the text-"In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread."

Such is the popular idea of labor. To this idea, widely diffused and powerfully influential, is attributable no little of the odium which was formerly everywhere, and which in many communities still is, attached to labor. How absurd it is, may be

seen,

1. From the fact that the greatest worker in the universe, is the Almighty. Never is He, never has He been, for a single moment idle. Constantly is He evolving new worlds, and fitting them to be the abodes of life and joy. Constantly is He bringing into being new intelligences, and placing them in conditions favorable to their development and happiness. Constantly is He guiding and sustaining the wondrous frame of things which our eyes behold, and with which our destiny is inseparably linked. Truly did Jesus say, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Made in the Divine Image, therefore, not very probable is it that man was originally exempted from the noble and Godlike ordinance of labor, or that this constituted any part of the penalty of his transgression.

2. The Record informs us, moreover, that immediately after the creation, and before the "fall," "the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it." Interpret this account as we may, literally or allegorically, one thing is clear from it—that the primeval condition of man was a condition of labor, any doc

trine of the Church to the contrary notwithstanding. The garden he was in, he must dress and keep. If he neglected it, he must suffer the consequences.

3. Besides, there is every indication in his constitution that man was made to labor. He has powers of locomotion, and the skill to employ them. He has arms and hands, wondrously adapted to use; in the latter of which some sceptical philosophers have seen the sole cause of his elevation above the brute. He is capable of enduring care, fatigue, privation. As, therefore, we say that the peculiar structure of certain animals indicates the nature of their food, whether animal or vegetable; as we say that the peculiar conformation of the bird-its wings, its hollow bones, its power of self-inflation - declares its home to be in the upper deeps; so the human constitution demonstrates that man was made to work. And in saying this, we simply say that God has created no faculty without providing the opportunity, and imposing the obligation, for its use.

But here, perhaps, it may be asked, Was not the text, "In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread," uttered immediately after the first transgression, and in such connection as to show that labor was designed as a portion of the penalty of that offence? If so, I reply that the text and context should doubtless be understood as a highly figurative and poetical description of the change, as it seemed to man, which sin had wrought in his condition. Conscious of his iniquity, smitten with profound shame, and penetrated with keen remorse,

the entire universe seemed altered. The sun shone not with so serene a light; the stars looked sadly and rebukingly down; the winds sighed, and the clouds wept over his fall; while the earth, late so fruitful and so fair, seemed little else than a barren waste, and life itself a hard and ungenial task. In such a frame of mind, no wonder that he imagined himself, and, for his sake, every living thing, and the soil itself, to be accursed, or that his imaginings took the form found in the narrative.

Without doubt, also, the toils and trials of man were actually, as well as seemingly, augmented by his sinfulness. Not, of course, that the ground was cursed with barrenness, or the beasts with an increase of ferocity, but that sin carried with it then, as now, its own punishment, and hedged about the path of its perpetrator with thorns and thistles.

But, however this may have been, we cannot suppose that simple labor was ever intended as a curse, unless we admit that what was originally a blessing was transmuted into an evil, and that Jehovah created man with powers which He never intended him to exercise. No. Labor is not a curse, but a blessing. As such, it was ordained; and relieved of the necessity, or deprived of the opportunity of performing it, we are as much out of our element as the fish when taken out of, or the bird when plunged into, the water. Sometimes, it is true, it wears a stern countenance, and puts on any expression but that of benignity; but even then, it is a blessing

in disguise, bringing with it very many, and very abundant rewards.

Like many other things, however, it is a blessing not for what it is, but for what it can do - for the comfort, energy, virtue, it can acquire, or impart. Indeed - and this is the point which I wish, in what remains to be said, to illustrate and enforce — there can be no excellence without labor. This is true not only in one, but in every department of life. Endeavor, hearty, persistent, well-directed, is the condition and to a far greater extent than is generally imagined, the sole condition of success in every sphere we are called to occupy. "In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread," is a universal law; and labor, I reiterate, is the condition of all excellence.

I. It is so on the lowest plane of existence. Our physical development and bodily vigor are dependent upon it. We may be endowed by nature with the best constitution, yet, if delicately nurtured, and carefully shielded from all the rough winds of heaven, we shall inevitably grow up puny and feeble, and probably find an early grave. On the other hand, nature may have dealt sparingly with us, and tendencies to weakness and disease may have been transmitted us, yet by judicious physical exertion, we may in a great degree counteract, if not entirely eradicate these tendencies.

The influence of labor upon physical energy and health, in fact, is too obvious to permit any length

ened illustration. It is labor that gives zest to the coarsest fare; while without it, the choicest viands soon become tasteless and uninviting. It is labor that makes the hardest couch soft, and the shortest slumbers sweet and refreshing. It is exercise that develops the muscles of the craftsman, giving vigor to the arm, and compactness and force to the whole body.

But to see this influence of labor in a yet clearer light, we have only to contrast the pale face, deli-cate hands, emaciated limbs, and debilitated air of some young man or woman, who has been reared in complete exemption from toil, with the rosy cheeks, vigorous pulses, broad chest, and energetic movements of one, whose life has been spent where the pure air of heaven could be inhaled, and where all honest, manly or womanly labor has been respected. And if this contrast be not enough to assure us that physical health is conditioned upon effort, I know not what would be. How foolish, how worse than foolish, then, the efforts of many fond, yet weakminded parents, not only to shield their offspring from the reverses and buffetings of fortune, but to relieve them from any necessity of toil, even if they do not teach them to regard with aversion both laborers and labor! No greater evil can they inflict upon their children, so far as their physical culture is concerned; and they will be likely, in after years, to be repaid for their well-meant, yet ill-conceived endeavors, not with gratitude, but with reproaches.