cause to believe that he has gone on laboring. He is the great Laborer of eternity; and it is the highest of possible honors to be admitted to labor with him. There is no patent of nobility, which can confer a glory like this. When he had finished his labor on our planet, his last and noblest work being man, he conferred on him a partnership in his labors. He handed down to him the great chain of labor, and bade him encircle the world with it. 7. He elected us as his successors here; and, from that time to this, the great family of man has gone on laboring with head and hand in a myriad of ways, carrying out, by the unceasing operations of intellect and mechanic skill, by invention and construction, the designs of the Almighty for the good of his creatures. Can there positively be a sight more delightful to the great unseen, but watchful Father of the Universe, than that of all his countless rational creatures busy at the benificent scheme of boundless labors, out of which springs the gladness of all life? 8. After the lapse of thousands of years, and when the cunning and the proud had cast a base stigma on that which God had created good and the medium of good, Christ came, and what were his remarkable words? "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Thus again, the revelation of the Gospel was also a grand revelation of the dignity of labor. It was acknowledged to be a principle exercised by the Divinity itself. Every one who labored was made to appear, not the slave of man, but the fellow-laborer of God. Where, then, is the meanness of labor? If God himself does not disdain to use it, shall we? If God seems even to glory in his labors, shall we be ashamed of ours? No! Labor is, as we have asserted, a divine principle of the universe; it is the most honorable thing on the earth, and, next to God himself, it is the most ancient in heaven. 9. All honor then to labor, the offspring of Deity; the most ancient of ancients, sent forth by the Almighty into these nether worlds; the most noble of nobles! Honor to that divine principle which has filled the earth with all the comforts, and joys, and affluence that it possesses, and is undoubtedly the instrument of happiness wherever life is found. Without labor, what is there? Without it, there were no world itself. 10. Whatever we see or perceive-in heaven or on the earth is the product of labor. The sky above us, the ground beneath us, the air we breathe, the sun, the moon, the starswhat are they? The product of labor. They are the labors of the Omnipotent, and all our labors are but a continuance of His. Our work is a divine work. We carry on what God began. We build up, each in his own vocation, the grand fabric of human honor and human happiness, exercising all our faculties and powers, physical and intellectual, and the result is What? 11. The scene of all our glories, the sum of all our achievements as a race, every thing which history can tell, which art has accomplished, which science has exhumed from the depths of oblivious darkness, which embellishes our abodes, and animates us to still greater victories in the cause of man and mind. 12. What a glorious spectacle is that of the labor of man upon the earth! It includes every thing in it that is glorious. Look round, my friends, and tell me what you see that is worth seeing that is not the work of your hands, and of the hands of your fellows-the multitude of all ages? 13. What is it that felled the ancient forests, and cleared vast morasses of other ages? That makes green fields smile in the sun, and corn, rustling in the breezes of heaven, whisper of plenty and domestic joy? What raised first the hut, and then the cottage, and then the palace? What filled all these with food and furniture-with food simple and also costly; with furniture of infinite variety, from the three-legged stool to the most magnificent cabinet and the regal throne? What made glass, and dyed it with all the hues of rainbows, or of summer sunsets? What constructed presses, and books, and filled up the walls of libraries, every inch of which contained a mass of latent light hoarded for the use of ages? What took the hint from the split walnut-shell which some boy floated on the brook, and set on the flood first the boat, and then the ship, and has scattered these glorious children of man, the water-walking ships, over all the oceans of the world, and filled them with the produce of all lands, and the machinery and steam of profoundest inventions? 14. What has made the wide sea like a great city street, where merchants are going to and fro full of eager thoughts of self-accumulation, but not the less full of international blessings? What has made the land like one great garden, laid down its roads that run like veins to every portion of the system of life, cut its canals, cast up its lines of rail-ways, and driven along them, in fire and vapor, the awful but beneficial dragons of modern enterprise? What has piled up all our cities with their glittering and exhaustless wealth, their splendid utensils, their paintings, their mechanic wonders, all serving domestic life, and its beloved fireside delights? Labor! labor! LABOR! It is labor, and your labor, men of the multitude, that has done it all! 15. True, the wise ones tell us that it is intellect that has done it. And all honor to intellect! It is not I, nor you, fellow-workers, who will attempt to rob the royal power of intellect of one iota of his renown. Intellect is also a glorious gift of the Divinity,-a divine principle in the earth. We set intellect at the head of labor, and bid it lead the way to all wonders and discoveries; but we know that intellect can not go alone. Intellect can not separate itself from labor. 16. Intellect has also its labor; and in its most abstract and ethereal form can not develop itself without the co-operation of its twin-brother labor. When intellect exerts itself,— when it thinks, and invents, and discovers,-it then labors. Through the medium of labor it does all that it does; and upon labor it is perfectly dependent to carry out all its mechanical operations. Intellect is the head, labor the right nand. Take away the hand, and the head is a magazine of knowledge and fire that is sealed up in eternal darkness. Such are the relationships of labor and intellect. 2. 3. 4. 5. EXERCISE XIII. THE LABORER. WM. D. GALLAGHER. Stand up-erect! Thou hast the form, And likeness of thy God!-who more? A soul as dauntless 'mid the storm Of daily life, a heart as warm And pure, as breast e'er wore. What then?--Thou art as true a man Who is thine enemy?—the high In station, or in wealth the chief? If true unto thyself thou wast, What were the proud one's scorn to thee? A feather, which thou mightest cast Aside, as idly as the blast The light leaf from the tree. No;-uncurb'd passions, low desires, Death, in the breast's consuming fires, Forever, till thus chéck'd. 6. 7. 8. 9. These are thine enemies-thy worst; Thy labor and thy life accursed. Thou art thyself thine enemy! The great!—what better tney tnan thou? As théirs, is not thy will as freé? Has GOD with equal favors thee True, wealth thou hast not-'tis but dust! Of both, a noble mind. With this, and passions under ban, Thou art the peer of any man. EXERCISE XIV. ACTION ALWAYS HEALTHFUL. 1. By ceaseless action, all that is subsists. COWPER Constant rotation of the unwearied wheel That Nature rides upon, maintains her health, An instant's pause, and lives but while she moves. |