by John Ruskin
LECTURE I.
_WORK._
(_Delivered before the Working Men's Institute, at Camberwell._)
My Friends,--I have not come among you to-night to endeavour to give youan entertaining lecture; but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask yousome plain, but necessary questions. I have seen and known too much ofthe struggle for life among our labouring population, to feel at ease,even under any circumstances, in inviting them to dwell on thetrivialities of my own studies; but, much more, as I meet to-night, forthe first time, the members of a working Institute established in thedistrict in which I have passed the greater part of my life, I amdesirous that we should at once understand each other, on gravermatters. I would fain tell you, with what feelings, and with what hope,I regard this Institution, as one of many such, now happily establishedthroughout England, as well as in other countries;--Institutions whichare preparing the way for a great change in all the circumstances ofindustrial life; but of which the success must wholly depend upon ourclearly understanding the circumstances and necessary _limits_ of thischange. No teacher can truly promote the cause of education, until heknows the conditions of the life for which that education is to preparehis pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to address you nominally,as a 'Working Class,' must compel him, if he is in any wise earnest orthoughtful, to inquire in the outset, on what you yourselves supposethis class distinction has been founded in the past, and must be foundedin the future. The manner of the amusement, and the matter of theteaching, which any of us can offer you, must depend wholly on our firstunderstanding from you, whether you think the distinction heretoforedrawn between working men and others, is truly or falsely founded. Doyou accept it as it stands? do you wish it to be modified? or do youthink the object of education is to efface it, and make us forget it forever?
Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We call this--you andI--a 'Working Men's' Institute, and our college in London, a 'WorkingMen's' College. Now, how do you consider that these several institutesdiffer, or ought to differ, from 'idle men's' institutes and 'idlemen's' colleges? Or by what other word than 'idle' shall I distinguishthose whom the happiest and wisest of working men do not object to callthe 'Upper Classes?' Are there really upper classes,--are there lower?How much should they always be elevated, how much always depressed? And,gentlemen and ladies--I pray those of you who are here to forgive me theoffence there may be in what I am going to say. It is not _I_ who wishto say it. Bitter voices say it; voices of battle and of famine throughall the world, which must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence.Neither is it to _you_ specially that I say it. I am sure that most nowpresent know their duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhapsthan I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class,which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore theless terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit isthere to that of which we are unconscious?
Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, and ask them,also as representing a great multitude, what they think the 'upperclasses' are, and ought to be, in relation to them. Answer, you workmenwho are here, as you would among yourselves, frankly; and tell me howyou would have me call those classes. Am I to call them--would _you_think me right in calling them--the idle classes? I think you would feelsomewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating my subject honestly, orspeaking from my heart, if I went on under the supposition that all richpeople were idle. You would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed meto say that;--not less unjust than the rich people who say that all thepoor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or more thanthey can help.
For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle rich; andthere are busy poor and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he hadten thousand a year; and many a man of large fortune is busier than hiserrand-boy, and never would think of stopping in the street to playmarbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between workers andidlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heartand innermost economies of men of all ranks and in all positions. Thereis a working class--strong and happy--among both rich and poor; there isan idle class--weak, wicked, and miserable--among both rich and poor.And the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orderscome of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class habituallycontemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people watchedand rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right; and if the busypoor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, all would beright. But each class has a tendency to look for the faults of theother. A hard-working man of property is particularly offended by anidle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerantof the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in theminds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in theunjust--but among the unjust _only_. None but the dissolute among thepoor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillagetheir houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among therich speak in opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of the poor.
There is, then, no class distinction between idle and industriouspeople; and I am going to-night to speak only of the industrious. Theidle people we will put out of our thoughts at once--they are merenuisances--what ought to be done with _them_, we'll talk of at anothertime. But there are class distinctions, among the industriousthemselves; tremendous distinctions, which rise and fall to everydegree in the infinite thermometer of human pain and of humanpower--distinctions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reachof man's soul and body.
These separations we will study, and the laws of them, among energeticmen only, who, whether they work or whether they play, put theirstrength into the work, and their strength into the game; being in thefull sense of the word 'industrious,' one way or another--with apurpose, or without. And these distinctions are mainly four:
I. Between those who work, and those who play.
II. Between those who produce the means of life, and those who consumethem.
III. Between those who work with the head, and those who work with thehand.
IV. Between those who work wisely, and who work foolishly.
For easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose, in ourexamination.--
I. Work to play; II. Production to consumption; III. Head to Hand; and, IV. Sense to nonsense.
I. First, then, of the distinction between the classes who work and theclasses who play. Of course we must agree upon a definition of theseterms,--work and play,--before going farther. Now, roughly, not withvain subtlety of definition, but for plain use of the words, 'play' isan exertion of body or mind, made to please ourselves, and with nodetermined end; and work is a thing done because it ought to be done,and with a determined end. You play, as you call it, at cricket, forinstance. That is as hard work as anything else; but it amuses you, andit has no result but the amusement. If it were done as an ordered formof exercise, for health's sake, it would become work directly. So, inlike manner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sakeof the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is 'play,' the 'pleasingthing,' not the useful thing. Play may be useful in a secondary sense(nothing is indeed more useful or necessary); but the use of it dependson its being spontaneous.
Let us, then, enquire together what sort of games the playing class inEngland spend their lives in playing at.
The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbinggame; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that than atfoot-ball, or any other roughest sport; and it is absolutely withoutpurpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask agreat money-maker what he wants to do with his money--he never knows. Hedoesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he _may_get it. 'What will you make of what you have got?' you ask. 'Well, I'llget more,' he says. Just as, at cricket, you get more runs. There's nouse in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game.And there's no use in the money, but
to have more of it than otherpeople is the game. So all that great foul city of Londonthere,--rattling, growling, smoking, stinking,--a ghastly heap offermenting brick-work, pouring out poison at every pore,--you fancy itis a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; verynasty play, and very hard play, but still play. It is only Lord'scricket ground without the turf,--a huge billiard table without thecloth, and with pockets as deep as the bottomless pit; but mainly abilliard table, after all.
Well, the first great English game is this playing at counters. Itdiffers from the rest in that it appears always to be producing money,while every other game is expensive. But it does not always producemoney. There's a great difference between 'winning' money and 'making'it; a great difference between getting it out of another man's pocketinto ours, or filling both. Collecting money is by no means the samething as making it; the tax-gatherer's house is not the Mint; and muchof the apparent gain (so called), in commerce, is only a form oftaxation on carriage or exchange.
Our next great English game, however, hunting and shooting, is costlyaltogether; and how much we are fined for it annually in land, horses,gamekeepers, and game laws, and all else that accompanies thatbeautiful and special English game, I will not endeavour to count now:but note only that, except for exercise, this is not merely a uselessgame, but a deadly one, to all connected with it. For throughhorse-racing, you get every form of what the higher classes everywherecall 'Play,' in distinction from all other plays; that is--gambling; byno means a beneficial or recreative game: and, through game-preserving,you get also some curious laying out of ground; that beautifularrangement of dwelling-house for man and beast, by which we have grouseand black-cock--so many brace to the acre, and men and women--so manybrace to the garret. I often wonder what the angelic builders andsurveyors--the angelic builders who build the 'many mansions' up abovethere; and the angelic surveyors, who measured that four-square citywith their measuring reeds--I wonder what they think, or are supposed tothink, of the laying out of ground by this nation, which has set itself,as it seems, literally to accomplish, word for word, or rather fact forword, in the persons of those poor whom its Master left to representhim, what that Master said of himself--that foxes and birds had homes,but He none.
Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting, we must put the ladies'game of dressing. It is not the cheapest of games. I saw a brooch at ajeweller's in Bond Street a fortnight ago, not an inch wide, and withoutany singular jewel in it, yet worth 3,000_l._ And I wish I could tellyou what this 'play' costs, altogether, in England, France, and Russiaannually. But it is a pretty game, and on certain terms, I like it; nay,I don't see it played quite as much as I would fain have it. You ladieslike to lead the fashion:--by all means lead it--lead it thoroughly,lead it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody elsenicely. Lead the _fashions for the poor_ first; make _them_ look well,and you yourselves will look, in ways of which you have now noconception, all the better. The fashions you have set for some timeamong your peasantry are not pretty ones; their doublets are tooirregularly slashed, and the wind blows too frankly through them.
Then there are other games, wild enough, as I could show you if I hadtime.
There's playing at literature, and playing at art--very different, both,from working at literature, or working at art, but I've no time to speakof these. I pass to the greatest of all--the play of plays, the greatgentlemen's game, which ladies like them best to play at,--the game ofWar. It is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination; the facts of it,not always so pleasant. We dress for it, however, more finely than forany other sport; and go out to it, not merely in scarlet, as to hunt,but in scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine colours: of course wecould fight better in grey, and without feathers; but all nations haveagreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. Then the batsand balls are very costly; our English and French bats, with the ballsand wickets, even those which we don't make any use of, costing, Isuppose, now about fifteen millions of money annually to each nation;all of which, you know is paid for by hard labourer's work in the furrowand furnace. A costly game!--not to speak of its consequences; I willsay at present nothing of these. The mere immediate cost of all theseplays is what I want you to consider; they all cost deadly worksomewhere, as many of us know too well. The jewel-cutter, whose sightfails over the diamonds; the weaver, whose arm fails over the web; theiron-forger, whose breath fails before the furnace--_they_ know whatwork is--they, who have all the work, and none of the play, except akind they have named for themselves down in the black north country,where 'play' means being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty example forphilologists, of varying dialect, this change in the sense of the word'play,' as used in the black country of Birmingham, and the red andblack country of Baden Baden. Yes, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, ofEngland, who think 'one moment unamused a misery, not made for feebleman,' this is what you have brought the word 'play' to mean, in theheart of merry England! You may have your fluting and piping; but thereare sad children sitting in the market-place, who indeed cannot say toyou, 'We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced:' but eternallyshall say to you, 'We have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.'
This, then, is the first distinction between the 'upper and lower'classes. And this is one which is by no means necessary; which indeedmust, in process of good time, be by all honest men's consent abolished.Men will be taught that an existence of play, sustained by the blood ofother creatures, is a good existence for gnats and sucking fish; but notfor men: that neither days, nor lives, can be made holy by doing nothingin them: that the best prayer at the beginning of a day is that we maynot lose its moments; and the best grace before meat, the consciousnessthat we have justly earned our dinner. And when we have this much ofplain Christianity preached to us again, and enough respect for what weregard as inspiration, as not to think that 'Son, go work to-day in myvineyard,' means 'Fool, go play to-day in my vineyard,' we shall all beworkers, in one way or another; and this much at least of thedistinction between 'upper' and 'lower' forgotten.
II. I pass then to our second distinction; between the rich and poor,between Dives and Lazarus,--distinction which exists more sternly, Isuppose, in this day, than ever in the world, Pagan or Christian, tillnow. I will put it sharply before you, to begin with, merely by readingtwo paragraphs which I cut from two papers that lay on my breakfasttable on the same morning, the 25th of November, 1864. The piece aboutthe rich Russian at Paris is commonplace enough, and stupid besides (forfifteen francs,--12_s._ 6_d._,--is nothing for a rich man to give for acouple of peaches, out of season). Still, the two paragraphs printed onthe same day are worth putting side by side.
'Such a man is now here. He is a Russian, and, with your permission, wewill call him Count Teufelskine. In dress he is sublime; art isconsidered in that toilet, the harmony of colour respected, the _chiar'oscuro_ evident in well-selected contrast. In manners he isdignified--nay, perhaps apathetic; nothing disturbs the placid serenityof that calm exterior. One day our friend breakfasted _chez_ Bignon.When the bill came he read, "Two peaches, 15f." He paid. "Peachesscarce, I presume?" was his sole remark. "No, sir," replied the waiter,"but Teufelskines are."' _Telegraph_, November 25, 1864.
'Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a woman, passing a dung heap inthe stone yard near the recently-erected alms-houses in Shadwell Gap,High Street, Shadwell, called the attention of a Thames police-constableto a man in a sitting position on the dung heap, and said she was afraidhe was dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched creature appearedto have been dead several hours. He had perished of cold and wet, andthe rain had been beating down on him all night. The deceased was abone-picker. He was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, andhalf-starved. The police had frequently driven him away from the stoneyard, between sunset and sunrise, and told him to go home. He selected amost desolate spot for his wretched death. A penny and some bones werefound in his pockets. The deceased was between fifty and sixty years ofage. Inspector Roberts, of the K div
ision, has given directions forinquiries to be made at the lodging-houses respecting the deceased, toascertain his identity if possible.'--_Morning Post_, November 25, 1864.
You have the separation thus in brief compass; and I want you to takenotice of the 'a penny and some bones were found in his pockets,' and tocompare it with this third statement, from the _Telegraph_ of January16th of this year:--
'Again, the dietary scale for adult and juvenile paupers was drawn up bythe most conspicuous political economists in England. It is low inquantity, but it is sufficient to support nature; yet within ten yearsof the passing of the Poor Law Act, we heard of the paupers in theAndover Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh and sucking the marrowfrom the bones of horses which they were employed to crush.'
You see my reason for thinking that our Lazarus of Christianity has someadvantage over the Jewish one. Jewish Lazarus expected, or at leastprayed, to be fed with crumbs from the rich man's table; but _our_Lazarus is fed with crumbs from the dog's table.
Now this distinction between rich and poor rests on two bases. Withinits proper limits, on a basis which is lawful and everlastinglynecessary; beyond them, on a basis unlawful, and everlastinglycorrupting the framework of society. The lawful basis of wealth is, thata man who works should be paid the fair value of his work; and that ifhe does not choose to spend it to-day, he should have free leave to keepit, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an industrious man working daily, andlaying by daily, attains at last the possession of an accumulated sum ofwealth, to which he has absolute right. The idle person who will notwork, and the wasteful person who lays nothing by, at the end of thesame time will be doubly poor--poor in possession, and dissolute inmoral habit; and he will then naturally covet the money which the otherhas saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him ofhis well-earned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving, or anyreward for good conduct; and all society is thereupon dissolved, orexists only in systems of rapine. Therefore the first necessity ofsocial life is the clearness of national conscience in enforcing thelaw--that he should keep who has JUSTLY EARNED.
That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between rich andpoor. But there is also a false basis of distinction; namely, the powerheld over those who earn wealth by those who levy or exact it. Therewill be always a number of men who would fain set themselves to theaccumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily,that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, andmore or less cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well-educated,intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of histhoughts; as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinnerthe principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, buttheir dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthilyminded people like making money--ought to like it, and to enjoy thesensation of winning it; but the main object of their life is not money;it is something better than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainlywishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay--very properlyso, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it--still,his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winningthem. So of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, ofcourse; but yet, if they are brave and well educated, the pew-rent isnot the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not thesole purpose of the baptism; the clergyman's object is essentially tobaptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. Theylike fees no doubt,--ought to like them; yet if they are brave and welleducated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on thewhole, desire to cure the sick; and,--if they are good doctors, and thechoice were fairly put to them,--would rather cure their patient, andlose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And so with all other braveand rightly trained men; their work is first, their fee second--veryimportant always, but still _second_. But in every nation, as I said,there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, and more or lessstupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, andthe work second, as with brave people the work is first and the feesecond. And this is no small distinction. It is the whole distinction ina man; distinction between life and death _in_ him, between heaven andhell _for_ him. You cannot serve two masters;--you _must_ serve one orother. If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is yourmaster, and the lord of work, who is God. But if your fee is first withyou, and your work second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, whois the Devil; and not only the Devil, but the lowest of devils--the'least erected fiend that fell.' So there you have it in brief terms;Work first--you are God's servants; Fee first--you are the Fiend's. Andit makes a difference, now and ever, believe me, whether you serve Himwho has on His vesture and thigh written, 'King of Kings,' and whoseservice is perfect freedom; or him on whose vesture and thigh the nameis written, 'Slave of Slaves,' and whose service is perfect slavery.
However, in every nation there are, and must always be, a certain numberof these Fiend's servants, who have it principally for the object oftheir lives to make money. They are always, as I said, more or lessstupid, and cannot conceive of anything else so nice as money. Stupidityis always the basis of the Judas bargain. We do great injustice toIscariot, in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He wasonly a common money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, didn't understandChrist;--couldn't make out the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. Hedidn't want Him to be killed. He was horror-struck when he found thatChrist would be killed; threw his money away instantly, and hangedhimself. How many of our present money-seekers, think you, would havethe grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was acommon, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always in thebag of the poor, not caring for them. He didn't understand Christ;--yetbelieved in Him, much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles,thought He was quite strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, Judas,might as well make his own little bye-perquisites out of the affair.Christ would come out of it well enough, and he have his thirty pieces.Now, that is the money-seeker's idea, all over the world. He doesn'thate Christ, but can't understand Him--doesn't care for him--sees nogood in that benevolent business; makes his own little job out of it atall events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass of men, you havea certain number of bag-men--your 'fee-first' men, whose main object isto make money. And they do make it--make it in all sorts of unfair ways,chiefly by the weight and force of money itself, or what is called thepower of capital; that is to say, the power which money, once obtained,has over the labour of the poor, so that the capitalist can take all itsproduce to himself, except the labourer's food. That is the modernJudas's way of 'carrying the bag,' and 'bearing what is put therein.'
Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair advantage? Has not the manwho has worked for the money a right to use it as he best can? No; inthis respect, money is now exactly what mountain promontories overpublic roads were in old times. The barons fought for them fairly:--thestrongest and cunningest got them; then fortified them, and madeeveryone who passed below pay toll. Well, capital now is exactly whatcrags were then. Men fight fairly (we will, at least, grant so much,though it is more than we ought) for their money; but, once having gotit, the fortified millionaire can make everybody who passes below paytoll to his million, and build another tower of his money castle. And Ican tell you, the poor vagrants by the roadside suffer now quite as muchfrom the bag-baron, as ever they did from the crag-baron. Bags and cragshave just the same result on rags. I have not time, however, to-night toshow you in how many ways the power of capital is unjust; but this onegreat principle I have to assert--you will find it quite indisputablytrue--that whenever money is the principal object of life with eitherman or nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill; and does harm both inthe getting and spending; but when it is not the principal object, itand all other things will be well got, and well spent. And here is thetest, with every man, of whether money is the principal object with him,or not. If in mid-life he could pause and say, "Now I hav
e enough tolive upon, I'll live upon it; and having well earned it, I will alsowell spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I came into it," thenmoney is not principal with him; but if, having enough to live upon inthe manner befitting his character and rank, he still wants to makemore, and to _die_ rich, then money is the principal object with him,and it becomes a curse to himself, and generally to those who spend itafter him. For you know it _must_ be spent some day; the only questionis whether the man who makes it shall spend it, or some one else. Andgenerally it is better for the maker to spend it, for he will know bestits value and use. This is the true law of life. And if a man does notchoose thus to spend his money, he must either hoard it or lend it, andthe worst thing he can generally do is to lend it; for borrowers arenearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil ismainly done, and all unjust war protracted.
For observe what the real fact is, respecting loans to foreign militarygovernments, and how strange it is. If your little boy came to you toask for money to spend in squibs and crackers, you would think twicebefore you gave it him; and you would have some idea that it was wasted,when you saw it fly off in fireworks, even though he did no mischiefwith it. But the Russian children, and Austrian children, come to you,borrowing money, not to spend in innocent squibs, but in cartridges andbayonets to attack you in India with, and to keep down all noble life inItaly with, and to murder Polish women and children with; and _that_ youwill give at once, because they pay you interest for it. Now, in orderto pay you that interest, they must tax every working peasant in theirdominions; and on that work you live. You therefore at once rob theAustrian peasant, assassinate or banish the Polish peasant, and you liveon the produce of the theft, and the bribe for the assassination! Thatis the broad fact--that is the practical meaning of your foreign loans,and of most large interest of money; and then you quarrel with BishopColenso, forsooth, as if _he_ denied the Bible, and you believed it!though, wretches as you are, every deliberate act of your lives is a newdefiance of its primary orders; and as if, for most of the rich men ofEngland at this moment, it were not indeed to be desired, as the bestthing at least for _them_, that the Bible should _not_ be true, sinceagainst them these words are written in it: 'The rust of your gold andsilver shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, as itwere fire.'
III. I pass now to our third condition of separation, between the menwho work with the hand, and those who work with the head.
And here we have at last an inevitable distinction. There _must_ be workdone by the arms, or none of us could live. There _must_ be work done bythe brains, or the life we get would not be worth having. And the samemen cannot do both. There is rough work to be done, and rough men mustdo it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it; and itis physically impossible that one class should do, or divide, the workof the other. And it is of no use to try to conceal this sorrowful factby fine words, and to talk to the workman about the honourableness ofmanual labour and the dignity of humanity. That is a grand old proverbof Sancho Panza's, 'Fine words butter no parsnips;' and I can tell youthat, all over England just now, you workmen are buying a great deal toomuch butter at that dairy. Rough work, honourable or not, takes the lifeout of us; and the man who has been heaving clay out of a ditch all day,or driving an express train against the north wind all night, or holdinga collier's helm in a gale on a lee-shore, or whirling white hot iron ata furnace mouth, that man is not the same at the end of his day, ornight, as one who has been sitting in a quiet room, with everythingcomfortable about him, reading books, or classing butterflies, orpainting pictures. If it is any comfort to you to be told that the roughwork is the more honourable of the two, I should be sorry to take thatmuch of consolation from you; and in some sense I need not. The roughwork is at all events real, honest, and, generally, though not always,useful; while the fine work is, a great deal of it, foolish and false aswell as fine, and therefore dishonourable; but when both kinds areequally well and worthily done, the head's is the noble work, and thehand's the ignoble; and of all hand work whatsoever, necessary for themaintenance of life, those old words, 'In the sweat of thy face thoushalt eat bread,' indicate that the inherent nature of it is one ofcalamity; and that the ground, cursed for our sake, casts also someshadow of degradation into our contest with its thorn and its thistle;so that all nations have held their days honourable, or 'holy,' andconstituted them 'holydays' or 'holidays,' by making them days of rest;and the promise, which, among all our distant hopes, seems to cast thechief brightness over death, is that blessing of the dead who die in theLord, that 'they rest from their labours, and their works do followthem.'
And thus the perpetual question and contest must arise, who is to dothis rough work? and how is the worker of it to be comforted, redeemed,and rewarded? and what kind of play should he have, and what rest, inthis world, sometimes, as well as in the next? Well, my good workingfriends, these questions will take a little time to answer yet. Theymust be answered: all good men are occupied with them, and all honestthinkers. There's grand head work doing about them; but much must bediscovered, and much attempted in vain, before anything decisive can betold you. Only note these few particulars, which are already sure.
As to the distribution of the hard work. None of us, or very few of us,do either hard or soft work because we think we ought; but because wehave chanced to fall into the way of it, and cannot help ourselves. Now,nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing: work is only donewell when it is done with a will; and no man has a thoroughly sound willunless he knows he is doing what he should, and is in his place. And,depend upon it, all work must be done at last, not in a disorderly,scrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered, soldierly, human way--alawful way. Men are enlisted for the labour that kills--the labour ofwar: they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Letthem be enlisted also for the labour that feeds: let them be counted,trained, fed, dressed, praised for that. Teach the plough exercise ascarefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the officers of troopsof life be held as much gentlemen as the officers of troops of death;and all is done: but neither this, nor any other right thing, can beaccomplished--you can't even see your way to it--unless, first of all,both servant and master are resolved that, come what will of it, theywill do each other justice. People are perpetually squabbling about whatwill be best to do, or easiest to do, or adviseablest to do, orprofitablest to do; but they never, so far as I hear them talk, ever askwhat it is _just_ to do. And it is the law of heaven that you shall notbe able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved tojudge what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing constantlyreiterated by our Master--the order of all others that is givenoftenest--'Do justice and judgment.' That's your Bible order; that's the'Service of God,' not praying nor psalm-singing. You are told, indeed,to sing psalms when you are merry, and to pray when you need anything;and, by the perversion of the Evil Spirit, we get to think that prayingand psalm-singing are 'service.' If a child finds itself in want ofanything, it runs in and asks its father for it--does it call that,doing its father a service? If it begs for a toy or a piece ofcake--does it call that serving its father? That, with God, is prayer,and He likes to hear it: He likes you to ask Him for cake when you wantit; but He doesn't call that 'serving Him.' Begging is not serving: Godlikes mere beggars as little as you do--He likes honest servants, notbeggars. So when a child loves its father very much, and is very happy,it may sing little songs about him; but it doesn't call that serving itsfather; neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It is enjoyingourselves, if it's anything; most probably it is nothing; but if it'sanything, it is serving ourselves, not God. And yet we are impudentenough to call our beggings and chauntings 'Divine Service:' we say'Divine service will be "performed"' (that's our word--the form of itgone through) 'at eleven o'clock.' Alas!--unless we perform Divineservice in every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all.The one Divine work--the one ordered sacrifice--is to do justice; and itis the last we ar
e ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that! Asmuch charity as you choose, but no justice. 'Nay,' you will say,'charity is greater than justice.' Yes, it is greater; it is the summitof justice--it is the temple of which justice is the foundation. But youcan't have the top without the bottom; you cannot build upon charity.You must build upon justice, for this main reason, that you have not, atfirst, charity to build with. It is the last reward of good work. Dojustice to your brother (you can do that, whether you love him or not),and you will come to love him. But do injustice to him, because youdon't love him; and you will come to hate him. It is all very fine tothink you can build upon charity to begin with; but you will find allyou have got to begin with, begins at home, and is essentially love ofyourself. You well-to-do people, for instance, who are here to-night,will go to 'Divine service' next Sunday, all nice and tidy, and yourlittle children will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and lovelylittle Sunday feathers in their hats; and you'll think, complacently andpiously, how lovely they look! So they do: and you love them heartilyand you like sticking feathers in their hats. That's all right: that_is_ charity; but it is charity beginning at home. Then you will come tothe poor little crossing-sweeper, got up also,--it, in its Sundaydress,--the dirtiest rags it has,--that it may beg the better: we shallgive it a penny, and think how good we are. That's charity going abroad.But what does Justice say, walking and watching near us? ChristianJustice has been strangely mute, and seemingly blind; and, if not blind,decrepit, this many a day: she keeps her accounts still, however--quitesteadily--doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, andthrough acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific invention shecares about). You must put your ear down ever so close to her lips tohear her speak; and then you will start at what she first whispers, forit will certainly be, 'Why shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have afeather on its head, as well as your own child?' Then you may askJustice, in an amazed manner, 'How she can possibly be so foolish as tothink children could sweep crossings with feathers on their heads?' Thenyou stoop again, and Justice says--still in her dull, stupid way--'Then,why don't you, every other Sunday, leave your child to sweep thecrossing, and take the little sweeper to church in a hat and feather?'Mercy on us (you think), what will she say next? And you answer, ofcourse, that 'you don't, because every body ought to remain content inthe position in which Providence has placed them.' Ah, my friends,that's the gist of the whole question. _Did_ Providence put them in thatposition, or did _you_? You knock a man into a ditch, and then you tellhim to remain content in the 'position in which Providence has placedhim.' That's modern Christianity. You say--'_We_ did not knock him intothe ditch.' How do you know what you have done, or are doing? That'sjust what we have all got to know, and what we shall never know, untilthe question with us every morning, is, not how to do the gainful thing,but how to do the just thing; nor until we are at least so far on theway to being Christian, as to have understood that maxim of the poorhalf-way Mahometan, 'One hour in the execution of justice is worthseventy years of prayer.'
Supposing, then, we have it determined with appropriate justice, _who_is to do the hand work, the next questions must be how the hand-workersare to be paid, and how they are to be refreshed, and what play they areto have. Now, the possible quantity of play depends on the possiblequantity of pay; and the quantity of pay is not a matter forconsideration to hand-workers only, but to all workers. Generally, good,useful work, whether of the hand or head, is either ill-paid, or notpaid at all. I don't say it should be so, but it always is so. People,as a rule, only pay for being amused or being cheated, not for beingserved. Five thousand a year to your talker, and a shilling a day toyour fighter, digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of the best headwork in art, literature, or science, is ever paid for. How much do youthink Homer got for his Iliad? or Dante for his Paradise? only bitterbread and salt, and going up and down other people's stairs. In science,the man who discovered the telescope, and first saw heaven, was paidwith a dungeon; the man who invented the microscope, and first sawearth, died of starvation, driven from his home: it is indeed very clearthat God means all thoroughly good work and talk to be done for nothing.Baruch, the scribe, did not get a penny a line for writing Jeremiah'ssecond roll for him, I fancy; and St. Stephen did not get bishop's payfor that long sermon of his to the Pharisees; nothing but stones. Forindeed that is the world-father's proper payment. So surely as any ofthe world's children work for the world's good, honestly, with head andheart; and come to it, saying, 'Give us a little bread, just to keep thelife in us,' the world-father answers them, 'No, my children, not bread;a stone, if you like, or as many as you need, to keep you quiet.' Butthe hand-workers are not so ill off as all this comes to. The worst thatcan happen to _you_ is to break stones; not be broken by them. And foryou there will come a time for better payment; some day, assuredly, morepence will be paid to Peter the Fisherman, and fewer to Peter the Pope;we shall pay people not quite so much for talking in Parliament anddoing nothing, as for holding their tongues out of it and doingsomething; we shall pay our ploughman a little more and our lawyer alittle less, and so on: but, at least, we may even now take care thatwhatever work is done shall be fully paid for; and the man who does itpaid for it, not somebody else; and that it shall be done in an orderly,soldierly, well-guided, wholesome way, under good captains andlieutenants of labour; and that it shall have its appointed times ofrest, and enough of them; and that in those times the play shall bewholesome play, not in theatrical gardens, with tin flowers and gassunshine, and girls dancing because of their misery; but in truegardens, with real flowers, and real sunshine, and children dancingbecause of their gladness; so that truly the streets shall be full (the'streets,' mind you, not the gutters) of children, playing in the midstthereof. We may take care that working-men shall have at least as goodbooks to read as anybody else, when they've time to read them; and ascomfortable fire-sides to sit at as anybody else, when they've time tosit at them. This, I think, can be managed for you, my working friends,in the good time.
IV. I must go on, however, to our last head, concerning ourselves all,as workers. What is wise work, and what is foolish work? What thedifference between sense and nonsense, in daily occupation?
Well, wise work is, briefly, work _with_ God. Foolish work is work_against_ God. And work done with God, which He will help, may bebriefly described as 'Putting in Order'--that is, enforcing God's law oforder, spiritual and material, over men and things. The first thing youhave to do, essentially; the real 'good work' is, with respect to men,to enforce justice, and with respect to things, to enforce tidiness, andfruitfulness. And against these two great human deeds, justice andorder, there are perpetually two great demons contending,--the devil ofiniquity, or inequity, and the devil of disorder, or of death; for deathis only consummation of disorder. You have to fight these two fiendsdaily. So far as you don't fight against the fiend of iniquity, you workfor him. You 'work iniquity,' and the judgment upon you, for all your'Lord, Lord's,' will be 'Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.' And sofar as you do not resist the fiend of disorder, you work disorder, andyou yourself do the work of Death, which is sin, and has for its wages,Death himself.
Observe then, all wise work is mainly threefold in character. It ishonest, useful, and cheerful.
I. It is HONEST. I hardly know anything more strange than that yourecognise honesty in play, and you do not in work. In your lightestgames, you have always some one to see what you call 'fair-play.' Inboxing, you must hit fair; in racing, start fair. Your English watchwordis fair-play, your English hatred, foul-play. Did it ever strike youthat you wanted another watchword also, fair-work, and another hatredalso, foul-work? Your prize-fighter has some honour in him yet; and sohave the men in the ring round him: they will judge him to lose thematch, by foul hitting. But your prize-merchant gains his match by foulselling, and no one cries out against that. You drive a gambler out ofthe gambling-room who loads dice, but you leave a tradesman inflourishing business, who loads scales! For observe, all dis
honestdealing _is_ loading scales. What does it matter whether I get shortweight, adulterate substance, or dishonest fabric? The fault in thefabric is incomparably the worst of the two. Give me short measure offood, and I only lose by you; but give me adulterate food, and I die byyou. Here, then, is your chief duty, you workmen and tradesmen--to betrue to yourselves, and to us who would help you. We can do nothing foryou, nor you for yourselves, without honesty. Get that, you get all;without that, your suffrages, your reforms, your free-trade measures,your institutions of science, are all in vain. It is useless to put yourheads together, if you can't put your hearts together. Shoulder toshoulder, right hand to right hand, among yourselves, and no wrong handto anybody else, and you'll win the world yet.
II. Then, secondly, wise work is USEFUL. No man minds, or ought to mind,its being hard, if only it comes to something; but when it is hard, andcomes to nothing; when all our bees' business turns to spiders'; andfor honeycomb we have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the nextbreeze--that is the cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever askourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is coming toanything or not? We don't care to keep what has been nobly done; stillless do we care to do nobly what others would keep; and, least of all,to make the work itself useful instead of deadly to the doer, so as touse his life indeed, but not to waste it. Of all wastes, the greatestwaste that you can commit is the waste of labour. If you went down inthe morning into your dairy, and you found that your youngest child hadgot down before you; and that he and the cat were at play together, andthat he had poured out all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up,you would scold the child, and be sorry the milk was wasted. But if,instead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there are golden bowls withhuman life in them, and instead of the cat to play with--the devil toplay with; and you yourself the player; and instead of leaving thatgolden bowl to be broken by God at the fountain, you break it in thedust yourself, and pour the human blood out on the ground for the fiendto lick up--that is no waste! What! you perhaps think, 'to waste thelabour of men is not to kill them.' Is it not? I should like to know howyou could kill them more utterly--kill them with second deaths, seventhdeaths, hundredfold deaths? It is the slightest way of killing to stop aman's breath. Nay, the hunger, and the cold, and the little whistlingbullets--our love-messengers between nation and nation--have broughtpleasant messages from us to many a man before now; orders of sweetrelease, and leave at last to go where he will be most welcome and mosthappy. At the worst you do but shorten his life, you do not corrupt hislife. But if you put him to base labour, if you bind his thoughts, ifyou blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, ifyou stunt his body, and blast his soul, and at last leave him not somuch as to reap the poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that foryourself, and dismiss him to the grave, when you have done with him,having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of that grave everlasting(though, indeed, I fancy the goodly bricks of some of our family vaultswill hold closer in the resurrection day than the sod over thelabourer's head), this you think is no waste, and no sin!
III. Then, lastly, wise work is CHEERFUL, as a child's work is. And nowI want you to take one thought home with you, and let it stay with you.
Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, 'Thy kingdomcome.' Now, if we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it verywrong, and say he 'takes God's name in vain.' But there's a twenty timesworse way of taking His name in vain, than that. It is to _ask God forwhat we don't want_. He doesn't like that sort of prayer. If you don'twant a thing, don't ask for it: such asking is the worst mockery of yourKing you can mock Him with; the soldiers striking Him on the head withthe reed was nothing to that. If you do not wish for His kingdom, don'tpray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you mustwork for it. And, to work for it, you must know what it is: we have allprayed for it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom thatis to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, it is not to be akingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also, it is not to come all atonce, but quietly; nobody knows how. 'The kingdom of God cometh not withobservation.' Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in the heartsof us: 'the kingdom of God is within you.' And, being within us, it isnot a thing to be seen, but to be felt; and though it brings allsubstance of good with it, it does not consist in that: 'the kingdom ofGod is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the HolyGhost:' joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, and helpful Spirit.Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enterinto it, there's just one condition to be first accepted. You must enterit as children, or not at all; 'Whosoever will not receive it as alittle child shall not enter therein.' And again, 'Suffer littlechildren to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is thekingdom of heaven.'
_Of such_, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such aschildren. I believe most mothers who read that text think that allheaven is to be full of babies. But that's not so. There will bechildren there, but the hoary head is the crown. 'Length of days, andlong life and peace,' that is the blessing, not to die in babyhood.Children die but for their parents sins; God means them to live, but Hecan't let them always; then they have their earlier place in heaven: andthe little child of David, vainly prayed for;--the little child ofJeroboam, killed by its mother's step on its own threshold,--they willbe there. But weary old David, and weary old Barzillai, having learnedchildren's lessons at last, will be there too: and the one question forus all, young or old, is, have we learned our child's lesson? it is the_character_ of children we want, and must gain at our peril; let us see,briefly, in what it consists.
The first character of right childhood is that it is Modest. A well-bredchild does not think it can teach its parents, or that it knowseverything. It may think its father and mother know everything,--perhapsthat all grown-up people know everything; very certainly it is sure that_it_ does not. And it is always asking questions, and wanting to knowmore. Well, that is the first character of a good and wise man at hiswork. To know that he knows very little;--to perceive that there aremany above him wiser than he; and to be always asking questions, wantingto learn, not to teach. No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, orgoverns well who wants to govern; it is an old saying (Plato's, but Iknow not if his, first), and as wise as old.
Then, the second character of right childhood is to be Faithful.Perceiving that its father knows best what is good for it, and havingfound always, when it has tried its own way against his, that he wasright and it was wrong, a noble child trusts him at last wholly, giveshim its hand, and will walk blindfold with him, if he bids it. And thatis the true character of all good men also, as obedient workers, orsoldiers under captains. They must trust their captains;--they are boundfor their lives to choose none but those whom they _can_ trust. Then,they are not always to be thinking that what seems strange to them, orwrong in what they are desired to do, _is_ strange or wrong. They knowtheir captain: where he leads they must follow, what he bids, they mustdo; and without this trust and faith, without this captainship andsoldiership, no great deed, no great salvation, is possible to man.Among all the nations it is only when this faith is attained by themthat they become great: the Jew, the Greek, and the Mahometan, agree atleast in testifying to this. It was a deed of this absolute trust whichmade Abraham the father of the faithful; it was the declaration of thepower of God as captain over all men, and the acceptance of a leaderappointed by Him as commander of the faithful, which laid the foundationof whatever national power yet exists in the East; and the deed of theGreeks, which has become the type of unselfish and noble soldiership toall lands, and to all times, was commemorated, on the tomb of those whogave their lives to do it, in the most pathetic, so far as I know, orcan feel, of all human utterances: 'Oh, stranger, go and tell our peoplethat we are lying here, having _obeyed_ their words.'
Then the third character of right childhood is to be Loving andGenerous. Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.It loves every
thing near it, when it is a right kind of child--wouldhurt nothing, would give the best it has away, always, if you needit--does not lay plans for getting everything in the house for itself,and delights in helping people; you cannot please it so much as bygiving it a chance of being useful, in ever so little a way.
And because of all these characters, lastly, it is Cheerful. Putting itstrust in its father, it is careful for nothing--being full of love toevery creature, it is happy always, whether in its play or in its duty.Well, that's the great worker's character also. Taking no thought forthe morrow; taking thought only for the duty of the day; trustingsomebody else to take care of to-morrow; knowing indeed what labour is,but not what sorrow is; and always ready for play--beautiful play,--forlovely human play is like the play of the Sun. There's a worker for you.He, steady to his time, is set as a strong man to run his course, butalso, he _rejoiceth_ as a strong man to run his course. See how heplays in the morning, with the mists below, and the clouds above, with aray here and a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere; that'sthe Sun's play; and great human play is like his--all various--all fullof light and life, and tender, as the dew of the morning.
So then, you have the child's character in these four things--Humility,Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. That's what you have got to beconverted to. 'Except ye be converted and become as littlechildren'--You hear much of conversion now-a-days; but people alwaysseem to think they have got to be made wretched by conversion,--to beconverted to long faces. No, friends, you have got to be converted toshort ones; you have to repent into childhood, to repent into delight,and delightsomeness. You can't go into a conventicle but you'll hearplenty of talk of backsliding. Backsliding, indeed! I can tell you, onthe ways most of us go, the faster we slide back the better. Slide backinto the cradle, if going on is into the grave--back, I tell you;back--out of your long faces, and into your long clothes. It is amongchildren only, and as children only, that you will find medicine foryour healing and true wisdom for your teaching. There is poison in thecounsels of the _men_ of this world; the words they speak are allbitterness, 'the poison of asps is under their lips,' but, 'the suckingchild shall play by the hole of the asp.' There is death in the looks ofmen. 'Their eyes are privily set against the poor;' they are as theuncharmable serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by seeing. But 'theweaned child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice den.' There is deathin the steps of men: 'their feet are swift to shed blood; they havecompassed us in our steps like the lion that is greedy of his prey, andthe young lion lurking in secret places,' but, in that kingdom, the wolfshall lie down with the lamb, and the fatling with the lion, and 'alittle child shall lead them.' There is death in the thoughts of men:the world is one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as it draws to aclose; but the secret of it is known to the child, and the Lord ofheaven and earth is most to be thanked in that 'He has hidden thesethings from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes.'Yes, and there is death--infinitude of death in the principalities andpowers of men. As far as the east is from the west, so far our sinsare--_not_ set from us, but multiplied around us: the Sun himself, thinkyou he _now_ 'rejoices' to run his course, when he plunges westward tothe horizon, so widely red, not with clouds, but blood? And it will bered more widely yet. Whatever drought of the early and latter rain maybe, there will be none of that red rain. You fortify yourselves, you armyourselves against it in vain; the enemy and avenger will be upon youalso, unless you learn that it is not out of the mouths of the knittedgun, or the smoothed rifle, but 'out of the mouths of babes andsucklings' that the strength is ordained which shall 'still the enemyand avenger.'