And the night wind brings up the stream, murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.

V

Still Nature's sleepless ministers move on, their glorious tasks in silence perfecting,

Labourers that shall not fail when man is gone.

The light we sought is shining still;

On, to the bound of the waste; on, to the city of God!

THE GOSPEL OF WORK

THOMAS CARLYLE

I

Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind; death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells that summon mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement. But whence? O Heaven, whither?

Sense knows not; faith knows not; only that it is through mystery to mystery, from God to God.

Not a May-day game is man's life, but a battle and a march, a stern pilgrimage through burning sandy solitudes, through regions of thick-ribbed ice!

He walks among men, loves men, but his soul dwells in solitude, in the uttermost parts of creation.

II

This fair universe is in very deed the star-domed city of God; through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every living soul, the glory of a present God still beams.

The universe is but one vast symbol of God. himself but a symbol of God?

What is man

Is not all that he does symbolical, a revelation to sense of the mystic God-given force that is in him, a gospel of freedom which he preaches as he can by act and word?

Not a hut he builds but is the visible embodiment of a thought; but bears visible record of invisible things.

Through all (symbols) glimmers something of a divine idea; as through military banners the divine idea of duty, of heroic daring.

But nobler than all, in this kind, are the lives of heroic God-inspired men.

Look on our divinest symbol: on Jesus of Nazareth, and his life and what followed therefrom.

This is Christianity and Christendom, a symbol whose significance will ever demand to be anew made manifest.

III

Two men I honour and no third. First, the toilworn craftsman that with earth-made implements laboriously conquers the earth and makes her man's.

Venerable to me is the hard hand.

Venerable too is the rugged face. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee!

Hardly entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent.

It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor. The poor is hungry and athirst, but for him also there is food and drink.

He is heavy laden and weary; but for him also the heavens send sleep.

What I do mourn over is that the lamp of his soul should go out. Alas, while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated!

That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

A second man I honour, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread but the Bread of Life.

Is not he too in his duty?

(He is) not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, who with heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us.

These two, in all their degrees, I honour; all else is chaff and dust.

IV

It is all work, this peopled, clothed, high-towered, wideacred world. The hands of forgotten men have made it a

world for us.

The only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself with asking much about, was happiness enough to get his work done.

Whatsoever of morality and of intelligence, what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, in a word whatsoever of strength the man had in him, will lie written in the work he does.

All true work is sacred.

Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven; sweat of the brow, and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart.

O brother, if this is not worship, the more pity for worship, for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky.

It is to you, ye workers, that the whole world calls for new work and nobleness.

To make some nook of God's creation a little fruitfuller, better, more worthy of God.

To make some human hearts a little wiser, manfuller, happier. It is work for a god.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

GOD AND MAMMON

JOHN RUSKIN

I

The writings which we esteem as divine denounce the love of money as the source of all evil, as an idolatry abhorred of the Deity.

(They) declare mammon service to be the accurate and irreconcilable opposite of God's service.

Whenever they speak of riches absolute, and poverty absolute, (they) declare woe to the rich, and blessing to the

poor.

Whereupon we forthwith investigate a science of becoming rich, as the shortest road to national prosperity!

(In) no previous instance in history (has) a nation established a systematic disobedience to the first principles of its religion.

Nothing in history has ever been so disgraceful to human intellect as the acceptance among us of the common doctrines of political economy.

II

The real political economy is that which teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life.

Which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction.

If they imagine precious and beneficent things, such as air, light and cleanliness, to be valueless, or the conditions of their own existence, such as peace, trust, and love, to be exchangeable for gold

The great and only science of Political Economy teaches them what is vanity, and what substance.