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least indifference, how agonizing is the thought! Separate the working masses from Christ, and then Mr. Potter's remark comes true-life is a ceaseless degradation, a daily martyrdom, a funeral procession to the grave. Bring them under Christ' banner, it is the pathway to glory, honour, and immortality.

CHAPTER III.

THE SWEAT OF THE BROW.

"For men must work, and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep."
KINGSLEY.

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FINLAY was away; my friend of the Doocot cave was away; my other companions were all scattered abroad; my mother, after a long widowhood of more than eleven years, had entered into a second marriage; and I found myself standing face to face with a life of labour and restraint. The prospect appeared dreary in the extreme. The necessity of ever toiling from morning to night, and from one week's end to another, and all for a little coarse food and homely raiment, seemed to be a dire one, and fain would I have avoided it. But there was no escape, and so I determined on being a mason."

So writes, in his Schools and Schoolmasters, one of whom working men may well be proud, and at whose feet all men may well sit for many a noble lesson. Many a working man is doubtless familiar with the feeling to which Hugh Miller alludes here, and like

him, has found it no easy task to bring his mind to a life of toil. Some, perhaps, think very little on the subject; and some, both in their apprenticeship and in later years, take work very easily, and do not scruple to make inroads on it whenever they can ; little credit therefore is due to them; but we will say that it is a great victory to begin with, when a lad, with all his schoolboy love of play, brings his mind steadily to face a life of labour and restraint, from morning to night, and from one week's end to another, all for a little coarse food and homely raiment; and it is a perpetual renewal of the victory, when, as years advance, and the weary frame gets more clamorous for rest, the six o'clock morning bell, tyrant though it often seems, is obeyed with as steady loyalty, if not as great alacrity as ever.

We are accustomed to speak of the curse of labour; but it should never be forgotten that, except when it is absolutely overwhelming, there is a blessing in labour as well as a curse. The blessing lies chiefly in the training which it supplies, and the full value of that training will only be seen when the life to come is taken into account. We must not make a virtue of necessity; and yet necessity is sometimes a great help to virtue. By what he feels to be the very necessity of his situation, the steady workman is constrained to conquer many clamorous lusts; he

keeps down as with a rod of iron the baser propensities of his animal nature; he learns to be useful; he learns to be independent; he learns to accommodate himself to his fellow-workmen, and yet to hold his own when it is needful; and he acquires the invaluable habit of persevering effort. Many a time, in the midst of hard work, the feeling will hover round him-"Oh this weary work-might I, not throw off the harness a little, and snatch a cup of pleasure, regardless of the future?" If his spirits are high, the craving will be for excitement; if they are low, it will be for rest; whether they are high or low, it will often be for strong drink. But the industrious and virtuous workman keeps all these cravings down; he must not dream of these things; he must be steady to his work. And hence, even to persons who have not to labour with their hands, and the regularity of whose work depends on their own will and conscience, the sight of physical labourers steadily at work is charged with a most useful lesson. There are men who, for nine or ten long hours, hardly lose a minute, make diligent use of their working talents, and brush aside every temptation to indolence. Would it not be well for some of us, if, in our department of work, we were as diligent, and made as constant use of our working talents as they?

And

But there is no rule without exception. there are exceptions here. It is seen in many

cases, that this devotion to work is the effect of mere and sheer necessity-nothing higher. At the stroke of six o'clock, when that necessity is removed, the goodly spectacle is often disenchanted; the workman not unfrequently hastens to abandon himself to the indulgence which he has been driving off all day. He made a bargain with his employer that he would work so many hours; on his fulfilment of that bargain the payment of his wages depends; when once the wages are earned, and his fellowlabourers, who kept him to his work very much as a team of horses keeps a lazy one in motion--when they are dispersed, and he is left quite to himself, his self-control flies to the winds. This is lamentable. The chances are, that in the dissipation of the evening the man wastes all the earnings of the day; but be this as it may, it is certain that he loses entirely all the high moral benefit which an inheritance of labour is fitted to bring. The harness and habits of daily toil do not help him to hold himself erect, to resist temptation right and left, to fight manfully the battle of life; he throws down his arms when he throws down his tools; and lets the Philistines rush upon him and treat him as they please. This is simply deplorable; it is the thing of all others

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