Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-03-24

and as corrective of the view Of what
constitutes mans duty. In the article he
says:
Bear in mind that, whatever the work is
you have to do, that work is given you by
God. Are you shopman? Well, behind
your counter cell your goods and do your
work as if it were Gods work. Are you q
lawyer? Well, work on in love to the
great Lawgiver, defend the right and de-
feat the wrong, remembering that your
calling lie divine. Are you laborer? a
plowman? a weaver? Well, steadily use
your shovel, merrily drive your horses to
the field, cheerily make your shuttle fly
till the pattern stands out before you in
the web, remembering that you are en-
gagged in a heavens appointed task. You
have Master in heaven. If it were 80,
would not all trickery disappear from
trade, all quirks and bubbles from the
law, all eye. service, all unfaithfulness, all
discomfort from the ranks of the laboring
population Depend upon it, we in gen.
eral take too low view of our calling.
We look upon our labor as merely drudg-
cry well, it may be SO, but it is divine
drudgery. While we work we are doing
good, and everything that is good is God
like. Such conception as this ennobles
the meanest toll, and raises the poorest me-
chanic, the humblest tiller of the soil, into
servant of Almighty God.
/ am afraid that some men-even good
men-are Disconnected with their lot, and
fancy that they are piously and properly
discontinued. They think they could do
Gods work better if their lot had been
different. They think, perhaps, that an
occupation SO mental as theirs cannot pos
sibly be the work of God. How can the
loom, they may say, be connected with re.
hgion! How can man by breaking
stones on the roadside be promoting the
glory of God? The poor man wishes he
were rich, just that he might employ his
wealth in the promotion of piety. My
dear friend, let me ask you: If iberality
be the virtue of wealth, are there no vir.
tues peculiar to poverty And were it not
better for you to cultivate the virtue of
the station which God has assigned to
you, than vainly to pine after another
station, which never can be yours Again,
some people foolishly think that clergymen
alone are the servants of God that their
calling alone is divine; that they only,
and such as they, promote the glory Of
God. But l tell you, my friends, be-
lieve that many poor artisan who in.
dustriously and ungrumblingly plies his
trade, that he may honestly support wife
and family, or that he may keep an aged
parent from the parish, is more effectually
promoting Gods glory than many pomp-
GUS preacher of the Word. There is an
eloquence in the pious resignation, the
contented looks, the busy fingers of the
one. which is not to be found in all the
bombast of the other; and no man of this
kind can calculate the influence for good
ness and for God which he may exercise on
society.
| know nothing which has exercised a
more pernicious influence on religion than
that unhappy divorce which has been eff.
fected between religious duty and the
every. day duties of life. When mother
is faithfully tending her children, and
making her hearthstone clean and her fire
burn bright, that everything may smile a
welcome to her weary husband when he re-
turns from his work, it is never dreamt
that she is religiously employed. When a
Hiau WOTh5 udio uuIluS tuc Jay, anu Tc.
turns to his family in the evening to make
them all happy by his placid temper and
quiet jokes and landings on his knee, the
world does not think-perhaps he does not
think himself-that there is religion
in anything SO common as this. Re-
Ggion is supposed to stand aloof
from such familiar scenes. But to
attend the church, to take the sacra-
ment, to sing psalm, to say a prayer, is
religion. Now God help this poor sinful
world if religion consists only in these
things and not also in the other. We have
devotional feelings, and by all means let us
give them exercise and utterance but
have we not other feelings and other duties
as certainly as these assigned us by
heaven? Why should we count the one
religious and not also the other? Is relig.
ion to be shut up in the church, and not
allowed to visit the house? Is she to at.
tend us only when we sit at the Com
munion- table, and not also when we stand
at our counter or sit at our desk? Why
should we not think that everything we do
is done religiously if it be done well !?