Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/72

68 pleasing to God and useful to society. But the time has come when we have but to ask this question: Why do you teach others, when you cannot teach your own selves? As is said in the same sense, "You place upon the shoulders of men heavy burdens, that you would not so much as touch with your little finger." We must set the example of virtue, and encourage people to cultivate it, lest the scythe in cutting the grass shall become broken against a stone.

47. O ye who belong to the upper classes of society, reflect on this: If all the laborers in the world should abandon labor for bread as you do, then every one would die of hunger. Do you admit that we could do this with as much reason as you do?

We do not rest, you say, we work unceasingly. We do not eat food without paying for it with the money we have earned by our work, and we give the price that the laborer demands. We eat our bread in the sweat of our face.

And if we all work, where will the poor get their money? We give it them, and they give us bread. We live by them, and they by us. We cannot govern and direct others, and at the same time labor with our hands.

The commandment given to Adam applies not only to labor for bread, but to all our other occupations. Even as we cannot live without bread, we cannot live without the things with which we occupy ourselves. God, in creating the world, intended that we should labor at