1

ing of early spring, to take my first lesson from thee

After all, as it has been said, "no work is the hardest work."

Ho! ye who at the anvil toil,
And strike the sounding blow,
Where from the burning iron's breast
The sparks fly to and fro;

While answering to the hammer's ring,
And fire's intenser glow,

Oh! while ye feel 'tis hard to toil
And sweat the long day through,
Remember it is harder still

To have no work to do.

Ho! all who labour, all who strive,

Ye wield a lofty power;

Do with your might, do with your strength,

Fill every golden hour!

The glorious privilege to do

Is man's most noble dower.

1 A friend in London told us lately that he had been in conversation with Mr. Mason, the well-known emissary of the Confederate States, whose capture in the "Trent," along with Mr. Sliddel, made such a noise some time ago. Mr. Mason told him, that what struck him most in the condition of England, was the steadiness and the readiness with which the working classes performed even the most disagreeable and laborious tasks. He could not have believed, till he came to this country, that such work could be got done without slavery. It seemed to him impossible, without the use of force, to induce men to undertake and continue to perform such tasks. It certainly indicates no inconsiderable progress in civilisation when all the work of a country can be done without compulsion; and it is creditable to us that, even in manning the navy, the aid of the press-gang, which may be said to have been the last relic in this country of absolute compulsion to work, has been dispensed with.

Oh! to your birthright and yourselves,

To your own souls be true;

A weary, wretched life is theirs

Who have no work to do.

We would not stop here in speaking of the benefits of that training which labour brings, or at least offers. There is a connexion, we believe, in the case of the Christian workman, between the training which he receives thus in this world, and the service in which it will be God's good pleasure to employ him hereafter. Many excellent people draw too broad a line of separation between this life and the life to come. They fancy that their worldly employment is nothing but a hindrance to their spiritual life, and that, if only they could get rid of the one, they would be in far better circumstances to prosecute the other. But is not this something like charging God foolishly? Is not this charging God with placing his children at the very worst preparatory school possible a school where they can get no right training for the future, except at by-hours, or by extra lessons? God's ordinary rule is very different. When he is preparing his creatures for a higher life, the preparatory life is always adapted with great skill to the more advanced. The caterpillar and the chrysalis are adapted to the future career of the moth and the butterfly, the tadpole to that of the frog, infancy to childhood, childhood to

manhood. Are we to suppose the analogy fails in the most important case of any-the adaptation of the earthly to the everlasting life? We cannot believe it. Moses and David, when they were shepherds, were undergoing preparation for the highest office of kinghood; and the apostles, as they cast their nets in the lake of Galilee, were preparing to be fishers of men. No one could have predicted that the shepherd would develop into the king, or the fisherman into the apostle. No one can predict now what the Christian labourer or mechanic may, by God's grace, develop into in heaven. For it doth not yet appear what we shall be. We know, however, that he that is faithful in a few things, shall be made ruler over many things; and that the awards of heaven depend not on the original number of your talents, but on the improvement you have made of them. We need not say that, in this remark, it is Christian workmen we have in view. Hugh Miller tells us, that one of the best persons he ever knew was a poor widow in Inverness, conscientious and devout, and ever doing her humble work consciously in the eye of the great Taskmaster. "She was a humble washerwoman," he adds, "but I am convinced that in the other world, which she must have entered long ere now, she ranks considerably higher."

In any case, it cannot be too strongly urged how

immeasurably the burden of hard, humble labour will be lightened wherever the heart is pervaded by the feeling, that such toil is the service to which a wise, gracious Father in heaven is pleased to appoint you. Confidence in the considerate care and kindness of God, when He is seen in Christ as a God of love, will go an immense way in making the yoke easy and the burden light. Long hours, hard toil, coarse clothing, humble fare, so far as these are inseparable from your condition, and are not the fruit of your own indolence or folly, will be in a sense transfigured, made radiant with the light of heaven, when they are numbered with the "all things that work together for good." For nearly half his lifetime on earth, the divine Saviour of the world had no better lot. For many a year the morning sun found him toiling in the workshop of Nazareth, fashioning, most likely, tables, and chairs, and ladders, and ploughs for the wild, rough Nazarenes; often weary, often worried, and often, doubtless, confronted with. the question whether this was fit work for one that had come to save the world, and whether it was desirable that so many years of vigour should be consumed in so humble toil. But in his case, every rising feeling of this kind would be silenced by the thought that such was the appointment of Him, whose will, he, as a man, had bound himself to

acquiesce in, and whose work he had undertaken to do. The example of Christ will often present itself to the Christian workman as a motive of commanding power. A French workman, who was guillotined in Paris in the reign of terror, is said to have boasted on the scaffold that the sans-culotte Jesus Christ belonged to the same fraternity as he. The excited and half-frantic democrat had caught a distorted glimpse of the great truth, which in its clearness and beauty can never be far from the view of the Christian workman, that the King of Glory, when he came to earth to suffer for his sins, did at the same time, as a brother-labourer, share his burdens and endure his toils.

Besides these considerations, there are many others of a more ordinary kind that should be kept before your minds, as contributing to give you success in your work, and to lighten its burden.

In the first place, all experience goes to prove the immense value to the workman of the spirit of steadiness and perseverance. "Persevere," used to be the constant advice of George Stephenson to young workmen. His own wonderful career had been a striking proof of the value of the principle. The son of a poor workman, and brought up as one of a family of eight persons, on twelve shillings a week, he had PERSEVERED, and through perseverance