Human occupation

Front matter

Class.

Book.

*T

PART II Working for Self Support 1S1

Responsibility 274

In Conclusion 286

PART I

Of all God's creatures on land or in the sea, there is none better organized to secure for himself a living than is man. By modern inventions his senses are multiplied in capacity far beyond those of the brute. Once outdistanced by the horse, the deer, the bird, he now outdistances everything mortal in the race. His inventions bring down the eagle from her giddy flight and reduce in an instant the most powerful and ferocious beast in his lair. He has the hands not only to gather but to store his food. If scarcity obtains in his own locality, by word or wire he commands his food from some distant quarter of the globe. Moreover he has communication with the mind that creates things, that stores with abundance the wild growths of nature and causes every summer to wave with spontaneous harvests.

Judging from our surroundings and the express word of Jesus, God never intended 13 that we should occupy any great portion of our time and thought in securing food, shelter or raiment. Food is everywhere within our easy reach. By nature the woods abound in it. By cultivation the fields are burdened with it. Orchards grow and bloom and bring forth a thousand fold. The rivers that flow at our feet, the seas that wash our shores abound with life fit for man. The beasts of a thousand hills and the fowls that flock through the heavens serve submissively their created end. In fact all things were made for man — for him to eat or to use or to reject or to experiment upon.

Yet freedom from concern for food does not always secure in man the highest expression of God's original hope. The abundance of food in the tropics begets laziness in man. He who was made upright, in the image of God, there basks in diurnal warmth, lacking necessity and void of desire. The achievements of his ancestors are no concern to him, nor does he dream of future greatness for his offspring. Because his wants are by nature supplied and his store house never demolished, he counts himself happy and lies down without concern. Long called upon to forward his rightful commodities to the markets of the world, he has only shifted his responsibility and invited the world to come after them. He has not imitated the temples of learning or of grace of other lands, nor has he given himself a name or a record or a prestige in the world. Swathed in luxuriant nature, reclining where it fell, all he had to do was to pick up the abundant fruit. And since he could do this whenever hunger called, his fallen nature sank still further in the scale of created beings. Endowed with a single talent, he smothers that in the roll of indolence, and, without an exertion, suffers time, opportunity, life, the sight of the world and the hope of heaven to pass. His station is low because of his inheritance and he leaves it low since he lacks inkindled divinity. He is man but he is fallen.

It cannot be argued that for him there is no hope, for the present age is revealing that hope. Chaste Christianity, in her mission to the soul sleepers of the tropics, is finding their divinity, it is fanning the spark, inkindling the flame and causing to glow with light that which for ages has smouldered in recognized heathenism. The ever towering civilization of the north casts its rays of light to that far off gloom. The wheels of commerce have invaded their solitudes. And thus we account for rising civilizations on almost every coast beneath the vertical sun.

Nor can it be shown that extreme necessity and dependence have always developed in man a rising response. The overcrowded peoples of the Orient have suffered all the reversals of fortune that man is subject to. Drouth, famine, pestilence and the sword have repeatedly swept over them. They have been subjected to the utmost extremities and tried with all the trials common to man. Yet these lashings and scourgings have passed over without evident spiritual results. In their distress these people have appealed to ears of brass and arms of wood or hearts of their own manufacture. There was a human heart and human intelligence and under pressure of nature their appeals were raised, but they were raised to that which could not respond. The result has been more ignorance, more confusion, deeper degradation and dense 1 " darkness. All the forces acting upon these celestials until the last century and a half have onlydeepened their degradation and sunk them lower in the mire of helplessness. Originally noble, descended from the good and the great, their want of truth has been their slow but certain ruin. Under the same conditions, with a window open from Heaven and the Word of Revelation handed down, they would never have lost their better estate. Or, having lost it, the inflow of light would have secured their speedy reformation and recovery.

This, in fact, is what has at last taken place. To them the true light came during the vicissitudes of the nineteenth century. Once introduced, it took effect with remarkable celerity. India is awaking to righteousness, Japan was born in a day and momentous China is being stirred at last in all her broad boundaries.

In the tropics we have people who bestow no thought upon clothes or food or houses. Nothing apparently has prevented them from devoting their uninterrupted time to the nurture of their children and the elevation of their own minds and hearts, but not having enjoyed the direct operations of the Spirit of God they have failed in all things in all ages. They cannot point back to so much as an attempt to rise. In the Orient we have a people who have been under periodical stress during all their history. Nothing could be more natural than to suppose that under the steel of war or the ravages of pestilence or famine they would cry out for help and seek deliverance which would lead to their elevation as time elapsed. This they have indeed done but owing to their misdirection nothing has availed until the dawn of recent times. In the presence of such facts, the most modest conclusion at which we can arrive is that if we work for a living or if we do not work for a living, or if we have but little material necessity it matters little. Neither will of itself, in the absence of the cooperation of the divine intelligence, impel us onward and upward.

Whether more can be said of the man who lives in the broad light of Christendom, but spends all his energies in seizing a living, remains to be considered. Blessed with environment, he looks down on his heathen neighbors and calls them lazy. He despises their attainments and pronounces against their improvidence. Be thrusts in the sickle to secure an abundance. Little does he reflect why or for whom, but all things are secondary to his supreme desire, a living. God has not been consulted nor man considered. But with coat thrown and sleeves rolled he bends to the business of grasping a living.

He does not consider the ant whose providence is inspired; or the lily which feeds from the soil as it reclines in the air. His ear is dumb to the voice which says, "All your needs shall be supplied" and "Take no anxious thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink or what ye shall put on, for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." God intends man shall have plenty of all that is for his good and has created all things for him, but he knows it not or does not consider. Every rising morning and every declining sun looks down upon him with his one concern. The earth chafes beneath his hasty feet and Heaven sighs and finds it useless to deal with him. The pit is set before him to receive his fall and arrest his attention; storms are sent upon him to cause him to consider; floods carry away what he has stored up, but to no effect; he is looking within and not learning from above. Sickness lays him low, war carries off a neglected son, dissolution obtains among his possessions, the hand is "writing on the wall,' , but without results. The man that concerns himself with feeding himself may have Heaven's Kingdom above him and all about him and even then die without its riches or its teachings. All there is for him is a living. Verily, he has his reward, the answer to his life, the desire of his every moment. He was abundantly filled and perished with his desire.

The man who lives for a living ignores the reality of his own soul. He is devoted to the body with all his time and faculties, but forgets his real self — the soul. The soul has its being within the body and is the self proper. It has little need of things here below, except that with which it may repair its house — the body. This material for repairs is deposited according to all its proper appointments by the circulatory system through a thousand gushing arteries. It is milled for the blood as it advances through the alimentary canal. The capacity of the stomach is fully up with the needs of the soul. In fact the state of the soul is the gauge for the food both in quality and quantity. Whatever unduly elevates or depresses the soul may wisely be rejected. Plain and scant food for the body has proven best for the soul and the great souls of earth have universally agreed upon this. The manner of feeding the body has rendered useless and unhappy countless numbers of souls. It has robbed them of greatness here and of glory hereafter. But the man whose chief joy and essential business is to procure and enjoy what ministers to the body, knows not the existence of the soul, much less the conditions under which it obtains its greatness.

The soul itself in no sense feeds upon the delicacies of the table, although its state is affected by all we eat, by what we wear and by all the circumstances of our environment. But, given a clean, roomy well warmed body in which to live, the soul feeds with rejoicing upon the word of God. "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." This word is its meat and its drink. And even on this the soul flourishes best when not gorged, or hurried, or over-fed, but when it partakes with reverence, thanksgiving and awe, as ministered unto by the Holy Ghost. From the serene depths of the Word rises to the soul's vision the most comprehensive view of ancient history known to man. Man is seen in his origin, his fall, his probation and his recovery through Christ. History here gets her philosophy, and God graciously deals with the rising race.

The man who pursues life for a living only, not only ignores the reality and interests of his own immortal being but to the grief of Heaven and earth, he ignores the souls of his neighbors, his nearest friends and even of his own children. In comparison with food and drink and what is pleasing to his taste, his children's entreaties are quite forgotten. They may hunger, they may shiver, they may go unloved, their bodies may famish and their souls perish; but (God pity the parent) he must pursue his unalterable purpose, that of procuring a living. Their living is lightly considered, and if provided for at all, it is only the body, while the more important part, the soul, the creation that lives forever, meets neglect and utter starvation.

Certainly such a mortal does not raise his eyes and look into the open portals of eternity. His face is fixed like a flint upon the defiant earth from which he exacts all his living. Should angels beckon him above he would not know it. The mansions there appearing, the royal reunion, the crown for the redeemed are all invisible to him. He has not measured time with eternity, and to compare the realities of this world with the realities of the world to come, he is utterly incompetent. His faith reaches only to the ground where his evasive treasure is. His desire is all toward himself at the expense of the universe and its Creator. Ministering to no one, no one ministers to him. The very extravagance with which he has cut off all things that he may serve himself, in reality cuts him off from all things and to him all things are forever lost. He has served self and lost all.

It is not evident that the man with every opportunity, who pursues only a living, is more blessed or honored in the end than the dweller in the confines of heathenism. His talents are greater but his attainments are not. And the woeful manner with which he disregards known duty and slams to the doors of opportunity, drives God and men with reluctance to the conclusion that he is less worthy of rewards than are they. They will be beaten with fewer stripes, lashed with an easier conscience, endure less from self-condemnation and live easier under the censure of all intelligent beings.

God has wisely made it necessary for us to work in this world. The facts that we must eat or starve and must work if we eat and have trials and troubles and losses as well as successes if we work are all good, and out of the far-seeing wisdom of a kind Providence. The good and great man is always a working man. Trials and necessities have evidently always been good for the race; but work and hardship and necessity have never been successful agents of themselves in rendering men good and great. They secure what ease and idleness will not, but they never succeed alone.

Man succeeds best and rises more surely when God is his teacher and the world is his school ground. God must condescend in looking down to man, and man must persevere in looking up to God. Agreement in good faith must be made and man's development in the world is certain. The storms, the trials, the temptations of this world are his lessons which he receives with joy. His extremities are God's opportunities and his disasters are God's reprovals.

The ever-living and unchangeable God has chosen one nation through whom He has illustrated this. His dealings with them constitute their history ; it has been recorded for man and its essential parts are in the book known in Christendom as the Bible. Its contents are the most noteworthy passages on record. They are designed to reveal God's nature and his dealings with the human family, what he has already wrought and what he proposes for the future. Out of His love for all nations of men, He has selected one nation which He calls His chosen ; but they were chosen more as an illustration than as favorites. Yet the choice was eminently fitting, inasmuch as of all the nations of mankind, they, the Hebrews, inclined most toward God and good. The historic platform on which they played their part was not only at the hub of history but at the hub of the ancient world. The eminence to which they were led was in full view of all mankind. Nothing was done in a corner. They acted real life ; and God pledges Himself that what He was then He is today and ever will be. No experiment was enacted, but the curtain was drawn to reveal an illustration.

The father of this commanding race, Abraham, rises to man's recognition because he possessed merit before God, and rose to God's recognition. One conspicuous quality in the man was that he was faithful. He had confidence in God and God with good reason had confidence in him. This confidence, or faith, led to heroic obedience on the part of Abraham and a conditional promise on the part of God. Out of natural impossibility and from a man as good as dead arose a great nation. They were made under the immediate hand of God, the stress of slavery, of war, of travel, of famine and contending religions. Through many centunes of toil and trouble they attained their golden age under Saul, David and Solomon and delivered their supreme service to the world, just before their complete fall, in the person of Christ.

Some of the details of what God can do with people who have to work and suffer may be seen in the history of this people. They lived in a country whose favors were periodical — sometimes plenty, with prosperity; sometimes scarcity with famine. Nature failed them but God never did. His willingness and ability were both shown when all other resources were cut off. He gave the nation growth under slavery, he gave them habitation by all the vicissitudes of w T ar, but their character, their conquering faith, their national organization and their divine statutes he gave them while they wandered in Arabia at the mercy of sand and sun, wind and war, where their food came direct from Heaven and their only hope lay in obedience.

Had the physical constitution been such that they had no need of food or water, they would have felt less need of God. But human need was never greater. For not only were they in the presence of hostile hordes on every side, their wives and little ones were with them and they all were without resources of any kind, save from above. Obedience became necessary and faith indispensable. What they had they must call for and what they called for in faith they received. The presence of God was constantly needed, constantly sought and constantly enjoyed.

The results are as evident as the causes. The first call of Moses to them to prepare all ages for the march met with suspicion and ridicule. Pharaoh, and his court as well, were incredulous. Egypt's sovereign and slave alike mocked the living God. No one believed or had immediate grounds for belief. But when God rained ten plagues upon the land, when he shook the earth with his wrath, when he rendered life unbearable for the royalty and the position untenable for the slave, the march was taken up, though with mutterings and murmurings and regrets.

The nation had been disqualified for war by four centuries of slavery, but under God and the stress of the times they became world conquerors. Their grasp of government, human or divine, must have been unworthy of regard, but God so situated them that in less than a score of years they were, and ever since have been regarded as models of mercy and judgment, and the first writers of revelation. In Egypt they had lost their faith but before they finished the conquest of their promised heritage they were living by faith to a greater extent than any single nation of any age on any part of the globe ever have done. Faith in God is unquestionably one of the most essential factors of man's greatness.

A summary of God's achievements in their behalf, and through them, in behalf of the human family, would serve to show the possibilities of a people who are, during the lapse of ages, for a few years only, brought immediately under the tutelage of God. So evident, so desirable, so facile are his transcendent methods, that man, can he but get his own consent, may enter into a new, a higher, and entirely different life before the gong sounds the third hour. This literal change is figuratively termed "the new birth." It is the passing from self to God, from a life our own to a life subject to Him. It is becoming his child, his disciple, his friend and co-worker. It is the mightiest transaction in man's spiritual history subsequent to itself, and it is the beginning of a series of forward and upward steps under God's direction, the end and glory of which man has not conceived.

This is the path of man's proper procedure. To gain a living is not the end of his being; it is simply a means to the end. Cut off the living of the body and the soul must take up its career in another world. A living, necessary as it is, is worthy of pursuit only as a means of providing a fit habitation for the soul. Man needs only enough to do good with — good to himself, his family, his fellow men and his God. Work thus should be man's only work ; but since man's choices thwart the will of God, God lays upon man incessant and unproductive toil simply as a corrective. And again man's acquired desire to amass fortune impels him to work, so that wherever Christendom has planted her banner and wherever working people dwell, there exists confusion as to what is the proper object of man's labor.

The desires of man, the face of nature and the prevalence of the weather can never settle this. There is one mind that knows, one heart that has conceived, one Word that has uttered it : the mind, the heart, the Word of God: "Son, go work today in my vineyard/'

II

There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. But those riches perish. All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness. — Bed. 5 : 13, 1±, 17.

God's warning to man has always been that he should not fix his affections upon the wealth of this world. Not because the wealth of the world is not good for man, or that it is withheld from him, but because it is not worthy of his affections, or a fit object for his desires. This world is not man's abiding place, it is only his school ground — the place of his education. Our real home, the place of our permanent abode, is far removed hence; it is eternal and in the heavens. There man's mansions are ready built, his possessions are spread out in glory, prepared expressly, and awaiting the fitness of his coming.

For man to concern himself with storing up goods in this world is to withdraw his gaze and his affections from Heaven and his eternal interests, for "where his treasure is, there will his heart be also." It is to strive after that which he cannot with 32 case and propriety obtain; it is to lay up what all money seekers will desire to take from him; it is to amass what time itself will tear down; it is providing for the ravages of moth and rust; it is to attach one's self to that which the sword of death will certainly some time cut off. It was an act of high mercy that God advised us not to exert ourselves for the wealth of this world, for in its gain we meet toil, in its possession we meet worry, in its distribution we meet responsibility and in its inevitable loss we meet disappointment. We need an abundance and God desired us to have an abundance; therefore he created an abundance. He has cast it upon the earth like snow, He has locked it away beneath the ribs of the rocks, so that all who ever shall live upon the earth will find their living, struck off to them with the rest of creation, ready and accessible for their use.

God has evident delight in a plentiful provision for his people, but man distrusts, or is ignorant of the wishes of his own Creator. As in the days of the downfall of manna, so in fact in all the days of man's earthly pilgrimage, God provides in due order for all man's needs, and the most that he wishes is that man may have enough, but not be burdened with an over supply, since the supply is to come daily fresh from the bounties of Heaven. But, as under the daily fall of manna, man could not trust his God and began to amass the fresh fallen bread, so man today, knowing the precision of the seasons and the veracity of his God, frets himself for tomorrow and falls to cribbing supplies in excess.

Yes, even more; the world has moved forward, and we now live under the illuminated canopy of the twentieth century. Man in all ages has found it hard to keep his hands off the wealth of the world and his affections fixed upon that empire above. He has transgressed his appointments, has for many generations gone over for more than was meet, and today with the precedent of the past, and an insatiate desire for gain, man, from his youth, labors for the bread that perishes. For this he is trained and equipped, and for this he believes himself to be born and commissioned. Making wealth — amassing a fortune, is his self-appointed business for life. And could angels look down upon a twentieth century pit of commerce, they would vow that man had cast down both consideration and reason — yes, and the humanity with which he was crowned; and, with a greed quite beyond that of the swine, blind with desire, with a shriek and a shove, he is pitching into the whirl to scoop full his mow with the husks of the pit. Not but there is plenty and to spare, but the desire has seized him to spread bestial claws over all he surveys and cover it to himself, against the piping desires of faint orphans and widows. The crocodile that retains his appointment among the slimes of the slough, could he look and pass upon this common act of greed, would shudder throughout at its baseness.

Unless man can blot out history he cannot deny this characteristic of his fallen nature. It was this that prompted its possessors to rear to themselves the fallen gardens and palaces of Babylon. It was this that prompted the Pharaohs to plant deep the pyramids of Egypt, and that impelled Rome to chain down the world. Whenever and wherever God's freemen have been bound down te" slavery it was by the p^wer of greed. By it the feebler nations of the world have been displaced. By it the stronger ones still fill the earth, and wherever war is waged or peace prevails, man rules or is ruled, to an appalling extent, by the power of greed.

Such is the history of man. He is advised not to lay hold upon the world and its treasure, but he rejects the advice. He is warned not to grasp for himself what is intended for all, but he has in all ages ignored the warning and the interests of men. He has heaped to himself riches; he has compelled others to serve him; he has invented means of storing wealth by thousands and by millions more than he could ever use or spend ; he has exacted usury; he has not given to the poor, or fed the hungry, or clothed the naked, or housed the homeless ; he has said, "I will build more vaults and incarcerate more gold; I will conceal it from thieves, from the needy and from the assessor; I will secure it for myself against all sources of attack; I will wall it in where moth and worms and rust cannot enter it and I will secure it against the eye and the hand of the Lord Almighty Himself."

Working for Wealth 3T

God has in all ages discouraged the rapacity of men. He has first of all created an abundance so no man has any lack at all. He has distributed it over the face of the whole earth and creates it for every generation of men. He has filled full the seas, the forests, the mountains and the soil. The air we breathe and the light and shadow in which we live are abundant, are for all and are free. No one is supposed to corner these necessities, or bottle them up for himself or wall them in from the masses of mankind. God has given them without extortion and those who handle them are supposed to handle them thus. The wool for clothes, the coal for fire, the wood for lumber and the gold and silver for mediums of exchange are no more to be withheld from man for a premium than the air we breathe, the light we absorb, or the room we occupy. The wealth of the world, like the water of the world, should flow forth from God to all mankind, without human interference or diversion. Men may handle it, but in so doing should only augment its volume and help it to flow forever on.

If man interferes with the free and full circulation of God's gifts, he is a grasper, and at once meets the condemnation of earth and of Heaven. He has been warned not to lay on hands except to improve and enlarge the circulation, and if he does so, he does it at his own peril. He may labor to subdue the earth but not to possess it. He may create wealth, but he must not withhold it from men. He may render the forests into lumber, or the clay into brick but he must not attach extortion. To build cities for earthly habitation, boats, roads and cars for transportation and mills for manufacture is good and commendable, for they help speed on the blessings of humanity and give God glory. But if their builder says, "Behold, they are mine, and for me," and withholds them and their advantages from God and men, he begins a fight against God and the entire human family. And his soul, if not called at once to give an account of itself before the throne of the universe, will be later, with a full rendering of all its works. It is not with ease nor certainty that the human eye perceives whether or not a man is antagonizing the universal interests, for he whose whole heart and soul are for God and humanity must buy and sell, pay taxes and insurance, hold deeds and pay rolls and bear the brunt of business with all the earnestness of the man who holds property, not as a trust, but as his own. If there are any surface distinctions at all, they are that the man who is for God and the people pays without deceit his due proportion of taxes, pays his helpers with a willing heart, gives with great willingness to the objects of grace, education and charity, and in fact is in business for the evident purpose of helping on the interests of God in the world, whatever they are. If he wishes to produce wealth, it is that it may be used for the good of others. He directs the course of capital that men may have labor and their families have food, clothes, the blessings of education and the joys of everlasting life. He is a perpetual giver, and yet all he gives is his talent, since God sends to him the silver and gold, the health and the strength that he has that He may behold with joy all its beneficent results.