Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/341

 of divineness. 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—which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted Heroisms, and Martyrdoms, up to that 'Agony of bloody sweat' which all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not 'worship,' then I say the more pity for worship, for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother!—see thy fellow Workmen there in God's eternity, surviving there, they alone surviving; sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Bodyguard of the Empire of Mankind. Even in the weak Human memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods, they alone surviving—peopling, they alone, the measured solitudes of Time. To thee, Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind as a noble Mother—as that Spartan mother, saying while she gave her son his shield—"With it, my son, or upon it!" Thou too shalt return home in honour, brother Worker!—to thy far distant Home, in honour, doubt it not, if in the battle thou keep thy shield!"