Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/141

Rh of the law and of the labor it requires; thus you cannot believe my words. It is my duty to speak them; with you it rests to believe or to deny them,

Then I pray you, my readers, to preserve these words, and to fix them in your hearts: Labor done according to the primitive law is the condition of love for others. Labor is strong without love; it can, by itself, win for man the highest prize he can attain before God, whilst love without the aid of labor can do nothing, because, as we have already said, true love freed from all hypocrisy, is concealed in labor; but without labor, love is dead. Love your neighbor and esteem him, but above all, O you who preach love, do not eat the bread of his labor. Again, the preachers have exhausted their strength, worn out their throats, and fatigued their tongues in preaching love, and what has been the result? Love does not exist anywhere.

If love reigned in the world, would the present state of things exist? In creating heaven and earth, God has given forever, to us laborers, and not to sluggards with white hands, this unchangeable law: "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou knead bread." God has based on this law both temporal and eternal happiness.

The supreme lawgivers, from the commencement of the world, have taken from us by fraud or by violence this precious treasure. Having stolen it, they have buried it deep in the earth, like the slothful servant in the Gospel who hid