| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 12 |
Page 3 |
So we may apply the principle to all kinds of work. The faithfulness which God requires must reach to everything we do, to the way the child gets its lessons and recites them, to the way the dressmaker and the tailor sew their seams, to the way the blacksmith welds the iron, and shoes the horse, to the way the plumber puts the pipes into the new building and looks after the drainage, to the way the carpenter does his work on the house, to the way the bridge builder swings the bridge over the stream, to the way the clerk represents the goods and measures or weighs them. “Be thou faithful” is the word that rings from heaven in every ear, God’s word for the doing of every piece of work that any one does. How soon it would put a stop to all dishonesty, all fraud, all scant work, all false weights and measures, all shams, all neglects or slightings of duty were this lesson only learned and practiced everywhere!
“It does not matter,” people say, “whether I do my little work well or not. Of course I must not steal, nor lie, nor commit forgery, nor break the Sabbath. These are moral things. But there is no sin in my sewing up this seam carelessly, or in my using bad mortar in this wall, or in my putting inferior timber in this house, or a piece of flawed iron in this bridge.” But we need to learn that the moral law applies everywhere, just as really to carpentry, or blacksmithing, or tailoring, as to Sabbath keeping. We never can get away from this law.
Besides, it does matter, for our neighbour’s sake, as well as for the honour of God’s law, how we do our work. The bricklayer does negligent work on the walls of a flue he is putting in; and one night, years afterward, a spark creeps through the crevice and reaches a wooden beam that lies there, and soon the house is in flames and perhaps precious lives perish. The bricklayer was unfaithful. The foundry worker, in casting the great iron supports for a bridge, is unwatchful for an instant, and a bubble of air makes a flaw. It is buried away in the heart of the beam and escapes detection. One day, years later, there is a terrible disaster. A great railroad bridge gives way beneath the weight of an express train and hundreds of lives are lost. In the inquest it is testified that a slight flaw in one beam was the cause of the awful calamity which hurled so many lives into eternity. The foundry workman was unfaithful.
These are but suggestions of the duty and of its importance. No work can be of so little moment that it matters not whether it be done faithfully or not. Unfaithfulness in the smallest things is unfaithfulness, and God is grieved, and possibly sometime, somewhere, disaster may come as the consequence of the neglect. On the other hand, faithfulness is pleasing to God, though it be only in the sweeping well of a room, or the doing neatly of the smallest things in household care. Then faithfulness is far reaching in its influence. The universe is not quite complete without each one’s little work well done.
The self culture that there is in the mere habit of faithfulness is in itself a rich reward for all our striving. It is a great thing to train ourselves to do always our best, to do as nearly perfect work as possible. Said Michael Angelo: “Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavour to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives for it, strives for something that is Godlike.” The habit, unyielding persisted in, of doing everything with the most scrupulous conscientiousness, builds up in the one who so lives a noble and beautiful character.
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