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on believing that there is no worship of God but prayers, and psalms, and public litanies, and private acts of devotion? Is not obedience a continual worship, and the life of a holy man a continual prayer? Whatsoever we do, if done to the glory of God," is true worship. The tillage of the earth, the sweat of the brow, the toils of reason, the labors of the learned, the industry of merchants, the justice of magistrates, the wisdom of lawgivers, all these severally are the work entrusted to each of God; and when done in obedience to Him, are as direct a sacrifice of worship as the praise of our lips and the chants of choirs, solemn processions and the pomp of festivals. So far, then, from our worldly duties being obstructions to a devout life, they are closely and intimately related to the highest law of obedience, and may be made the occasion and expression of a fervent spirit of devotion. What were the public burdens of Moses, or the household cares of Jacob, or the royal offices and charges of David, but occasions of daily obedience to the Divine will? Whensoever, then, we hear people complaining of obstructions and hindrances put by the duties of life in the way of devoting themselves to God, we may be sure they are under some false view or other. They do not look upon their daily work as the task God has set them, and as obedience due to Him; or they are conscious that in their daily work there is something which is not wholly lawful; or that it is not carried on altogether by lawful means; or they know that they permit it to interfere with the duties of religion; or they do not rightly know what the duties of religion are; or they think devotion to be an occasional state of the mind separate and remote from the work of life, and even opposed to it. Now people talk in this way as if they really held, with the Manicheans, that this world is the creation of an evil being, and that all

things relating to it must needs clash with the holiness of the Supreme God. Let us, then, lay this down as an axiom, that whatsoever be the duties of our lot in life, they are the sphere and field in which God would have us to serve Him. They can obstruct nothing of the hidden life in us, so long as we have a clear sight of God in them, and do them all for His sake. And this answers the second objection. The distinction of secular and sacred is but external; all duties are sacred. Let us not think that there is no serving God except in the direct ministry of His Church. It is true that the pastors of Christ have this great privilege, that all their daily work is visibly and distinctly related to the will of God and to the habit of personal devotion. Our duties and our devotions are almost one and the same act. And this is a singular and inestimable benefit, for which we must answer with a fearful strictness at the last day. But the pastor and the peasant, the catechist and the sower, the bishop ruling in the Church and the judge sitting in the gate, the saint in his closet and the faithful householder ordering his family, all these are serving their Father in heaven by a simple, direct, and acceptable service. Their circumstances, as we say, in life, that is, the outer world of relations, duties, employments, by which they are encompassed, are the deliberate appointments of God's providence, and may be taken as a revelation in fact of the kind of service He requires of them. It is through these appointments that we are to worship God with the reverence and obedience of our whole heart. A life of devotion does not mean a life of separation from active duties, but the discharge of all offices, high or low, from the most sacred and elevated to the most secular and menial, in a devout spirit.

2 But we may go farther; and say, not only that the

duties of life, be they never so toilsome and distracting, are no obstructions to a life of any degree of inward holiness; but that they are even direct means, when rightly used, to promote our sanctification. For what are all our duties, toils and cares, but the lot which God in His mercy appointed to man after the fall? "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."* It matters not what is the form of our labor, or the condition of our calling in life. The cares of princes, no less than the labors of the herdsman and the tillage of the ground, are all fruits of the same law of toil which God imposed upon Adam when he sinned and it was hardly so much a curse as a blessing; hardly so much a penalty as a merciful provision. What would have been the career and destiny of man, if, after falling from righteousness and from God, he had been left in the free posses'sion of all created things; if, with a heart corrupt, all the fruitfulness and richness of paradise had still been his earthly portion? Surely Heaven would have sickened at the sight of man: earth would have groaned under the burden of his sloth, lust, and atheism. Is there not mercy in the niggardliness of the earth, and the overcasting of the sky, and the changes of storm, and wind, and cold, and tempest, by which this world chastises our sloth and intemperate desires? If labor were not the lot of sinners, verily Babylon and Nineveh, Sidon and Tyre, Sodom and Gomorrah, would be but faint types of the pride and rebellion of mankind. Now, in this view we may look upon our calling and work in life as a humiliation, as a token of the fall. In the case of pastors and preachers of the gospel it is manifestly so. The Church itself is a witness that sin

* Gen. iii. 19.

has entered into the world. If there were no sin, then there would be no need of a ministry of reconciliation, of sacraments of renewal, of the pastoral rod, or the fold separate from the world. So again in the highest civil employments: what are kings and princes, ministers and statesmen, but witnesses that the governinent of God has been shaken off, and that men must be governed by the sword? The same truth is still more evident in the professions which are devoted to war, to healing, to litigation; and hardly less in those which relate to the clothing, food, and necessities of this earthly life: the traces of the fall are upon them all. Now, if men would see their daily employments in this light, it would work a wonderful change in the feeling with which they undertake and pursue them: it would hardly be possible for a man to be proud, covetous, or ambitious in the very matter which reminds him that he is a fallen being, and in a condition which is the portion of a sinner. This is a strange reading of all worldly greatness. How will the world bear to hear that all the pomp and splendor of thrones and legislatures, of courts and councils, and all its wealth, its" merchandise of gold and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odors, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men ;"* that all this is no more than a gorgeous display of its fall from God? This humbling view of our daily work in the world will be very wholesome, in making us go to it as sinners, and in admonishing us to do our duties in humility and

* Rev. xviii. 12, 13.

patience. In this way it will help to perfect our repentance; it will remind us that, at our best estate in this world, if we compare it with the bliss and rest of paradise, we are as the prodigal, outcast and naked, toiling under a base servitude in a far country. We shall therefore bear our daily task as a deserved and salutary yoke, by which we acknowledge our condition as penitents. The weariness, crosses, disappointments, and vexations, which arise in it: the early hours and late; the crowding and thronging of the multitude; all these are but as the dust, ashes, and sackcloth, of our just humiliation.

us.

3. Another benefit in continual employment is, that it acts as a great check upon the temptations which beset an unoccupied and disengaged man. If we could reckon up the temptations which have assaulted us in life, we should find by far the greater number have come upon us in seasons of relaxation, when the mind is vacant, wandering, and off its guard. Employment, even of a mechanical sort, much more real toil and active labor, are most beneficial to Next to prayer and a life of devotional habits, there is nothing that keeps the heart so pure, and the will so strong and steadfast, as a life of active duty. This is no doubt one peculiar blessing of those who live hard and laborious lives, and accounts in a great measure, for the singular simplicity, straightforwardness, unconsciousness of evil, which is to be found among the laboring poor. Their poverty, and daily intentness of mind upon the pure and simple tillage of the earth shields them from a thousand assaults of evil, and a whole world of dangerous thoughts, schemes, desires, and designs, which throng upon the idle or unemployed. Compare the open and natural character of a poor man with the complex, suppressed, inward mind of those who live in the world with much time at their disposal, and little or no

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