The Bible and Life Part 5

Still we must again a.s.sert that these clumsy divisions were not emphasized by Jesus himself. There has been an age-long debate, ofttimes degenerating into a wrangle, as to the relative hards.h.i.+ps of the different forms of labor. Men who cling to their occupations will still declare that those occupations have trials beyond all others. Into this debate Jesus did not enter. He never set one form of toil against another by entering into any comparisons or contrasts. As he experienced all the general forms of labor, so did he honor all forms. In his view they were all good and all cooperative. On the surface they may seem to be rivals, but in the center they are actual partners in the divine program. Hence Jesus pa.s.sed from one realm of work to another with little sense of transition. Carpenter, Healer, Teacher, Preacher, he was ever the servant of the Kingdom.

Faithfulness, honor, industry, efficiency, patience--in short, all the virtues were possible in any good way of work. The life of Jesus unites all our types of labor in a divine purpose and rebukes that quarrelsome spirit which so often sets the manual laborers and the mental and moral laborers in opposition. The hand cannot say to the head, "I have no need of thee," nor can the head utter the like speech of egotism and self-sufficiency. The workers are all one body, and every one members of another.

So do we find Jesus putting himself with willing sacrifice into his varying tasks. He had said to his parents in Jerusalem, "Wist ye not that I must be amid my Father's matters?" and then he went into what men call the silent years. But they were not wholly silent. The attentive can hear the sound of the hammer. The point is that in pa.s.sing from the Jerusalem temple to the Nazareth shop Jesus did not depart from his Father's business. We may all resent the particular descriptions of the quality of his work as a carpenter; and we may be quite content in our faith that all his work was done faithfully and well. Holman Hunt's "Shadow of the Cross" relates Jesus's work in the shop to his sacrificial character. At the end of a weary day the Nazareth Carpenter extends his arms to relieve his weariness. The suns.h.i.+ne coming through the window casts his shadow on the wall in the form of a Cross. His mother glancing in through another window sees the Cross foreshadowed there and gets her glimpse of the sword that should enter her own heart. Nor did Jesus escape hards.h.i.+p and exhaustion when he became a healer and teacher of the people. The crowds thronged him wherever he went. The hillside became like an open-air hospital. The mult.i.tudes hung upon his words of instruction. Some have said that one reason why he commanded men who were healed or who were told the deeper secret of his nature that they "should tell no man," was that he might avoid the greater press of the throngs. Be that as it may, we are surely justified in saying that he gave himself lavishly to the work of each period. In each section of his life his action said, "I must work."

It would be easy, however, to overstate Jesus's relation to work. He did not labor all the time. Knowing how to toil he knew likewise how to rest.

Men may plead the example of Satan against a vacation season, but they cannot plead the example of Christ! He rested after he had worked and in order that he might work again. When the crowd became importunate and the drain upon his power had become severe, he sought the desert and in its quiet restored himself for the new labors. He bade his weary disciples to come apart to the spot of respite. He was the exemplar of proper rest even as he was the exemplar of proper work. Industrious men often need one lesson even as lazy men need the other. There are persons who are greedy of toil. They are as avaricious for it as the miser is for gold. They are what Carlyle would call "terrible toilers." They die before their time because they work after their time. Jesus knew this danger. He wished to guard against it by keeping the Sabbath for man. He wanted to save the resting place between the weeks because he wanted to save man to his best self and work. He prescribed the working day and the shop, and he prescribed the resting day and the desert.

We need not be surprised, then, to find that the new day puts the emphasis on the sanctification of common work. Professor Peabody gives the contrast between two well-known poems as ill.u.s.trating a change that has come over the personal side of the social question. A generation since Lowell gave us his "Vision of Sir Launfal." The hero of this poem, after traveling in many lands, finally finds the holy grail in the cup which he had filled for a way-side beggar, while the more personal presence of Jesus is discovered in the beggar himself to whom the searcher has given alms. The characteristic of the new day is seen in Van d.y.k.e's "The Toiling of Felix." The hero of this later poem, after seeking the direct vision of his Lord in caves and deserts of idle contemplation, at last secures the coveted revelation as he enters gladly into a life of toil and particularly as he flings himself into the swollen river to rescue a fellow laborer. Felix finds that there is a holy literalness in the words which he found on the piece of papyrus as a recovered gospel of Christ:

Lift the stone, and thou shalt find me; Cleave the wood, and there am I.

The ranks of labor are "the dusty regiments of G.o.d." The Lord, being a worker, is mindful of his own:

Born within the Bethlehem manger where the cattle round me stood, Trained a carpenter of Nazareth, I have toiled and found it good.

The good work of the world is the work of Christ. There is really no contrast between sacred and secular; the actual contrast is between the sacred and the wicked.

They who tread the path of labor, follow where Christ's feet have trod, They who work without complaining, do the holy will of G.o.d.

This is the Gospel of labor--ring it, ye bells of the kirk, The Lord of Love came down from above to live with the men who work.

The inevitable drift of this emphasis on the working experience of Jesus has swept admiration away from the monastic life. The "religious" are not those who shun the world of toil in order that they may gain the world of personal peace and salvation. The modern saint is not a Simon the Stylite.

Saint Francis of a.s.sisi projects himself into the admiration of the twentieth century because he was a worker rather than a recluse. The att.i.tude toward monasticism among the healthier and more energetic peoples goes further than this: there is a feeling that in the last a.n.a.lysis the religious hermit is spiritually selfish. That is deemed a poor kind of religion which forsakes a world in order to save one's soul. The argument that the recluses may render the world the service of constant prayer does not appeal to those who know that work is itself a form of prayer; and that in Jesus prayer and work lived together in harmony. A better understanding of the religion of Christ demands that its followers shall be socially efficient. If Jesus is to be the world's example, more and more men and women will find in their legitimate toil one of the sacraments of life.

Already we have come to feel that the Bible doctrine of work, especially as that doctrine is incarnated in Christ, lays stress upon the man as well as upon his task. It asks, "What is the man doing with his work?" It also asks, "What is the work doing with the man?" The reflexes of activity often become a topic of teaching. Paul said that the man reaps the harvest of his own sowing. Jesus said, "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." This is much as if he had said that in the upper realms of living action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions.

He told his disciples that, if they p.r.o.nounced the benediction of peace upon a house unfit or unwilling to receive it, the benediction should return to them again. The meaning is that no work done with the right spirit can really fail. The poets give this idea currency. George Herbert declares that a servant with the proper clause in his creed makes "drudgery divine":

Who sweeps a room as to thy law Makes that and the action fine.

He had already implied that such a servant made himself fine. Mrs.

Browning emphasizes the need of a serious purpose in work when she uses her picturesque description:

I would rather dance at fairs on tight rope Till the babies dropped their gingerbread for joy, Than s.h.i.+ft the types for tolerable verse, intolerable To men who act and suffer. Better far Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means Than a sublime art frivolously.

It is "better far" because our seriousness comes back to dwell with us; and our frivolousness does the same. Many of the parables get their meaning from this certainty of reaction. The good shepherd is good because he does his work well, and the return of his work makes him better still.

Just as physical work reacts on the muscles, so that sometimes men exercise without any outward object in view, even so does the moral spirit of work come back to dwell with the man and to make his last estate either better or worse. Our bodies are built into strength by a series of reactions, and our spirits evermore receive their own with usury.

This idea, as we have observed in another connection, has wrought some marked changes in the social program. It has largely superseded almsgiving by workgiving. Scientific charity seeks to remove the causes of poverty, knowing that this is the sure way to remove poverty itself. The conviction is that a day's work with a day's pay is far better for the man than a day's pay without the day's work. In the latter case the man loses both independence and self-respect, while in the former case he keeps both of these and gains in addition the rebound of faithful labor. The tramp, or the man with the heart of a tramp, always fails. Outwitting others, he outwits himself more truly. He plays tricks on his own soul. The weakness of his life settles back into his spirit. He drags with him always his evasions and neglects. Scamping his toil, he scamps his own soul. All shoddy material gets built into his own being. He erects a dishonest house for another, but with it he erects an evil structure in which he himself must live. So it is that a man's work may be his blessing, or it may be his vengeance.

While this idea has its terrible side, it has also its side of glory and comfort. It provides amply for the failure of the faithful. Goldsmith says that "Good counsel rejected returns to enrich the giver's bosom," just as Jesus says the declined benediction of peace comes back to the true disciple. It follows that for the good workman there is no real failure.

The house that he has builded may go up in smoke and flame, but the industry and honor that fas.h.i.+oned its walls and fas.h.i.+oned themselves in the making of the walls cannot be destroyed. The fortune that he has gathered may take wings and fly away, but the deeper treasures that have been garnered by fair-dealing in the marketplace abide in the deposit of the heart. Jesus said, "Your hearts shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." We see here that there are possessions that human power cannot remove. They have been woven into the self. The treasure house is too deep for the touch of man. A minor poet tells us:

I've found some wisdom in my quest That's richly worth retailing; I've found that when one does his best There's little harm in failing.

He corrects this mild statement in his concluding verse. He wanted riches, but he was rich without them; he wanted to sound the depths with his philosophy, but his s.h.i.+p sailed on anyhow; he wanted fame; but he discovered the secret of greatness without it; and so he adds the lines which declare that the failing of the faithful not only does "little harm," but even that it furnishes its own enrichment of the real life:

I may not reach what I pursue, Yet will I keep pursuing; Nothing is vain that I can do; For soul-growth comes from doing.

David "does well" that it is in his heart to build the Lord's house, even though the honor be pa.s.sed on to another. The good purpose helps to make the good man; and the good purpose that expresses itself in work is sure of the inner reward. This conception may be twisted into a soft gospel for the inefficient; but the evident purpose of the Bible is to offer it as a comforting gospel for the faithful.

It would be easy to follow the guidance of the Concordance as it notes the word "work" in the Epistles. All of the conceptions that have thus far been treated reappear in the apostolic writings. The symbol of everyday work is constantly lifted to the highest. We do not need to see Paul bending over the sailcloth and thrusting his needle into the canvas ere we know that he is a worker. His whole life was one of toil. He was not slothful in his apostolic business; and the fervor of his spirit would have been a good example to the ancient mechanic or merchant. He saw good men as his colaborers with G.o.d. He saw the men that he helped to make good as a husbandry that he was cultivating for the Lord, as a building that he was fas.h.i.+oning for Christ's sake. The cure for thieving was work. He that stole was to steal no more, but was to work with his hands the thing that was good; and the benevolent motive was to impel to work that the former thief might have something to give to the needy. It was of the hard toil of servants that Paul said, "Whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord." It is the idea of reaction again; G.o.d suffers no faithful worker to lose his reward. The apostolic rule is very thoroughgoing in dealing with laziness. "If any will not work, neither shall he eat." This rule may be an offense to the idle rich, but it appeals to the sense of justice. Perhaps some day society will be skillful enough to starve its tramps and s.h.i.+rks until they flee to toil as to a refuge.

It is peculiar that the end of the Bible should have been misconceived, even as the beginning, in its teaching concerning work. We have discussed the heresy that declares that work is a penalty of sin. There is another heresy which pictures heaven as a place of everlasting idleness. If we select certain of the descriptions of Revelation, it is easy to see how the error arose. Yet in each of the weird pictures of the eternal city there is one sentence at least that hints at heavenly service. For energetic souls no other conception will be satisfying. Surely inactivity is not the goal of a redeemed race. Shortly before his death Mark Twain published in a magazine a satire on the usual idea of heaven. Introduced in a dream to the city of our hope, he was told by an attending angel to take his seat on a cloud and to occupy himself by wearing a crown and holding a harp. Soon becoming weary of this do-nothing life, he came down to the golden streets. He was asked to keep for a time the crowns and harps of the pa.s.sers-by, and he noted that the way was strewn with these rejected ornaments! Some good people may have been offended by the satire; and some whose life has been filled with weariness will insist that heaven must offer rest. So indeed it must. One suggestive pa.s.sage says concerning the souls of those that were slain for the testimony of Christ that they should "rest yet for a little season." Those that have come out of great tribulation are given service as a reward of their tribulation. "Therefore are they before the throne of G.o.d and serve him day and night in his temple." In the later description the land of rest is seen as a land of work, and "his servants shall serve him." The race does not look back to a workless Eden; neither does it look forward to a workless heaven. Kipling puts it well for either here or there:

We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it, Lie down for an eon or two, Till the Master of all good workmen Shall set us to work anew.

The ideal of the Bible is service, and that ideal is not rejected when life comes to its crowning.

One of the great hymns of the church gives to the wors.h.i.+pers in a sanctuary the Bible's Gospel of Work:

Yet these are not the only walls Wherein thou mayst be sought; On homeliest work thy blessing falls In truth and patience wrought.

Thine is the loom, the forge, the mart, The wealth of land and sea; The worlds of science and of art, Revealed and ruled by thee.

Then let us prove our heavenly birth In all we do and know, And claim the kingdom of the earth For thee, and not thy foe.

Work shall be prayer, if all be wrought As thou wouldst have it done; And prayer, by thee inspired and taught; Itself with work be one.

The biblical ideal for earth sends men forth to their daily tasks, while the biblical ideal for heaven breaks its reserve sufficiently to show us a City wherein the saints at rest are likewise the saints at work.

CHAPTER VI

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH

The word "wealth" as used in this discussion does not mean simply great riches; it rather means those outer and visible means which have a certain purchasing power and which gain their value from that fact. The word is relative at best. A wealthy man of fifty years ago would by many be deemed a poor man now; while, in the individual estimate, one man's poverty would be another man's riches. We have all discovered, too, that persons may be tested by their att.i.tude toward little as well as by their att.i.tude toward much. The man who breaks down in his use of a thousand dollars is not likely to recover his conscience in his use of a million dollars. There is high authority for the belief that he that is faithful in a few things can be trusted with rulers.h.i.+p over many things. This principle will apply to riches quite as well as to cities. We must necessarily take at large discount the vigorous attack that is made on great wealth by the man who is narrow and selfish in his use of moderate wealth. One ray of light falling into a dark dungeon will test a man's att.i.tude toward light; and so the real personal att.i.tude toward one coin may become the revelation of a human heart.

All of us must live within the realm of material endeavor. Six days of the week are given by the average man in an effort to win worldly goods. If, as is generally supposed, Jesus went back from the temple scene in Jerusalem when he was twelve years of age and worked in the village carpenter shop until he was thirty, he spent eighteen years in a remunerative employment ere he entered upon the three years of public ministry. It is a mechanical conception again; but it is interesting to observe that the proportion of his years spent in his trade is the same six sevenths of the time that most men must spend in the effort to gain the necessaries or luxuries of life. One has only to stand on the streets of the city in the early morning and see the throngs as they move to their places of work to appreciate how large a part the wage motive plays in actual living. Each day many millions of men and women go down to the various marts in order that in the evening time they may come back from the struggle with increased gains. If the Bible takes an att.i.tude toward the spirit that dominates work it must also take an att.i.tude toward the spirit that dominates the object of work. It would be small use to have men made right toward toil if they were to be twisted in their relation to the proceeds of toil. We should expect, then, that the Bible would give some explicit teaching to individual men concerning the right att.i.tude toward wealth; and when we turn to the Holy Book this expectation is fully met.

Beyond this, the social consequences of wealth are manifold and important.

To see this point clearly exemplified in a wide field, we have but to study the history of the wars waged by our own nation. At some point every one of these great struggles has been caused by a false relation to wealth. Just where we locate that false relation will depend somewhat upon our prejudices; but the dilemma in each case is such that we are driven to locate it somewhere. The French and Indian War was a military debate as to whether the English or the French should gather the furs in the region of the Upper Ohio and should secure the profits in the world's markets. In the settlement of that issue many lives were sacrificed. The War for Independence was caused by taxes--not, as many people suppose, by a tax on tea alone, but by a long series of taxes covering many years. If the English had a right to levy the tax and if the tax was just, then the colonists were greedy. If, on the other hand, the Americans refused to pay an unjust tax, inspired in their rebellion by a lofty spirit of liberty, then the English were the greedy party. The War of 1812 was caused by the seizure of our vessels on the French coast and related to freedom of commerce. The dilemma is the same as before. Some one was at fault in that commercial war. A wrong att.i.tude toward property caused the long-drawn-out struggle.

Our later wars show the same form of contest. Historians declare that the war with Mexico was occasioned by the desire to extend slavery territory; by the nation's l.u.s.t for the enlargement of her borders; and by certain debts owed to citizens of the United States by citizens of Mexico. All of these motives touch somewhere on gold. The Civil War grew from the same "root of all evil." Northern men aided in bringing African slaves to this land in order to turn forced labor into money, while Southern men continued African slavery because it was deemed necessary for the production of cotton. The cry "Cotton is king" was not always spoken above a whisper, but as a slogan it caused some fierce struggling. Boston merchants helped to mob Garrison. The sentiment of England flowed against the North because it was thought that the abolis.h.i.+ng of slavery would demoralize the markets of the world. The hooting crowds that Beecher faced in England were unconsciously influenced to their hostile att.i.tude by a commercial argument. The whole struggle was broadened and heightened until words like "liberty" and "unity" put a moral pa.s.sion into the fray. But, while the nature of the government and the question of human rights were to be settled, the primary occasion of the contest was commercial.

Nor was the war with Spain any exception to this rule. If we absolve the United States from any motive of greed in our claim that the struggle was purely humanitarian in its character, we must still grant that the heavy taxes a.s.sessed against her Western colonies by the Spanish government led to the series of revolutions that occasioned our interference. Thus do we find that somewhere in the heart of each war there was the lurking pa.s.sion for gold. When we make up the mournful lists of the many thousands whose lives have gone out in these contests, we can debit them against the spirit of greed. Milton in Paradise Lost represents that the rebellion in heaven was caused by the like l.u.s.t, and that Satan's eyes were ever bent in anxious desire toward the very gold of the streets! Milton's imagination concerning heaven stands for the historical fact about earth.

The demon of greed is usually the demon of war.

The great problems of current national life all trench upon the same influence. If money be not the princ.i.p.al in each of them it comes in as an important confederate. The tariff problem, the currency problem, the ca.n.a.l tolls problem, the trust problem--all these are quickly cla.s.sified by their names. The cleavage between American political parties for the last fifty years has been made by a wedge of gold. Tariff, or coinage, or trusts--these have been the large words of political speech. In the problems that have a more apparent moral bearing the same commercial element appears. The Labor Problem is with us quite as acutely as it was with the Romans when long ago the plebeians left the city and camped on the hillsides, leaving the patricians to do their own manual toil. Whether the employer gives too little or the employee asks too much in any given struggle, the demon of greed plays his part again. In the Temperance Problem the case is even clearer. Distillers and brewers and saloonists do not enter their trade because they thereby add either to their social standing or to their moral peace. We cannot eliminate from the problem the factor of the human appet.i.te that craves a stimulant; at the same time we know that the motive for the business itself comes from the lure of gold.

That gleam invites many men into a path which, as they themselves know well, cannot lead to any large political preferment or to any great personal admirations.

The problem of social purity is, of course, related to another human pa.s.sion. But there has crept into the vocabulary of the people a suggestive phrase, "commercialized vice." There is the general feeling that, if the element of monetary profit could be taken from the loathsome trade, the problem would be much nearer its solution. Hence we have our Red Light Abatement Laws by which we seek to make it dangerous for men to rent their property for the traffic in virtue. On the legal side the present efforts at the solution of the problem all strive to fix a set of conditions, making commercially unprofitable the house of her whose feet take hold on death. If, as is earnestly contended by some, low wages tend to furnish the recruits for the pitiable ranks of the trade in bodies, we have another commercial factor in the campaign. Explain it as we may, it is still true that money makes the unholy alliances. It is no marvel that the Bible has sent down to all the centuries its phrase, "the mammon of unrighteousness."

Of course, many will overstate the case of American greed. The Almighty Dollar is not our G.o.d. Our pa.s.sing celebrities may be mere millionaires, but our permanent heroes were quite more than traders. If we have seemed more commercial than other peoples it has been because a new continent gave such sweeping opportunities for wealth. Some one has said that it is an evidence of the degeneracy of our period that the word "worth," which once had a n.o.ble and inner significance, is now controlled by the market.