The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1872-06-22
Commandments and handicraft make good

versity. He is talking TO Scotchmen, and of
days gone by, and he says, "Our boys, like
| yours, were made TO understand that they would
have to answer for the use that they made of their
| lives. And in both countries they were put in
the way of leading useful lives if they would be
honest, by industrial training. The essential
thing was that every one that was willing to
work should be enabled to maintain himself and
his family in honor and independence" That
was happy time and wise way surely. Not
so good chances now, though we think our times
so much better. Sill the bottom fact exists
that we have to answer for the use we make OF
our lives; answer to own success, self-respect,
repute, before we do to God and we ought to
| put that in under the very corner, just as men
| put precious things into the corner stone of
churches and public buildings and monuments.
We ought not to start life any other way, try to
get, hope to get any other living out of it than
this OF accountability. Only as secondary will
God ask Anything about the dollar and cent use
OF life. The question TO which life itself must be
the answer is what was the innermOst, under
most. hindermst, uttermost of the spirit which
possessed you, and was by you thrown into your
making of living?
In making living, take conscience into your
partnership. 1t is good councillor, safe
Judge l. e. if it be really conscience. There IS
7 good dea about tie act and opinion g
Il -
conscience has nothing to do. That is con-
venient and imposing name, and generally
stops all questions. Men have seldom the
hardihood to go beyond it. When a man says,
conscience" requires or dictates, you receive
it as II it were an oath. 1t is hazardous Ques-
tioning, and you don't like to. Behind the
| plea OF conscience men do good many weak
things and bad things and malevolent things.
A designing man or a canting man or a coward
finds this his ready weapon, his equally ready
shield But conscience is something more, and
| the conscientious man, one whose conscience
flows out into his whole life and dnconsciously
regulates it. 1t is not sentry, pompously
| standing at the door and challenging every
conner, something whose parade you see, but
| it is spirit, an inner, ever burning light, cast
! ing genial radiance through the whole charac-
ter and even the whole life. Not matter-of-
course possession is it, but something to grow
by culture, to become more and more keen,
| and sensitive, and broad and Just to become
| by neglect, more and more dull and hard and
narrow. In making living, conscience must
be our regulator, that something in us which
decides not only the matter of right and wrong
in graver matters, but can keep just balance
in the many little and intricate things. A
something al,oay with US, beside. Man cannot
leave his conscience at home. Whatever his
work he wants it many times, daily and sud-
denly. To be without 1T more fatal to ones day,
than to have left ones watch under his pillow
He will be wrong in something else than the
hour. l cannot pen line in my discourse ex-
cept have it, You cannot turn furrow, build
a WALL sell yard Of muslin or pound of
coffee, or plead at the bar, or decide upon the
bench or run a locomotive or sewing machine
without it. We all need the viglant watch of
the inward monitor, as vigilant as my theology
represented the three headed day, Cerberus, at
the gate of the Internal regions, whom nothing
could pass. And the inward monitor needs
training, experience, discipline. Just as you
may not get the whole value of muscle ex-
cept you develop it, so you cannot get the whole
value of conscience by merely letting it alone,
and taking it for granted that conscience is con-
science, but you must brace and sharpen it
and compel it to be awake and alert, measuring
its decisions back against Divine laws, and
compelling it to move only under the guidance
of a true Christian spirit.
suppose you will think me needlessly SIM
pie in mentioning industry as an ingredient
| in making living, but industry is moral
quality as well as occupation of time. and it is
the moral conscientious occupation of time
that we want. II were to say what | think
it would be, that there is too much labor de-
manded of man, that the circumstances of
civilized life crowd too many hours of compul
sorry work on us all. do not favor any eight
hour or ten hour system because all such sys-
TENS are grossly unequal and unjust. Hard
work is not confined to factories, and trades
cad dirt a:SSiEG.-.I war=az.>-i<.c tlst .Ae1s
very men, so anxious about their own eight
and ten hours, are not going to give their hard
working wives any such law. The grind and
wear and worry of homes, of dinners, and
children, and care night and day, has got to
go on. Extend your eight and ten hours over
counting rooms, and lawyers Offices, and retail
stores and printers forms, and ministers studies,
and nurseries and kitchens and will 60 for it.
Muscles are not the only things that tire, the
only things to be exempt. There's wear and
tear too much, and more of it, where the work
is of the brain than of the hand. Weary
bodies rest weary brains do not. The hardy
mechanic renews his vigor by the very means
which exhausts him the weary shop girl ex
hausts and has no reaching. Society is savage
in its exactOns, but trades are unequal and un-
Just in their reforms. The worst worked me-
chanic is not so hardly worked in getting his
living as the ordinary clergyman in getting
his. and there is not an employer who does not
work or has not worked more hours, and does
or has done more exhausting labor than those
be employed Too much demand for labor, too
much time given to it all round. If you re
form anywhere, reform everywhere.
What feel about men under the present
system and pressure is this-that they drive
industry to be more and more an intermittent
thing, over work now, and then by and bye,
lying off, industry alternating with idleness.
| notice this in the trades, which suppose are
the most demoralized ofall human occupations,
so largely are they become the opportunities
for the arts and ntrigues of designing men, so
greedily have they listened to bad and selfish
advice. But it is everywhere observable that
more and more life comes to be an alienation
between over activity, and compelled repose,
or indulgence snatched at every possible mo-
ment. In their hurry at making living men
wear out, and die, or break down and have to
recruit in their dislike to work, men dodge
and do as little as they can, and do nothing
when they can. Their industry is compelled
industry-herd, uncongena!, unlovely-just
as much as if you saw the master standing by
and compelling it under the lash. And the
work done Is the tell tale, betraying the man
ner of man who did it. Industry must be
moral, justly moderate and wholly honest
not a logged bread and butter matter, but
something that prudence, principle, God have
something to do With, which man will set
himself at not as mere worker. but with some
affection and as morally responsible. Industry
is real blessing to man. He can make it
curse.
Toward that thrift which makes living, that
grosy and troublesome virtue economy is vital.
Nature is full of Economies and God is the
| great economist. We don't take to economy, or
| else we go too far and economic to death-get
mean, and that's the most loathsome leprosy
! you can teint your soul with. think mean
man the drtest bit of dirt God lets stay to
shriyel and disappear. The infnitesimal moth
| ngness that you mean man is The question
used TO be in the strange old scholastic times of
the middle ages, gravely discussed msny
souls might stand on the point of cambria
needle. If they were souls of mean men, l
should say, infinite millions Economy will
| be, all the time, running us toward that I'm .
| loveliness, except we have sharp look out
Making living begins so small, with most OF
us, is of so slow and small accretions, demands
such Outstanding keeps so hard hand on
| outgo, requiring fresh balance sheet with
every spending, that before men know it they
| nave got that narrow taste and habit which
makes them paltry and niggard, and hard and
| close and never content save in some pinch
| ing of SELF or some screwing of another.
| Economy must be our teacher, and then our
! friend never our dictator or tyrant
| Growing habits of extravaganza make one
wonder how people get together the means oy
which to live, while they are all the time rails
| ing the standard of expense. What are we
coming to p? 1t is thing to which there is no
| end ? We refuse to learn, and we will not
believe our civilization in danger from the very
| thing we know to have overthrown all civiliza-
tions before us. We increase and multiply
methods of spending and create habits of ex
pense, and women's backs are not only sight
to behold, but Solomon in all his glory couldn't
have been q circumstance to what bursts and
flowers from bonnet to boot, on every pleasant
| DAYS parade. Men are insane over stocks and
| horses, cigars and wines and bad women-and
| that's the way the money goes on their side !;
and women are insane over trnkets and RIB
| bons and laces and furniture, parties, and
| that's the way it goes on their side. How is
| all the living made that adVertiSeS itself and