So long
as life remains to us our duties are unfinished: God yet desires our
service on earth, and while he desires let us not doubt our capacity
to serve. Even for one in the solitude of a prison-cell, when acts of
charity become impossible, the duty of labor is not taken away. One may
still work for the Father in Heaven, though sitting in darkness, and
with manacled limbs. To possess the soul in patience, to be meek,
forgiving, and pious, are duties amply sufficient to tax the powers of
the strongest. There is no room for idleness even here.
To work is not only a duty, but a necessity of our nature, and when we
fancy ourselves idle, we are in fact working for one whose wages is
death. The question is never, Shall we work? but, For whom shall we
work? Whom shall we choose for our master? and our happiness here and
hereafter must depend on the answer we give to this question. We may
not deliberately put and deliberately reply to this question in stated
words; but our whole lives answer it in one long-continued period.
Those who labor steadfastly, with no end in view but the acquisition of
worldly, perishable advantages, answer it fearfully; but theirs is not
a more desperate reply than comes from the idler and the slothful.
Wherever there is activity and force there is hope; for though now
flowing in a wrong direction, the stream may yet be diverted into
channels that shall lead to eternal life.
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