outward expression. Feeling that the empire of G.o.d is over all of life, man must submit his mind to the divine rule. Hence it follows that the man who is intellectually lazy, as well as the man who is intellectually dishonest, is a sinner. This statement may shock those who have a surplus of caution, but these may rea.s.sure themselves with the conviction that any theory may be fearlessly accepted, if it brings us face to face with G.o.d at any point of our total life. The failure to follow this biblical idea has brought a penalty always. No denomination that has fought or slurred education has led a large and victorious life; on the contrary it has invariably become one of the fading and dwindling forces of G.o.d's work. The G.o.d of wisdom is evermore against the promoters of ignorance. So do we find that, by the examples of its greatest characters, by the life of its Greatest Teacher and its ruling Lord, by the vision of its supreme ideal, by the a.s.sertion of its inclusive theory of consecration, and by the divine dynamic which it brings to bear upon the mind, the Bible has become the steadfast friend of proper education. It has opened the doors of countless schools and has bidden the children of men to enter the portals of learning with the a.s.surance that all truth is of G.o.d.

The Bible renders education the service of inspiration, and it renders it the service of proper restraint. When any one faculty of human life becomes a monarch it always makes for trouble. Zeal without knowledge tends to breakage; knowledge without zeal tends to waste. The Bible does not make intellect all. Man has mind, and he must use that. Man has sensibility, and he must use that. Man has will, and he must use that. Man must get the truth out of his integral self rather than out of his fractional self. The man who does not use his heart and will in the gaining of truth is just as faithless as is the man who will not use his mind. Without attempting to use psychological terms with exactness, we may say that Jesus brought in the reign of the practical intellect, which gets truth from all there is of man. Even as truth comes not from the naked will of G.o.d, nor yet out of his cold thought, but rather out of the full nature of the Infinite, so truth finds man, not at some one point of his being, but in the glowing center of his whole life.

We may a.s.sert, also, that the Bible saves education from frigidity.

Tennyson speaks of "the freezing reason's colder part." We all know the meaning of the phrase. Jesus put into the search for truth the mood of humility. The method of learning was obedience. Obedience is the organ of intellectual vision as well as of spiritual vision. The method of Jesus was not merely for the spiritual life, as men speak in their fragmentary way; it was a universal method. It takes humility to make the beginnings of a scholar, and weariness and shame of ignorance, and faith in an intellectual empire, and a high trust that the mind is made for truth, and the truth for mind. Ere we have done, we have a huge creed wrapped up in our intellectual processes. But the creed has been saved from its cold pride. The Bible says in one of its marginal readings, "Knowledge puffeth up; love buildeth up." Knowledge alone may be swollen with pride, and the higher demand of the Bible would save from that disaster. This gives us the clue to more than one biblical sentence. There is a "science falsely so called." There is a sense in which "not many wise after the flesh are called." These implied warnings are not the cries of prejudice. They stand for the effort to touch learning with humility, which alone can save it from being distant and icy.

The good Book rescues education from a selfish inaction. There was a living and serving element in Jesus's relation to the intellectual life.

He did not deal in barren metaphysics or in helpless abstractions. His truth went to work. He fastened it to life's burdens, and they were lifted. He dropped it amid life's problems, and they were solved. He cast it against life's temptations, and they were defeated. He attached it to life's duties, and they were fulfilled. He sought those truths with which men had to dwell. He never attempted to set forth the essential mystery of things. He was no dealer in an intellectual cure-all. He spoke with authority and yet with reverent limitation. There was a great reserve in his explanations. Yet in the realm where men must live their present lives, Jesus gave enough truth to keep men busy all their days. Here again comes in the question of dynamic. Men sometimes prate about their "love of truth." The intellectual life, like the religious life, may be guilty of cant. It takes more than an open mind to get the truth; it takes a working mind. Truth does not come to the pa.s.sive man by way of transfer. One teaching of the parable of the virgins is that, while the coa.r.s.er goods of life may be transferred, the finer goods of life must be won by spiritual effort. It takes dynamic to secure a real intellect. Perception may see a truth, but only inward power can use the truth. Jesus conferred that power. He gave us the truth in the doctrine about G.o.d. He gave us the way in the spirit of obedience. He gave us the life in the willingness to make the truth the servant of the world for the sake of Christ.

This leads us to the biblical idea of consecrated intellect. As we have often failed to indicate the sin of needless ignorance, so have we failed to point out the sin of an unconsecrated mind. All truth can be dedicated to Christ. His great call to-day is for more men with the highest culture placed under the thrall of his grace and under the guiding power of the Spirit whom he sends--more Luthers from Wittenberg, more Wesleys from Oxford, more Pauls from Gamaliel's school; more men from all our modern seats of learning who will know that gifts of learning can be placed at the service of the King and that all science and philosophy and literature may be placed at the foot of the Cross. In the coming day of the Christian intellect

Mind and heart, according well May make one music as before, But vaster.

CHAPTER V

THE BIBLE AND WORK

The frank purpose of the present lecture is to discuss the relation of the Bible to the moral and spiritual aspects of work. The aim is not a study in economics. Without doubt the Bible stands for justice; and without doubt, also, the intent of the Bible is to make just men. But the great Book does not give an infallible table of wages; neither does it offer any sure rules whereby we can determine the working value of any particular individual. It declares that "the laborer is worthy of his hire," and it leaves the details to be wrought out by men whom it summons to the spirit of justice and love. Interested as we may be in the economic problems of our day, we must still rejoice that the Bible does not surrender its work of inspiration in an effort at mechanical guidance. The wage scale must necessarily vary with the conditions of living; and, therefore, a textbook of money wages would have made a c.u.mbersome volume with most of its pages as lifeless as the Book of the Dead. The very suggestion ends in ridiculousness. The effort of the Bible is not to give directions for working machines, but to give motives to working men. It is not a taskmaster, but a task-inspirer.

True toil of whatever sort is in need of inspiration. It must go by system and by schedule, and the element of monotony makes itself felt. The man leaves his home six mornings of the week and takes up his accustomed task.

The bell calls him to work at an appointed hour, and it dismisses him by the demand of the clock. The husband goes to the store or office or factory to do the same things again and ever again, while the wife goes about the household duties that have engrossed her on thousands of previous days. One of the victories of life is to be a worker and not to be a drudge. We have all known people who have not won that victory. Their work is a grim necessity. It is not acquainted with poetry or with music.

When the idealist speaks of the man who sings at his toil, they sneer at his sentimentalism or they doubt his sincerity. Work is a ceaseless grind; it is a dreary round; it is a hard compulsion. The poet who wields a pen may tell the man who wields a pick that work is joy and refreshment and liberty, but the sour toiler will regard his teacher as a condescending comforter. The complaint of many people is not simply that they must make bricks without straw, but that they must make bricks at all. In their vocabulary pleasure contrasts with labor because labor itself is pain.

They are weary in their work and weary of their work. The only ideal for this sort of laborer is that he may labor so successfully as to be able some day to get on without labor. This man is the drudge.

Oddly enough, he has had his theological partners. There have been Bible students who have held that all work is a penalty of the Fall. They say that when G.o.d said to Adam, "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread," he entered toil among the punishments of life. Undoubtedly sin adds to the hards.h.i.+p of work, especially if the sin be the sin of a wrong att.i.tude. Thorns and thistles do prosper more around the broken gate of the sluggard. The earnest expectation of a groaning and travailing creation does wait for the revealing of the sons of G.o.d. Discontent puts its evil reflex on the muscles. The rebellious worker is ever the tired worker. But even the literal story of Eden does not give the ideal of worklessness. Adam had been placed in the garden "to dress it and to keep it." Wherever G.o.d places the man, he places the task for the man. Any other conception of life is unworthy and utterly irreligious. A silly theology that puts a premium on idleness is not born of the G.o.d that "worketh hitherto." Still the view that work is a curse persists even after the theory that encouraged the view has gone to the discard. The sanctified escape the fret of work, but they do not escape its fact. The Perfect Life, as we shall later see, was the life of a Worker.

Admitting, as we all must, that work is sometimes tragic because it lacks its proper outer reward, we may still contend that often its deepest tragedy is a wrong att.i.tude of spirit. Doubtless much of this comes from maladjustment. Some idealists believe that if every man were given his own task, every man would be happy at that task. Kipling so states it in the "L'Envoi" of "The Seven Seas." He sees the good time when there shall be an adjustment between man and his task. The lower motives for work shall all be done away, and the one satisfying motive shall abide.

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame, And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, But each for the joy of the working, and each in his separate star, Shall draw the thing as he sees it, for the G.o.d of things as they are.

Ideal as this is, it gets a response from us all. Besides there are some foretokens of this age of joyful toil. Usually these are seen most clearly in work that has a relation to beauty. The woman works cheerfully at her fine embroidery, and she works just as cheerfully over the flowers in her garden. With men the form of toil that stands for genuine achievement often becomes not only a pleasure but a veritable pa.s.sion. Where a spiritual motive allures, work frequently becomes the gladness of life.

Aga.s.siz declined to accept the remunerative call to lecture by saying, "I am only a teacher. I cannot afford to make money." Wesley poured back into his work all the results of his work and died a poor man whereas he might have become rich. In America college professors have been known to save their meager salaries in order that they might return their slight estates to endow more fully the inst.i.tutions for which they labored. They received from their work so that they could give back to their work.

The more we study cases of this fine sort, the more will we be impressed that the workers labored under the biblical sense of life. The men just mentioned were all profound believers in G.o.d, and they lived their lives as under his eye. Hence they saw their portion of work as a part of the infinite whole that makes for the kingdom of G.o.d. There is a story of a workingman who, standing on the street opposite the Cathedral of Cologne, was overheard saying, "Didn't we do a fine job over there?" Turning about, the listener saw a rough hand pointing at the wonderful cathedral. "What did you do?" he asked the man. The reply was, "I mixed the mortar for several years." The tale was told by the thoughtless as being humorous. It is, however, serious and beautiful. That workman had gotten the vision of himself as a partner in a plan that covered centuries of grand toil. He was a helper of G.o.d in the fas.h.i.+oning of his temple. In reality he had joined the company of Hiram and of Solomon. Now all honest work must have a direction that is both long and high. It reaches down into the years of men. It reaches upward into the heart of G.o.d. Precisely this idealism is needed in order that toil may be redeemed from its drudgery. George Eliot gives us a striking ill.u.s.tration of it in her tribute to Stradivari, the maker of violins. This immortal mechanic is said to have had a reverence for his labor. He felt that, whereas G.o.d gave men skill to play, G.o.d depended on Stradivari to furnish the instruments. He was the partner of the Most High. G.o.d had chosen Stradivari as a helper. Hence he could say,

G.o.d be praised, Antonio Stradivari has an eye That winces at false work and loves the true, With hand and arm that play upon the tool As willingly as any singing bird Sets him to sing his morning roundelay, Because he likes to sing and likes the song.

We may not all have this att.i.tude toward our work, but we are all idealists enough to wish that we felt just that way. The singing workman is not altogether a figment of the imagination; neither is his spirit impossible in the day that now is. The men who regard work as a blessing, and not as a penalty and a curse, are found in many trades and professions. They are the forerunners of the Eden life. Certainly the main teaching of the Bible, that labor is designed to aid in the bringing in of the kingdom of G.o.d, must give to the honest laborers in every realm an exalted joy.

This primary consideration is joined by the human examples of the Bible.

We find in its pages a procession of workers, and from this procession G.o.d selects many of his chosen leaders. Moses was tending his flock on the hillside when the voice of the Lord summoned him to his manifold leaders.h.i.+p. Saul was seeking his father's cattle when he found the kingdom of which he was to be king. David was busy in the sheepfold when the prophet called him to his work as warrior and monarch. Ruth was gleaning in the fields, in her pathetic effort to care for her widowed mother-in-law and herself, when she found her way into happiness and into the ancestry of our Lord. Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press when he was drafted for the campaign that was to break the power of the Midianites. Elisha was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen when the mantle of Elijah was cast over his shoulders. Nehemiah was serving as cupbearer to the king when he evoked from Artaxerxes the permission to return and rebuild the walls of his beloved city. Amos was among the herdsmen of Tekoa when the word of G.o.d took him captive and sent him to his prophetic career. These are the instances in the Old Testament where mention is made of the form of toil from which G.o.d called men to some spiritual service.

Without doubt the full record would show that other signal servants received their commissions while they were faithfully performing their duties on thres.h.i.+ng floors, out in the fields, and within counting-rooms.

The New Testament is less specific in its descriptions, but it often gives us the like hint. Matthew was at the seat of custom when he was invited into the fellows.h.i.+p of the disciples that he might tell men of the eternal exchange. James and John were engaged in their occupation as fishermen when they heard the voice on the sh.o.r.e and pulled their boat over the blue waves that they might become fishers of men. The shepherds were in faithful watch over their flocks by night when they heard the evangel of song and were startled by the message of peace. The ill.u.s.trations make us feel that the favorite meeting place of G.o.d with man is the meeting place of man with his work. A motto says that "the best reward of good work is more good work to do." The providence of G.o.d upholds the motto. The Bible shows a preference for the workers as against the s.h.i.+rks. It puts the premium on industry, whether the type of toil be manual or spiritual.

Here, as in all other themes of real life, we come to Christ for our highest teaching and our best example. We have noted elsewhere that he made the home the ill.u.s.tration of our relations with G.o.d; and we now note that he made the common work of earth the ill.u.s.tration of our responsibility for service to G.o.d. This he did so often and so urgently that we are driven to feel that work was not only the form of ill.u.s.tration but also the form of service itself. How many parables did he gain from the ways of toil? He would say, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto--,"

and straightway his hearers' minds were sent to the places where men wrought for their daily bread. In most places the blanks can be supplied by some form of employment. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto--" a merchant and his pearls; a sower and his field; a woman and her leaven; a fisherman and his net; a husbandman and his vineyard; a merchant traveler and the intrusted talents. Where his words were used as deft and quick ill.u.s.trations rather than as lengthy and formal parables, he gathered his material from the realms of toil. The builder and the house; the shepherd and the sheep; the axman and the tree; the tailor and the cloth; the housewife and the coin; the rich man and his steward; the woman and her grinding; the man and his plowing; the watchman and his vigil; the husbandman and the vine; all these entered into his speech as showing what G.o.d would expect of men. Here we have almost a cyclopedia of labors.

Inasmuch as Jesus commended the qualities shown in these various phases of service, we are allowed to think that he regarded the legitimate occupations of everyday life as both representing and fulfilling the kingdom of G.o.d. Nor will reverent thought be satisfied with any less comprehensive view. There would be a dread of living if we were made to feel that the work which we must do, both to meet our own sense of self-respect and to provide for the needs of ourselves and our beloved, was either in opposition to the grace of G.o.d or stood for neutral territory between the realms of good and evil. The teaching of Jesus saves us from that practical atheism. He allows every honest man to take the oft-repeated phrase, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto--," and to complete a portion of its meaning from his own form of labor. If a man is engaged in any task that makes sacrilege and blasphemy when it is used to fill out the sentence, then let that man look well to his own heart and life. Every man's work should serve as a parable of Christ.

But Jesus was not simply the doctrinaire of toil; he was its exemplar. The emphasis here is usually placed upon the fact that Christ was a carpenter.

He transformed crude materials into useful tools. An overdone stress on this point is itself a confession that manual toil needs an apologist! The significant thing is that such a stress is wholly absent from the speech and att.i.tude of Jesus. With him carpentry seems to have been a natural part of life. He never refers to it as something that he had outgrown. His backward look toward the occupation of his youth betrays no condescension, like to that occasionally seen in so-called self-made men! After he had left the carpenter's bench he said, "I work." When he saw the night closing down about him, the brevity of the working day became an incentive to more work, and he said, "I must work." Even in the agony we can catch the exultation of the cry, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." It was his meat to finish his "work." Jesus did the appointed task for each period of his life. Then he pa.s.sed on to the task of the next period without the least hint that the varying tasks were not joined in the harmony of the divine purpose. The work of his life was like his garment; it was all of one piece. From the building of the Nazareth cottage on to the building of the "many mansions," there is no consciousness of contradiction. With Jesus the working life was a unity.

And at the risk of being mechanical in the use of bungling divisions we may declare that Jesus entered into all the large divisions of toil. The note of universality is seen here as it is seen elsewhere. We have been told that the three forms of temptation that Jesus encountered on mountain top and temple pinnacle exhaust all the types. It has been said, too, that the thankfulness of Jesus is directed toward all the channels by which the good of life can flow in upon us. This same characteristic of universality appears in the work of Christ. As a carpenter he worked upon material things. As a healer he worked upon the bodies of men. As a teacher he worked upon the minds of men. As a preacher he worked upon the souls of men. All the workers of the world can be brought into one of these divisions, and so all true workers can enter into partners.h.i.+p with Jesus.

We call him the Carpenter, the Great Physician, the Greatest Teacher, the World's Saviour! The manual toilers claim him. The doctors claim him. The teachers claim him. The evangelists claim him. He is at home in the shop, in the hospital, in the schoolroom, and in the temple. All the cla.s.ses of toilers can appeal to the sanction of his example.