The Crown of Wild Olive
defiance of its primary orders; and as if, for most of the rich men of
England at this moment, it were not indeed to be desired, as the best
thing at least for _them_, that the Bible should _not_ be true, since
against them these words are written in it: 'The rust of your gold and
silver shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, as it
were fire.'
III. I pass now to our third condition of separation, between the men
who work with the hand, and those who work with the head.
And here we have at last an inevitable distinction. There _must_ be work
done by the arms, or none of us could live. There _must_ be work done by
the brains, or the life we get would not be worth having. And the same
men cannot do both. There is rough work to be done, and rough men must
do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it; and it
is physically impossible that one class should do, or divide, the work
of the other. And it is of no use to try to conceal this sorrowful fact
by fine words, and to talk to the workman about the honourableness of
manual labour and the dignity of humanity. That is a grand old proverb
of Sancho Panza's, 'Fine words butter no parsnips;' and I can tell you
that, all over England just now, you workmen are buying a great deal too
much butter at that dairy. Rough work, honourable or not, takes the life
out 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 holding
a collier's helm in a gale on a lee-shore, or whirling white hot iron at
a furnace mouth, that man is not the same at the end of his day, or
night, as one who has been sitting in a quiet room, with everything
comfortable about him, reading books, or classing butterflies, or
painting pictures. If it is any comfort to you to be told that the rough
work is the more honourable of the two, I should be sorry to take that
much of consolation from you; and in some sense I need not. The rough
work 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 as
well as fine, and therefore dishonourable; but when both kinds are
equally well and worthily done, the head's is the noble work, and the
hand's the ignoble; and of all hand work whatsoever, necessary for the
maintenance of life, those old words, 'In the sweat of thy face thou
shalt eat bread,' indicate that the inherent nature of it is one of
calamity; and that the ground, cursed for our sake, casts also some
shadow of degradation into our contest with its thorn and its thistle;
so that all nations have held their days honourable, or 'holy,' and
constituted them 'holydays' or 'holidays,' by making them days of rest;
and the promise, which, among all our distant hopes, seems to cast the
chief brightness over death, is that blessing of the dead who die in the
Lord, that 'they rest from their labours, and their works do follow
them.'
And thus the perpetual question and contest must arise, who is to do
this 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, in
this world, sometimes, as well as in the next? Well, my good working
friends, these questions will take a little time to answer yet. They
must be answered: all good men are occupied with them, and all honest
thinkers. There's grand head work doing about them; but much must be
discovered, and much attempted in vain, before anything decisive can be
told 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 we
have 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 done
well when it is done with a will; and no man has a thoroughly sound will
unless 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--a
lawful way. Men are enlisted for the labour that kills--the labour of
war: they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Let
them be enlisted also for the labour that feeds: let them be counted,
trained, fed, dressed, praised for that. Teach the plough exercise as
carefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the officers of troops
of 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 be
accomplished--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, they
will do each other justice. People are perpetually squabbling about what
will be best to do, or easiest to do, or adviseablest to do, or
profitablest to do; but they never, so far as I hear them talk, ever ask
what it is _just_ to do. And it is the law of heaven that you shall not
be able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved to
judge what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing constantly
reiterated by our Master--the order of all others that is given
oftenest--'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 praying
and psalm-singing are 'service.' If a child finds itself in want of
anything, 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 of
cake--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 want
it; but He doesn't call that 'serving Him.' Begging is not serving: God
likes mere beggars as little as you do--He likes honest servants, not
beggars. 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 its
father; neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It is enjoying
ourselves, if it's anything; most probably it is nothing; but if it's
anything, it is serving ourselves, not God. And yet we are impudent
enough to call our beggings and chauntings 'Divine Service:' we say
'Divine service will be "performed"' (that's our word--the form of it
gone through) 'at eleven o'clock.' Alas!--unless we perform Divine
service 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 it
is the last we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that! As
much charity as you choose, but no justice. 'Nay,' you will say,
'charity is greater than justice.' Yes, it is greater; it is the summit
of justice--it is the temple of which justice is the foundation. But you
can'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, at
first, charity to build with. It is the last reward of good work. Do
justice 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 you
don't love him; and you will come to hate him. It is all very fine to
think you can build upon charity to begin with; but you will find all
you have got to begin with, begins at home, and is essentially love of
yourself. You well-to-do people, for instance, who are here to-night,
will go to 'Divine service' next Sunday, all nice and tidy, and your
little children will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely
little Sunday feathers in their hats; and you'll think, complacently and
piously, how lovely they look! So they do: and you love them heartily
and 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 to
the poor little crossing-sweeper, got up also,--it, in its Sunday
dress,--the dirtiest rags it has,--that it may beg the better: we shall
give it a penny, and think how good we are. That's charity going abroad.
But what does Justice say, walking and watching near us? Christian
Justice has been strangely mute, and seemingly blind; and, if not blind,
decrepit, this many a day: she keeps her accounts still, however--quite
steadily--doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and
through acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific invention she
cares about). You must put your ear down ever so close to her lips to
hear her speak; and then you will start at what she first whispers, for
it will certainly be, 'Why shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a
feather on its head, as well as your own child?' Then you may ask
Justice, in an amazed manner, 'How she can possibly be so foolish as to
think children could sweep crossings with feathers on their heads?' Then
you stoop again, and Justice says--still in her dull, stupid way--'Then,
why don't you, every other Sunday, leave your child to sweep the
crossing, 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, of
course, that 'you don't, because every body ought to remain content in
the position in which Providence has placed them.' Ah, my friends,
that's the gist of the whole question. _Did_ Providence put them in that
position, or did _you_? You knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell
him to remain content in the 'position in which Providence has placed
him.' That's modern Christianity. You say--'_We_ did not knock him into
the ditch.' How do you know what you have done, or are doing? That's
just what we have all got to know, and what we shall never know, until
the 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 the
way to being Christian, as to have understood that maxim of the poor
half-way Mahometan, 'One hour in the execution of justice is worth
seventy 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-workers
are to be paid, and how they are to be refreshed, and what play they are
to have. Now, the possible quantity of play depends on the possible
quantity of pay; and the quantity of pay is not a matter for
consideration to hand-workers only, but to all workers. Generally, good,
useful work, whether of the hand or head, is either ill-paid, or not
paid 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 being
served. Five thousand a year to your talker, and a shilling a day to
your fighter, digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of the best head
work in art, literature, or science, is ever paid for. How much do you
think Homer got for his Iliad? or Dante for his Paradise? only bitter
bread and salt, and going up and down other people's stairs. In science,
the man who discovered the telescope, and first saw heaven, was paid
with a dungeon; the man who invented the microscope, and first saw
earth, died of starvation, driven from his home: it is indeed very clear
that 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's
second roll for him, I fancy; and St. Stephen did not get bishop's pay
for that long sermon of his to the Pharisees; nothing but stones. For
indeed that is the world-father's proper payment. So surely as any of