WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY. 
i 
WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY:
OR,
THE GOSPEL IN THE TRADES.
BY
ALEXANDER CLARK,
AUTHOR OF "THE GOSPEL IN THE TREES," "THE OLD LOG SCHOOLHOUSE," ETC.
AUTHOR OF t~ THE GOSPEL IN THE TREES,' ~THE OLD LOG SCHOOLHOUSE, ETC.
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
PHILADELPHIA:
CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER,
8I9 & 821 MARKET STREET.
SPRINGFIELD, OHIO: METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE.
PITTSBURGH: S. A. CLARKE & CO.
187I.
: 1.
II 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year x870, by
CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
.........................................................................................................................
STEREOTYPED BY J. FAGAN & SON. FRINTED BY MOORE BROTHERS.
4.
. 4....
il..,_.,
I 
tdiration.
TO
THOMAS W. SHAW, M.D.,
JAMES S. ATTERBURY,
SAMUEL WILLIAMS,
WILLIAM J. TROTH,
OF THE CONGREGATION WHERE HE HAS WORSHIPED;
AND TO
DANIEL SCHINDLER AND J. C. HARPER,
OF THE PITTSBURGH PRESS,
Ahi# olume
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF KIND AND APPROVING
WORDS,
WHEN ENCOURAGEMENT IN HIS WORK
WAS ESPECIALLY NEEDED,
BY THE AUTHOR.
V
IN
I, 
'I 
;:;;~
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
'-      ~HAVE  read "Workday Christian,  ity," and have been pleased with
God.  the ingenuity with which the author
illustrates religious truths by things which cor.
respond with them in the material world,
especially by the methods and processes of
the mechanic arts.  The work will, I think, do
good.
I particularly like the catholic spirit which
pervades these pages, and the superiority to
mere dogmatical distinctions which they show,
accounting him to be a true Christian, what                                    vii 
IzV NTRODUCTOR Y NOTE.
ever his sect, who is a sincere follower of
Jesus Christ, and faithfully obeys the law of
love which he taught.
The style is clear and well suited to the
subjects.
W. C. BRYANT.
NEW YORK, Ilairch i6, 1870.
viii 
~ CONTENTS.
I.
THE CARPENTER                                I
II.
THE MASON 
III.
THE BRICKLAYER.....
IV.
THE FOUNDER....
V.
TIHE MACHINIST.....
VI.
THE POTTER.....
ix
PAGE
I I
33
*   57
8i
. III
I37 
x          ~~~CO,VT.EA[S.
I X.
xi.
VII.               ~~~~~~~~PAGI
TEDAV-LA]BORER..26
x
TH F,
THE
THE
THE
THE 
ARPENTER.
Carpenter?"-MARK vi. 3.
xi
THE C
*c Is not this the  
WORKDAY CIHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER I.
THE CARPENTER.
A   HE  first sentence of Holy Scripture
reveals God as a Creator.  He cre       ated the heavens and the earth.  The
wondrous fabric was not formed by any fortuitous circumstances. There was a design,
outwrought by a beginning, a process, and a
consummation. The statement is distinct and
absolute. A Supreme Intelligence moulded
and furnitured the world, and recorded the
great fact as first in the order of revelation. The entire Bible maintains the doctrine of creation as the work of an inde
9
I
I,
2 
IO     WORAKD,AY CIIRISTIA NITY.
pendent and an almighty Person, and emphasizes it to all generations of people, that it may
never pass from mind, by fixing upon one day
in every seven as a commemoration of the finished work. Every Sabbath's sun is a celestial seal set to the truth written in the first
chapter of Genesis. The orrery of the universe
is but a clock to mark the coming of the hallowed day of rest.
The Bible shows us also, as a whole, by both
its former and its latter testimonies, that He
who made the world "in the beginning," condescended, "in the fullness of time," to suffering and sorrow amidst its scenes, to redeem
and reconstruct that portion which sin had
ruined. How fitting that He who created
should repair! Creation and Redemption are
the accordant octave-tones that reverberate
through all the Bible from the Alpha of Genesis to the Omega of Revelation - whose music
echoes forever from earth to heaven and from
heaven to earth. The infinite Word and the
infinite Work are unifold. The Creator and
the Redeemer are one. The power that built
and the power that restores are the same.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the 
THE CAkRPENTEPR.
Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God. All
things were made by Him; and without Him
was not anything made that was made....
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us.... He was in the world, and the
world was made by Him, and the world knew
Him not."
For there was a wide distance between the
gate of Eden and the cradle of Bethlehem.
There was a lapse of forty centuries from the
time when God talked with Adam in Paradise,
until he worked with Joseph as a carpenter.
The infinite wisdom that planned and framed
a universe of worlds, was not in haste in rounding out the fullness of time when Messiah
should appear.
Never is the divine method necessarily
splendid, startling, or imposing in its operations. The great era of creation was finished
before the eyes of men were opened to behold.
The procedures were not for exhibition. It is
enough for human intelligence to witness results when  Omnipotence works.   The ways
of God are past finding out. Behind his most
I I 
12       IVOiD.4AY  CIIHRAISTIAVI7'Y.
stupendous operations, and in the execution
of his grandest plans, there is "a hiding of his
power." The material universe came into existence without attesting human witnesses, to
stand as a self-evident fact; and so, evermore,
"the kingdom of God cometh not with observation."
Men, themselves the creatures of dust, are
apt to speak of storms, of volcanoes, of earthquakes, of convulsions and of revolutions - to
make a noise and stir to attract attention; but
God speaks in "the still, small voice." Hence
the people are slow to believe the statement
of Moses in reference to the creation, and the
account of the evangelists in reference to redemption. That such great things should be
so simply said and so quietly done, is an evidence of divinity that babbling mortals can not
apprehend.  They are not prepared to accept
a Saviour in the person of a carpenter. Nazareth is too near home to rear a prophet.
Men would naturally expect a triumphal descent from heaven, an angel convoy with bugles to rouse the masses, chariots and horses
of fire, a magnificent royal advent of the Mes 
TIIE CA RPEAN7'ER.
siah robed in glory and radiant with light -a
kingly coming that should strike the nations
with amazement, and compel, by physical
powers, the allegiance of the people.
But that the Son of God should appear as a
babe, be announced to a few poor shepherds
in the fields by night, be obscured for tedious
years as the son of a carpenter, and wear the
form and show the tan and brusqueness of a
servant   this was beneath belief!  Mary, the
mother of Jesus, was neither a ruler nor a
ruler's daughter. She was of David's line, a
royal ancestry, to be sure; but her immediate
relatives were humble and retired. Her husband was a mechanic. As a family, their circumstances were limited, for as the birth-offering of their firstborn, a lamb could not be afforded, and a pair of turtle doves, the pledge
that poverty presents, were the consecrating
sacrifice when the child Jesus was given to the
Lord in the solemn temple service. He was
brought up to habits of industry, economy and
self-denial, in Nazareth. His hands were hardened by daily toil. He put his shoulder to
heavy timbers, drove the saw and plane, and
2*
I 3 
14        [VOR'A"4Y  CtRIS7-]IA _VI TY.
swung the hammer in honest work. It was
not considered a disgrace in those days to ply
a trade. Even the Rabbins were accustomed
to some handicraft. There is a tradition that
Jesus constructed plows and farming utensils,
as well as the articles of common carpentry.
Paul was a tent-maker, and nearly all the apostles were tradesmen.   None  of them were
above work. Some of them were used to
drudging toil.  It would seem that employment, from the morning of creation, when God
himself worked and rested, and when Adam
was commanded to till the soil and subdue the
animals, implies peculiar dignity and honor.
The Maker of worlds blesses labor.  It is
apostolic, it is Chlrist-like, it is God-like to
work.  No system of education is complete
that does not harden the hand and toughen
the muscle, while it develops the intellect and
enlarges the heart. The religion that shows
nothing but pale cheeks and lily-white fingers
is not the religion of the Bible. Highways
and hedges are better sanctuaries for acceptable service, than studies, and cloisters, and
cells. Scars and knots on the hands are more 
THE CA REPENTER.
honorable than rings and gloves. Bronze out
of the sunbeams is more beautiful on the face
than rouge out of the shops. Only a worker
attains the true symmetry, strength and glory
of manhood or womanhood.   Genius itself
falters in a conflict with labor. Industry has
the long end of the lever that moves public
opinions, parties, congresses, and thrones. It
was men with brown faces and sinewy arms
that built the pyramids on Egypt's plains,
reared the temple on Mount Moriah, and
walled the Holy City with adamant, circled an
Asiatic Empire with impenetrable granite, put
arm in arm the old and the new worlds as
whispering mother and daughter, spanned the
American continent with a thoroughfare of
iron from sea to sea, cut a canal for steamers
in forty months across the desert sands where
the Israelites wandered for forty years; it is
men with sunburnt features and nerves of steel
that to-day whiten the world's wide waters
with the sails of commerce, navigate all rivers,
explore all lands, subdue the earth as God at
first commanded. An idle man, however white,
and soft, and smart, is not God's man!
1 5 
i6     W ORkDAY CHRIS'IANITY.
But the people of Nazareth, near twenty
centuries ago, were very like the people of
larger cities now. They heard the wonderful
words of Jesus, and were astonished.   But
their surprise gave place to jealousy and indignation.  "Is not this the carpenter, the son
of Mary, the brother of James and Joses, and
of Juda and Simon, and are not his sisters here
with us? And they were offended in him."
As much as to say, "We know his family and
his standing in society. Hle is but a mechanic,
the son of a mechanic, one of the common
people, one of our poor neighbors, a hewer of
wood, an obscure tradesman of Nazareth!"
But what an unintended tribute of respect is
this! The Son of God was the Son of Man.
He grew up to human maturity amid toils and
tears, eating the bread of manual labor every
day, and resting as a wearied worker every
night. He mingled with the people, not as a
guest, or stranger, or superior, for all these
thirty years; but as with his fellow-beings, as
one of themselves, engaged in active industry,
and known as an ordinary mechanic. There
are fastidious professors of his religion now, 
THE CA RPEi Ez TER.
who would scarcely have stooped to enter his
shop among the chips and shavings, or to have
taken his homely hand in their delicate grasp,
or to have eaten at the same table with the
hungry Nazarene! To some stylish Christians,
in these modern times, fingers are only intended for twirling a cane, for folding away
mortgages, for lifting to dainty lips domestic
wines, for pointing out the broad acres of estate and its high stories of mansion which men
call their own. Some men who were once
common laborers, made rich by smiling Providences and the hard knocks of busy hands,
have children who turn away in scorn from the
mechanic and the laborer. It is astonishing to
see how soon the homely phrases of industry
and the Frenchy words of fashion exchange
places in the vocabulary of some people.
There is a well turned truth in the familiar
lines remembered from schooldays:
"One day, a rich man, flushed with pride and wine,
Sitting with guests at table, all quite merry,
Conceived it would be vastly fine
To crack a joke upon his secretary.
I7 
i8     W O R AKD,AY CHR IS 7YA1VI 7' Y.
'Young man,' said he,'by what art, craft or trade,
Did your good father earn his livelihood?'
'He was a saddler, sir,' the young man said,
'And, in his line, was reckoned very good.'
'A saddler, eh? and had you stuffed with Greek,
Instead of teaching you like him to do!
And pray, sir, why did not your father make
A saddler, too, of you?'
At this each flatterer, as in duty bound,
The joke applauded, and the laugh went round.
"At length, the secretary, bending low,
Said, (craving pardon if too free he made,)
'Sir, by your leave, I fain would know
Your father's trade?'
'Afy father's trade? Why, sir, but that's too bad!
My father's trade! Why, blockhead, art thou mad?
My father, sir, was never brought so low;
He was a gentleman, I'd have you know!'
'Indeed! excuse the liberty I take;
But, if the story's true,
How happened it your father did not make
A gentleman of you!'"
True gentility as well as true genius is oftenest found among the common people, made
healthy and happy by willing work. Profess
in science what you may; cling to whatever 
THE CA RPENTER.
social clan you choose; accept for religion
nothing but ceremony and cadence if you will;
pity the plain, plodding mechanic if you must;
but remember withal, that the Lord of glory
was a carpenter! Those hands which touched
the cripple, and made him leap for joy; the
dumb, and turned his tongue to praise; the
deaf, and charmed his ears with melody; the
dead, and brought him back to life; those hands
that rested in benedictions on little children's
heads; that fed the hungry multitudes; that
grasped and held still the furious tempest of
the sea; that were nailed to the rough timber
of the cross; those hands for many years were
skilled in the use of the axe, the adze, and the
plane. How passing strange that the hearts
of fellow countrymen should conspire against
him, and that the hands of fellow craftsmen
should frame the wood on which he was crucified!
The people were not ready to accept the
teachings of a tradesman as the words of a
prophet. They were looking in another direction for truth; they expected something more
august, regal, and outwardly magnificent. And
I9 
20      WORKDAY CHRISTIANXITY.
to this day, there are thousands in Christendom
who reject the gospel because it is so simple
and familiar in its manner. They fail to apprehend the divinity that wears so plain a garb.
They fashion gaudy garments for the Divine
word. They supplement the Bible by ritual,
dogma, or creed-by councils, theologies, and
views- until "the faith once delivered to the
saints" is lost in the verbiage of the sect, instead of held in the life of the soul. The heavenliest principle in the gospel is its manifested
love in Jesus Christ, who, "being in the form
of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with
God; but made himself of no reputation, and
took upon himself the form of a servant, and was
made in the likeness of men." Yes, indeed, he
completely assumed our nature, accepting its
toil, its care, its weariness, its hunger, its thirst,
its sweat, its suffering, its shame -- everything
but its sin. It would have been great conde scension for God's Son to assume an earthly
throne and to make himself brother to kings
and level with carnal conquerors. But he did
more: he became the apprentice of a mechanic,
and endured years of toil as equal of the work 
THE CA R PENTE R.
ingman, while really the Master and Redeemer
of all.
There is, also, a lesson of patience in this.
There were some ten years of matured physical manhood spent in manual labor at the
bench. Enthusiasts would call that wasted
time-years wrested from his special mission
in the world. Young men must be hurried
into the ministry now, at twenty. The church's
loudest calls to-day are for pastors on the
sunny side of thirty. Precocious preachers
command a premium in the market. But"  God's
ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as
our thoughts." He never needs to be in haste.
He works out his designs by the fullnesses of
time. The Eternal is not guided by clock or
calendar. Many men become restless, uneasy,
and even violent to attempt and accomplish
certain schemes. The heart sometimes leaps
forward, when the head says, "Hold; be calm;
keep still." For always there must be wisdom
to balance impulse, and discretion to parallel
devotion.
Christians are often rash in their methods to
extend the Redeemner's kingdom. They go by
3
2I 
22     WORKD AY CHRISTIANITY.
feeling rather than by faith. There must be
growths in grace; not fits and starts, but steady
increase. Growth in grace is the only clear
gain. No winter overtakes it. It is perennial.
Sometimes churches will engage in what they
presumptuously announce beforehand as a "revival work."  They who pretend to be shocked
at the advertising of special gospel themes
from the human side, will venture to advertise
" revival," which is the peculiar work of God!
They will press every force into an effort of a
few days, neglecting family, business, everything else, attempting to condense into the
convenient focus of a week the opportunities
and agencies of a whole round year, deliberately unsettling health of body for the sake of
souls. Great results are programmed for a
certain convenient time. God must serve in
seasons set by men, and according to the
methods made sectarian by men. Then, the
excitement ended, the half a hundred and one
other weeks lapse into a dullness and dumbness which even the secular world might pity.
There is never a necessity for spasmodic strains
or pyrotechnic exhibitions in Christian work;
II 
THE CA4RPENTER.
but always a necessity for earnest, practical,
honest, persistent action in rescuing men from
sin. The true revival spirit is "instant in
season and out of season," is always alert and
active, and claims the summer noon as well as
the winter midnight as the set time to favor
Zion. The gospel is good news in seed-time
and in harvest; out in the field among the
shepherds, at the river side among the purplesellers, on the mountain, on the sea, at the
wedding, at the funeral, at home, or in the
sanctuary. It is like its divine Author, "the
same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." It
has all times- for its own. Christ never showed
impatience nor confused haste in his ministries.
He was always deliberate, tender, persuasive,
and 0, how compassionate! -but calm, firm,
and orderly in his dealings with sinners, recognizing and honoring the physical, mental and
social interests of the people, while specially
pleading for the souls of all. Hence, his fewer
words were spoken with a power that remained. He addressed men as intelligent beings, hingeing salvation on the human will.
He presented religion, not as a system of
23 
24     WORADA Y CHRISTIANITY.
thought, or an impulse of the heart, but as a
believing and consecrated life. The truth that
he preached he was! The gospel that he proclaimed touched and blest men in their places
and in their work. He spent the round of
laborious years as a carpenter, and did not
begin his public ministry until the full-bearded
maturity of thirty. Is there not a lesson of
patience and deliberate method in this?
The fact that our Saviour was a mechanic is
an effectual argument against the popular delusion that greatness is leveled by birth, rank,
or wealth. There is no such thing as caste or
aristocracy among the angels. They are as
willing to watch in a lonely grave as to sing in
the open sky. They do not feel humiliated in
stepping to the lowest round of the ladder that
rests in the dark wilderness, nor elated when
they soar about the eternal throne. They
shout the same exultant strains when a new
world is made and when a lonely wanderer in
this repents and turns to God. It is said of
Peter the Great, the Czar of Russia, that, in
order to familiarize himself with ship-building,
he disguised himself and entered the Dutch 
THE CA!R PE NT 7'.E R.
village of Saardam, and for some time labored
as a common workman, under the assumed
name of Peter Michaeloff. He was well called
Peter the Great, even if for no other act than
that. It is great to be humble. It is greater
for a ruler to get down than for a subject to
get up. One of the greatest things that Abraham Lincoln did while President, was every
morning to black his own boots. The people believe in such men. The Apostle Paul forfeited
none of his dignity, when, occasionally, he
rested from his public ministrations, and resumed, for a change, his former employment of
tent-making.   He  preferred tent-making to
spongeing. So the Saviour evinced real grandeur of person and glory of character, by
laboring as a carpenter. The hands that put
worlds and suns together as a universe, could
put stiles and panels together as a door or
gate. The hands that framed the lofty vault
of the firmament, and frescoed it with golden
stars, could frame the rafters of a poor man's
cottage in Nazareth. The hands that laid the
crystal floors of the eternal city, and spread
them as a sea of glass, could put down the
3*
25 
26      WO R D A Y CHR IS TI NIT Y.
planks of a lowly porch in the hill country of
Judea.
Religion does not altogether consist of devotional exercises, but, as well, of daily work.'
\Ve get a wrong idea of Christianity when we
reduce it all to songs and sermons, to prayers,
solemn faces and ecclesiastical paraphernalia.
It is not especially for Sabbaths and sanctuaries, but also for week days, for shops, for
homes, for mills, for stores, for streets and
fields. Religion is largely an out-door institution. Its Author was born, baptized, transfigured, and crucified under no roof but the
sky. It means diligence in business, serving
the Lord in common vocations and everyday
relations, as well as in consecrated syllables
on set occasions. Jesus was more sublimely
great standing unknown by men at the carpenter's bench in Nazareth, with apron on,
than if he had been surpliced as a priest in
the temple, or arrayed in robes of royalty on
Pilate's throne. He was greater with an adze
in his hand than with a crown on his head.
Christianity allows no aversion toward the 
THE CA RPENTE R.
mechanic. It gives him honorable position.
It invites him to its home, and visits him in his.
Yet how many rich young ladies who would
scorn to associate with the sons and daughters
of our workingmen! The matrimonial problems that busy their brains involve such fractions as lawyers, physicians, large- salaried
preachers, wholesale merchants, millionaires,
and gentlemen of leisure. It would be ridiculous, they think, to throw themselves away on
mechanics! Of course, society has its affinities, and that is well. Education grants it.
Refinement and culture always seek their
level. But we dig down for gold. Too often,
dissipated dandyism is petted and honored,
while intelligent industry is denied a place.
The difference between building houses and
selling houses is not so great that one should
be considered contemptible and the other illustrious. Really, as a business, it makes but
little difference whether a man mends clothes,
bones, pens, houses, laws, or morals.  Work
is work and nothing less; man is man and
nothing more, Suppose some of our fastidi
27
N 
28    WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
ous churchists had met the journeyman joiner
of Nazareth on our streets, would they have
nodded to him? Would they have invited
him to their parlors? Hearing so practical a
preacher say such wonderful things in so plain
a way, would they not have said- are there
not many imitative aristocrats in republican
communities who would now say - "Is not
this the carpenter?"
The church of God is no place to carry
prejudice against labor. Christ himself stands
identified with the toiling poor. He would
have all associated discipleship plain and free,
to bear no higher title than "The Mechanics'
Church "- the church where laborers meet,
mingle, love each other, are loved of all, and
worship God. During the Saviour's ministry
on earth, he preached the gospel through nature, through the trades and occupations of
the times - farming, fishing, herding, merchandizing, vine-dressing, building, and the
"common  people heard him gladly."  The
Nazarene carpenter has left a religion in the
world for the busy masses. It rebukes oppres
i 
THE CARPENTER.
sion, fraud, indolence, tinsel, and caste. The
rich men and rulers may reject the gospel, but
it is glad-tidings to the laboring classes, for it
blesses their bodies, develops their minds, and
saves their souls. " God hath chosen the poor
of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the
kingdom which he hath promised to them that
love him." The pure religion and undefiled
has been perpetuated through humble families. Reformations have sprung from the
pious hearts of common people. The church
of Christ owes no favor to the rich and great
of the earth; but it has a truly noble and
brilliant record in the "short and simple annals of the poor."
"Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not
The faith of One whose walk and word were right,
Who tranquilly in life's great task - field wrought,
And, side by side with evil, never caught
A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white."
Mechanics and workingmen everywhere,
the gospel announces a Saviour at your side.
He meets you in your places of toil. He
29 
30     WORIDADY CHRISTIANITY.
brings salvation to your very doors. The
church of Jesus Christ is for you a congenial
home. Its fellowship is just what you need.
WVill you receive the Nazarene carpenter as
your companion, and accept him as your
God?
z 
THE MASON.
" Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a
precious corner-stone, a sure foundation."-ISAIAH xxviii. I6.
3I 
II 
CHAPTER II.
THE MASON.
REQUENTLY the church of God is
designated in the Holy Scriptures by
IB the figure of a building, stately, symmetrical, and solid. The apostle Paul, addressing the Ephesian believers, recognizes them
as a portion of the compact edifice "built upon
the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone." The doctrine of redemption, ranging
through the Old and the New Testamentsthe Messiah of the prophets and the Christ of
the apostles - is the one sure and safe foundation. The fact of a Redeemer born, anointed,
crucified, buried, risen, and alive forevermore,
underlies the whole superstructure of the
4                                  33
11 
34    WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
church. Peter, a preacher of the new dispensation, quoting the prophecy of Isaiah of the
old dispensation, says, as warrant for his faith,
"Wherefore it is contained in the Scripture,
Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner - stone,
elect, precious, and he that believeth on Him
shall not be confounded." A corner-stone is
the choice and calculated stone that binds two
walls and makes them one. It is the seal that
holds the broad foundation in solid body as a
base. Paul uses the same idea in his language
to the Corinthians, "For other foundation can
no man lay than is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
The prominent thought in the topic is this:
Christ ihe foundation of the Chitrch.  It is a
figure framed from the facts of common observation. It is so familiar and significant that
a child may apprehend it. The prophets and
the apostles go to the mason for an illustration. Many of the great truths of God find
fittest expression through the facts and forms
of ordinary work. The well-known phrase
from Shakespeare, "sermons in stones," originates in the Bible. Indeed, the poets and
philosophers of all ages, more largely than
tk 
THIE MASO. 0V.
may be dreamed, gather their best thoughts
from the pages of Divine inspiration.
A foundation is a beginning. It may be
composed of material older than history. But,
set to a corner-stone, it implies purpose, afterwork, and finish. Masonry is the essential
body of architecture. It puts in place the imperishable. It holds its records in granite and
marble. Its registries are ancient and royal.
However near the Eden-gate its first design
may have been wrought into form, one of its
earliest monuments was that of Jacob in the
desert, when he put a few way-side stones
together as a pillow for his weary head. That
rude masonry was the foundation of a shining
stair on which angels trod in ministries to
man.
There were towers, palaces, and kingly
courts erected in the primal days of old, and
cities and capitols of magnificence appeared
wherever man extended his domain. But, of
all ages and lands, no grander achievement
has masonry ever accomplished than that of
building Solomon's temple. It was erected in
a time of peace, when the Lord had put Israel's
35 
36      VOPXKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
enemies "under the sole of his feet." Hiram,
the king of Tyre, proffered the aid of his subjects, and access to distant forests and quarries, and the stupendous undertaking was begun. The fraternity between Solomon and
Hiram extended to the servants of both; and
on mountain and in mine there was harmony
wherever the laborers wrought. One great
will seemed to control the many thousand
workmen, all duly and well qualified for their
respective  stations.  The  hands  of woodhewers and stone-squarers moved as the one
strong right hand of Solomon the Wise. So
completely did the workmen understand the
plan, and supplement each other's labors, that
there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any
tool of iron heard in the temple while it was
rising, from its foundation to its dome. There
was such accuracy of calculation, such exact
preparation and adjustment of parts, such
strict adherence to the original design, that,
although at such distances measured, shaped
and pointed, the stones and beams of the immense structure were fixed in their places and
ranged into general symmetry almost as noise
i
I 
THE  ilIA SON..
lessly as the petals and stamens of a lily that
opens into bloom in a summer morning. The
unity was so complete that never a jar nor
jostle disturbed the process of the builders.
There is something in such precalculated
order and patient industry as this- the masonry of plan and labor -that symbolizes the
operations of the church of Christ. There is
a distinct and comprehensive work, inspired
by the divine will, ever going on in the human
soul, shaping itself in consecrated life among
people of every name and nation, the wide
world over. The quiet, but sure and steady
rising of Solomon's temple beautifully illustrates the rising of the spiritual temple -  the
dwelling-place of the Most High-upon the
earth There is a charm of variety in unity,
of peace in busy toil, of fraternity in separate
spheres, homes, and occupations. God permits such blessed fellowship of love and reciprocity of confidence in chosen circles here
below. As in the building of the temple there
was a masonry of mechanics, and as in social
life there is a masonry of kindred minds, so in
the universal church of Christ, there is a ma     4*
37 
38    WORIDDAY CtRISTIANITY.
sonry of sympathetic souls.  "All things work
together for good to them that love God."
And love to God implies love to man.
The foundation of a building is its groundwork, its rest, and its support. Take away the
foundation of the building where we worship
or dwell, and all its other portions would fall to
ruins in a moment. Yet the essential part on
which the superstructure stands is hidden. We
see the steps, the walls, the ceiling; but the
most important part is not intended to be seen.
That, in a building, which is for strength and
support, is never essentially visible.
So the Rock of Ages on which the Christian church is built, although concealed from
mortal sight, is its sure and eternal base. This
is why the church has not fallen -why it can
not fall; this is why it has stood, and shall forever stand, the combined attacks of all enemies; this is why the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it. It is founded on a Rock.
Take away from the Christian system the infinite Christ, and the whole fabric must fall.
Where the divinity of Christ is denied the
church totters, scatters, admits the frost and
II
II 
THE MASON 0.
snow to its altars, and becomes a fallen mass
of ruins. The winds of false doctrine howl its
requiem.  But the true foundation-stone, the
Christ of God, the Jesus of the people, is tried.
The eternal One came down to our depths of
misery and want, down to the deepest stratum
of humanity, suffered, died the victim of malignant hate, and all for love! He seemed forsaken of the Father. But he bore the awful
test of tears and blood. He was tried. As
pressure brings out the fragrance of flowersas night brings out the beauty of the stars
so did Christ's suffering reveal his love.
But the foundation has been tried by skeptics and critics in all ages of the Christian era.
From Celsus to Renan, Jesus has stood the attacks of hostile enemies. Some crafty scholars
have tried to argue him away as a myth - an
ideal; but he has a history of solid facts. His
record is ineffaceable. It has left tallying testimony in the world's annals, and in the rocks,
in the circling suns, and in the consciences of
men. Christ has stood well the blows of every
sledge of infidelity; and he is to-day, in person
and in character, real to more thoughtful souls
39 
40     WORKDAY CHRISTIANfITY.
than in any period of the past. Criticism has
only proved the tried stone to be precious.
The commanding edifice of his truth has been
rising and shining in silent increase, in spaciousness and in beauty, as the wonderful temple rose before the busy builders' hands at
Jerusalem in noiseless but positive accession
every day.
The church of Christ consists of all true believers of every land, age, complexion, and
tribe. This structure is bounded by no narrow
ecclesiastical limits. It is greater than any
titled organization. It can not be fully represented by theological views; nor can its census
be taken from denominational statistics. No
sect can justly claim, however correct its orthodoxy or high its standard of spiritual proprieties, to be the only church of Christ. The
New Testament knows of no exclusive community organized as the alone visible church.
No society of kindred believers can arrogate
to itself the ministry, the means of grace, and
the sacraments. The foundation is Christ, the
apostles, and the prophets: Jesus Christ being
the chief, the corner-stone, binding the old and
i
II
I
I 
THE MA SON.
the new dispensations into one. The church
of God is the purchase of his blood - not a
company united under a human head or by a
human bond. The base and boundary of all
believers are broad as the Bible, the Christ,
the apostles and the prophets.  The Lamb's
Book of Life is the only correct register of
believers. The Church of the First Born is
not Roman nor Protestant, Greek nor Anglican, Episcopal nor Presbyterian, Baptist nor
Methodist, although it includes members in all
these branches. It is no national church, for
no nation under heaven is big enough to give
it name. It is nothing less nor lower than the
great multitude which no man can number, of
all kindreds and peoples and tongues. The
foundation laid in Zion is immensely broadbroader than Plymouth Rock-broader than
all the Augsburgs in Germany -broader than
the seven hills by the Tiber. The corner-stone
in Zion is firm enough for an immortal super structure that shall rise above the sun.
"One family we dwell in him:
One church above, beneath,
41 
42    WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY
Though now divided by the stream -
The narrow stream of death.
One army of the living God,
To his command we bow;
Part of the host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now."
Man, the lord of creation, needs shelter
more than any other creature that breathes.
He is the most defenceless of beings. Without a dwelling-place he would be the shortestlived of animals. Without a home, the forces
of nature which he now controls and makes
minister to his comfort, would be his speedy
destroyers. This want of shelter conditions all
other relations in life. It creates the family,
fixes a place of habitation, institutes order,
government, security and strength. Humanity
must have a home. The house is to the family
what the body is to the soul, an indispensable
tabernacle.
The Christian church is the believers' house
for refuge, culture, and repose. As men can
not live upon the earth and be men without a
house of some description, neither can Christians, as such, live anywhere without some
I
t,
i 
THE MASON V.
kind of association and communion. There
exists a necessity for an organized and visible
church. There must be law with love, assimilation, fraternity, mutual support and defence.
There is a sacred affinity of hearts which the
gospel recognizes and promotes. The members of the same family eat from the same
table. So all true Christians have common
access to the heavenly supplies. Tear down
the house and you dissolve the family, and
society would be in ruins. Tear down the
church, and Christianity would perish. A man
can not live a separated life. The laws of his
being imply association and obligation to certain rules and regulations, pre-arranged for
every one born into the race. Nor can a
Christian live a separated life. No disciple
can thrive as an absolute ecclesiastical independent. There is here and there an enthusiasm which ignores church organization
altogether, contemns all formularies, rejects
the ministry, and asks that men be let alone
with their Bibles, to worship in unembarrassed
isolation. Suppose that a house leaks in water
through the roof, or lets in wind through a
43 
44     WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
crevice in the wall, or has some defective timbers, shall the family, imperfectly sheltered, destroy the structure entirely, and take to the
outer rain, the cold, and the storm, each member for himself? Suppose that because the
church is deficient in some part of its superstructure, admits a little frost at times, has a
shelving cornice, a crooked post, a knotty
plank, shall Christians batter it down and disperse, shelterless, single, and alone, to contend
with such a frowning world as this? With
such human nature as ours built in, could perfection be expected? If the church were disorganized, what confusion, sorrow, and loss!
No, we are members one of another, compacted and built on one foundation. Religious
life depends more on the church than some
persons seem willing to admit. Fellowship
overcomes many a difficulty, quickens many a
conviction, expands many a charity, and saves
many a soul. Christ has established a church
-  a building - a visible structure - and  is
himself the corner-stone. The disciples of him
who had not where to lay his head shall never
be unhoused. And this house, founded on a
II
t
I
I 
THE MASO N.
Rock, rises every day a little nearer heaven.
Its design is after the model of our Father's
house with many mansions. Our Babels do not
help us up to God. Our views, our schools, our
opinions, our theologies are only chaff. The
true church is built of living stones. Our
schemes result in confusion and disaster when
the storm comes, and the flood. The Master
Builder alone could lay the foundation-stone
of the temple, and this he did in Zion when he
gave himself to die. God builds immortalities
upon this foundation. He takes many a rough
stone from nature's quarry, and, by the sharp
edges of discipline, shapes it for position on
the Rock, Christ Jesus. Soul by soul, man by
man, the world is brought to Christ, fixed, stablished, settled on him. Men may amuse, en tertain, instruct, excite, astonish; but no one
can build save God alone. All the materials
that masons may quarry, square, polish and
seal upon a false foundation will soon crush
and crumble to the dust. The wise builder
knows upon what his workmanship shall rest.
Its symmetry, its compactness, its fidelity of
joint, its utility, everything depends upon the
5
45 
46     WORKDAY CHRISTIANI TY.
corner-stone. So, exactly, in the church. A
society built upon any man, even upon an
apostle, as an apostle, will, in the pressure of
ages, swerve and fall, however vast the pile;
and the greater its dimensions, the more appalling its overthrow at last. The true church
does not rest on Peter, or Paul, or Luther, or
Calvin, or Wesley, but only, squarely and forever, on Jesus Christ: He is the tried and
precious corner-stone on which all believers
build their lives, of every age, nation, circumstance and name.
The foundation is a stone, true and precious.
The word indicates stability and strength.
Stone is the solidest of earth's building materials. Rock is the deep, underlying support
of the soil, with its forest, meadow, and mansion. It seems strange that any thoughtful
mind should ever look upon Peter, a mortal, a
fallible man, a man of mistakes, cowardice and
impulse, except only when held by the power
of his Lord, as the rock-foundation of the
church.  When, on one occasion, our Saviour
questioned his disciples on their knowledge of
1. 
THE MASON.
his own personality and work, Peter answered,
"Thou  art the Christ, the Son  of the living
God." And Jesus said, "T hou art Peter; and
upon this rock will I build my church." That
is to say, On this rock which thou hast confessed
by heavenly insyiration -upon myself, the Son
of the living God, as thou hast said - upon
this will I build my church. Now, has the
church, since the days of the apostles, been
resting upon Christ or upon men? Some of
Peter's successors, according to the Roman
calendar, have been of doubtful integrity, some
of feeble spiritual pulse, and of influence none
the purest. The present Pope Pius was not
quite sure whether he was infallible, and to be
certain, let fallible men decide! Has the holy
truth of God been built on sand or on granite
-on human characters, changeful as the clouds,
or on Christ, "the same yesterday, and to-day,
and forever? " Oh, not on dying men, not on
broken arches of humanity, but on the precious, permanent corner-stone once laid in
Zion, rests the church to-day! The Rock of
Ages is tried and true.
47 
[WORKDA I' CHRISTIANAITY
"The tempest rages through the earth around,
Tossing the ocean into mountain waves;
Thrones shake and totter as the storm-wind raves,
And mightiest empires tremble at the sound;
What is there stable'mid this wild uproar?
The church heeds not the angry billows' shock;
Thy church, 0 Lord, is founded on a Rock!"
On the stormy southwestern coast of England is a massive column of masonry, resting
upon a desolate island rock, a league or two
from shore. It lifts its brilliant light steadily
as a star along the firmament, to warn the
mariner of breakers, and of the yawning gulfs
below. It is the renowned Eddystone lighthouse. A hundred years ago, the architect
who proposed to erect in such a dreary place
a light- house - a column of stone strong
enough to defy the howling blasts and surging
tides of the sea -was laughed to scorn. The
proposition was treated as the dream of an enthusiast. The people said that no edifice could
possibly be reared in such a place to stand
against the sweep of storm and billow. Yet
the builder, just because of the great danger,
was the more determined to succeed. Al
z
i
48
I
I 
THE AfA S ON..
most alone, he began his work. He cleared
a level on the isolated rock for a foundation.
The corner-stone was tried and laid. Layer
after layer of adamant went down in solid
strata, the structure rising into view only to
excite the ridicule of spectators on the shore.
They smiled contemptuously, and said the first
fierce storm would sweep the masonry away.
The storms came, one after another, and, like
broadsides from a battery, drove the workmen
from their places on the walls. But as the
winds abated, the work went on. Tempests
were but arguments for perfect work. The
howling sea, by its very madness, said, "Build
strong.   Bind the walls."  Stone by stone
the column rose as a monument of patience
and  perseverance, toward  the  clouds.   At
length, after years of labor, the cap-stone was
laid, and soon the cheery beacon-light from
Eddystone danced triumphantly over the
billows.
Even then, opinionated prophets would say,
"Never mind. Only wait. It will fail yet. It
can not stand against the great storms, such
as we have seen. It will yet give way before
5*
49 
~50    IVORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
the tides." In three years one of the great
storms did come. The people on shore shuddered for the fate of the keepers of Eddystone
light-house. It was a night of awful crash and
thunderbolt and roar along the coast. In the
morning after the tempest hundreds of people
hastened to look toward the sea, lest the beautiful column should be missing. Anxious eyes,
through telescopes, turned hopefully and yet
fearfully to the ominous southwest. The universal question of the hour was only, "Has
that majestic structure been swallowed in the
waves?" But how great was the joy of its
friends, how bitter the disappointment of its
enemies, how intense the astonishment of all,
when, through the misty atmosphere of morning, the magnificent, upright proportions of
Eddystone light-house were seen, still bearing
its turrets to the sky, still throwing its radiance
along the restless sea! Not a stone was displaced. Not a ray of light was extinguished.
The foundation stood the test for itself, and for
all the superstructure which it bore. It still
stands. The tornadoes of a hundred years
have assaulted it in vain. It rests on a tried
I
It 
7'Hi~ AIA S     0 2V.
stone -a sure foundation, a "well-formed, true
and trusty" corner-stone.
So stands the church of Jesus Christ to-day.
Established in a time of peace, its corner-stone
bound together Jews and Gentiles into one
broad foundation-square for an enduring edifice. As a light-house built to warn and save
men, it was laughed to scorn at first. The
tempests of persecution well nigh swept the
builders from their work. But they had courageous hearts and brawny arms; they rallied
against opposition, built the stronger, pressed
forward, initiated new builders according to the
simple ritual of the gospel, extended the walls,
and toiled away by faith before the powers
of pagan, infidel, skeptic and philosopher.
And still the glorious structure rises toward
the skies. Its cap-stone shall glitter forever
with the reflected radiance from the very
throne of God. Eighteen centuries have not
accumulated storms enough to disturb the
"well-formed, tried and trusty" corner-stone.
Silently as the temple on Moriah, savingly as
the Eddystone tower of adamant, the church of
Christ rises with life and light for all the world.
5I 
52      W OR(KDAY CHRISTIANITY.
'. On the Rock of Ages founded,
What can shake her sure repose?
With salvation's walls surrounded,
She can smile at all her foes."
If the church were built on anything less
true and precious than the Son of God, the
storms of persecution would have leveled its
walls to the dust of oblivion long years ago.
But the foundation is eternal and immutable
Truth, and the blood of the martyrs is the
cement that sealed the granite facts of all history into the masonry of this spiritual edifice.
It is impregnable and must stand forever. All
its materials are prepared with the gauge and
gavel of truth; every wall is raised to the
plumb-line of rectitude; each duty is squared
by the compass of virtue; the whole structure
is cemented by brotherly love. It is a temple
of living stones-a temple of imperishable
thoughts and deeds, shaped and inlaid to the
will of Him who built the universe; and it is
evermore illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
Christian men and women, if only we could
draw aside the veil that conceals the shining
ones in glory, and send up the question,
k
i. 
THE MA S O N.
"What is the foundation on which you built
while strangers in this wilderness?" they would
answer, as with a bugle shout, "Jesus — Jesus
only!"  Glorified St. Paul would repeat from
the celestial heights what he preached on
earth, "There is no other name given under
heaven or among men whereby they can be
saved." And all the redeemed would answer
in full chorus, Behold the foundation laid in
Zion, the tried and precious corner-stone."
Jesus- Jesus only, Jesus forever! The loudest hallelujahs are in honor of his name.
Sinner, troubled, tempted, downcast, undone
- come, build your life anew in Jesus. Bring
your burdened heart-your restless selfyour all, and learn the secret of real living in
the blessed will of God. Millions, as wretched
and miserable as the vilest outcast who now
breathes the air in infamy, have come, trusted
their all upon this sure foundation, and are
smiling and waving palms in heaven. Come,
that you may be ready to exult in victory over
death, and say, "I know in whom I have believed." You will need a rest and a refuge
then. How soon the then of death is here!
53 
54     WORKIDAY CHRISTIANITY.
The darkness gathers. The storm mutters.
The lightning flashes. Heart and flesh shall
fail. You will soon be overtaken and overcome.  Accept the Saviour now.  The invitation is unqualified, unlimited, universal.
" Lift up th' eternal gates,
The doors wide open fling;
Enter, ye nations that obey
The statutes of your King!"
I
I
I
k 
THE BRICKLAYER.
"Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves.
"Let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labor
therein: and let them not regard vain words."- EXODUS v. 7, 9.
55 
,-0         -N o 
CHAPTER III.
THE BRICKLAYER.
HE   first account of brick-making in
,  the Bible is in the book of Genesis,
where record is made of Noah's descendants journeying from the east and settling on the plains of Shinar.
The tents of the moving masses had hitlherto been their most substantial dwellings;
but now there is to be marked an era of
change in the material of their habitations.
The transient and flimsy fabric of pole and
canvas is to give place to buildings with fixed
foundations. Wandering tribes are about to
assume permanent abodes, and to establish
citizenship and civil relations.
The family now recognizes the community;
society takes its place in the economy of Providence. The land of Shinar, on the rich plains
6
57 
58     WORXKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
that bordered the Euphrates, was beautiful and
luxurious, but destitute of stone; and its soil
yielded no lime for cement, and hence, in the
early history of architecture, there arose a
necessity for invention. The sandy clay was
found to be easily moulded and sun-burnt into
convenient forms that would answer in the
place of stones; and a kind of bitumen or
slime which floated on the ponds and marshes,
was substituted for mortar to bind the bricks
into solid walls.
It was here, of such materials, and by men
theretofore of one language, that the tower
of Babel was attempted, as a refuge against
another flood. The people were not willing
to trust God's word, though stamped with the
rainbow seal, that there should be no more
deluge, but rather inclined to believe in brick
of their own hands' making than in the promise
of the Almighty.
Cities and towers from this time forward
began to dot the post-diluvian world. The
manufacture and laying of bricks were the occupations of multitudes of busy men. There
are still in existence in Egypt both public and
z
I, 
THE BRICKLA YE R.
private buildings erected with the kind of materials described by Moses in the Pentateuch.
The Babylonian bricks were about one foot
square, and three and a half inches thick.
They bore various inscriptions and patterns on
their surface, cast in their moulding. Really
the art of printing might be said to date its
origin in this custom. Old bricks have been
discovered at Nineveh and Thebes bearing the
ovals of a king, and the names and offices of
the priests.
Both sun-dried and kiln-burnt bricks were
common in the treasure cities and granaries
of lower Egypt. The clay from the banks of
the Nile was carried in baskets, thrown into
mass, saturated, and trodden into the proper
temper by the feet of the workmen. It was a
most fatiguing and perilous toil. Nahum refers to the severity of such service in his
prophecy, iii. I4, "Draw thee waters for the
siege, fortify thy strongholds: go into clay, and
tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln."
Wherever there was any difficulty in procuring desirable building stones, the Romans,
in later ages, resorted to the use of bricks.
59 
60     W  ORKDA4 Y CHRISTIANIT7'Y.
The Roman bricks were from eighteen to
thirty inches in length, nine inches in width,
and two and three-fifths inches in thickness,
and originated a style of architecture peculiar
to their shape. Bricks were less used during
the early part of the middle ages; but about
the twelfth century were generally employed
in Northern Italy, and in the adjacent provinces. By the sixteenth century, brick almost
superseded stone, and many of the great
cathedrals and prominent public works of engineering were executed of bricks even where
stone was accessible. In later years the taste
is changing again, and stone-work comes to
the front in fashionable architecture, and bricks
are pressed into rear walls and unpretending
structures.
The various colored bricks, red, yellow, blue
and brown are obtained from clays of peculiar
tints The Philadelphia pressed bricks have
a brilliant red appearance, while the common
and scarcely less beautiful bricks of Milwaukee
are cream-tinged, and in those cities the walls
hold their primitive colors; while in Pittsburgh,
Wheeling, and other places, whatever may have
II
t
k
I
I
I
I 
THE  B R IC KLA YE~R.
been the original hue of houses, they soon become shadowed with the smoke and soot of the
bituminous fires. And so does many a man's
religion, however bright and clear at first,
sometimes become tinged with the prevailing
atmospheres. It were well, however, if the
shade on men gets no thicker than on houses.
There are solid bricks, red and clean at
heart, in the walls of the dimmest old church
utinder the settling smoke. So be it evermore,
beyond our sight, with the varied human portions that compose the temple of the living
God, though oft obscured without and dull
with the dust and grime of business - may
they be pure and clean within!
A large and profitable commerce is carried
on along the upper Ohio River shores, in the
manufacture of fire-bricks - a tile for furnaces
and hearths, prepared of superior material for
which the West Virginia hills are famous, and
burnt in -a porcelain kiln of manifold severer
heat than that of ordinary fires, and free in
their composition from lime, magnesia, and
iron, and matured in their elements to avoid
unequal contraction and expansion by any
6*
6i 
62        VORKDAY CHRISTIA NI TY.
temperature  to which they may  be  subsequently exposed. These fire-bricks are costly
and rare in comparison with the great bulk of
bricks that go into the world's material struc'tures. But they are indispensable for certain
places. They do not warp nor crumble at the
force of the flame - they are true to their
shape and weight in the time of trial.
And there are fire-brick men in the Christian church. They come of royal humble
blood. They are found in obscure families.
They are searched out by Providences, tried
in the furnaces of affliction and fused into condensed power by peculiar agencies, for setting
in prominent places in the great spiritual
temple. Like the three Hebrew children, they
stand the fire. Men who have passed through
intense sorrow and suffering are the truest for
health and for altar tests. Men who have
been disciplined by loss, by ridicule, by persecution, are the men to set in exposed places
where ordinary human nature would yield and
give way.
ILuther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, Campbell,
Stockton - these were fire-brick men when
l 
TIIE B.RICAYL,4YER.
the Bible was assailed by the hot blasts of infidelity - rare, firm, invincible - and they filled
their places well. The church always needs
such men, and always puts them in their
proper stations.
Brick-making in its varied forms, as an art,
is, we see, one of the oldest and most important. It has prominence among the Bible occupations, monuments itself in architecture,
and has honorable mention in history from
the days of the Babylonian captivity, when
poor men toiled in sand and sun as slaves,
until the present day, when freedmen with
their own hands rear colleges for themselves
and children, and all ancient and modern Pharaohs, with their horses and chariots, hounds,
marshals, and all, are swallowed together in
the sea!
Asiatic architecture, among the Chaldees,
produced the brick type, and was the first to
introduce the arch as a distinct element of
construction. This is considered to be the
most difficult part of the art. The cutting of
bricks to a separate bend or angle, and gauging
the circle for strength and beauty, is one of
63 
64      V 0 R KDA Y CHR IS TIA NI T Y.
the intricate tasks of the bricklayer. The pier
and arch compose a distinct system, while the
post and lintel are subjective in their origin to
a symbolized religion. By these forms, variously wrought and ornamented, special deities and hero gods were personated. By this
means the earliest poetry of paganism was embodied. And to this day the temples of idolatry are more for the accommodation of the
eye than the ear; more for sight-seeing than
for hearing instruction.
In architecture there can be traced, as on a
winding stair, an advancement from crudity to
magnificence; and this fact symbolizes the
building of man's moral character, as he rises
from the dreams and transiency of childhood
into the symmetrical solidity of maturer years.
A particular building may be finished, may
become old, may be pointed out as a ruin; but
architecture is the soul of building; it continues from age to age, always approaching
perfection, coming up toward the model of
"the house not made with hands, eternal in
the heavens." So mind is never stationary,
although the body may cease to grow - may
tk
I 
THE B R I CLA LYE R.
begin to crumble down. The soul, immortal,
and aspiring, forever ascends the mystic winding stair, each step leading to some new range
of mental illumination, and to the apprehension
of some undiscovered truth nearer and nearer
to God.
Man rises from the flower-garden of infancy,
where a blooming acre is a world, and a loving
mother is immaculate, to the presence of the
Eternal, to roam at will his universe of suns;
for vision and knowledge shall increase with
the capacities of the ever-enlarging soul.
But there rises a train of thoughts from the
subject which may be profitable in its closer
analogies and suggestions.
The children of Israel are in cruel bondage
to Pharaoh. They are obliged to make brick
for his cities, treasure-vaults, and palaces. Although their toil is arduous and unpaid, they
are humble, patient, and uncomplaining. Hard
work is the only school where persons honorably graduate in lessons of modesty.  Lowly
vocations insure good manners.
The hard-worked Hebrews merely ask for
a brief vacation from labor - a three days'
65 
PVORfDA ~Y CHRIS TIA NITY.
journey to make sacrifice to God, as idolaters
were permitted to do to their gods. The incessant brick-making would cease but for a
short half-week, and then the people, refreshed
and re-united, would resume their labor, and
more than recover their borrowed time.
Pharaoh has already had many cities and
towers erected by these captives' hands, and
it is reasonable to hope for a little holiday
that should be a holy day indeed.  But the
tyrant barbarously denies the request, and
adds insult to injury by calling them idlers
and their worship vanity. The same day
the Israelites requested the favor to worship
God, Pharaoh commanded harder tasks than
ever: "Ye shall no more give the people
straw to  make  brick, as  heretofore.   Let
them go and gather straw for themselves.
Let there more work be laid upon the men,
that they may labor therein; and let them not
regard vain words."
What the use of straw was in making bricks
is not exactly clear. It is conjectured by some
that it was to heat the kilns, by others that it
was a sort of covering to prevent the fresh
66
I 
THE B i C AL A YE R.
moulded bricks from cracking under the violent heating of the sun. This opinion is
strengthened by the record in Vitruvius, who
says that the best bricks were made in the
spring or autumn, that they might dry in an
equal heat, the midsummer solstice being so
intense as to form a crust upon the bricks,
while they would remain moist and soft within.
Still another opinion, and perhaps the correct
one, is that the straw was wrought into the
compact body of the bricks, owing to the alluvial nature of the Nile deposits, from which
they were made. At any rate, the straw was
a necessity, and Pharaoh not only acts the
tyrant, but the fool, in shutting off the supply.
It was to his own interest to furnish straw; but
the common sense of the monarch is overbalanced by his passion. And he is the man who
presumes to call God's words vain words. He
shall learn better when the Red-Sea billows
chill his royal blood and close over his crown;d
brow.
The haughty Egyptian ruler who insists
upon the usual tale of bricks, on time to the
minute, and made to the standard, may early
67 
WORKDAY CHRISTIANITK
learn the proverb, "A drowning man catches
at a straw." He may yet have a want, and
not a means of supply! But while the power
is yet in his hand he drives for more work,
harder work, and withholds the material. This
was the answer to the desire of the people to
make sacrifices to God.
Nothing for the Lord; all for Pharaoh. The
order was enforced. The people scattered
over the land to gather stubble for straw.
The taskmasters hurried them up, whipped
them to their work, demanding the full daily
task to be done, and well done, to the last inch,
and to the very moment.
Such is slavery. It has no mercy. It lashes
as chatteled herds, immortal souls. Darker
and drearier grew the night. But "man's extremity was God's opportunity." The harder
a ball is thrown down the higher it rebounds.
Sometimes the worse the better.  "Who is the
Lord?" says Pharaoh. He has learned who
he is.
- The devil has his Egypt, and his work to be
done, his castles to build, his palaces of revelry
to keep going, his theaters to run, his saloons
t
68
'I
i' 
THE BRICKLA 4YER.
to be sustained. He has enterprises on his
hands immense as pyramids, and he uses men.
He has millions of captives in his hands, moulding his mud, baking his brick, and enlarging
his possessions. And he tyrannizes over his
subjects in cruelest exaction. He is the Shylock greedy for his pound of flesh; and he
takes it at whatever smart. He does cut after
men's flesh! Sinners are the bondmen, making brick for Satan without pay and without
straw, paying over blood, bone, and spirit for
the horrible opportunity-abject, hated, hurried, starving, dying slaves, doing their haughty
master's bidding.
You read of old Pharaoh of Egypt, and your
blood tingles at his heartless dealings with the
Hebrews; your soul leaps up and shouts at
the joy of hating such a tyrant; and you can
hardly choke down your hallelujahs at kis
choking in the sea!  But how is it, this hour,
with your own allegiance? Whom do you
serve? Are you serving God in newness of
life - in Canaanward liberty marching on - or
are you drudging in the sand, scraping after
stubble, and sweltering under the fierce suns
7
69 
70    HWORAKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
of Satan's slavery? Either you are bond, or
you are free.
There is a man who gives his time and
talent to hoarding money, to broadening his
estates, to office-hunting, to fashion, politics,
and pleasure, and becomes so absorbed in
mammon that he can not lift a thought to
heaven; so engaged with self that he feels no
concern for others. That man is a bondman
and a brickmaker for the cruel old Pharaoh,
who still presses the people into his service
brickmaking for the devil is he, without straw,
with his face to the sand, and his back to the
sun.
The word "bond" is applied to the mode of
laying bricks side by side, and one upon another, with a view to secure the greatest
amount of strength with given space and material, and to produce a symmetrical appearance. There are several kinds of bond in the
art, but in each the same precaution is required in distributing the cement, and so fixing the bricks that the joints shall never be
immediately over one another. The workman's phrase is that bricks must "break
t, 
7'HE BRICK~AY ER.
bond." But to break bond in bricklaying is
just the reverse of breaking bond anywhere
else. Here it means to hold fast.
A man, building character, must break bond
as a bricklayer. His thoughts, purposes, and
actions must interlap and interlock, cross over
each other, and be sealed by brotherly love.
He must build in much for strength and little
for show. Comparatively few bricks go into
the street-side wall of a house. The materials
that compose the rear walls, gables, and cross
partitions must be as firmly burnt and carefully laid in as the stenciled rows that face the
thoroughfares. So a man must make himself
strong, not merely in a single trait, or truth,
but build his character through and through
by plumb and level.
He must square himself up heavenward by
well-adjusted proportions of reading, business,
meditation, and religion. His works must
measure up even against his words. He must
provide windows of illumination and doors for
his guests. Some men are built like jails.
They are blind walls and gloom all the way
"p; their eyes are cross-barred with forbidding
7I 
72    RWORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
frowns. If there are emotions within they are
prisoners. Not a solitary tear can escape the
sentinels.
Now, if in the ideal of the apostle Paul, a
man's body is a house, let it be a home and
not a prison for the soul. How beautiful the
house that stands square and level against the
storms, that has ample windows, welcoming —
doors, airy and cheery parlors, music, conversation, books, bounty, fragrance congenial
company, for dweller and visitor and guest!
As a pleasant residence goes into form with
every item of material accurately calculated,
set and sealed into its place, so does a man
build himself into symmetrical character.  It
is no chance-work.  The  more  exact every 
thought, the more refined every impulse, the
more polished every sentiment, the stronger
and safer his manhood, and the more room
for radiance through the windows of his soul.
Many a young man is building his own penitentiary out of the materials God  has put
within his reach for a comely and consecrated
home. People, people, let us build choicefully,
build diligently, build into our life-dwelling the 
THE BRICLLAYEYR.
best materials, make windows, break the
bonds! To the rhythm and cheer of the
poet's* song, let us busily build:
"For the structure that we raise
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.
"Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees
Such things will remain unseen.
"I,et us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house where God may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.
"Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.
"Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place."
* Longfellow.
7*
73 
k
74     WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
The bricklayer accomplishes his work little
by little. Brick by brick the greatest cathedral rises. One brick appears but a trifle; but
such trifles aggregated make temples and
mighty cities. This is God's way in nature.
"First the seed, then the blade, then the ear,
then the full corn in the ear." So human
character is developed. Twenty-one years of
patience and culture are required to put a
ballot in a baby's hand. Faith is not so much
a climax as an expanding agent. It may be
increased in any heart. "0 Lord, increase our
faith!"
In the far South Seas are many broad
islands, with lofty mountains and luxuriant
plains. Tall trees stand laden with delicious
fruits in the groves. Rare birds warble in
the forests.   Crystal  streams  gurgle from
the hills, ripple and dance through the woodlands, and, swelling into rivers along the wide
valleys, push vast currents of fresh water out
into the bitter sea.  New-made worlds are
these islands, and homes of multitudes of
people. But the materials of which they are
built have been collected from ten thousand
t
t
l[
I
I 
THE BRICKLAYER.
marble quarries in the deep, selected atom by
atom, shaped, fixed, and sealed together with
the exactest care and skill. Islands now, but
once they were infinitesimal particles floating
in the salt sea waves. The mechanics that
dived after the materials and brought them to
their places were tiny insects smaller than the
head of a pin. From lime in the water-drops
these little masons and bricklayers put down
the foundation and reared the superstructure
of continents in the agitated seas. What a
craft of architectsare they, uniformed in regalia of crystal, busy for evermore in building
happy homes for men! "Here a little, and
there a little," and the stupendous work is
done.
Thus, Christian, do you build your character. You may be unseen and unknown, but
you are progressing as long as you believe
and keep busy. Your very tears and sighs
go into substantial structure beneath your pilgrimn feet.  A more than coral continent is
shaping as the homeland of your soul. Be
patient. Persevere. Build away in dark or
light. God helps you every hour. Though
75 
76   0VORKDAY CHRISTIA4NITY.
you blunder with your A B C's, though you
be worried with the primer of your discipleship, though you can not begin to read divine
providences now, master the alpihabet, and you
have the key-words to unlock a blessed immortality. The words of sacrifice are not vain
words. Press forward, and the monotonies of
service will modulate, sweeten, and ring out
into the archangelic song of victory over
death, and welcome to your house "not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens!"
"Low on the ground an acorn lies;
Little by little it mounts to the skies;
Shadow and shelter for wandering herds Home for a hundred singing birds.
Little by little the great rock grew,
Long, long ago, when the world was new;
Slowly and silently, stately and free,
Cities of coral under the sea
Little by little are builded - while so
The ages come and the ages go.
"Little by little all things are done;
So are the crowns of the faithful won;
So is heaven in our hearts begun,
With work and weeping and laughter and play;
I 
THE BRICKLAYER.
Little by little the longest day,
And the longest life are passing awayPassing without return- while so
Our spring-time comes, and our winters go."
From the abundant materials which God
has placed within our reach, let us build ourselves up into eternity. Upon the Rock of
Ages let us build. A thought, a word, an act,
hopes, tears, and joys - all these on Christ we
build, breaking bonds, little by little, all the
time. By breaths, songs, charities, prayers,
deeds, let us build up character into the very
heavens!
77 
I
4
i
k 
THE FOUNDER.
" As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into
the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to melt it: so will
I gather you in mine anger and in my fury, and I will leave you
there and melt you."-EZEKIEL xxii. 20.
79 
I
f 
CHAPTER IV.
THE FOUNDER.
HE  furnace figure of Ezekiel  is a
striking example of divine instruction
adopting the phraseology of worldly
work. The secular is seized upon to illustrate
the spiritual. It is the common method of the
Scriptures to explain the unseen by the seen;
things remote by things at hand; the heavenly
messages and meanings by current forms and
movements. The Bible is a book of objectlessons for the eye, the ear, the imagination.
The poetry of inspiration is radiant with vivid
pictures. They glitter in unfading beauty
from Genesis to Revelation. They are very
old and very new. The prophecies, especially,
glow with portraitures of things sublime, familiar, and significant. The imagery of Ezekiel
is of matchless range and exhaustless beauty.
8                                  8
8
8I 
82    WORKDA Y CHRIS TIAN iTY.
The process of founding or moulding metals
into form is implied in the language of the
prophet. He was not so wrapt in celestial
theories as to be indifferent to earthly sights
and sounds. The religion he represented
did not express itself in abstract monotonies.
God used Ezekiel as a man acquainted with
common things, mingling with common people;
and not as an airy stranger, half let down to
earth and half gone up to heaven- talking in
a foreign tongue and a lofty tone, distantly, indistinctly, professionally, as a mysterious being —less than an angel, and yet more than a
man. He talked about furnaces and metals.
He drew analogies from ordinary occupations;
and under inspiration he moulded many model
thoughts and themes for the minor and plainer
prophets of all subsequent ages.
It is the business of the founder to take advantage of a common law - that by which
water seeks its level, conforming to the shape
of the vessel into which it pours. It first finds
the bottom, then spreads, rises, touches outmost verges, until every accessible vacuum is
reached. The bulk of water is then a perfect
I
i
c
i 
TIHE F O U~DE E R.
model of the interior of the vessel.  Let it
freeze, and the solid body of ice be extracted,
and every feature of the mould, faults and all,
is accurately preserved. So is it the businessof the Christian teacher to take advantage of
the common law of resemblances and analogies, and to illustrate truth and duty by pictures
from every-day observation. The prophets so
instructed the people, and were understood;
and the apostles followed their example- an
example made emphatic by the methods of
Christ himself- and were never accused of
secularizing holy things, except by the Pharisees, who were too religious to allow a few
heads of wheat to be rubbed out of its chaff by
hungry men on the Sabbath, and yet not too
religious to bruise people to death with stones
for entertaining opinions at variance with their
own, any day and anywhere.
Founding embraces all the operations of reducing ores and smelting and casting metals,
from coin to cannon, from printing-types to
cylinders and bells. The art is one of the
most ancient. Tubal Cain was skilled in
working metals. It is evident that copper
83 
84    WORI(DAY CH-RSTIANITY.
was, if not the only metal known for a long
period, the most abundant. It was universally
used for ornaments, utensils, and arms. Iron
was of later discovery. But the very earliest
nations successfully wrought in copper, brass,
and gold. It is said that the Egyptians had
the art of tempering brass, and giving it sharp
and lasting edge in articles of cutlery. This
statement is corroborated by the fact that
wherever the word "steel" occurs in our version of the Bible, the original is brass. What
we know as steel is called "northern iron" by
Jeremiah. One of the first references to the
subject in the writings of Moses is where
Abraham's servant gave Rebecca a golden
ear-ring of half a shekel weight, and two
bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight
of gold. In making the presentation to the
beautiful and courteous damsel at the well, he
referred to his master's riches, especially mentioning silver and gold. The various passages
in the Old Testament touching this subject
prove an extensive employment in metals in
the times of Jacob and Joseph; and the fact
that they were used for luxury and ornament
I
k 
THE FO UNDER.
argues that considerable progress had been
attained in the art. The ancient sculptors
were workers in metal. Bezaleel, of the tribe
of Judah, a shrewd and skillful genius in his
day, devised elaborate works of gold, silver,
and brass. He, Aholiab, of the tribe of Dan,
and others of similar tastes and training, were
the artists who executed the ornate work of
the Tabernacle.
Among the Egyptians the use of metal
dates from the earliest historical records. In
the excavations at Nineveh, various bronze
ornaments, which had evidently been cast in a
mould, were found; and several specimens of
these curiosities may to-day be seen in the
British Museum. The Israelites cast a molten
calf as a god, while Moses communed with the
Lord on the mount. The artificer engaged by
Solomon to decorate the temple, a thousand
years before the birth of Christ, was Hiram, a
native of Tyre, "cunning to work all works of
brass." History testifies that some of these
productions were cast, and that some were
wrought.
In the time of Homer, there were arms,
8*
I
85 
86    WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY
statues, and ornaments made in Greece. The
first and most simple process seems to have
been hammer-work. Lumps of the material
were beaten into the required form; and if the
work projected were too large to be forged of
one piece, several were shaped, and all fitted
and fastened together by keys. Herodotus
distinguishes between the hammer - wrought
metals and those that were cast. In the
time of Moses, the lawgiver commanded that
the brazen censers should be beaten out into
plates for covering the Tabernacle.
It is difficult to determine when the art of
casting metal in moulds was first employed.
Its progress was gradual. Simple as the process appears to us, it has been developed by
successive inventions. At first the metal was
melted into a mass, and then beaten out into
proposed shapes. The next step in discovery
was to melt and mould the material into form
leaving the statue solid. The third method or
step in discovery was to cast in a mould, with
a center-piece or core, by which to limit the
thickness of the metal. The last of these distinct stages was known at a period some five
~\ 
THE F O -UND E R.
hundred years before the Christian era; and
there has been no radical improvement in the
art since that time.
The ancient Romans were inferior to the
Greeks in works of art. Zenodorus, however,
imitating the productions of Greece, executed
some splendid designs in the time of Nero,
among which was a colossal statue of the emperor, one hundred and ten feet high. But
Pliny, who lived in the reign of Vespasian, records the decline of the art, and a sad lack of
skill and ambition among the artists of his
time. Furnaces of considerable size were
built in the days of Queen Elizabeth; and
until the seventeenth century the metals of
Britain were smelted by wood fuel, but the
demand becoming so great, the forests were
exhausted. It was only after many patient
experiments that coal was brought into use.
The increase of civilization augmenting the
commerce, the manufacture of iron in its various forms has at length become an immense
business, not only in Great Britian, but also in
the United States.  Pittsburgh is known the
world over as the "Iron City." About two
l
87 
88     WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
sevenths of all the iron consumed in this
country is manufactured here. There are upward of thirty large iron-mills, working up, on
an average, some twelve hundred tons of
metal every day.  Besides these, there are
eight steel and two copper-mills of first-class
capacity, employed both day and night. The
work turned out from these establishments
goes into a thousand uses in as many different
localities, near and far, substantial testimonials
of the genius and industry of this city. There
is a single mill in this vicinity that turns out
more iron than all the mills of England a hundred years ago.
These mills and foundries furnish direct employment to some fifteen thousand men, besides business of a kindred nature to more
than twice as many more. These people are
our neighbors and fellow-citizens, an honor to
the State, and eminently deserving of Christian
sympathies and acquaintance. There should be
a better understanding between the churches
and the mills. There are vacant pews enough
in Pittsburgh to accommodate thousands of
these workingmen, who may never have been
I
k
I
i 
TIE F 0 UND E R.
visited in all the years of their toil, and personally invited to a seat, and assured a welcome in the sanctuary. As Protestants, we are
sadly slower in this legitimate work than our
industrious and devoted neighbors-the Roman Catholics. We may learn the very first
lessons of evangelization from those whom we
are wont to criticise and avoid. There is no
cathedral with its tower and cross so great
that it does not afford gospel and grace to the
poorest of the poor.
These stalwart men, who handle the ore and
shape it for the market, are among the noblest
specimens of the human race. They have
busy brains and large hearts to match their
brawniness of arm and giant grip of hand.
They are the thorough men. Visitors, in looking through the mills, are sometimes inclined
to pity the operatives as drudges, forcing in
time for pay, and to consider such work degrading to manhood. The smoke and the
grime of the business, to persons who are in
the habit of judging men by surface indica tions, often deceive a casual observer. These
iron-workers care but little for show; they
89 
90     WORKDAY CtHRISTIANXITY.
hang out no feathery signs; they make no
apologies for personal appearance; they are
never ashamed of blackened faces, or singed
and sooty garments. With bared breast and
arms, they have a firmer tread and a more
royal appearance among the flying cinders
and circling sparks than kings who walk on
marble floors, and conceal their emaciated
bodies  under  the  cover  of regalia.   Out
through a rough exterior they show you an
honest eye -index of a great heart, beating
strong and well with the pulses of right living.
Such men get the real sweetness out of bread,
because they earn it; and the real refreshing
out of sleep, because they deserve it.  God
pays the workingman a premium over and
above his daily wages. Life to such men is
dear, earnest, and full. There is more of
heaven in the mills where these men work,
and in the homes where these men rest, than
in all the palaces of idle aristocracy the broad
world over. They are producers, and not
mere consumers. God never made a man
and put fingers on his hands with the expectation that he should put them in his pockets, or
1
x 
THE F O UNDR ER.
in somebody else's pockets, and live like a
leech, boring for others' blood, instead of
making his own; and whenever men eat and
wear more than they honestly earn, however
showy and smart they may appear, they have
the thief's remorse without the thief's excuse.
Men with contented minds, pure hearts, and
sound bodies are the happy men. The true
nobility of this country do not bear titles, nor
perpetuate greatness in the orthography of a
name. They have their honor always warm
and fresh in their busy blood; and it has unconscious perpetuation in the life-purposes and
every-day habits of children and children's
children.
The capitalist, too, has his place in the fraternity of toil. The man who invests his
money in building mills, and vitalizing them
with machinery, giving employment to laborers, managing vast financial economies, spending time and talent in providing implements
for subduing the wilderness and making it to
rejoice and blossom as the rose, is a public
benefactor. He is tilling the soil, building
homes, educating the masses, ornamenting the
9I 
92     WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
world, and may, in his line, be as much a
prophet of God as an Elijah fed by the ravens,
or a John the Baptist eating locusts and wild
honey. It is such inventive and adventurous
men that this world needs; and when their
means are held for such use, and their minds
absorbed in such utilitarian enterprise, their
percentage of gain, even if large, is fair in this
land of levels where the least may become the
greatest. The church needs business-men as
well as preachers - workers, indeed, rather
more than talkers. The gospel has no controversy with the rich man whose conscience
enlarges with his expanding purse. It censures only the covetous, the selfish -the man
whose eye would spoil a neighbor's home to
fill out some unrounded corner of his own
possession-the man who starts up and half
swears in his sleep at the possible unbottoming of iron safes  the man  of wealth who
seems hardly to possess anything but suspicion of his fellow-men -the man whose gains
'only serve as swallows of salt-water to his
thirsty throat-the miser.
It 
TE F 0 UND E R.
"There walks Judas, he who sold
Yesterday his Lord for gold;
Sold God's presence in his heart
For a proud step in the mart.
He hath dealt in flesh and blood;
At the bank his name is good;
At the bank -and only there
'T is a marketable ware."
We have found a more satisfactory definition of Ezekiel's words amid the din and dust
of a Pittsburgh rolling-mill and foundry than
ever we did among the musty commentaries
of the library. "As they gather silver, and
brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into the
midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it;
so will I gather you in mine anger and in my
fury, and I will leave you there and melt you."
The first thing is to gather. These mills in
Pennsylvania reach, by well-adjusted agencies,
to the shores of Lake Superior, and to the
mountains of Missouri for ore. It is gathered.
But, as dug from the earth, it is nmixed with
worthless substance. The metal and the dross
must be separated. This is done only by intense heat, refining and fusing the particles of
9
93
, 
94     WORKDAY CHRtISTIANITY.
ore, and consuming all else. The next operation after that of gathering is that of the blast
furnace. Nothing but fire of intensely aggravated flame will dissolve the flinty partnership
of centuries. This accomplished, the ore is
first called metal. Still its form is crude and
rough. It is, in this state, as useless as ever.
It is nothing but so much uncomely avoirdupois. Its value is only in its possibilities. If
this were the end, the material might as well
have remained in the depths of the distant
mines.
God, by the prophet, speaks of Israel as of
metal mixed with dross. Men are easily alloyed. The favored people have become so
earthly by long contact with mammon that
they exhibit a bulk of worthless weight. The
prophet shows by this figure how the Israelites
have degenerated, from a state of comparative purity in David's time, to a condition of
grossness which nothing milder than furnacefire would correct. When the kingdom was
divided, and human ambitions crept into the
room of loyalty to heaven, the original head
of gold became as armns of silver,  But now,
I( 
7THE FO UND E R.
in the later day of Ezekiel, it has deteriorated
into the darker and baser metal; and its ring
and richness have become obscured. The
prophet grades the people as brass, tin, iron,and lead- as much as to say: impudence,
hypocrisy, cruelty, and stupidity. The religion
of men had been well-nigh lost in the original
clay from whence humanity sprang. But there
is a good in all this rubbish which may yet be
developed. The people, gross, scattered, and
foreign, may be gathered into Jerusalem, the
holy, central city.  There  is an  appointed
agency by which to reach and save that which
is true, and to consume that which is false.
The gathering of the people from the distances is like the gathering of various metals
and ores with various percentages of dross,
within a crucible, to be melted down and renatured, with all the recrement consumed by
the process. They are in the city, besieged by
hostile forces, swift and terrible as the winds.
Jerusalem is one great blast-fuirnace: the wrath
of Almighty God is let in upon the accumulated masses for their good. By the raging
fire of persecution, self-esteem and sect-alloy
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V0 ORKDA Y CHRISTI4ANITY.
are destroyed, mere human philosophies utterly dissolved, the rust and rubbish of ritualism blown away as ashes, and the inwardly
pure and precious gems of truth made the
more brilliant by the test. This seems to have
been the teaching of the prophet; and history
sanctions the inference. True it is, that Christians are always improved in temper by severe
experience -
"Like purest gold, that, tortured in the furnace,
Comes out more bright, and brings forth all its weight."
The process that refines the genuine believer removes the dross - pretender out of
sight. Such heats are necessities to purify the
church. They are kindled in organizations
and in individuals. They consume caste. They
make smoke of fashion, and cinder of aristocracy. It is the way by which God destroys
sin, and burnishes virtue. It is the only way
to get at the true metal. The judgments of
heaven are spoken of as "furnaces of affliction," and as "refiners' fires."  This puts the
sublimest meaning in the words of St. Paul,
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THE F 0 UND E R.
"For we know that if our earthly house of this
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;"
and "we know that these light afflictions, which
are but for a moment, shall work out for us a
far more exceeding and eternal weight of
glory!"
"Thus in God's furnaces are his people tried;
Thrice happy they who to the end endure.
But who the fiery trial may abide?
Who from the crucible come forth so pure
That Christ, whose eyes of flame the depths can span,
May see His perfect image in the man?
"Not with an evanescent glimpse alone,
As in that mirror the refiner's face;
But stamped with heaven's broad signet there be shown
Immanuel's features, full of truth and grace;
And round that seal of love this motto be:
'Not for a moment - but eternity!'"
There is a Christian who has been prospered in business beyond his expectations.
He becomes engrossed in the world for its
own heavy sake. His heart begins to knit
itself, fiber by fiber, to money, to estate, to
9*
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98      W  OR KD  Y CHR ISTIA NITY.
position. Its pulse-blood beats out into carnal
extremities to the sore chilling of the soul.
He neglects his prayers at home to be in time
at the exchange. He permits his Bible to accumulate dust, while his ledgers are posted
and duplicated every day. Religion gets to
be vague and vain -a matter of convenience
or a nothing; and business is all and in all.
Christ appears but a myth, and heaven a childhood's half-forgotten dream; while the bank
becomes a shrine of devotion where the vows
are paid in all weather, and the mill and store
sufficient paradise. To this man there is more
music in the rattle of iron wagoned to market
over the cobbly streets than in the loftiest
hymn of praise in Zion's courts. Christianity
is alloyed with mammon. The old clay Adam
gets the better of the new creature. The
once heavenly - minded man becomes earthy,
groveling and dull. But let the Bible tell it:
"How is the fine gold become dim!  How is
the most fine gold changed! The stones of
the sanctuary are poured out in the top of
every street.   The  precious sons of Zion,
comparable to fine gold, how are they es
I 
THE F 0 UND E R.
teemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the
hands of the potter!" Sad indeed, when a
man so neglects his Christ and his soul —
when a church becomes worldly in its heart
and compromising in its policy! Then God's
way of renovating and renewing is by the
flames. He saves men by fire. Let us heed
well the lesson, and look to our privileges, our
influences, and our solemn obligations. If we
are sluggish and heavy, like lead; cruel and
noisy, like iron; impertinent and proud, like
brass; deceitful and glossy, like tin; corrupt
and gross, like the wild ore of the mountains,
God will kindle a flame of fury upon us and
melt us into compacter and better substance,
consume our follies, and reduce our boasted
sects  and selves to  something useful and
comely, though it be obscure and small.
"Keen are the pangs
Advancement often brings. To be secure,
Be humble. To be happy, be content."
In visiting the mills you may have observed
that the iron is hurried through the rollers
while at white heat.  As soon as the blue chill
..  Is
99 
WORKDA Y CHRISTIANITY.
of the air begins to creep over it, the particles
yield unwillingly to the pressure. The colder
the iron, the harder to forge and shape And
so with men. The very best quality, as well
as the worst, of human nature, is more susceptible to influence when warm. That is the
time for impressions    Men  in affliction
men made tender by sorrow and bereavement-men  made  responsive by courtesy
and kindness- men made sympathetic by
brotherly love - (for all these things are as
coals of fire)- these are the men more easily
Christianized than men tempered and cooled
to ordinary atmospheres. If you would wield
power over others, you must feel real interest
in them; you must be able to impart warmth
into their affections. If you introduce religion
to persons who are cold, hard, and blue as flat
iron in the warehouses-if you strike them
with piety, as if you slung a sledge, you will
most likely get nothing but resistance and
clangor for your pains. God's Spirit alone
can prepare the mind for truth; and it is the
Christian's business to study circumstances, to
watch for conditions, and to "strike while the
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TIHE F 0 UND E R.
iron is hot." But, as in iron-making, there
must be gathering, and adjusting, and warming, with patience, and industry, and perseverance, before permanent results are secured.
The Christian worker should be "instant, in
season and out of season," - awake and alert
the whole year round. It is a lamentable state
of affairs in the business world when the mills
stand idle for weeks and months at a time.
It is ominous of bankruptcy among capitalists,
and of distress among the operatives. And
so it is a subject of sorrow among the angels,
when the church is intermittent and irregular in its operations.  Many of our churches,
active and efficient in the mid-winter, look all
summer as if there were a strike among the
members. The fires die out. The laborers
lapse into indifference, and the work of salvation ceases. And this argues unanswerably in
favor of Satan's kingdom: for suspension always precedes bankruptcy, poverty, and want.
Not that we would discourage the most earnest efforts to save sinners do we thus speak,
but to emphasize the fact that the New Testa ment churches are organized to keep their
I0I 
IVORKDA,Y CHRIST1IANIT7Y.
me/Sods moz,izzg always and everyw,here.  Sermons, prayers, exhortations, and hallelujahs
over returning prodigals, should sound on in
ever-increasing tones until lost in the trumpet
blasts of the judgment day.
In the process of casting iron in moulds,
there are several conditions essential to success. A peculiar kind of sand is used, of certain moisture, grain, and temperature. In this
the pattern leaves an exact impression of itself. Then when the metal is poured into the
vacuum made by removing the pattern, there
must be a way of escape for the air before
the accumulating liquid.  Without this precaution there would be a "blow," involving a
loss of time and labor. Air must not occupy
the room of iron. These unlike substances
can not be forced into affinity. Sometimes
such an invisible trifle as a puff of air destroys
the largest casting. There must be vigilant
attention given to every corner of the mould.
With these conditions observed, there will be
produced an exact imitation of the pattern. The
character of the casting depends not only upon
the model, but upon the manner of using it.
I02
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I 
THE FO UNDER.
There is an apt illustration in this of the
method by which Christianity is formed in individuals and in communities. Certain primary conditions are required. There is such
a thing in the economy of grace as a prejbaralion for the gospel in human hearts. The
model of Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son
of God, must be there, with every feature imaged-the complete pattern of thought, and
purpose, and life. The airy vanities of the
world and empty ideals of the schools must
be excluded. The likeness of Jesus in the
soul can not be matured while any impediment is in the way. The divine Spirit must
have free course to be glorified. There is a
law in the gospel which forbids the coalescing
of unlike principles in the human soul. A
single clinging passion, or prejudice, or secret
sin, would mar the beauty of holiness, and
make worthless all attempted forms of religion. Christ and Beelzebub make no partnerships. They are as opposite in nature as
metal and air. This is why so many half-inearnest professors in the church, like ill-prepared receptacles at the foundry, blow out as
I03
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104    WORKDA Y CHR ISTIA NI T Y,
fussy failures, and lie around the thresholds as
rubbish until melted over again. Some religionists are moulded from the rough almost
every year. The Prince of the Power of the
Air interferes with many a conversion. He
puts a clod of earth or a puff of air in the
way of a man's spiritual development-a
farm, a mansion, or a mill; a bank account, a
bond, or a mortgage takes the room that belongs to God. Christ will have the whole
heart or none. He is a perfect model of life.
He must have imitation and affiliation in
every feature, grace, and trait of character.
The warm, loving heart conforms to Him.
But the chill and harsh, the hard and haughty
man is none of Christ's.
There is but o;ze model for all Christians, of
every age, and tribe, and tongue, in heaven
and in earth, in time and in eternity, the same.
Jesus, and Jesus only! The sects have human
patterns. They mould men after Luther, Cal vin, Wesley, and lesser and later models still.
-They patent the models, and cast the creed brands in front places on human souls, as
inventors do their names on metal wares
1
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THE F 0 UND E R.
There is incessant change of dogma, view, and
opinion in theology, and these changes are
formulated by doctors of divinity into patterns
by which thinking freemen of God are to be
cast and recast as so much running liquid!
Converts are taken when warm in the love of
God, and when ready to be Christians in and
out and through and through, and run into
Methodists, into Presbyterians, into Baptists,
or into some  other narrow shape, at great
waste of soul and strength. Thenceforward,
too often, by some strange chill, they are content with the lesser name than that of Christ,
and with the smaller fraternity than that which
girdles the immortal brotherhood of believers.
The spirit which prevails in a sister church,*
well named, if for no other excellence than
this, "Christ's church," is the spirit of the
gospel. Sinners are brought to the Saviour
and permitted, and even advised, to select
whatever branch of the church may be most
congenial and convenient. Members of other
denominations have been made happy at that
* This reference is to a Methodist Episcopal Church of large and
active membership, under the pastoral charge of the Rev. J. A. Gray.
I0
I05 
io6    IWVO R AD  Y CHR ISTIANzITY.
favored altar, and have gone back to their respective churches to work for the salvation of
kindred souls. Wherever this charity obtains,
the Kingdom of Heaven will be established.
We do not disparage the ecclesiastical organizations. They are a necessary means. But
they are not the end. Let them multiply and
extend; but for the soul's sake and for
Christ's sake, let them all conform to the
image and will of Him who is all and in all,
blessed forevermore. Let the denominations
at least fit together like the various parts of an
engine made by one common process, of one
common material, cast separately, if need be,
but to be supplemented,lpart to its counterpart,
and keyed into one mighty agent, under God,
for the overthrow of Satan and his kingdom,
and not as so many distinct cannon, to turn
their thundering mouths against each other in
exterminating war.
If we must have the denominations, they
ought to be brought into a tenderer and more
helpful sympathy. They ought to be held together, if this be possible, in a more substantial
unity. At no point and by no means ought
I
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TIlE F 0 UND E W.
there to be strife and friction between these
"branches" of the family of Jesus.  So should
the love of Christ overcome all their differences of creed and diversities of mere opinion
as to make them one at least in practical
effort and constant purpose to save souls.
"Were love in these, the world's last doting years,
As frequent as the want of it appears,
The churches warm-ed, they would no longer hold
Such frozen figures, stiff as they are cold;
Relentless forms would lose their power, or cease,
And e'en the dipped and sprinkled live in peace;
Each heart would quit its prison in the breast,
And flow in free communion with the rest."
I07 
I 
THE MACHINIST.
" I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty
inventions."-PROVERBS viii. 12.
"O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made
them all: the earth is full of thy riches."- PsALM civ. 24.
Io*
IO9 
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"'41)1))                I
CHAPTER V.
THE MACHINIST.
,   IF  you were  to visit a certain New
X11 England city, you would find, among
;I many other interesting objects, a carpet-loom, so constructed as to weave a pattern
composed of a dozen different colors, selecting and using the materials in exactly calculated proportions. As you watched the shuttles
flying and the heddles dancing, it would seem
as if the variously tinted threads were chosen
and adjusted by the fingers of an intelligent
being. The unerring certainty by which every
shade of the woof is thrown into picture
through the warp, would make it difficult to
get rid of the impression that the supplejointed iron were not endowed with thought.
To me the spectacle was one of bewilderment
and wonder. At first, the complexity of the
III 
112  TVORKDA Y CHRISTIAzNITY.
thing was incomprehensible. And yet it was
the invention of some brother human brain,
and the workmanship of some kindred right
hand in the race. Its plan and its particulars
were soon apparent. Watching it weave for
a while, its marvelousness gradually vanished.
At first its designer appeared as a being
almost great enough to be worshiped; but
when the mind mastered the scope and use of
the machine, the feeling was reduced to admiration and respect, for the loom was measurable by common finite understanding. The
inventor was a genius, but his work was human. It might, any day, be superseded by
another of greater capacity and elegance.
But how different our emotions when we
come to study God's works in nature! Here
is infinity, inviting investigation, and yet always stretching beyond our apprehension.
God, as we have already contemplated him in
these pages,* is a worker, shaping his purposes into tangible forms, for special results;
but his designs and doings outrange our highest conceptions. The more our mental powers
* The Carpenter.
Iy 
THE ANA CHINIS T.
are elicited, and the more our experience
is enlarged, the more does the field of possible knowledge expand, blooming, inviting, and
beautiful before us. The larger our attainments, the less, relatively, do we  seem to
know. We see the evident marks of an Almighty intellect; but the great Original himself keeps evermore behind his handiwork,
and appeals alone for love to our highest
faculty -that of faith. His wisdom dwells
with prudence. It solicits investigation; and
the study gives men good heads and dextrous fingers. The Bible is a great incentive
to all discovery. It has done more for true
science than all the logic of worldly philosophy, policies of statesmanship, or victories of
armies since the world began. The Scriptures
record a progress of civilization by which the
wilderness is made fruitful, deserts transformed into gardens, the elements of nature
subdued and controlled, and the kingdom of
darkness lighted up into the kingdom of God's
Son. The church of Christ to-day, has the
arts and sciences as her right-hand agencies
of pioneering into remotest paganism. Printed
I I3 
II4  TVO~KDA Y CHRISTIANITY.
Bibles, locomotives, and lines of telegraph, are
the new heralds of the Christianity which saves
the masses.
From the Eden days until the time when
Noah was instructed to build the ark, we have
no account of any invention or handicraft by
other than members of the family of Cain.
The line of Seth is specially favored in chronology, the names, ages, and relations being
kept distinct and definite. By this discrimination we have the data of the past, and may
thereby trace the lineage of the Messiah.
Any deviation from this peculiarity in the
Sethite records is merely to note religious
phases and hopes. But the Cainite registry is
secular. This is why so many inventions are
ascribed to wicked men. Cain, after his exile,
built a city, and called it after his son Enoch.
This implies a fact sometimes overlooked:
that tent- life succeeded settled habitations.
The Darwinian development theory finds a difficult problem here. The very first-born man in
the race has designing genius. He builds a
city. Tents had their origin several generations later. Builded cities antedate nomadic 
THE A2S CHIJA7ITS T.
life by a thousand years. If there was a gradual progression it was backwards!  Darwins,
nor any other unscriptural speculators, are able,
with all their show of learning, to explain the
records of the primeval days. Human civilization has not been a growth out of a savage
state. Eden was a paradise, and not a wilderness.
As to the style of architecture which characterized the first city, we can infer only
crudeness and simplicity, for tools were few.
Walls and roofs were put together principally
with no other implements than the hands and
feet. The first houses were necessarily plain
and poor. They were erected for comfort
rather than for ornament. Lamech, the fifth
descendant from Cain, had two wives at the
same time, and of course his troubles. But,
withal, he had an inventive genius for poetry
and music. Some sort of necessity, no doubt,
aided his gift to practical results; for a man
with two help-mates on his hands at once,
would require a surplus of words and tones
and winning ways to counteract domestic jars!
"Necessity is the mother of invention," is a
II5 
I I6    WORKDAY CHRISTIA NITY.
very ancient sentiment. Lamech's son, TubalCain, inherited the talent, but turned it to more
substantial uses.   He  was  the famous  inventor in works of brass and iron. Jubal,
his half-brother, imitating the tact and taste of
his father, discovered the art of giving musical
sounds by instruments.
"Jubal, the prince of song, (in youth unknown,)
Retired to commune with his harp alone;
For still he nursed it like a secret thought,
Long - cherished, and to late perfection wrought And still with cunning hand and curious ear,
Enriched, ennobled, and enlarged its sphere,
Till he had compassed in that magic round,
A soul of harmony, a heaven of sound."
Whatever the extent of Tubal-Cain's inventions in metal, he stands as the first machinist
in the annals of history. Some ancient nations even worshiped him under a name that
signified "artificer in fire!"
The word machine applies to any instrument or organization by which power is made
effective -to any thing, or system of things,
by which specific results are accomplished.
The primary object is to reduce the outlay of 
TIlE MA CHINI.S T.
manual labor, and increase the amount  of
good to man. A machine may be composed
of material parts, as in an engine; or it may
consist of principles and laws, as in a code of
government. The antediluvians had a knowledge of arts, and attained to degrees of considerable civilization. The workmen engaged
by Noah built a large and eminently sea-worthy vessel; and such an enterprise implied
tools and appliances of no mean order. The
arts of useful life which were lost in the scat
tering of the tribes were gradually recovered.
There were re-inventions under similar circumstances as those by which they were originated. For nation after nation rose and fell.
Reverses in history have been hindrances to
art. The darkest ages were not the earliest
ages. Human nature waned by reason of
idleness, indulgence, and passion. The sharp
and disciplinary necessities of the primal days
were life's best incentives. But later, by indolence, the blood of the race coagulated, and
there was constant paralysis of power. We
boast of this age of invention in which we live;
we indulge the dream that there never was
II
II7 
II8    WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
such a time - that there never breathed such
a brilliant people as ourselves - that there
never were such wonderful works wrought
out by human hands as now. We may overestimate the present because of our ignorance
of the past. There are, away back beyond
the midnight of the dark ages - beyond the
frontispiece and blank pages of the world's
popular history,-records and monuments of
a civilization three and four thousand years
old - of nations scarcely less advanced than
our own. There were arts and economies
then of which we are ignorant to-day. There
were productions of beauty and utility which
modern skill has not equaled, or approached.
They who thought and worked out their designs in those days were conversant with laws
in nature and in science, which are profound
secrets to us.   Indeed many  of our most
wonderful inventions are but revivals of old
things of almost thirty centuries ago. And
this makes stronger argument still against the
"development theory" of Darwin and other
popular philosophers. A very ancient Scripture tells it better than the most learned 
TIE M~A4 CHINITS T.
professor in any of the schools: "The thing
that hath been is that which shall be; and
that which is done is that which shall be
done, and there is no new thing under the
sun."
Sir Matthew Hale Smith, in his treatise on
the Primitive Origination of Mankind, refers
to this subject in these words: "We are not to
conclude every new appearance of an art or a
science is the first production of it; but, as
they say of the river Tigris and some others,
they sink into the ground, and keep a subterranean course, it may be for forty or fifty
miles, and then break out above ground again,
which is not so much a new river as the continuation and reappearance of the old: so,
many times, it falls out with arts and sciences;
though they have their non-appearance for
some ages, and then seem first to discover
themselves, where before they were not known,
it is not so much the first production of the
art as a transition, or at least a restitution, of
what was either before in another or in the
same country or people: and thus also it is
said that guns and printing, though but lately
II9 
I20    WORKDAY CHRISTIANIITY.
discovered in Europe, were of far more ancient
use in China."
It is a commendable trait in human nature,
that no man desires to labor more than is
necessary to accomplish his object. His constant and proper desire is to contrive means
by which to economize physical exertion. A
rich soil and a congenial climate are always
esteemed as blessings, because people enjoy
the results of industry in abundance rather
than in pittance. A wise and prudent laborer
wastes no strength that he can save. He
works, not for work's sake merely, but to secure the largest possible results. Man is not
the fool to wear himself out in such drudgery
as beating the air, scratching the rocks, furrowing the sand. Labor without adequate
compensation is regarded as a curse. Almost
every human invention, from the first, has
been designed to save labor and augment the
sum of good livings for all. Horses, camels,
and cattle have been made subservient to
man -to bear burdens that would else have
rested on his own shoulders- to draw the
plow, which otherwise must have been forced 
7THE ANA CHINIS Y.
through the sod by his own muscles. All nature is claimed, wherever it can be controlled,
to subserve the same end. The creek turns
round the wheel of the mill and grinds the
grain, that, without such appliance, must have
been crushed into flour by pebbles as pestles
in weary hands. The wind is man's servant
and does his work. A boat is an invention to
save labor in transporting goods from place to
place. Rowing the boat is less arduous than
carrying its cargo. But to save the toil and
fatigue of rowing, sails were invented, and the
winds were harnessed to do the drudgery of
man. To the same end the steam-engine was
applied, and has become the mighty agent
of doing in million - fold what the strongest
combinations of men would fail in attempting
to do.
Man is weak in body, frail of arm, short of
life; and in a world where animals have
greater strength of sinew and fleetness of
foot, and are better armed both for attack and
defence, than he, there is a divine fore-calculation concerning him, that he must invent. He
must use his wits as the bird its wings. He
II*
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I22    WO.RKDA Y CHkISTIAN4ITY.
invents tools, implements, weapons, agents, and
nature bows a slave at his feet, conquered,
controlled, and restless to do his bidding.
There is a way for limited human power to
grapple with and overcome physical superiors.
Invention after invention makes him more
powerful, more happy, more useful, more exalted in the scale of being. Man already
more than flies. He sends his words as the
fleet lightning round the world. The giant
forces of machinery have revolutionized the
world, and are hastening on the millennium as
rapidly by days as once it could have come by
centuries. The flint, and the bone, and the
stone-hatchet of the savage in any age, the
metal-edged tool of the mechanic, and the
steam - engine of the manufacturer, - all have
the same aim and purpose - to save labor
and multiply comforts. It is a divine faculty
imparted to man to invent and create, and to
improve his productions to the end of time.
The Bible itself has been made the common
people's book by means of machinery; and
missionaries of the cross are efficient and increasing in proportion as art and science are 
THE zVlA C HINzIS T.
cultivated in lands already won to Christ.
True religion sanctifies secular pursuits, and
makes evangels of the dumb materials that
have lain locked up in silence in mountains
and rivers since the world began. All arts
and scientific achievements among men are
but the relics of an intellect defaced by sin.
Like pieces of old coin, corroded with rust,
we all bear the stamp of a royal Head. An
Aristotle, and a Sir Isaac Newton were but
rubbish of an Adam who stood sinless and at
liberty in Eden.
Now this thought of invention for purposes
of good in human affairs leads us to examine
the system of things in nature by which we
are surrounded and supported. We see marvelous ingenuity displayed in the elements of
air, earth, and water, and in the movement of
our planet along its place in the march of
worlds. We see that the seasons are appointed and modified for specific results, by
the combined revolutions of other spheres,
and by the adjustment of swinging systems of
planets and suns in the firmament. To bring
out a violet into bloom requires the united
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I24    W[ORKDAY CH.RISTIAiNTY.
whirling of a million ponderous orbs. The
universe is a machine, balanced in all its parts
and counterparts to bless intelligent beings.
God framed and fitted up the world, unrolled
its grassy carpets, fringed its fields with flowers, spread out its silvery seas, reared its pillarless dome for the circling sun and glittering
stars,  finished the creation of material things
as a home for man, before he lifted him from
the dust and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life. Man is not a mere accident or
surplus of the creation -not the greatest because the last of the handiwork of the beginning. He was created a little lower than the
angels.  He was made to be maker.  He has
God's image and God's breath, and is immortal. For his body the earth was made; and
for his soul the heaven of heavens. He may
lift his thoughts to the skies, search out his
Father, understand his works and his words,
know him, love him, serve him, and live forever. The sweet singer of Israel long ages
ago apprehended the scheme of creation in its
beauty and bounty; and the One Hundred
and Fourth Psalm is both a philosophy and a 
THE  ~A4 CHIzNIST.
poem. Recounting the well-appointed order
of nature by which every living thing is satisfied, and enraptured with the magnificence of
the mechanism by which the seasons are revolved and the wants of man supplied, he exclaims, "0 Lord, how manifold are thy works!
in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth
is full of thy riches!" God, the builder of
homes for all his creatures, from the insect
to the archangel, is also the benefactor of all.
He feeds and clothes and equips the armies
of heaven and earth.
From a vast and empty abyss where nothing was from all eternity, God commanded
this wonderful creation to arise. It immediately came forth, as his infinite ideal, embodied, with harmony of parts, and perfection
of purpose, and accuracy of movement, shining  and singing  as a universe.   How
adorable is our God, "who clothes himself
with light as with a garment, who stretches
out the heavens like a vast pavilion, who
makes the clouds his chariots, who walks upon
the wings of the wind, who establishes the
earth in its circuit," and wraps it round with
I25 
[WORA'DAY CIIRISTIA ANITY.
oceans as with robes folded and fastened by
rivers as with ribbons, a girdled pilgrim for its
march in the company of obedient worlds!
The design and manufacture of an intricate
machine by human brain and human hand are
tedious and laborious, and often result in utter
failure. There have been more failures than
successes. The ruins of abortive inventions
lie scattered everywhere, and among the ruins
sometimes the brains of the unfortunate designer. But the production of the earth, sun,
moon, and stars out of nothing cost the Almighty but a word. He spoke, and it was
done. He commanded, and it stood fast. In
an instant, as his will went forth, all things
emerged  from  chaos  into  existence.  The
power of the Most High is absolute. He
needs no aid from other powers, and the Omnipotence that creates a world can create a
million universes, perfect and measureless as
his infinite domain.
There are men of wealth and of office who
glory in the power they sway over their fellowcreatures. They wear the insignia of royalty
and bear titles of honor. They fancy them
I26 
TIIE A A CHINIAS T.
selves great and mighty. They rule nations,
cast communities into formulated thoughts,
habits, and fashions, and are revolved around
by devotees like Saturn by its moons. They
are not great by the power of genius; they
are not the men who invent, who grasp real
utilities, and create, and prosecute, and accomplish great measures for the reformation of
the world. What are the grandest achievements of the best of men, compared with the
works of God? What need has Jehovah for
a Pope, a President, or a Peabody, as a supplement to his own manifested authority, power,
and benevolence? Men may plan stately
cathedrals, brilliant campaigns, unparalleled
charities - may extend possessions, increase
goods, gain applause - may be idolized as
demi-gods on earth. Yet all this is but specious varnish, tinkling cymbal, empty chaos.
The greatest of mortals use borrowed brains
and borrowed muscles to execute their purposes. They are fed and clothed and housed
by workingmen. But God does all his own
work by his own right arm. He both designs
and executes.  He puts himself into the labor
I27 
WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY
which embodies his purposes. It is not the
divine method for one to invent and another
to  execute.   Doing  is equal in honor to
thinking. The man who works out his own
designs with his own  hands works as God
works.
The Almighty stood and measured the
earth, says the prophet: * He looked and dissolved the nations. For strength and power
are in his hands. He touched the trembling
hills and they were wrapped in smoke; the
ancient mountains burst in pieces; the rocks
melted away like wax; the earth shook to its
center, and the pillars of heaven were forced
from their foundations. The sun and the
mrnoon stood still in their habitation: at the
light of his arrows they went, and at the
shining of his glittering spear.
St. John, in his Patmos rapture, heard a
universal voice- the voice of every living
creature in heaven, and earth, and sea, crying
out in one accord, "Blessing, and honor, and
glory, and power be unto him who sitteth
upon the throne for ever and ever." "For
* HIabakkuk iii.
I28 
THE MA CHINIS T.
great and wonderful are thy works, Lord God
Omnipotent; just and true are thy ways, O
king of saints! Who shall not fear thee and
magnify thy name?"
He commands the light to go forth, and it
goes, bounding along the horizons in silver
sandals swifter than a fleet-footed hart on the
mountains. He recalls it, and it obeys in the
tremblings of eventide. The stars give light
in their midnight watches, and sing.  When
they are called out as sentinels to keep vigil
in the solemn silences, they answer,'" Here we
are,!" This stupendous machine which God
has erected is subordinate to his will in every
atom of its substance.  When  the captives
were led out of Egypt toward Canaan, the
sea saw the approaching host and parted its
billows before their weary feet. Before the
children of God, Jordan rolled backward its
currents and stood still. That the sons of Israel might prevail in battle, the sun halted in
his march across the heavens. The Almighty
touched the great orb with his finger, as a
jeweler would touch the spring-wheel of a
chronometer to drop a moment from its count.
I2
I29 
I30    WORKDA~Y CHRISTIANI7'Y.
He who created absolutely controls. The
miracles of Jesus attest this truth.
I"When God came down from heaven, the living God,,
What signs and wonders marked his stately way!
Brake out the winds in music where he trod;
Shone o'er the heavens, a brighter, softer ray;
The dumb began to speak, the blind to see,
And the lame leaped, and pain and darkness fled;
The mourner's sunken eye grew bright with glee,
And from the tomb awoke the wondering dead."
You who appreciate the wisdom displayed
in "witty inventions," and the genius and industry by which they are operated, -you who
are convinced by the sight of a machine that
it had a designer and moves for a specific purpose,- you can not but see that the same
thought is enlarged and intensified in the creation around you, and of which you are a
part. You believe in God the Father, Maker
of heaven and earth. Will you also believe
in his Son, Jesus Christ, by whom all things
were made- the manifested God-  the Immanuel - the Saviour of sinners? The infinite
designer of the universe which you acknowledge to be perfect in all its purposes and 
THE MAA CHINISS T.
parts, has a plan by which you may become
immortal - by which all your sins may be pardoned, and your souls redeemed and exalted
to the Divine Presence. The whole system
of things around you is constituted with a
view to your salvation. It comprehends the
discipline and education of souls. It appeals
to reasoning and responsible beings. The
whole structure of man and the universe is
interpreted by the Christ of God who died for
sinners.
The divine character, like the pure light of
day, is one uniform and unbroken mass of
brilliancy. But the gospel is a prism, and by
it we divide the rays; and we are surprised at
their variety and beauty. We wonder how
they should all so harmoniously unite. In
Christ Jesus we see Justice and Mercy, Holi ness and Truth - attributes of the Godhead
-blended and perfected.  By the plan of re demption, we see how the sinner can be justi fied, the law honored and magnified, and the
divine government maintained. A God of in finite sanctity assumed the sinner's form and
place that he might be capable of suffering in
I31 
132    WORKlDAY CHRISTIANITY.
his stead; and that by suffering he might restore him to the inheritance which had been
forfeited by transgression. The formation of
the heavens had been but the work of his fingers; but in the work of redemption he made
bare his omnipotent arm. By this he has
broken down the gates of hell, and destroyed
the kingdom of Satan. By the doctrine, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Saviour,
he has established a church as a refuge for all
who believe in his name and are led by the
Spirit. This is the religion which in the beginning was to the Jews scandal, to the Greeks
foolishness, and to the Gentiles insignificance
and obscurity. But in vain did persecution
whet its sword to destroy it; in vain did rulers
conspire and armies contend to hinder its
growth.   It prevailed  by its own  inherent
purity against all the eloquence, passion, and
prejudice of its enemies. It was divinely calculated and omnipotently worked, and nothing
could withstand its power. It spread from
Jordan to the sea, to the distant islands, and
to the continents beyond. And now in every
corner of the globe it has set up the triumph 
THE AIA CHIIXS T.
ant standard of the cross. The kingdoms
of the world are becoming the kingdoms of
our Lord and of his Christ. It is an infinite
design, omni-operatively executed, and its
power must extend and accomplish what its
Author intends, even the salvation of the
world!
By his great power this vast universe began; and as soon as the course of ages which
he has appointed shall be complete, by his
power will it also end. Then every mark of
worldly grandeur will be blotted out. The
world and all its riches shall pass away. Let
us make it our life-purpose to be great in
heaven. To accept this free salvation is the
only ambition worthy of an immortal soul.
12*
I33  
THE POTTER.
" The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold; how are they
esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!"
- I.A ENTATIONS iv. 2.
I35 
i 
\               4
CHAPTER VI.
THE POTTER.
J   HE  art of working in clay is of high
antiquity.  It ante-dates all other vo        cation and design.   Adam  himself
was made of clay, his name adamag, the
ground, implying his origin of dust. God
imaged himself in an earthen vessel.  It is a
pre - historic thought and occupation. It is
attributed by the oldest nations to the gods,
or mythical personages.   To  the  remotest
references of Scripture, it is wonderful to find
how often tradition has corroborating parallels.
In Egypt, the cradle-land of the arts and
sciences, the god called Chnum is accredited
with the invention of turning clay into vessels
and ornaments by the use of finger and fire.
In the ruins of some of the oldest structures
137 
WO A0 KDA Y CHR IS TI ANI T Y.
ever erected in the Euphrates valleys and
along the shores of the Nile, vases of red
earthenware have been found. The sepulchers of the fourth and fifth dynasties have
yielded evidence to the antiquity of the art by
their brick-burnt pictures of potters at work.
Job uses the figure suggested by this art,
when he speaks of his own creation as a work
of skill and care: "Thine hands have made
me and fashioned me together round about;
yet thou dost destroy me. Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay;
and wilt thou bring me into dust again?" He
argues that it would seem waste of work, after
such pains and wisdom in one's creation, to be,
by the same hand, dashed in pieces. For who
would make a beautiful vase merely to break
it when finished? Whenever this portion of
the Bible may have been composed - and it is
evidently one of the most ancient Scriptures
it has peculiar value and significance from its
incidental notices of the arts and sciences as
they prevailed in that distant time. The refer ence to man's creation as the work of a potter
moulding clay, is frequent in the Bible. This
138 
THlE POTTER.
seems to be an intentional use of metaphor,
especially to recall the fact of Adam's origin,
and to keep in remembrance a knowledge
among all men, everywhere, of their bodily
frailty and dissolution.
The Assyrians were extensively engaged in
the finer works of clay. There were skillful
potters among them who manufactured clay
histories, mostly in hieroglyphics, clay titledeeds, clay documents of various descriptions
for both public and private preservation.
They wrought hexagonal prisms, cylindrical
rolls, and different forms of registers for letters and statistics. Many of these were impressed with their official seals, burnt into the
substance of the clay.   About ten thousand
fragments of an ancient terra-cotta library
were discovered in a secret chamber of the
palace at Kouyunjik. The history of Senna cherib's campaign against the Jews has been
preserved by means of this indestructible pro cess. Thoughts once cast and burnt into this
adamantine material, are safer for after gener ations than when embalmed in hollow tradi tion, or inscribed on rolls of parchment. The
I39 
I40    IYORKDA Y CHRISTIANITY.
potter's art was in full activity and highly developed before the fall of Nineveh, and was
maintained as an occupation of honor and
importance for many ages on the plains of
Assyria.
The Babylonians, who immediately succeeded, and, in some measure, were contemporaneous with the Assyrians, shared the
same customs to a large degree. They continued the art, turning it to essential uses in
their temples and their tombs. They invented
glazed coffins; and immense numbers of them
were used. Some of these curiosities, in a
state of preservation very remarkable, and
containing handfuls of human dust, have been
recently exhumed at Warka, and at Mugeyer,
with other strange remains of the ancient
days.
The Hebrews do not appear to have employed the art until after the exodus. They
probably learned it in Egypt as a part of their
bond-experience under the Pharaohs. Before
that time they must have used other substances for drinking-vessels; or else procured
them from other people. The very few Jewish 
THE POTTER.
vases now in existence do not seem to be older
than the time of the Maccabees, although
something of the art of glazing was certainly
practised during the reign of Solomon. During the Captivity, the prophets frequently employed metaphors suggested by the potter's
art, as, for example, in the passage quoted
from the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
Until  about  580 B. C., the temples  of
Greece were roofed with terra-cotta tiles, said
to have been invented in Cyprus, and are
formed similarly to the Roman, and are somewhat ornamental.  These tiles, in many instances, have stamped upon them the name
of the city, the potter, and the year of the
emperor's reign in which they were made.
Much valuable historical information has been
preserved in this incidental manner, of vast
value as corroborative testimony to the truth
of the Sacred Scriptures. Many Bible proofs
have been found among the ruins of pagan
temples. God's Word has myriad witnesses,
silent but eloquent, in nature and in art. And
these tallying testimonies forever multiply as
the past ages are explored and understood.
I3
I4I 
ucor t A'D.4Y CIHISTI.4.VI TI'
Friezes and other architectural ornaments,
cornices, antefixes, pipes for draining, small
figures of much beauty called pelina clays,
and used for penates, or votive offerings, are
among the relics of a remote day in Roman
antiquity. In the ruins of Pompeii, drinkingcups of various ornate forms have been discovered; and although constructed of clay,
they attest an ingenuity of workmanship which
is admirable even now.
The potter's wheel, noticed by Homer at
the beginning of the Grecian history, is probably a far eastern invention of earlier date.
The wheel is described as a low, horizontal
table turning on a central pivot, and made to
revolve by an assistant, and was extensively
used. It was constructed as a kind of lathe,
for shaping vases, jars, and cups. The feet
and handles of vases were stamped and
moulded, while wet, to their respective places
on the work.   Some  of these vases were
made of the finest clay, and glazed and colored into objects of real beauty. They were
sometimes elaborated into gods, and the trade
became very lucrative. That region of the
142 
THE P O TT  En.
world is still famous for images as objects of
worship, the relics of an idolatry which a corrupt Christianity has failed to obliterate.
The manufacture of pottery seems to have
prevailed all over the habitable globe. Some
of the finest productions are those of China.
The very word, China, is indicative of the
rarest earthenware in the market. It is fine,
hard, light, and beautiful. Even in the heart
of Africa the art is known, in Madagascar,
and in the remotest islands of the sea. The
aborigines of this country, probably Asiatic in
their origin, have left specimens in their
mounds similar in type to those found in the
Old World. The monuments of the Aztec
nations, so common in Mexico and in South
America, show rare artistic merit, being, in
many cases, decorated with the forms of deities, and occasionally covered with silicious
glaze of great brilliancy. A few specimens
have been found among the Aztec relics which
resemble those of the Chinese. There is yet
an unread history in these fragments of earth enware, that shall doubtless be worded into
thlrilling, language and  made to tell a won
143 
[FVORUODA  Y CHRISTIANIT-3Y
drous tale of the wandering tribes, and especially concerning the origin and object of the
mysterious mounds of the Mississippi valley.
In England, potteries were operated as early
as the time of Edward III., with indications
that pitchers and costrels were made as far
back as the eleventh century. There are relics of the ware that show pictures of the Norman knights of the reign of Henry II., and
images contemporary with Edward II. The
chief seat of modern English potteries is in
Staffordshire, although at Fulham, Bristol, and
Leeds,  there  are  extensive  works.   Here,
among the humble and industrious operatives,
Methodism had rise and mighty power.  It
was in its beginning a religion for the working
masses, simple, earnest, and efficient. And its
success was that of the gospel, which at first
and forever appeals to the common people.
"I,ike as a man Christ trod on earthly soil;
He bore each pang, and strove in every toil;
He spake with human words, with pity sighed;
Like us He mourned, and feared, and wept, and died.
Yet all the Father's fullness dwelt in Him,
In wfhom no shadow made the glory dim;
I44 
THE P 0 T     TER.
Such strength, 0 God, from Him to us derive,
And make, by life from Him, our death alive!"
But now, as in the prophet's days, and
through deeper deliberation, there is sad backsliding from places of privilege and honor.
Professors of religion, in attempting to climb
to self-appointed exaltations, are often captured in the vain ambition, and thrown prostrate in the dust. The people, once warm in
the love of God and fellow-souls, when  unawake and forgetful, when inclined to the follies of sin and foot - set in the traps of Satan,
lose their zeal, grow cold and callous, and are
broken in an evil hour of passion as vessels of
clay that are dashed upon the ground. "The
precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold,
how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the
work of the hands of the potter!"
In the Hebrew this book of the Bible has
no distinct title, but is named, as all the books
of Moses are, from the first word, How?
Jewish and Greek interpreters call it kilzo/,Lamentations. Its composition is acrosticala poem whose every stanza begins with a letter in the order of the Hebrew alphabet, as an
13*
14'-) 
I46    I!VOAAIDA Y CHAISTIANIT' Y.
aid to the memory in recitation. It was written as a kind of psalm for pious Jews, to console them in their sufferings, giving them
accordant language by which to express their
grief.   And  the  poem  is full of exquisite
imagery. Even tears may be trained to flow
in proper channels.   Mourning for sin must
have expression. Sorrow has its own rhetoric
of sobs and sighs, and its tones of plaintive
minor key. Jeremiah has been fitly called
"the weeping prophet."  The syllables of the
simile sound as a piteous cry. The chapter
opens with a doleful account of the change
which had come over the inhabitants of Jerusalem. It is an elegy. The temple is laid
waste. The glory of the city is departed.
When the city was besieged and burnt, it was
tarnished by the smoke; and the magnificent
temple was thrown down among the rubbish.
It had once glittered in the sunlight as a crystal gem on the brow of Moriah -a diamond
on the mountain's crown which dazzled from
afar like a day-star over the holy altars; but
now its splendor is changed; its costly material is trampled in dishonor to the dust.  The 
THRE P0 TT~'ER.
curiously-wrought stones of the sanctuary, so
elaborate and skillful in their carvings, were
thrown down by the Chaldeans, or shelved
and riven by the scorching fires.
The  princes, or priests, here called "the
precious sons of Zion," were injured and
abused. An enemy's hostility, accumulated
and intense, had vent on their devoted heads.
But, in the midst of distress, they have heavenly recognition. Sons of Zion! What a
title of honor!  How poetical and significant!
Yet, under the proud oppressor's hand, how
are the mighty fallen! The purity of hearts
and the sanctity of souls are nothing in the
eyes of wicked rulers. Although estimated
by the inspired penman as fine gold, good men
are accounted by the world as earthen pitchers. Men of truth, justice, benevolencemen of holy principles and noble purposes,
are genuinely valuable. They have intrinsic
worth. They are the salt of the earth -the
light of the world. They are really great and
rich, although apparently weak and poor.
They are covenanted in sacred brotherhood;
they are heirs of immortality. Angels are
I47 
PORCD,A ~Y CHRIS7'ANVITY.
their servants. Jesus Christ is their Redeemer. Heaven is their home. For them
the universe revolves its shining suns. All
things are theirs. Believers of every name
and nation are the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold. They who are faithful
have a name and a credit for Christ's sake,
which are honored among the shining hosts
above, although they may be often hungry,
and hated, and hunted down on earth. In all
ages God's people have been at discount in
the marts of the world. Wealth mixes its
alms with curses, and tosses the compound toward chill, shelterless pilgrims, as crusts and
bones to a dog. The Old Testament saints
were thus treated by peers of the realm and
sons of estate. The first disciples of Jesus
were ridiculed, mocked, and derided as the
offscourings of the earth - as the followers
of him who was hanged. The Redeemer
himself appeared as a root out of a dry
ground. He was despised and rejected of
men. Down through the whole history of the
church, good men have suffered persecution.
The truest of men have been martyred for the
148 
THE POTTER.
cause so dear to their hearts. Even to - day
the people of God are subject to relentless
criticism and venomous contempt; and thrice
blessed is he who endures it to the end-who,
through cutting censure, and beating broadsides of opposition, presses his way forward to
glory and to God! These tests are for discipline.  They  put armor on the soul.  The
virtues of Christianity as lived in men are this
world's uplifting powers. And in these days
of Satan's reign abroad, when the crowds are
wading hellward in the miry clay, though
Christians may be popularly considered as
earthen pitchers, clay-modeled and brittle, as
the work of the hands of the potter, still, bless
God! -still and forever are they gold, fine
gold, New Jerusalem currency, the precious
sons of Zion! The world's opinion of Jesus
and his followers is not the judgment-day decision. The haughty lips of men in ease, and
bodily fat on good livings, may deride and disown the lowly Nazarene and his church; theologians may attempt to mould Christianity into
convenient dogma and sect, ornamenting and
glazing its front- surfaces, as a potter the
I49 
150    I 0RA'DAY CHRISTIA4NITY.
clay; but the precious sons of Zion are gold
and not clay, and they are not intended to be
manipulated by human fingers, however skillful,
into narrower form or fainter image than those
of Jesus Christ.
God alone is sovereign over all people.
But one is our Master, and all we are brethren. He delegates his power to no creature,
not even to an archbishop or an archangel.
There is no deputized authority committed to
any being under or over the shining sun. Nothing that breathes the air or soars the skies
has any commission to regulate the faith of
men. There are ecclesiastical usurpers who
deign to dictate certain finite and fixed opinions as creeds for believers. Young converts,
susceptible to impression when their whole
nature is softened by the Spirit of Godwhen ready to be renewed in the image of
Jesus Christ and made free indeed by the
emancipating powers of truth, are too often
taken up professionally, as just so much senseless clay, trodden into proper consistency by
the agony of repentance, to be put on the potter's wheel of Autgsburg, VWestminister, Ando 
7'l   P O Tf'fEI.
ver, or some other local patent, turned into
mere sectarians of specific form and feature,
burnt into fore-ordained hardness and glaze,
and fixed in statued discipleship, brittle and
growthless  as  earthenware.   There  is an
abundance of this plaster-of-Paris religion in
Christendom. Protestants need not so criticise and ridicule the little images of Rome,
until these specimens of cast formalism are
removed from their own sanctuaries. They
are shapes, and may be capable of sounds, but
that is all. They occupy room, but exert no
saving power on others. If they have spirit
in them, they hold it as dumbly as jugs do
their spirits. They stand as so much clay-work
in the church of Christ. They do not, as intelligent and responsible beings, represent the
gospel of grace as revealed in the New Testament-the broad, open liberty of divine sonship in Christ Jesus, original and alert as Pauls
and Luthers and Wesleys for every new issue
in discipleship.   They are content with the
empty forms of religion, while they deny the
power. They are earthen pitchers, the work
of the potter's hands. Not the gospel of the
I S r
P- Ej 
152    IVORkAA~Y CHRISTIANITY.
Son of God, not the Holy Spirit, but treatises on theology have made them what they
are.   Custom  has fashioned them, and not
the blessed Christ. Many of our popular
churches where the precious sons of Zion
might have place and power, are nothing more
than spiritual potteries where the sum and substance of all religion are run in clay, turned,
baked and finished in fancy styles for exhibition. It is pretty, and so is a pitcher; and as
a pitcher is hollow, so is this pious pottery of
the churches. But the first blast of the judgment-bugles in the air will batter and scatter
such earthenware to fragments. There is sad
havoc made of souls when Zion's sons are
degenerated to the dumbness and deadness
of potter's work. The only test of true membership in the church of Christ is that recorded on the pages of the New Testament.
The potters' wheels of later ages are human
inventions to divide, confuse, and destroy the
unity of Christian brotherhood. WVe do not
urge objection to denominational organizations, if only they are sympathetic and supplementary in their methods. But when they 
THE PO T TER.
become exclusive and belligerent, when they
by common consent resolve themselves into
heresy hunters, and use their breath and
brains to magnify the letter that killeth, and in
strife against the overflowing Spirit that giveth
life,-when they become jealous of each other's
spires and statistics, quarrel over each other's
agencies, and proselyte from each other's
ranks, they do excite in heaven the lamentations not only of sainted prophets, but of sinless angels, and the pity of the ascended Lord
himself, "The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as
earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the
potter!"  Well, well indeed for us, were our
weaknesses and worthlessness only imaginary,
as in the case of the overpowered Hebrews.
Their enzemzes so esteemed them; but in our
bondage to time and sense, may not our
friends, even our LORD, apply the same lam entation to us?  Once there were shining
sons of Zion in our now desponding and ap athetic churches. The fine gold was here.
But alas for the papery substitute! It is
crumpled and soiled and torn!  Once there
14
I5 3 
154     V'OIO'KDAY CtRISTI[AXITY.
resounded echoing hallelujahs on many a lip
over the conversion of penitents at the sound
of the glad tidings. Once there trickled fountains of tears within many hallowed walls
tears of joy at the victories of Jesus over
Satan and his hosts. Once there was hearty
co-operation in rescuing men from sin. Where
are the precious sons of Zion now? Thank
Heaven! they are beginning to shine again!
The gold is coming into currency once more,
an evidence that the divine administration
shall stand forever. The rebels' sway is coming to an end. Satan retreats before the
blood-wet banner of the cross. The dumb
earthenware is being removed from the temple
at last, the idols are crumbling down, and the
genuine heart - worship is sending up incense
and song to Almighty God again! There
are new converts every day to Christianity.
Believers are waking up to renewed diligence;
backsliders are returning, and sinners are inquiring what they must do to be saved. United
prayers have reached the Majesty on High,
and down to the churches, in accordance with
the people's faith, descend the answers in bap 
THE POT      1'LR.
tisms of love. To God be all the glory, as his
alone is the power, and his the authority and
dominion forever!
We have been asked to explain that famous
passage in the ninth of Romans-those words
which have been so often interpreted as an
excuse for inaction and passivity in religion.
But as there are secrets in the works, so are
there secrets in the words of God, beyond our
apprehension. They are the expressions of an
apostle to a particular people; and letters often
contain words susceptible of misconception by
third or disconnected parties. We cannot, nor
would we attempt to, grasp their meaning as
isolated verses, much less to formulate a doctrine upon a casual metaphor. This is the
reading: "Therefore hath he mercy on whom
he will have mercy, and whom he will he
hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why
doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted
his will? Nay, but 0 man, who art thou that
replieth against God? Shall the thing formed
say to him that formed it, Why hast thou
made me thus? Hath not the potter power
over the clay, of the same lump to make
15 5 
W5 OA'DAY CHRISTIA NzITY.
one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?"
But at the end of this same chapter, there is
the great keyword of all grace- whosoever.
In speaking of Christ, the apostle concludes,
after all, that "whosoever believes on him shall
not be ashamed." The teaching of the figure,
as used by St. Paul, is to impress presumptuous
men with the duty of unquestioning submission to God -entire acquiescence to his will
in what he does for all. For the Almighty
will not be climbed up to on any human-devised
ladder. The way to him can not be paved with
the rich man's gold; nor carpeted with the inventor's most gorgeous handiwork. In order
to reach and rescue sinners as a common lump
of humanity, God does not supplement himself
with a pope, a bishop, a council, or a creed.
Himself is in his Word, the same at once to
all. He is no respecter of persons. The
teaching puts us down into confession of utter
helplessness; it takes pride and preferences
out of our hearts as to methods of salvation.
It is not empty capriciousness, for no such
attribute is ill the divine nature. It is not arbi
I56 
THIE POTTER.
trary persistence, without reference to results,
for the whole Bible has an opposite import.
It is an awful thing to mould an'ism or a
theology from fractional parts of chapters, to
adjust eternal destinies from an apostle's paragraph, pen-pryed out of its place, and to preach
a doctrine from disjointed syllables at variance
with the life and gospel of Jesus Christ. Any
apparent difficulty here is only as an intentional
note of discord in an anthem of resounding
harmonies.  It is to start men into thought,
thrill them into appreciation, move them into
action; it is not to discourage or distress.
There is an inherent and an irresistible drift
of truth, which is the current of the New Testament, broad and sweeping and full. You have
sometimes stood by the river-side and watched
a backward-circling eddy near the rocks, where
the water actually ran at cross angles, and
against the course of the stream. You tossed
in a leaf, and on the narrow current, it floated
up stream, if you decided direction by the
valley and general sweep of the river. But
all the while the particles of water temporarily
obstructed by the rocks, were sliding imper      I4*
157 
I58     IVORKDAY CHR ISTIANITY.
ceptibly away into the wide river. The stream
flowed downward surely and forever. To base
a new theory of gravitation on the little impediment of eddy and whirl, and argue from
it, that, because your dry leaf floated in a given
direction, a certain definite quantity of the
river, calculated to a drop from all eternity,
did not run down stream, would be a vain
delusion. And so to argue a mass of unsavable humanity from a sentence which may
be negative in itself, but which is in deep and
real harmony with the whole economy of grace,
is a delusive theology. Jesus infinitely outmeasures Paul. The Saviour's message to the
world is the river, even if Paul's whole epistle
to the Romans is an eddy. Really the current
is identical. On at the end of the rocky ninth
of Romans, the eddy-drops of "whom-hewill" are free and aflow as one again in the
blessed "whosoever;" and further on, at the
close of Revelation, the still richer, sweeter,
higher, broader, deeper "whosoever will," let
him come to the river of life and drink, and
drink, and drink till he is satisfied!
God, being the Maker and Ruler of all, 
THE PO TTE R.
knows how to attain certain ends; and his procedures are necessarily beyond our comprehension. But we know that his tender mercies
are over all his works. He is our Father, and
he has a father's eye, a father's hand, and a
father's heart. Our destiny is what we make
it. Our happiness here and hereafter hinges
on our own will. To the pure all things are
pure. To the good all things are good. To
the gloomy and base and bad, all things are
bad and base and gloomy. The world about
us is a great mass of materials, subject to experiment. We build our own character by
will and work. By tact and time, the believer
overcomes obstacles, solves problems, settles
doubts; and it is God chosen into himself by
himself, who shapes his destiny. There is a
boundless universe spread out before us. To
us there is offered the grandest possible opportunity for securing eternal life.  Our only
chance for heaven is in our hands.  Our invitation to the skies is ringing in our soul for
answer
"Listen, the Master beseecheth,
Calling each one by his naime
159 
I60    [VORIDAY CHRISTIANITY.
His voice to each living heart reacheth,
Its cheerfulest service to claim.
"Come to the good that is nighest;
Dream not of glory afar;
That glory is nearest and highest,
Which shines upon men where they are! " 
THE GLASS-MAKER.
"Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman  that
needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."2 TIMOThY ii. I5.
"And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal."- REVELATION iv. 6.
I6I  
CHAPTER VII.
THE GLASS-MAKER.
.-Li,HE time at which glass was invented
is not known.  There is a popular
f'i<~'& tradition that the discovery was accidental. Pliny has recorded the story of a few
mariners who were transporting a cargo of
nitrutm, or, probably, soda, landing on the
banks of the river Belus, a little stream that
winds from the base of Mount Carmel, in Palestine. Finding no stones on which to support their cooking vessels, they placed under
them some masses of nitrum, with which the
region abounded; and when the fire became
well kindled, they observed that the nitrum
melted and fused with the sand into a liquid
and transparent stream.   This has been a
current account of the origin of glass.
The ancient Egyptians, however, were cer                                    I63 
IWORA'D Y CHRISTIANITY.
tainly acquainted with the art of glass-making.
Earthenware beads have been found in old
mummy cases, having an external coat of glass.
Among the ruins at Thebes fragments of colored glass have been exhumed. There are
strong arguments adduced to prove that the
art of glass-making was practised in Egypt
before the exodus, giving it a chronology of
five-and-thirty hundred years.  It is evident
that the manufacture of glass was known in
Alexandria, and had been introduced into Italy,
Spain, and other countries, before the time of
Pliny, who records the Belus River theory of its
origin. Utensils and ornaments of glass have
been found in the ruins of Herculaneum. At
Warka, in Mesopotamia, in the ancient mounds,
are strata of baked clay coffins to the depth
of forty feet, and within these quiet recesses
of the dead, which have been undisturbed for
thirty centuries, are found relics of gold, silver,
copper, and glass. At Nineveh, in a subterranean chamber of a palace, were discovered
bowls of glass, covered with pearly scales
with veins of brilliant opal variously tinted under different lights. Beneath the accumulated
I64 
TIE GC LA4 SS-A AKE E R.
debris of ages in other ruins of that city was
also found a small bottle, bearing the title of
the Assyrian king, Sargon, in cuneiform characters, and a miniature image of a lion's head.
This would fix the date somewhere about
seven hundred years before the Christian era.
There is no reliable information that transparent glass was known at any earlier period.
It is generally believed that the first glasshouses, or manufactories for turning the ware
into market, were erected in the city of Tyre.
There  were  peculiar advantages for glassmaking and for transportation at that point;
and Tyre was for ages the center of the commerce in this staple. Thence the trade extended to Rome; and during the reign of Tiberius, there were whole streets of glass factories there, although the art seems, at that time,
to have been employed almost exclusively in
producing articles of luxury. Only the wealthy
Romans and their foreign equals could afford
the indulgence of such elegant wares. It was
probably in Nero's time that clear crystal glass
was first produced. Thitherto the specimens
had been more or less opaque. The first
I5
x65 
I66    WORKXDAY  CHIelSTIANXITY.
transparent glass was an object of great wonder and admiration, and was celebrated by the
poets in enthusiastic rhythm and rhetoric.
Horace* and Virgil refer to the beautiful
creation of crystal in language rivaling in luster the theme of their song. One of them compares the beautiful substance to the waters of
the romantic Fucine Lake glittering under the
Italian sky.
The decline of the artin Rome is succeeded by
its introduction and prosperity in more northern cities, especially in Murano and Venice.
From its establishment here and in Bohemia,
its progress can be traced to Germany, France,
Britain, and to the United States. From its
success in Venice, where the most exquisite
* Horace, in his Odes, Book iii., Ode I3, uses the
simile. The following translation of the passage, by Dr.
R. Audley Browne, is a faithful rendering:
"0  fountain of Blandusia, more brilliant than glass,
Worthy of sweet wine, not without flowers,
To-morrow I will present thee with a kid
Whose forehead, swollen with its earliest horns,
Both love and battle foretokens
In vain  " 
THE GLA SS-SA -IC E R.
cups and goblets were produced, the art became honorable above the ordinary trades,
and operatives were permitted to mingle with
the royal families, and even to marry the'
daughters of noblemen, a privilege conferred
upon no other mechanics. It is not uncommon in foreign lands, even to this day, to trace
the flow of kingly blood down through the
veins of glass - blowers. In France, it is said,
several distinguished families are sprung from
this class of tradesmen, some of whom have
been honored with the highest dignities and
offices.
It was about the year 1 557 when glass-manufacturing was introduced into England, where
it made but slow progress for a hundred years
or more. In I700, the English Government
granted substantial aid to the business, and
from that time Venice of the south, had a rival
in the island of the northern seas.
The application of glass to windows is of
comparatively modern times. In the year 674,
foreign artists from the continent were employed to glaze the church windows at Weremouth, in Durham, England; and so late as
I67 
V ORKADAY CHRISTIANIT7.
1567, this mode of excluding cold and admittingi light by the same medium was confined
to the aristocracy. Until near I670 the use of
window - glass in Scotland was so limited that
only the front and upper rooms in royal palaces were furnished with it, the rear and lower
apertures having wooden shutters. But, gradually, since that time, the Scottish people have
received light, until now every humble home
to the remotest Highlands has its window-pane
and lamp. Many a cotter, now, has 
"His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnilie,
His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile:
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
Does a' his weary, carking cares beguile,
An' makes him quite forget his labor and his toil."
The introduction of glass - making into the
United States was a few years prior to the
Revolution, and was attempted by a company
of Germans at Quincy, Massachusetts. Their
specimens were rude and limited. Then in
Brooklyn, New York, and in the forests of
New  Hampshire, works were erected.  In
1820 a New England company began a similar
I68 
THE GLA SS- ilA KER.
enterprise in Kensington, near Philadelphia,
but disagreement between the proprietors and
workmen soon defeated the project. In I8o8
a few glass - blowers from an abandoned manufactory in Maryland, reached Pittsburgh, and
were engaged by one Col. O'Hara in the erection and working of the first window-glass
factory west of the Allegheny Mountains.
In Geneva, and at other points on the Monongahela, like establishments followed; but the
great center is in Pittsburgh and immediate
vicinity, there being at present, according to
statistics furnished by Mr. Atterbury, twentyfour firms or factories engaged in the production of flint or crystal glass, besides about as
many more that turn out window- glass, jars,
vases, and other articles. The facilities for
coal, together with the natural avenues of
commerce, doubtless contributed, as in the
iron trade, to the location of these important
works in this place. The history of this department of industry would, if written, reveal
much of interest and influence in making
Pittsburgh the great city it is.  There were
many failures, disappointments, experiments
15*
I69 
170    TVO X0DA~Y CHRISTIANITY.
and losses, before the trade became secure.
But now it ranks next to the first in the several staple productions of the place.
Here are thousands of workingmen of kindred tastes, temptations, and habits, who are
worthy the special attention of the churches.
If Christians do not take an interest in their
occupation, they can not be expected to take
an interest in Christianity. If glass-blowers
as a class are outside the churches, it is because
church-members have kept outside of the manufactories. If they are ignorant of the plan
of salvation, it is because we are ignorant of
their plan of workday life and labor. But
there are devoted Christians among the working masses, notwithstanding the apathy and indifference of the churches. The gospel workman must have something for this large class
of mechanics that is in the line of their own
thought and vocation,-must study to make
himself acquainted with the history, relations,
and specialties of their business, so that he
may rightly divide the word of truth, making
most of its elements, as they make glass of
given materials -giving to each a portion. 
THE GLASS-MAfKAER.
The analogies in this department of thought
and labor are many and significant. Illustrations of Christian life and duty may be crystallized from the common facts in glass-making
into lenses that reveal the Saviour to sinful
men.
The first instance where the word glass
occurs in the Bible is in Exodus xxxviii. 8, as
a syllable in the translation of a word which
might be rendered mirrors. In our version it
is looking-glasses, and refers to articles in
common use by the women. These mirrors
were plates of burnished brass, capable of
casting reflections much clearer and sharper
than those from polished silver. It was not a
vain habit to consult the looking-glass, but a
religious rite among the Egyptians; for all the
women, as they approached the temple, were
tastefully adorned, and carried a musical instrument in the right hand and a mirror in the
left. It is a custom among Arab women to
this day to carry their mirrors with them as a
part of their apparel. The laver for the priests
to wash in was made of the women's looking glasses. Females, in those early days, who
2.
171 
I72    WO  AnDAY CHR ISTIANI T Y.
assembled at the door of the tabernacle, were
willing to sacrifice all else to devotion. This
is an honorable record for the sex who have
been, through all the ages and aspects of the
church, the more frequent, devout, and earnest
at shrines of worship. The women both of
the Old and the New Testament times are the
examples of faithfulness in religious service.
In the tabernacle days they assembled in
troops, ready to part with their ornaments and
sacrifice their conveniences for the blessedness
of acceptable worship. Rather than that the
workmen should need brass, they would contribute their looking-glasses. The toilet should
be desolate, that the sanctuary might be beautiful. It was, in honor, preferring the Lord's
house to the home-parlor. The record itself
is a mirror for us all. In these days the
church gets only the fragments of our timeonly the nickels and crumpled currency of our
dollars -only the remnants of our thought
and life -only the easy hours of fair weather
attention. Business absorbs all else. Churches
may be mortgaged; Sunday-schools suffer for
air, light, and books; missionaries starve and 
TH~f  G L A S S- AI, KE R.
shiver in heathen lands, if only oil and wine
may flow freely at domestic feasts. A splendid mansion, and a dashing carriage, broadcloth, satin, gold, diamonds, and cologne for
one's self, and nothing but crusts and crumbs
for Christ! This old looking-glass in Exodus
is not so dim after all!
The language in the book of Job is of similar import, in which Elihu, speaking of the
sky, compares it to a molten looking-glassa great, suspended mirror formed by fire and
mould. The early notion of the firmament
accounted it as a broad, solid expanse, reared
as a dome over the heads of men, fixed on
mystic pillars to stand forever. The Bible
accommodates its language to the apprehen sion of the people; but it no where makes an
assertion which science will not attest. We
speak of the rising and the setting of the sun;
and yet we know that such terms are but rel atively true. The object of the Bible is pri marily to teach religion; but it every where
suggests and encourages scientific investiga tion. For God's works and words agree.
The sacred writers used the popular phraseol
I73 
0 WORKDA Y CHR ISTIA NI TY.
ogies, just as philosophers do now. The fact
that this dark earth contains the elements, that,
when combined, make glass the only medium
by which the eye can explore the firmament,and that every sweep of the telescope but reveals higher and grander beauties still, is, in
itself, a challenge to scan the universe of
worlds. We find eyes in the clods by which
we may read the poetry of the stars. Men
may, by the skill of their fingers, supplement
the power of their own vision, and lift a lens
between themselves and heaven which opens
a million marvelous creations beyond this little planet on which we stand and gaze; or,
reversed, show a million wonders more in the
universe of animalculae below. The sky is
indeed a mirror, and so is every drop of water,
reflecting the handiwork of God. The deeper
we penetrate the mysterious recesses of nature, the more profound our discoveries, and
the more satisfying the evidence that our Father's house is one of many mansions, as Jesus
said. Here in the flesh, and standing on this
plain of graves, peering through the tears of
sense and the dust of time, - we do see "as in
I74 
THE G A,4 S S- M, AA'ER.        175
a glass darkly." But, some day, the veils shall
be rent, the clouds dispelled, and the blinding
tears all wiped away; some day we shall have
an outlook from the sunny summits in glory,
and shall see face to face, pierce the secrets of
eternity, and know as we are known.
The ingredients that enter into glass, -
sand, soda, lime, niter, and arsenic, -are all
opaque in their raw condition; but when
melted and fused, become, in the partnership,
clear as crystal. The particles when isolated
and separate, are dull and gross, but all the
while have hidden affinities which combine
under certain conditions into a mass of brilliancy and beauty. Science discovers these
secrets, and industry works them into practical
results. The Creator of all things furnishes
the material with given possibilities, imparts to
man the inquiring spirit and the applying tact
and forces, and stimulates him to accomplish
by toil and patience what otherwise would
seem as the direct work of his own almighty
hand. God has built the world for a work shop, and  not for a dwelling-place.   It is
stowed with materials and with tools to be 
WORNDAY CHRISTIANzITY.
taken hold of by men's hands and used.
There are beckonings to study and to business in the rocks, in the sands, in the plants,
in every thing; and every human hand is
jointed and sinewed for work. The dumb
beasts have no use for the gospel or for science; no capacity to enjoy the one, nor any
faculties to experiment with the other. They
are provided for by another economy. But
man, imaged in the likeness of his Maker, is
himself a producer; his brain and hand are
the agents of a power which even angels may
not exercise. Man as an individual, rather
than as a race, is progressive, and the wide
world is his laboratory.
The church, if composed of but one element, would be opaque. The variety of human character is what makes the real unity in
a company of believers. Soda alone, or lime
alone, never makes glass. To attempt a method of bringing men to one gauge of thought
as a test of membership, is as unwise as for a
glassmaker to spend all his capital in sand.
There is the same result in blending unlike
traits and dissimilar souls, as in bringing glass
176 
THE GLA S S-lIA KE ER.
out of its individually uninviting elements
the crystal of true communion. The church,
to shine, must embody all types of humanity,
rich and poor, learned and illiterate, old and
young. And a nation, to be transparent and
beautiful as a whole, must recognize in its
organization, as constituent parts, all gauges
of stature, all shades of color in hair and skin,
all brogues of tongue, and all keys of voice.
In the church and in the nation, the unlike
elements produce the crystal completeness, as
in the composition of glass. The sand needs
the lime, and both need the soda, the niter, and
the arsenic. Poison itself loses its deadliness
in the partnership.   And  so does  the true
church attract, absorb, use, and crystallize
even the worst of sinners, who, if left in outer
isolation, are death-dealing in every breath
and act.
In a glass-manufactory the principal object
is the furnace where the pots are set for the
melting and fusing of the essential materials.
Everything radiates from this center. The
flinty broth is gathered on the point of a hollow rod, swung in the air by studied balan
I6
I77 
178    WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
cings, and blown into specific form by the
operator's breath. All this is done with dexterity and vigilance, the most elaborate shapes
being wrought out in a fey seconds; and the
small hand's-size of original liquid chills into
a crystal vase, or pitcher, or other form, by the
outer air. The endless variety of shapes and
styles of ware is met by the busy workmen
who dip the red masses on the points of their
blow-irons from the boiling-pots, and swing,
breathe, press, and cut them into forms as
many and as exquisite as fastidious taste can
ask.
And all these utilities and beauties are
wrought out of dull and obscure materials, that
lie as common rubbish beneath our feet! The
fire subdues and fuses, and busy fingers and
daily breath transform the bulk into a thousand elegant designs.   This illustrates still
further the thought of Christ's church as a
kind of crystal palace, where all varieties of
originally dull, dark, heavy, and even vicious
humanity, fused by the fires of God's own
kindling into common mass, are so touched
together in these elements which are immortal, 
THE G A SS- AA _~".E R.
that by contact they become luminous and
symmetrical. Thus may it be with the denominations of Christendom.   Isolated and
alone they are opaque bodies; but when
brought into contact and sympathy, when
their self-nature is melted, they flow into a
spiritual compact which is infinitely brighter
and better, the one true, radiant church of believers.
The sincere minister of the gospel recognizes this fact in his office and work, and labors
not so much to enlarge and intensify a sect or
an opinion, as to build up the broad kingdom
of the Son of God. He does not so much care
to accumulate the mere sand, soda, and lime
of Christianity, as to fuse all the factors of
truth into a blessed unit. He studies to show
himself a workman that needeth not to be
ashamed. He does not put material into an
east wall which he has stealthily pried out of
equally important position in the west wall. He
rightly divides the word of truth that the spirii
of truth may be unifold and full. He discovers, discriminates, compares, adjusts; he brings
unlike materials into complementary complete
179 
i8o   WIORDA~Y CHRISTIANITY.
ness, and out of varied types of thought, and
feeling, and life, by the fusing influences of the
Holy Spirit; he aims to establish in the lives
of men a Christianity which is open and clear
as the day, seen through and admired by all,
and in substance, though so transparent, is yet
as firm and enduring as the glass that holds
all its atoms, and shines with uncorrupted luster through centuries of time. And as a vessel of glass is the same in transparency every
where, in one use as in another, in window, or
vase, or pavement, or coffin, so is a Christian
transparent under all circumstances, in places
of honor, and in places of reproach, at home,
abroad, in office, in prison, at a wedding, and
at a funeral -always the same. He is known
by all men by the crystalline consistency of his
life.
"Religion pure,
Unchanged in spirit, though its forms and codes
Wear myriad modes,
Contains all creeds within its mighty span,
The love of God, displayed in love of man."
"Religion's ray no clouds obscure,
But o'er the Christian soul 
THIE GLASS-AlA, KE R.
It sends a radiance calm and pure,
Though tempests round it roll;
His heart may break with sorrow's stroke,
But to its latest thrill,
Like diamonds shining when they're broke,
Religion lights it still."
In glass manufacture there is a process
called annealing, which especially interests the
visitor. Glass, on suddenly cooling, acquires
great brittleness. A chill, after the most painstaking and successful moulding of vase or
goblet, would cause the beautiful structure to
fly to pieces. A slight touch of finger-nail or
crumb of glass has, in a critical moment,
sometimes crushed the finest specimen of
artistry to dust. There is a remedy for this
tendency in new-made glass. By annealing,
or reheating the ware, to a degree a little
below that by which it was melted, and gradually removing it from hot to cooler temperatures, the particles are toughened into more
reliable affinity. A circular train of cars, on
wheels made for slow rather than rapid movement, in the establishment which I visited,
bears hundreds of fresh-blown vessels in easy
I8I 
WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
advances out from hot to ordinary temperature, in a kind of graduated oven, and this
simple process occupies a thousand-fold more
time than the shaping of the articles. This
brittleness of the glass is attributable to the
disturbance of hasty cooling in the arrangement of its delicate particles. There must
be deliberation in its adjustment to the new
state.
This may serve as an illustration of the
brittleness of new converts. They will not
stand rough handling. A single thoughtless
word has ruined many a young Christian.
After conversion, they must be annealed.
They must be trained into strength to resist
the ordinary temptations of life. Conversion
is not enough. By prayer and patience the
new convert must be disciplined to daily duty,
advanced by careful degrees into Christian
work, and come by time and regularity into
strength.
And there are some old Christians who
have never been annealed. They may have
been converted years ago, but not being needed
particularly, being more ornamental than use
I82 
THE  GL A SS- IA KE A'.
ful, they have, like blown but unannealed
glass-ware, been on the shelf and hidden.
Their names are on the church register, and
that is about their greatest achievement in
religion. They are never in use. They have
become so accustomed to the shelf and the
shade, that you never miss them. They keep
in rear places and dark corners. They have
the form of Christianity; they may have tone
enough to pray; they may look solemn and
behave respectably in their distant retreatsmay even say "our church," "our minister,"
"our doctrines."  But all the while they have
never been annealed. A sudden temptation
and their temper flies. Invite them to the
prayer- meeting, ask them for missionary
money, suggest a few hours' earnest work for
Jesus, and snap! they go to pieces! They
may have been converted, but they were put
on the shelf before they were annealed, and
they are worthless ware. It is possible at
any time, and even probable, on a bright Sab bath morning, that a gentle touch from the
pulpit on the subject of personal consecration
and work, may crush some of these tender
183 
V O.RADAY CHJISTIANITY.
vessels of the church to fragments! I have
seen so slight a thing as a bit of wooden pencil, dropped from the hand into an unannealed
glass goblet on the workman's table, shiver it'
to atoms.  But no matter how long a piece of
glass-ware has lain idle and unnoticed on the
shelf, it may still be annealed as easily as a
new - blown specimen warm from the maker's
hand. The two may pass through the oven
side by side, and emerge together as equals
for the test of use. And this is what all the
churches need -that their crystally clear and
prematurely cold professors should be put into
discipline, into exercise, into self-denial, into
sacrifice, into endurance for Christ's sake for a
season, and gradually tempered into practical
religious work; and then the gospel would have
power on the minds and hearts of sinners.
Every church ought to have its annealing apparatus, and keep it turning until every brittle
vessel of the Lord is tempered into reasonable discipleship.
For this is a life of work, of trial, of tears
and fears, of conflicts fierce and long. Christianity is both thought and action. The truth
I84 
THE' G L A S S - AkI EV R.
must not only be rightly divided as to language; in men's lives there must be consistency, symmetry, patience, workmanship in
deed. But after all our toils are done, all our
sorrows ended, we shall, if faithful, be permitted to mount up, and survey, and enjoy for
ever what St. John on Patmos so faintly saw, —
the city of our God, whose pavements are as
sapphire and as a sea of glass clear as crystal.
There our vision will be perfect. There the
hearts as the faces of all will stand clearly
revealed. We shall see as we are seen, and
know as we are known, when we tread the
ether plains before the throne. The sea of
crystal is emblematical of the purity of heaven,
where all weary workers for Jesus shall rest
and rejoice. I can not explain these glorious
words of the exile looking home. The vision
was a rapture to him; and his record is a
thrill and a song for us. The measure of the
apostle's meaning, or the Spirit's message, we
may not apprehend. But some day we shall
know it all. The words mean revelation by
and by. What we know not now we shall
know hereafter. A man unable to look up
I85 
i86    1VOlA'DAY CHRISTIANITY.
and see the blazing sun in the heavens, might
be able to look down and form some idea of
its brilliancy and beauty by looking at its
image on a placid lake. So Christ and the
high heaven in which he shines are too great
for our mental vision to apprehend, too profound for mightiest telescopes to trace. But
in this quiet mirror-verse of the New Testament we catch a glimpse of the supernal glory.
We would rather sing it than explain itrather wait than wonder! What an anthem
for the soul!- "And I saw, as it were, a sea
of glass, mingled with fire: and them that had
gotten the victory stand on the sea of glass,
having the harps of God. And they sing the
song of Moses and the Lamb, saying, Great
and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King
of saints!"
"And the city had no need of the sun, neither
of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of
God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light
thereof! And the nations of them that are
saved shall walk in the light of it: and the
kings of the earth do bring their glory and 
THE GLASS-MA KER.                     187
honor into it. And the gates of it shall not
be shut at all by day, for there shall be no
night there."
"Ah,  here we grope and stumble through  the chill
encircling gloom,
The few sweet stars that cheer us, lighting only to the
tomb.
We try to trace His footsteps on through maze and mys      tery,
And follow in our blindness, trusting where we can not
see;
But in yonder crystal radiance, ever welling from the
throne,
We shall see Him in his beauty, anid know as we are
known. "  
THE PILOT.
. "Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way,
and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared." - EXODUS
xxii. 20.
" Thy wise men, O Tyrus, that were in thee, were thy pilots." -
EZEKIEL xxvii. 8.
189
I7  
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PILOT.
. N  maritimne countries the term pilot is
used to indicate an officer in a ship
who has general charge of the helm,
and gives exclusive attention to the ship's
course. The word also applies to a person
who undertakes special charge of a vessel, to
guide it in particular rivers, roads, or channels,
on entering or leaving ports, and who assumes
peculiar responsibilities aside from those of
captain or master, in consequence of his special education or qualifications in the field to
which his duty is restricted.
In some countries pilots are established for
particular ranges of coast, and maintained as
servants of the government; and a master
of any ship engaged in foreign trade must
put his vessel in their hands, in both outward
I9I 
I92    WORX DAY CHRISTIXIANITY.
and homeward voyages. There are regulated
laws of pilotage, systems of training, rules for
license, qualifications for fraternity, with charitable provision for superannuated pilots. Such
association in all professions and pursuits is
commendable. There is a deep-natured sympathy among men of the same vocation; and
when it enlists the hand with the heart, the
fellowship has bounty and blessing in its
bonds. Trades' unions for mutual improvement and protection are worthy of encouragement.
The art of navigation had new impetus,
indeed a revolution, in the invention of the
mariner's compass, - a magnetic needle, balanced on a pivot, which by some secret law in
nature always points to the north. This little
instrument was found to be a reliable index in
all seasons and under all circumstances, and
became the key that unlocked the vast regions
of the sea, and by which unknown islands and
continents were opened to mankind. The
knowledge of magnetic power as a directive
agent was a secret to the early centuries of
the world. Even the Greeks and Romans, in 
THE P I L 0 T.
their scholastic times, failed to apply this natural principle to commercial purposes. It was
not until late in the twelfth century that European nations brought it into use as a guide
upon the trackless ocean. The compass, however, has been known and used among the
Chinese, in India, and in Arabia, from periods
of remote antiquity. The annals of these
heathen empires show this to have been one
of the many evidences of a high civilization
before the Christian era. The earliest Jesuit
missionaries to China, not likely, for manifest
reasons, to report any brightness or beauty in
idolatrous lands without strictest examination,
agree in the conviction, and publish it to the
world, that the Orientals are entitled to the
invention of the compass, at a date some 2600
years before Christ. A translator from the
Chinese authorities speaks of the origin of
the compass as "a chariot for indicating the
south, in order to distinguish the four cardinal
points." The Chinese, however, did not apply
the discovery to navigation until about the
year 265 after Christ. Thereafter we find
scattered references, in their public records, to
17 *
193
f...
I 
WORKDAY CHfRISTIANVITY.
ships directed over the wide waters by the
needle. The compass was known on the Syrian coast before it came into use in Europe.
For ages it was guarded with jealousy by the
nations possessing it as of special commercial
importance.
In 1260, Marco Polo, it is said, returning
from his travels in the far east, brought back
to Europe, among many other Chinese inventions, a knowledge of the compass; and about
the close of the fifteenth century, another explorer found his way around the Cape of Good
Hope, piloted by the sea-charts and needles
of East India origin.
It is believed that the use of the compass
was known as early as the close of the eleventh
century in Norway, and was employed for
purposes of navigation; for at that time there
was no lode-stone in the northern countries.
Different nations and various ages claim the
honor of this invention; but there is no claim
so well authenticated as that of the Chinese,
our far eastern rivals in courtesy and skill,
now so scorned by political Christianity as
they greet us from the west. Strange and
194 
THE PIL 0 T.
cruel that the people who gave us the secret
of the seas, -who pointed out by their genius,
long ages ago, our broad continent of privilege
and plenty, - should now, in these days of
schools, churches, and republicanism, be treated
as dogs rather than as men, when they land
upon our sunset shores!
By means of the compass the earth's treasure-depths have been discovered, cities located,
states mapped out, and lines of railway made
to weave into unity the diverse nationalities of
all the earth. It is the silent, but safe and unerring pilot of civilization, and occupies a
prominence in the secular and religious worlds
accorded to no other contrivance of human
hands. Not only the mysterious seas, but
the broader firmaments of sky, as well as
kingdoms, empires, republics, commonwealths,
farms, fields, and dwellings, are mapped and
memoried by the aid of the pilot's needle.
The prophet accredits wisdom to the Tyrus
pilots. "Thy wise men, O Tyrus, were thy
pilots." Tyre was situated at the entrance of
the sea, with many commodious harbors.
Standing at the head of the Mediterranean, it
I95 
1 96     V 0 RKD A Y CHR IS 7'IA NI  Y.
was a center for trade through a populous
country beyond. Occupying a position between Greece and Asia, it became a metropolis of merchants and the emporium for ships
of every sail. The Tyrians were among the
early navigators, and developed the art as
fully as it could be without the use of the
magnetic needle.  Their ships were stoutly
built and elegantly furnished, having the best
of fir-wood, oak, and cedar timbers, and ivory
for benches and ornaments. The sails were
of fine linen, woven in Egypt, and richly embroidered. The state - rooms were hung with
royal purple and finest tapestry. The oarsmen were specimens of physical strength and
endurance; and the pilots were men of culture and skill. The owners of the Tyrian
trading-vessels gave high wages for competent labor, and their voyages were, consequently, prosperous and pleasant. What these
people of Tyre did in ship-building and cruising, they did well. It was thorough work,a business that enlisted their best talent, means,
and energies.
Thus should every occupation in which men 
THE PILO T.
engage enlist their ablest powers. All secular
employment, to be enjoyed and to be successful, must be heartily pursued. Whatever is
worth the doing at all, is worth doing well.
Be it managing a ship of state, or a ship of
trade, a mill, a farm, a mine, a store, a wagon,
a pen, or a spade, drudgery can be taken out
of it whenever the heart is put into it. Wise
men were the Tyrus pilots. They made their
business a study. They ennobled the art into
a science. They contributed to the dignity
and good reputation of the city by diligence
in their special line of business. So can all
work be made honorable. The Bible allows no
slovenliness in business. Christianity encourages invention, promotes refinement, suggests
method, insists upon order, promptness, regu larity, good humor, good manners, and good
livings. The resources of the earth are abun dant for all. If manual labor were made a
part of education-an  essential  in  every
school and  college  curriculum-the world
would be brighter and cheerier for the change.
It is because labor has been dunned out as
toll for a livelihood- underpaid, overtaxed,
I97 
WORAiD AY CHRISTIA4NITY.
unfashioned, and unchurched, that so many
toilers are worn, and weary, and forced to
be illiterate and melancholy; whereas, if their
work and position were properly rewarded,
they would be strong, vigorous, intellectual,
religious, and happy.
"The smallest bark on life's tumultuous ocean,
Will leave a track behind for evermore;
The lightest wave of influence set in motion,
Extends and widens to the eternal shore;
We should be wary then who go before
A myriad yet to be; and we should take
Our bearings carefully, where breakers roar
And fearful tempests gather; one mistake
May wreck unnumbered barks that follow in our wake."
On our river steamboats the office of pilot
is one of highest honor and greatest responsibility on board. The pilot must know the
channel in all stages of water, the precise
location of rocks, bars, and snags; he must
keep himself informed of every change in the
depth and drift of the current.   And  this
knowledge must be available by day and by
night; for not only valuable cargoes of freight,
but human life also is involved in faithfulness
I98 
THE P IL O0 T.
of the hand at the pilot's wheel. It will be
recollected what a dreadful casualty occurred
not long ago on the Ohio, between Cincinnati
and Louisville, when two magnificent steamers,
unskillfully guided, came in collision, and were
destroyed, at the sacrifice of many lives. A
slight turn of the pilot's wheel neglected or
wrongly done, or the too feeble sound of a
signal at the touch of his foot -a very little
thing in itself-was probably the cause of that
double disaster. Of all men, the pilot should
be a man of wisdom.
When a man has a long journey to make
through a forest or unknown region of country, through which he has never traveled
before, he selects a careful guide, and engages
his services for the way. He trusts in the
wisdom of another-commits to his keeping
his treasures and his life; and under the direction of a competent guide he safely reaches
his destination at last. When a vessel is to
cross or cruise along the seas, a pilot who
knows the dangers of the route, who understands the winds and the currents, the geography of the distant shores, the location of the
I99 
200    [VORKDAY CHRISTIANITY
obstructions that lie hidden under the waves,
is employed to take the wheel and move the
helm. Special wisdom is sought and trusted
for the voyage.
Human life is a voyage. There are dangers all along the way. The channel for safe
sailing winds among rocks and over reefs, and
often the perils are difficult to see. There are
contrary winds and counter-currents to drift
the soul away. Man needs a pilot. He is in
jeopardy every hour. He is without knowledge of the breadth and sweep of the heady
seas. He can not span the dim distances before him, nor make the harbor of which he
dreams as lying calm and quiet in the open
sunlight by the other shore. He has no compass by which to trace his way from time over
into eternity, and be sure of his reckoning,
pressing on in light and dark the same. But
God knows man's low and lost condition.
The Creator is a pitying Father, and proffers
help to all the ruined race.
The promise quoted from the Book is from
the lips of God himself. The children of Israel,
human - natured and exposed, need the guid 
THE P IL 0 T.
ance of a special power. They are to be led
forward by a hand which moves at the will of
Him who sees the end from the beginning.
An eye that never sleeps, down -looking
through all storm and night, sees a way of deliverance for an obedient and a patient people.
The pathway through the wilderness shall be
pointed out even to the promised land. An
angel is the pilot. He is especially qualified
for the work of advancing the bewildered
hosts, helpless and hopeless without celestial
aid. This beckoning angel, at whose hand the
multitudes press onward through heavy marches
and tedious wastes, is no other than the Son
of God, the same who, ages afterward, led the
little band of disciples up and down Judea's
rugged walks, until from Olivet he was parted
from them in a cloud. It was the Angel of the
Covenant, the Messenger of God, the Light of
the World, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
He now, as then, and to us as to the Hebrews,
goes before to keep his people in the heavenly
way, and to bring them to the place which he has
prepared. " I go to prepare a place for you,"
he said.   "Come hither; follow me,; I would
IS
20I 
WORA'DA Y CHRISTIANIT}.
have you where I am." Jesus Christ who descended from heaven to meet and rescue sinful man, has again ascended to the throne.
To and fro he has traveled the way, from
Paradise to Golgotha and back again. He is
the wisdom as well as the power of God. Humanity's Pilot is heaven's King. He knows
the dangerous shoals, the quicksands, the hidden rocks along the deep, for he has made the
voyage himself.  He, as man, was tempted in
every point, as we are tempted. He is touched
with a feeling for our infirmities. But he is
absolute Master of the sea and storm, and has
Death and the grave put under his feet.
Although the Divine Redeemer is unseen by
our natural eyes, he guides men by the promised Spirit. Conscience is the believer's compass. Our future safety depends upon our
fidelity to the dictates of this monitor within
the breast. By heeding conscience men learn
their special work and power. How often we
hear persons complain of the monotony of
life! They have surplus time hanging ovet
their heads, and they study means to kill it.
By games, by stupid novels, by stupider dress
202 
THE PIL 0 T.
parties, by stupidest conversation, all in befevered adjectives from fashion's limited vocabulary, stale and senseless as the clatter of
machinery, aimless and useless people try to
kill time, and escape conscience and the judgment.
The meanest insect under our feet has a
mission, and fills a purpose. Not a plant, or
blade of grass, or leaf, but what has in nature
its appointed place. Is man an aimless being?
Is man the floating waif on the sea of time?
The trouble with many persons arises from
the fact that they are drifting about without a
pilot, moved on every current and wafted by
every wind, passively on, as a mass of innate
material, to certain wreck and ruin. When
time hangs heavy and life is dull, it is evidence
that men have not discovered the tendencies
within themselves, that they fail to apprehend
the purpose of their own creation, and are
living without an object. The compass is obscured, the pilot's hand is palsied, and the
helm is astray.
Now, to ascertain one's own nature and
possibilities, the tides and currents of the sea
203 
V ORICD,AY CHRAISTIANITY.
of life, and the hither boundary of the eternal lands, intelligence was imparted to man.
Conscience is the guide to the soul's safe harbor, and as the agent by which the Holy Spirit
operates upon the mind. God speaks the
soundings, and forewarns of peril and gathering storm through the conscience, as a pilot
from his high outlook at the wheel speaks
through the winding trumpet-tube to the engineer below.
And as a pilot takes real pleasure in the
duties of his post from hour to hour and league
to league, enjoying the advance he makes
in the face of contending elements, so does
the Christian bless himself by daily consecration to his common work. Heaven is not
altogether external and distant. It is heaven
already to every soul that is fronted thitherward in openness and light. Some painters
have represented heaven as a company of little.round-cheeked  chubby cherubs blowing
silver bugles, or as an ether loft among the
stars, where pious people sit in silent circles
all around, and are exceedingly happy because
of their exalted position.
204 
THE PIL 0 T.
But there is a heaven in which to attain the
heaven of heavens.  As a well-built and elegantly furnished vessel in which to cross the
seas is inviting, and even luxurious, so is the
church of Jesus Christ, instituted at his command and piloted by his almighty arm, a delightful transport from the shores of time to
the shores of eternity.
A man with noble purpose and living faith
makes his own heaven in the association of
true believers. The blessed kingdom is not
so much a change of position as a change of
self. The idea is practical to the man of business, the workingman, the mechanic, the inerchant, the handler of needle, or spade, or
wheel- you must trade, legislate, invent, dig,
strike, act in every thing with a design to bring
heaven down to earth. When once you discover your gift and place in the world, take
the wheel as a pilot, hold to the indicated
course against wind, current, and tide; for
when you move in God's will, crooked places
become straight and rough ways plain at your
feet. This takes dullness out of life, and gives
it cutting edge. This banishes monotony and
18*
205' 
WORKDA Y CtRISTIANITY.
melancholy, and puts courage, cheer, and glory
in the heart. This makes the years goldenwinged and beautiful as they fly. This makes
a man wish for days of a hundred hours, and
for a score of hands instead of two. And if
men  can not so put themselves into their
work, and make ordinary vocations radiant
with religion - if parlors and kitchens are not
sacred as sanctuary altars and Christly as
cathedrals, there is reason for suspicion that
the pilot is asleep at his post, and that life is
drifting to destruction.
It is a custom among some rich men to
have the door of the safe where their money
is deposited so arranged that, on opening it,
a signal-bell is made to ring an alarm in their
sleeping chamber; and a thief in attempting
to steal by night may not reach the coveted
treasure without giving warning to the owner.
In some such way God has adjusted the
conscience as a signal-bell to sound an alarm
whenever Satan attempts to force an entrance
to the soul. There is timely warning given.
There is no sleeping-time excuse forlosing
the heavenly riches which are treasured in a
206 
7'HAE P IL O T.
Christian's heart. So long as a man continues
faithful to this unerring monitor, he is invincible to the attacks of sin. As individuals, men
are accountable for the heed they give to this
faithful sentinel within the breast.
One dull and dreamy August evening, a few
years since, I was a passenger on board a
steamer on a northern lake, bound for a
port on the coast of Canada. All day long
a haze had filled the atmosphere; the sun
seemed, as it went down over the western
banks, like a ball of copper sinking in the
ground; and a dense fog crept up from the
surface of the waters, and wrapped the vessel
like a heavy veil. The distant shores had
been but faintly visible under the noonday
sun; but now, at eventide, the objects on our
steamer's deck but a few steps from us were
scarcely discernible.   The  fog  and  smoke
shrouded in mist our fellow-travelers with
whom we face to face conversed. We were
approaching the port, and doubtless other
vessels were near us on the lake; but the
strong signal lights failed to penetrate the
gloom. The night intensified the darkness
207 
208    WORAkDAY CHRISTIANITY.
and the danger. There was imminent peril.
Collision and wreck would be but the work of
a moment in the awful calm and blindness of.
such an hour. Hark! Faintly and from afar
comes the muffled toll of a bell. We happened to be standing near the pilot. He
looked as though he had heard the bell from
the beginning of the darkness. He had caught
the familiar tones long before we heard the
tolling through the heavy air. Toll! again.
Silence and anxiety, and again the tolling tone
of the bell.  It is louder and we-  hark!the bell - we are nearer - the bell. It is the
fog-bell sounding from the shore. Suddenly
there looms up the ghost of a ship; we are
almost upon her; but the pilot saw the vessel
before we did, and clears her safely. Other
ships appear and disappear like specters in
the gloom. The bell continues to toll; the
pilot signals to the engineer below; the ponderous wheels again reduce their speed; the
vessel moves more slowly still; the variously
colored lights from land begin to glimmer
through the gloom; and on past ships at
anchor and ships afloat, on past projecting 
TIJE PIL 0 T.
headlands and massive piers, our gallant
steamer is rounded gracefully in to the landing, and we step out upon the solid wharf and
street.
So the heavenly Pilot guides the ship of
Zion through the gloom. We are passengers,
happy in the cheery cabins and state - rooms
of the vessel, anxious only when we step out
to the bow or up to the decks and try to peer
through the mists to the unseen shore. But
One is at the helm who knows the waters
well, and whose hand will guide the vessel
through. We doubt sometimes, and fear, and
find fault, and wish we were safe over the
treacherous sea. But while we are trembling
and afraid, hark to the tone of the fog-bell
sounding from the shore! "This is the way!"
"Come  hither!"  "Hold  fast!"  "Be  thou
faithful unto death!" "Lo! I am with you
always, even to the end of the world."
"Friends, fondly cherished, have passed on before:
Waiting they watch me approaching the shore;
Singing to cheer me through death's chilling gloom,
'Joyfuilly, joyfully, haste to thy home.'
209 
WOORA'DAY CHRISTIANITY.
Sounds of sweet melody fall on my ear:
Harps of the blessed, your voices I hearRings with the harmony hleaven's high dome,
'Joyfully, joyfully, safely at home.'"
What  blessed  encouragement,  when  the
earthly horizons disappear, when the helps of
men all fail, when we are absolutely dependent
on another arm for deliverance, to rely on
Him who is mighty to save! When the Christian can no longer see Jesus, he can hear his
voice, and feel the uplifting power of his arm.
Though thick darkness settle over the soul,
the sound of the fog-bell may be heard- the
voice of the Spirit- still and small as a muffled
note, and it is sweet to the heart. "Follow
thou me." "Whosoever will, let him come!
Come!  COME!"
Conscience answers to the beckoning bell
from the heavenly shore. If we heed the signals we shall at last step from these swimming
decks and from this perilous gloom, out to the
streets of crystal and gold, and tread forever
the solid floors of our Father's house of many
mansions.
210 
THIE PILO T.
That was a brave and noble pilot, who some
years ago, on Lake Erie, when the steamer was
discovered to be on fire, near half a score of
miles from shore, turned her bow to the nearest
land, and stood at his post until the flames
wrapped him round in lurid light. The passengers were frantic with alarm. The officers
were bewildered by the tumult. But his eye
was fixed through blaze and smoke upon the
land, and he stood firm at the helm until the
garments fell in cinders from his body.  "John
Brainard," cried the captain from below, "can
you hold on five minutes longer? " "I'11 try,
sir," was the reply. He stood there determined
to die at his post rather than attempt to save
himself at the peril of the passengers. He
clung to the wheel until his sinews crackled,
and the bones of his right arm were laid bare
by the fire, and then with foot and left arm
held the ship ashore, and perished in his place,
just as the rescued people leaped from the
wreck to the land. Who does not honor such
a hero?  Who would not trust in such a man?
His was a greater achievement than that of
211 
212    WORiDA~Y CHRISTIANITY.
Wellington at Waterloo -greater than any
victory that carnal conqueror ever won.
Yet this is but a feeble illustration of what
Jesus Christ has done to rescue an imperiled
race. He came to deliver the world from sin
and the second death. He assumed a suffering nature that he might die. He gave his
life for men. He died, the just for the unjust,
- hated, scourged, mocked, taunted, and tormented to the last by powers in authority, and
by thoughtless multitudes, for whom, by his
very death, he made salvation free. He was
slain for us.
Sinner, Jesus voluntarily suffered death for
you, that you might live forever. Why do you
hesitate to trust one so wise, so merciful, and
so good? You who guide our steamboats so
safely on the rivers, aiding our commerce and
earning honor and reward,- you who have
great vessels so completely under control, and
to whom are committed precious human lives
in utmost confidence - are  you  yourselves
drifting without guidance to the grave and out
into a shoreless eternity?   Are your souls
afloat on the currents that sweep downward 
THE PIL 0 T.
forever? Have you no knowledge of this
chart that maps the celestial landing? Are
you willing to be accounted as so much dumb
and dead material, when God would lead you
to heavenly places in Christ Jesus? Let the
suffering Lord of glory possess your faculties
and your affections, kindle your consciences,
and direct your thoughts, and you will find
such strength and enjoy such liberty as you
never dreamed it possible for dying men to
share.
O what a failure, if, after all your years of
successful piloting, never even perhaps to lose
a barge committed to your care, you should at
last be utterly wrecked yourselves- stranded
in the river of death, broken and scattered as
fragments along the dismal depths of perdition! Be wise men, O pilots, and heed the
tones that echo in promise from the eternal
shore, the words of God struggling through
the heavy mists to arrest your attention now,
"Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep
thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place
which I have prepared."
I9
213 
..i I i 
I 
TLIE PRINTER.
"O that my words were now written! 0 that they wrere printed
in a book! " -JOB XIX. 23.
215 
.0 
CHAPTER IX.
THE PRINTER.
HE  word "printed,"  in the ancient
Scripture, means engraved; for the
art of printing was unknown in those
days. Job had a creed which held his head
and his heart, and he desired to perpetuate it
as something more substantial than a tradition.
It should be more than merely chalk-marked
on the rock; he wished it cut to the granite's
heart, that the crumbling centuries might not
erase it forever. Arabia has many inscriptions
on the mountain rocks to-day. Who knows
but that, in some sequestered place, Job's creed
will yet be found and read? It would be a
simple one, but sublime; it would be central
of all humble, patient, holy purpose, and superior to all the dogmas that modern theologists
have compiled and foisted on the churches.
l9*                               217 
2I8    WORKDAY CHRISTIA4NITY.
The old patriarch would transform rocks into
Bibles on which future generations might read,
for all the coming years, the doctrines that
were sacred to his soul.  A true creed is self
expressive. It struggles for utterance in every
honest heart. It cries for syllables on the
tongue, and for record on the monuments of
time. Jeremiah felt it as a fire shut up in his
bones. Peter and Paul were so inspired with
the gospel that they could not but preach.
Truth glories in expression. Faith must well
up and run over into words and works. Job
said, as the substance of things hoped for, "I
know, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and
that he shall stand at the latter day upon the
earth;" that the good news -the glad tidings
- should ultimately spread and fill the earth
as the waters the channels of the sea. These
words of faith in the world's Redeemer have
been perpetuated, printed in a book, and multiplied in hundreds of languages to millions of
people.
"Stars are poor books, and oftentimes do miss;
This book of stars lights to eternal bliss." 
TH E RINTER.
Men in a savage condition have always been
without an alphabet. Ability to write by means
of letters is a mark of civilization. Before any
characters, as the elemental signs of sound- and
thought, were invented, the memory of important events was preserved by heaps of stones,
as the Bethel of Jacob in the wilderness; by
planting trees; by instituting festivals; or by
historical songs. The first'attempt at communicating ideas to others through the eye, was
by means of paintings. The Egyptians used
certain symbols called hieroglyphics -sacred
carvings -grouping several things in one picture. It was a crude and indistinct method of
conveying either fact or fancy, but the world
knew none better. The Phoenicians invented
letters, and Cadmus introduced them into
Greece some I500 years before the Christian
era; but his primitive alphabet was limited,
containing only sixteen letters, although it
was afterward extended by Palamades and
Simonides to twenty-four.
Most of the ancient writings were on stones
or bricks. The Ten Commandments were thus
inscribed. Afterward, plates of brass, of lead,
2I9 
WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
of earthenware, and blocks of wood, were used.
On these, for many ages, all public records
were kept. At first only capital letters were
known, as is proved from old marble monuments and antiquarian coins.
Then the liber, or inner bark of trees, came
into use; and hence the name li6er- a book,
and library - a collection of books. Afterward linen and wax-covered tables, parchment,
or the skin of animals; and next, in the time
of Alexander the Great, a fabric began to be
manufactured from an Egyptian plant called
papyrus, from which the word paper is derived.
The instrument used for writing was an
iron-pointed pencil, called a graphium. The
Romans wrote on but one side of the parchment or paper, and attached the end of one
sheet to another, and when the work was finished, it was rolled on a staff or cylinder;
hence the word volumenz- a scroll. The term
volume, to us, suggests an object square and
with angles and corners, rather than round, as
a roll.
Julius Caesar introduced the custom of dividing the continuous scroll into pages, and fold
220 
THE PRINTER.
ing them in convenient measures with the folios
marked as at present. In writing letters the
Romans always put their own name first, then
the name of the person addressed, with any
expression of esteem and affection they chose,
and forwarded their letters by special messengers, or commonly by slaves; for there were
no mails or post-offices. Some of these incidents of correspondence are discernible in the
introductions and postscripts of the New Testament epistles.
But even by this tedious process books
accumulated. Solomon, in his day, said, "of
making many books there is no end." Ptolemy
Philadelphus collected at Alexandria, 274 B.C.,
a library of 700,000 volumes. This famous
library was destroyed by fire from Cesar's
fleet, again restored to almost its original dimensions, and totally destroyed by the Saracens in A. D. 642. Augustus founded a Greek
and Latin library in Apollo's temple on Palatine
Hill; others were collected in the Capitol, and
in the house of Tiberius, besides private libraries of rare value; and all this literature before
the art of printing was known in book-making.
22I 
222    WORKDAY CHRISTIA4NITY.
The world's annals, poems, and pictures were
all in hieroglyphics, tombs, coins, and cumbrous
manuscripts, until three - fourths of the time
from Christ to us had lapsed away.
Printing is the art of producing copies of
writings or other marks by means of pressure.
Any substance that will receive an impression
by reason of its softness, as wax or clay, or of
its bibulous nature, is susceptible of receiving
color from some pigment with which the stamp
is moistened. Strictly speaking, however, the
copies produced are notfac similes, but are reversed; yet the relation of the print to the
type is always perfectly assignable, so that any
form may be given to the result by means of
the stamp.
The use of engrayed seals for impressing
soft substances, preceded by many centuries
the art of printing by transference of a pigment, that is to say, by means of colored
stamps or types. Indentation of properly conditioned surfaces was practiced in very early
times. A common foot-track in the sand could
not fail to give hint of the art.
Copper-plate printing, or the art of word and 
THE P R ITEr TR.
object-grooving in hard substances, and thus
making hollows for the ink, and then pressing
the sheet upon the plate to absorb the color, is
a custom of earlier practice than that of printing from types. This contrivance was invented
in China by a minister of state named Foongtaon, and is still in common use in that country.
The page of writing to be reproduced is pasted
down over the smooth block, generally of peartree wood, where it leaves its letters and other
characters in an inverted form. The wooden
surface thus marked is made ready for printing
from, by cutting away all the uncolored part
of the wood, leaving the impressed lines in
bold relief, ready to receive the ink from the
brush or roller for impressing copies. The
Chinese language being complex and arbitrary
as to its alphabet, having an unmanageable
conglomeration of characters, not reducible
by laws of orthography, this block-page process, or half-hieroglyphic style of printing, is
about all that the Chinese brains and fingers
could ever make of the art. An alphabetical
mode of writing, where letters represent elementary sounds instead of ideas and things,
223 
WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
is essential to the full development of printing.
Even in Europe, where writing was from
regulated alphabets, the Chinese mode of printing was the first practiced. It is credibly recorded that Marco Polo, who returned from
China about the close of the thirteenth century, brought with him some specimens of
paper money stamped with a seal covered with
vermilion. The first samples of printing in
Europe were playing-cards, and manuals of
religion, a variety at the beginning which has
been observed ever since, the Devil and the
Lord having a divided interest in the art.
Genius will always promote error as readily as
truth, unless controlled by sovereign grace.
Talent turns to the cause of Satan or of God,
just as the heart elects.
The age of these crude block-prints was the
first half of the fifteenth century. One still in
preservation in Lord Spencer's library in England, bears the date I423. Of the blockbooks, a small folio of forty leaves, each leaf
containing a picture and a text of Scripture,
published somewhere between 1430 and I450,
224 
THE PRINTE R.
a copy is now in the British Museum. Another
block- book was a small Latin Grammar for
schools, issued in those innocent days before
the era of book agents, committeemen, and
morocco-bound voting!
At this point, printing would surely have
stopped, if the art of alphabetic writing had
not been  adopted.   The word - method, or
block-page system, was impracticable for the
infinite combinations of thought.   The  art
must be based on individual letters, and be
made to modulate from the simplest elements
of speech. All possible words and sentences,
from homeliest prose to sublimest poetry,
may be wrought from a simple alphabet; and
if a sufficient number of types, consisting each
of but a single letter, be provided, and the same
types used in printing one page afterward
distributed and reset in other words for the
next page or form, the new principle is found
to be practicable at once; and from its application we date the origin of printing.
The employment of moulded types, and the
manufacture of these types by casting in metal,
were the organic changes from the Chinese
20
225 
IVOR RKDA Y CHRISTIA NIT Y.
system which made printing what it is to-day.
That wonderful instrument, the alphabet, being
already invented, this improvement from logography, or cut-wood and block-page printing,
consisted in simply breaking up the wooden
block into as many distinct pieces as there
were letters engraved upon it, and by moulding
the letters in matrices instead of engraving
them by hand. The casting of metal types
was only a separate department of the founder's
art, which, as we have already seen, was one
of the vocations of antiquity.
To Laurens Koster, of Harlem, belongs,
according to reliable and impartial history,
the honor of inventing and using movable
types.* The Germans, owing to a social or
political prejudice against the Dutch, have well
nigh succeeded in appropriating to themselves
the discovery of the art of printing, while,
really, they have only developed and popular
* The art seemed to have been locked up in his rude
chase as a sacred secret, and it was not until others
either supplemented or reproduced the invention, under
other auspices, that printing found favor and became
practicable.
226 
T[E PRIN 7YER.
ized what had its origin in Holland. But, all
claims aside, printing was not so much a discovery by original genius, as it was an inevitable consequence of gradual increase of knowledge. There were thinkers in those days, and
a necessity had come for putting ideas broadly
before the people. Paper had been already
invented, and xylographic or block-books were
common, and it remained only to make movable types to perfect the art. So the credit
scarcely' belongs to one individual, or to a
single nation, of furnishing the world the
means of "making books without end."
In the year I426, Koster first applied ink
to adjustable wooden types, and in ten years
after, a system of metal types was successfully adopted.
About the year A. D. I442, John Guttenberg, of Strasburg, in Germany, improved
upon the practice of printing from adjustable
blocks of wood, and succeeded in producing
some specimen pages in good style. He contended with many difficulties, working in secret
and alone for a time, and was, at last, about to
abandon the enterprise in despair, when he
227 
IV OR'D A Y CHR I STIANITY
formed an intimacy with John Faust, a wealthy
citizen of Mainz, to whom he confided his
plans. Faust, himself an ingenious mechanic,
became at once interested in the new process,
and furnished means to carry forward the
work.   Soon  afterward, Peter Schoffer, of
Gernsheim, was also identified with the invention, and these three German workmen stand
side by side in the honor of having established
this noblest of arts. Their sturdy, full-bearded
faces are grouped in the popular medallion
which printers everywhere recognize as the
badge of the craft. They had some personal
misunderstanding, and even litigation; but all
these local troubles are long since forgotten
in the grateful memory of what they accomplished for the world.
From this date forward, printing became one
of the most important and influential arts; and
the history of its development and application
is one of rare interest throughout civilization.
It assumed an unexpected power in moulding
thought and controlling governments, such as
no other single agent had ever exerted. And
this influence increased with every age, until
228 
1 JE  PAR IN 7'L'R.
now the press is the great lever by which communities and nations are moved into enlightened action.
If Solomon, who, when books were so tediously made, thought there was no end to the
business - if, when every letter on every page
was traced by a pen in weary, aching fingers,
he had occasion to be astonished at the numerous volumes which resulted -what would he
say, and how he would stare at a modern
power-press tossing off, as mere child's play, its
twenty-five thousand sheets in an hour! What
kind of interjections would he pronounce when
convinced that a single morning will rush into
the market all over the land, ten thousand fresh
books complete and beautiful for ready reading!
The first printing - press in North America
was set up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in
I 639, a few years after the settlement of the
pilgrims.  There had been a press in operation, however, at Lima, in South America, from
the year I62I. In both these instances, the
primary object was to promote religion in the
western world- the northern press by the
20 *
229 
230    WORKDAY CHRISTIANXITY.
Puritans, and the southern by the Jesuit missionaries.   It is not  difficult to determine
which has had the greater success. It is believed that printing was practiced in Mexico
as early as I569; and specimen copies of
small devotional works are said to be still in
existence which bear the imprint of the Spanish
missions there near that time. But by some
strange incubus, ecclesiastical or political, the
press has never, in South America or in Mexico,
accomplished what it has done in the British
colonies and the United States. Where the
Bible has been free, paper not unreasonably
taxed, and conscience untrammeled by priestcraft or party, printing has been both pioneer
and harvest-gatherer of Christianity.
The first newspaper published in America
was in Boston, bearing the date of Monday,
April 24, I704, and called the -lews-Letter;
the second was the New Enzgland Gazette;
and the third the Philadelphia Mercury. The
third periodical in New England was the
Boston Courier, James Franklin's paper, and
on this journal, Benjamin Franklin, the younger brother, served his apprenticeship among 
THE PRIzVNTER.
the types.  The printing-office was to him
more than the college has been to thousands
of youths born, bred, and booked in the luxury
of later days. He honored the trade, and the
trade honored him. Sometimes we hear the
remark from unmannerly graduates and fastidious fools: "A printer! nothing but a printer!
O but printing is a mean occupation!" The
charge is false. No honest vocation is mean;
and this has special attractions and delights.
By its peculiar discipline, it made the boy Benjamin Franklin, a profound philosopher; the
boy, Horace Greeley, a conscientious and powerful politician; and the boy, Thomas Hewlings
Stockton, the pulpit orator of his day. It is a
noble  employment.   It develops talent.  It
encourages genius. There is a charm in the
touch of types that is magnetic. I had rather
spend an hour in a printing-office among
sprightly workmen than an equal time any
where else in search of general information.
The business makes men ready thinkers and
correct talkers -barring the bad grammar of
occasional profanity, which is always evidence
of an awkward printer- and if employers
231 
WORKDAY CIRISTIXANITY.
would treat typos as artizans and equals, and
provide respectable offices, and proper and
ample materials, printing might take its legitimate place as first among the trades   as a
calling of peculiar  dignity and honor.   A
printing-office ought to be as neat and winsome as a school of design among artists. If
printers would keep themselves in "good
sorts" socially, as they like their cases to be
literally, this glorious art would come out of
its drudgery, and be sustained by just appreciation in the form of good wages, genial associations, and airy and wholesome hours and
apartments.
But, supposing that we are in an ordinary
printing-office, let us make some observations
and draw some inferences as we go along. A
type-setter is called a compositor.   He works
at a sort of desk, known as a stand, the surface of which is divided into two inclinations,
the nearer portion to his hand being called the
lower case, and the further and steeper portion the upper case. These two cases, with
corresponding ones for italics, contain all the
letters, small and capital, figures, marks, points,
232
O-W-  
THE PRJINT~ ER.
and spaces arranged in boxes or open divisions, according to their frequency in words,
the most used sorts being nearest the hand.
Hence the small letters are in the lower case,
and capitals in the upper case. The spaces,
or blank types, by which words are separated
and lines adjusted in the composing-stick,
are also arranged in boxes according to their
thickness. From these cases, letter by letter,
the pages of books and newspapers are made
up. Here the manuscript, or "copy," placed
in the printer's hands for reproduction, is transferred to the solid squares of type, which,
when locked up and put through the press,
will multiply the original to any desired extent.
Every letter, point, and intervening space has
been specially reached for and fixed by a separate motion of the compositor's hand. Little by
little the work is done. The cases, containing
the alphabet, have the elements for all varieties
of theme and shades of language. Out from
these few little type-apartments have come all
the words in the printed volumes, tracts, and
periodicals of the world, with their untold in
233 
234    WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
fluences for good or evil upon the millions
since the art was known.
So is human character composed. The alphabet case before us is Time. The hours,
minutes, and seconds are the apartments for the
types, which, lifted and locked into place, shall
spell our life. Every day is a new page.
From the moulded moments before us, we
pick up and set in order the thoughts that
make our history. As a printer has the power
to put together mischievous words and vicious
sentences out of the'same case of types from
which a Bible might be composed, so has every
accountable human being the power to make
his own life what he will. He may make his
history a police gazette or a Christly gospel,
according to his copy and his choice. And as
a printed page is not read by the world until
finished and issued beyond revision, so is a
man's life interpreted by what he is with
rounded days and years -by what he expresses himself to be through crises and eras
- rather than by his single promises and
emotional actions. A page is locked into form
by itself, and its impress is a unit, although re 
THE PR IzV; TE R.
lated to pages before and after; so is a day or
a year in a man's life. He can not get himself gauged by head - line Sunday lettering,
double-leaded in the way of promised piety,
and with the italics of tears, dollars, and amens
in the sanctuary service, unless the weekday
parts of the page be properly adjusted. The
lower-case particulars must range in with a
man's capital generalities. Christian character,
to read well, must include the whole make-up
of the years, the solid quadrats of unseen
charity, the regular spaces of secret devotion,
the points of punctuation in all the means of
grace, the well-justified lines of daily duty, and
all locked up in the form of square-living as
prescribed in the New Testament. It is as
necessary that the religious silences be observed as the religious speeches, in order that
a Christian life may be an epistle read and
known of all men. The hidden quadrats are
as essential as the heady capitals in typing a
page of poetry.
The copy before all men is the example of
Jesus Christ. Out of our times we are to select and set together the impulses, thoughts, and
235 
VWOR?DA~Y CHRISTIANITY.
actions that shall make us most like Him, so
that as we who profess His name are read, we
shall be able to show something of His spirit,
His life and His work.
Christians are epistles to be read. The
world reads them every day. How important
that this living gospel which walks and trades
and stirs about in public places should be correctly printed! Yet how many of these living
epistles have been printed from battered type,
from mixed fonts, on spotted paper, and in
dim ink! But after all, orthodoxy is safer in
the consecrated heart than in the theological
library. Evangelism is an upright, open-eyed,
warm - handed, advancing thing, not the flat
flimsiness of a mere programme, to be written
and put away on the shelf for safe keeping; it
is always alive, alert and growing; it is not
dead Latin, but vital mother - tongue in this
country; it is not steepled in church, cadenced
in ritual, or robed at the altar, so much as
hearted in living people and radiated in workday duties.
So let us here and evermore show a gainsaying world the sacred printing on our hearts
236 
THE PRINTER.
by letting the light in upon it through our
common life. Let sinners read us rather than
our books.   Let us pronounce the gospel
warm from loving lips, and emphasize it by an
honest practice, and we shall accomplish more
truly evangelical work than by sending off assorted packages of brimstone, tinder, and
matches, sect-patented and prepaid from  all
eternity, to our heathenish neighbors. We
must be in our places like the separate letters
of a word, and the various words of a message,
and as individuals and denominations, in living,
lightning emphasis, spell out the gospel of salvation to dying men.
In a printing-office, sometimes, when a form
or page is not well locked up, a type, a word,
or a line drops out and spoils the meaning.
The chase must be square and sound, and the
quoins firm and well driven.   So when  a
church has no definite rule of faith, and no disciplinary appliances by which to hold men together; in the looseness of doctrine and duty,
men drop out from their appointed places in
entire words and lines, as represented in the
fellowhood of families-drop out and are p/ed,
21
237 
238    IFORAPDAY CH'RI STIANIT.
marring the significance of great congregations. It is difficult to read the meaning of
a church where once-active members are missing. The blanks arrest the eye of the world
before the beauties. A full pew will not begin
to excite the remarks that an empty pew will
excite, because these breaks and vacuums are
unnatural. Some fashionable churches prefer,
doubtless, to have the people adjusted in select
groups and far between, richly clad and sweetly
scented, in a kind of poetical measure of fours
and twos, the vacant places of crimson-cushion
being supposed only to give accent to the syllabled solemnity that ranges itself rhythmically
across the pews, as a printer arranges shortlined but deep - thoughted poems across the
middle of the page. But there is more truth
than poetry in a solid page of print at last.
A student in a boarding-school, on handing his
composition to the teacher, was asked, "Why
do you begin every line with a capital letter?"
f"Why, sir, that's poetry." Just as if! And
to see the manner in which some pewed
churches arrange their capitalists, the most successful business-men occupying the principal 
TIlE PRINTER.
places - the aisle - end prominences of the
sanctuary on sunny Sabbaths, with families
and servants ranged down toward the corners
- gives hint of the student's vain ambition,
"Why, sir, this is poetry!"  Just as if, again!
The gospel is fact, and not fancy. Who
does not worship more profitably and blessedly
in a church- room full of happy souls, with all
the caste bars broken down? A type picked
and gouged out of a form is ruined; but a
type dropped out may be replaced and made
to print as sharply as any unfallen letter in the
case. But the printers call that place where
castaway, broken, and battered types are collected, an awful place! So that place where
wanderers, and backsliders, and beaten churchmembers are grouped - no more to aid in
words or works of love -is hell! 0, Christian, make every thing tell for truth? The
end of church life is not form, not ease, not
independence -but the showing of an epistle
that shall be read and known of all. Job
prays for the same impressiveness of life, " O
that my words were now written! O that they
were printed in a book!"  So, evermore, as
239 
240     WORkDAY CHRISTIANITY.
the Bible itself has come out of quiet cloisters
and crumpled manuscripts, and been multiplied, published, and proclaimed abroad to the
expectant millions, may it be our daily ambltion and prayer, in the composition of our life
which shall be read by the ages to come, to
get out of creedly coverings and traditional
ways, and to put by lip and by life our motive
meaning before the world -to become more
legible to our fellow- men!
"The deeds we do, the words we say,
Into still air they seem to fleet,
We count them ever past       But they shall last;
In the dread judgment they
And we shall meet!" 
THE WEAVER.
" I have cut off like a weaver my life." - ISAIAH xxxviii. I2.
21 *
N- 
24I  
I),
CHAPTER X.
THE WEAVER.
T is evident, from frequent references
in the Bible, and from the general
character of dress, that woven fabrics
were among the earliest productions of human
hanlds. Weaving is of even greater antiquity
than spinning, the first materials combined into
woven web being reeds, blades, barks, and
strips of leather.   These  rude fibers were
plaited and crossed into each other and driven
into compact texture by simple machinery, and
cut and seamed into various articles of clothing
long before the art of making yarn from wool
or hemp was known.
The Egyptians were the earliest manufacturers of linen and other cloths; and the products
of their looms were eagerly sought by foreign
nations. On the old monuments at Thebes,
243 
244    WORKDAY CHRISTIANVITY.
there are pictures of looms, and of weavers at
work; and although the representations show
the machines to have been exceedingly crude,
yet it is certain that by this means many very
fine specimens were manufactured. This statement is corroborated by the fact that at the
present time, the Hindoos produce exquisite
muslins from their rude looms, the same in
construction as those used by the ancient
Egyptians. On these primitive contrivances
of beam, heddle and sley, as depicted on the
crumbling tombs, the fine, elastic, and durable
mummy- cloth was woven for the dead.
Weaving was a special employment in some
of the larger towns of Greece; but in that age
of the world, it was an essential item of female
education to know how to weave; hence almost every dwelling had a loom at which the
women worked.
The ancient Romans used every inducement
to encourage domestic industry.   Spinning
and weaving constituted the principal occupation of the women. It was considered a better
qualification for matrimony than wealth. The
atrium was a place set apart for female in 
THE WEA VER.
dustry, that their workday habits might be conspicuous. They rather invited than avoided
inspection in their working apparel. But, in
aftertimes, the women of rank became luxurious and lazy, and began to be ashamed of
their looms; the real dignity of labor sank
lower and lower, and indolence and false
modesty at length so completely made slaves
of women, that they would actually apologize
and blush when caught with broom or brush
in hand: "Excuse me, for really I did n't expect to be seen in this business; but just at
this time, we are without a girl, and the awful
necessity is upon me to take hold of things
myself, just for a day or so.  Now, you will
excuse my appearance, won't you?"
All the while, a woman is never so beautiful
and attractive as when engaged in just such
work- making home pleasant. It is angel
work to banish dust and gloom from earthly
dwellings, and to smile and sing in ministries
of love.
In the book of Proverbs, the wise man,
speaking of a virtuous woman, a model of
goodness and grace, of health and beauty,
245 
246    WORKDA Y CHRISTIANITY.
says: "She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh
willingly with her hands. She layeth her hands
to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.
She is not afraid of the snow for her household:
for all her household are clothed with scarlet.
She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her
clothing is silk and purple. Her husband is
known in the gates, when he sitteth among the
elders of the land. She maketh fine linen and
selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. Strength and honor are her clothing;
and she shall rejoice in time to come."
There are females in these days, educated in
colleges and courted by bachelors of art, who
would not be able, if asked, to define the meaning of the word spindle, or distaff,- who would
scorn to wear anything that would excite even
a lurking suspicion of having been homemade. The Bible estimate of female character
makes no allowance for craziness after foreign
wares, fashion and mammon to the contrary
notwithstanding. The real worth of womanhlood and the enduring charm of female society
are most fitly expressed in those words and
works which bless the home. Home is next to 
TIIE IWtE AVE R.
heaven. Woman is sister to angel. She is
not a mere ornament or a toy; neither a slave
nor a drudge; she was not created from his
head to rule, nor from his foot to be trodden
down; but from his side, to stand as sharer in
domestic duties; and in social, intellectual, religious, and political privileges, his honorable
equal in all ages and lands. A true woman
knows how to work, and delights in being
busy with hand or brain, or both; and she
lives, moves, and has her being, not the more
to be ministered unto than to minister. She
rises early, says Solomon. She has no ballroom midnights of show and dance and dainty
feasting, to make up in sunny mornings by
lying in bed till noon; she puts her hand to
the spinning-wheel and distaff, to the sewingmachine and broom, as proudly as her husband to his plough, or plane, or trowel. She
does not consider it beneath her dignity, or an
infringement upon her liberty, or a narrowing
of her rights, to share in the common toils of
life. It is not enough to engage in the lightfingered lace-work and gossamer-laid fancies
-those infinitesimal niceties that never tax
247 
IWOR'KDAY CHRISTIANITY.
the muscles - those delicate things that are
next things to nothings at all; the true woman
puts her strength and soul into ordinary work
in her chosen sphere, as a man does int6
his. These are the equal rights and the equal
honors that are so beautifully inculcated in
the Bible.
The days when women whirled the spinning-wheel and plied the loom in this country are not quite forgotten yet. When these
lands were new, before pianos and organs
were common in the parlor, there was a music
of winter evenings, when the wood fire roared
and the spindle hummed, and the happy mothers, spinning, sung their children into the
paradise of dreams.   This  is an ancestral
honor that many dainty dandies and befashioned maidens now would fain disown! Indeed, there are here and there in American
society persons who wear nothing but imported fabrics and fanciful fixtures every day,
who move in the rustle of silk and satin only,
whose school-day garments were spun and
woven, cut and stitched, by a skillful mother's
fingers. The times have changed. But, after
248 
THE MWE A VE R.
all, there never shall be painted a more beautiful picture than that of the bygone days,
when the flax-fields, bordered round by heavy
forest green, waved in purple bloom, and webs
of linen bleached white as snow upon the
meadow grass! The whir of the fliers and
the spool when the downy flax from the distaff
and the velvety rolls of wool from the yielding
hand were drawn out in threads and wound
away, and the beat - beat of the busy loom
made as charming sound to the souls of our
fathers and mothers as the tones of piano and
guitar to their fastidious children and children's
children now. Yes, the times have changed;
but whether toward or from the Eden joys, let
him who considers and discovers tell! Still,
the health and bliss of honest work are very
sure.
In the language of weavers, the long threads
are called the war;p, and the cross threads are
called the woof. The warp is wound about a
beam in the loom, to be unrolled as it is met
by the woof and wrought into the web; while
the woof is contained in the shuttle, a small,
boat-like instrument, driven horizontally across
22
249 
I'VO R AD A Y CHRI IS TIA NI7'Y 
the warp by the weaver's hand, from right to
left, and from left to right in rapid flight.
In the book of Job, our days are compared
to the weaver's shuttle, passing and repassing
so very swiftly, every throw leaving a thread
behind it; and when they are finished, the
thread is cut off and the web taken out of the
loom for inspection, measurement, and future
use.
The meaning of the words, "I have cut off
like a weaver my life," is, that as a weaver
cuts off from his loom his finished web, and
hands it, in its own weight and measurement,
to the inspector, so does a man his life. For
life is a web. The simile is instructive. The
prophet, in his striking description of death,
employs this figure of speech to make sharp
impression on the mind. It implies that the
middle-aged are most unwilling to die. Children are easily reconciled to death, and so are
old people. They pass over into the eternal
state quietly and peacefully. Death is not
dreadful to them. But the man in his prime,
with plans but half accomplished, and with
prospects ever brightening and beckoning
25o 
7THE [VE A VE R.
before him; the man with strong pulse and
clear eye and dextrous hand; the man in the
mid-way journey and joy of his life, -is afraid
and unready for the experiment of dying. A
man's most solemn words are spoken when he
stands face to face with death, and especially
when the summons comes in the shock of a
moments and in the midst of smile and song
and highest noon of being. When the messenger announces his coming to a man in
supposed security - with health and wealth
enough for years of ease, and insists upon the
immediate dissolution of soul and body, it cuts
the thread in the work of weaving, and bears
away into the judgment light the web for the
Master's eye and solemn word.
The prophet shows the real power of prayer;
for there are added out of heaven fifteen years
to a man's life in answer to simple faith. As
soon as the appeal reaches the throne of God,
the sun is commanded t6 measure out to a
fleshly mortal the exact surplus to a moment,
before the grave should receive his dust. A
late writer has said that this incident includes
"a history, an elegy, and an anthem all in
25I 
252    IVORKIDAY ClI?LISTJANITY.
one." The thought before us might well be
called a part of the elegy.
Every man is a weaver, and character is the
web he weaves. Reputation is but a painting
or printing of unoriginal figures on the surface; character-making is the working of new
designs and combinations irnto the texture of
the web. The one is external. The other is
internal and thorough. The one fades; the
other brightens by wear. Reputation washes
out. Character is the more firmly set in order
and brilliance by every cleansing test. The
Christian is not a painter of reputation; he is
a weaver of character.
In forming character there are two distinct
elements, corresponding with the weaver's
warp and woof. There are some things which
unwind from eternity-immortal principles that
emanate only in the purities of heaven. They
are let down to men from above, as warp is
advanced to the weaver in the loom, and as
they live and work up to the giving. These
divine principles are faith, hope, and charity,
and their parallels. Providence arranges them
in order, and adjusts them to our life, to be 
ToHE IVE AVE R.
met and crossed into unity by works of patience, benevolence, and prayer. These celestial elements of character are like the weaver's
warp, strong, lasting, and regular. They are
the eternal threads which may be woofed into
beauty for heavenly adornment, or marred
and knotted into sackcloth palls for outcasts
in darkness forever. The warp is wisely arranged by the fingers of God. The materials
of the woof are lying about us awaiting the
spindle, the texture, the tinting, and the weaving into whatever is appointed before us in the
opening of the days. Our actions, our words,
our thoughts - these are the threads we
select from the circumstances about us. aWe
wind them into the shuttles of the flying hours
by our own hands, and weave them into the
ever- lengthening web of character by the
pulse-beats of our own hearts.
"Ceaselessly the weaver Time,
Sitteth at his mystic loom,
Keeps his arrowy shuttle flying Every thread a-nears our dying And with melancholy chime,
22*
253 
IVORA'DAY CtA'lS7TYANtIT'Y.
Very low alnd sad withal,
Sings his solemn madrigal,
As he weaves our web of doom.
'Mortals!' thus he, weaving, sings,
'Bright or dark the web shall be,
As ye will it; all the tissues
Blending in harmonious issues,
Or discordant colorings;
Time the shuttle drives, but you
Give to every thread its hue,
And elect your destiny.'
In cloth-making, both warp and woof are
necessary. But the warp is always considered
the superior element in the web. So in character-weaving, both faith and works are essential. Faith, the heavenly principle, is the superior element, because the gift of God; this
is the strength and stay of character.  But
works, which are human, blend with, bind into,
and make body of faith. The human will mingles with the divine will, the finite with the
infinite, and things present with things to
come. Results are at the choice of the weaver. No angel shapes his own character, as a
man  shapes his.  For angels are not free
agents in the sense that men are free. They
254, 
THE WE AVE R.
are high and holy in their creation. But man
has the peculiar privilege of electing his destiny as he will. This is his distinguishing prerogative. He rises by discipline, and becomes
a co-worker with God in securing his own
immortality. He stands upon the earth, and
gathers out of its chaos and ruins, and weaves
into his character by choice, what no other
beings can. An angel would make miserable
failures in his plan, and get forward awkwardly
with man's work put into his hands. Angels
would have no Christ as Redeemer, Pattern, and
Guide. The looms in which man weaves character for eternity would snap the delicate fibers
of seraph -life into shreds. None but mortals
have such a wondrous scheme before them
a loom which moves only because the Son of
God came down to earth and attached the
thread of his own divine life to ours, while suns
were darkened and worlds made to tremble at
his tread. Immortal humanity will present designs and glories transcending the visions of
archangels; for the image of Jesus will give
special grace and grandeur to every saint that
shines in heaven.
26 5 
256   WfORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
Materials for weaving are common to all.
The world is full of helps. As communities,
men may accomplish great things; they may
form parties, shape republics, and give tone to
the world's times; but in character-weaving
every man must make his own. There is no
borrowing or lending of looms; no interlapping nor exchanging of threads. No other
can weave a man's character for him. We
may escape the old Roman custom of a loom
in every house; we may make unfashionable
the primitive notions of industry; we may hire
our garments done in mammoth manufactories, or import them ready-made from foreign
nations, and be innocent of the very name
and nature of the fabrics we wear. But every
man and every woman is held to the work of
weaving personal character.  God does not
furnish men, as angels, with characters readymade. A man's character is his own moral
and immortal self. He can not lease himself
out to his party or his sect, and by contract
get his weaving done against the judgmentday.
In this sense, we are God's workmanship, as 
THE [VE A VE R.
St. Paul has it. Our motives, our passions,
our energies, and our influences are inherent
in our creation. These are the materials from
which we shape ourselves. These are fuirnished us to use as a weaver the flax and the
wool. It is in the direction which we give to
these things, the relations into which we combine them, and the use that we make of them,
that we become co-workers with God. He
works in us both to will and to do; but at the
same time it is we, as men accountable and
reasoning, who will and do ourselves; and thus
we really work out, after God helps us to begin
it, our own salvation. God never violates our
free agency. He furnishes us the materials
for substantial character, reaches our minds
and consciences by arguments, and inspires us
with a zeal to carry forward what he plans for
our good and his own glory.
"Countless chords of heavenly music,
Struck ere earthly time began,
Vibrate in immortal concord
To the answering soul of man;
Countless rays of heavenly glory
Shine through spirit pent in clay,
257 
258    WOA'DAY CHA'ISTIINITY.
On the weavers at their labors -
On the children at their play.
Man has gazed on heavenly secrets,
Sunned himself in heavenly glow,
Seen the glory, heard the music, -
We are greater than we know."
This life-weaving never ceases. It is not a
question whether the work shall go on. No
human being can stop the unwinding warp
which his own heart-throbs bring down out of
eternity. The only choice is whether the filling
in shall be good or bad, distorted or beautiful.
No weaver goes to his loom and flings an
empty shuttle to and fro the whole day long.
He would be a fool to ply the heddles and
sling the sley without a crossing thread,to waste his time, spend his strength, and wear
out his loom for nothing. Yet such a blank
task could be done. There might be such a
fool. But in life there is a thread, though
always a brittle thread. As long as man
moves he is accountable. There is no such
thing as swinging an empty shuttle. Some
sort of web is weaving every hour. Our very
intuitions go into the wondrous fabric, tingeing 
TIlE  ILE.4 VEL R.
the texture of the web. There is no holiday,
no respite from the continuous work. Yet
the weaver need not weary, if he but put his
soul with his strength into his task. If hard
at first, if the shuttle drag with its fullness, and
the loom start muscles into aching, still the patient weaver soon acquires skill, and by-and-by
he sings as he plies the treadles, throws the
shuttle, strikes the reed; for he begins to see
the charming figures taking shape as a panorama of beauty under his hand. He now
smiles at the soft tintings of his yesterday's
tears that dropped into the warp as he wept.
He sings as much as he sobs; he rejoices over
as much as he regrets. The man who weaves
his own will into God's will, sees angel-like
images under his eyes, and while his heart
beats with hope, he sings praise and toils joyfully forward in his weaving.
But, be we full of gladness or of grief, of
hope or of fear, the work goes on and on forever. Sometimes the royalest patterns are
outwrought in the dark, and under the beatings of sorest trouble. There was a day when
Job did not know what he had in his loom.
259 
W0 RA'DA Y CHRISTIANITY.
He had lost property, friends, health, influence
-every thing but life.  He had nothing to
weave into his web but sobbing breaths and
spirit agonies. He was forsaken and heart'
broken; but, poor Job! he wove in these
thrums, ragged, and torn, and soiled, and thin.
For there was a heavenly design in all his
bereavement which did not then and there
appear. God was all the while fixing the heddles to turn a magnificent picture in the web.
Now, every age and all the angels admire that
monotony of mourning which was woven in
with tears and pain. Job himself sees now
what then he was permitted to do. Who in
heaven among the happy hosts can show a
finer, fairer pattern than that which wrought
in the potsherd and the ashes!
Christian, never mind the sorrows. Those
things that are dark and rough on the earthly
side of your weaving are the brightest and
best on the heavenly side. You weave for
immortality and not for time. The right side
of your work will be unrolled before you after
a while, all radiant with beauty and surprise.
Sore bereavements, deaths of friends, the crape
260 
THE WEA VE R.
at windows and doors, the hearse that rumbled away so dismally with your darling dead,
the yellow clay of the new grave, the mound
of springing green that turns ashy), dull in the
autumn drought,- all these are brilliant on
the eternal side of the weaving. The more
confused and tangled the earthly side, the
more rich and rare the glory of the heavenly.
"The soul, reposing on assured relief,
Feels herself happy amidst all her grief!
Forgets her labor as she toils along Weeps tears of joy and bursts into a song."
Weave on. Weave well. Keep the thread
of life a-flying. The more you put into character here that is true and strong, the better
will be your immortality. The life and truth
of Christ Jesus, the influences of the Spirit,
the events of common  life-duties, obligations, self-denials, losses, sorrows, - do n't reject them; weave them all in. These are the
weaver's wool and flax. The joys, gains, blessings, sympathies, affections- weave them in
without purloining. These are the weaver's
silk and silver threads. All these the Master
23
26i 
ITV ORD A Y CIR IS TIA NIT Y,
furnishes. He bids you use them as they
come. It is yours to search them out and
weave them in. To one he gives less, to another more, to all a part, according to each
man's capacity to appreciate and use. There
must be nothing wasted, nothing refused, nothing concealed for other purpose. Life-character is a question of patience, perseverance,
skill, muscle, and honor. This life-loom never
stops for want of thread. The flying shuttle
never strips the quill. Every weaver has his
hands full, and must be wide-awake and busyfooted to keep the treadles going!
"Our many deeds, the thoughts that we have thought;
They go out from us, thronging every hour;
And in them all is folded up a power
That on the earth doth move them to and fro;
And mighty are the marvels they have wrought
In hearts we know not, and may never know."
I have cut off like a weaver my life."  There
is an end. There is a last trip for the shuttle.
There is death. Cloth wears out, but character does not. In the last chapter of the Bible
it is said, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust
262 
7T'E WE A4 VE 2t.
still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy
still." At death the work is over. Then the
rattling loom must stop, and the pulsing heart
be still. There will be no opportunity then
for overgoing bad work, adjusting awkward
designs, or covering false figures. When the
sley has ceased to swing, and the treadles drop
upon the floor, then the shears cut off the web,
and just as it is, through and through from selvage to selvage and from end to end, it is
handed over to the Master. It is examined as
a weaving, not as a painting. Reputation is
something at a funeral; it insures long procession and eligible lot. But it is nothing in the
judgment. Character, after death, is everything. Will this life-fabric - this soul - weaving - hold together in eternity? This is the
grand question of all life. For the Master
disposes of it exactly according to its worth.
Very soon, and nothing but our work will
be left. Wealth will be gone; health will be
gone; reputation will be gone; all will be
gone but character. That remains forever.
What have you in your loom? Hlow are you
263 
WORKDAY CHRISTIANIT Y.
weaving?  Is the likeness of Jesus taking
form, is his glory coming forth, as your
thoughts go in and your pulses beat, and the
circling suns go round and round?
264 
THLE DAY-LABORER.
" Man goeth forth unto his work, and to his labor, until the evening." - PSALM civ. 23.
23*
265  
CHAPTER XI.
THE DAY-LABORER.
RAND is the poem from which these
words are selected, and it is syllabled
all through with the music of nature.
It celebrates the order of God's universe, the
harmony of the seasons, the beauty and bounty
of the fields, trees, waters, and living creatures,
with all the various phenomena of the material world.
Among the distinct statements concerning
the economies which God has instituted, we
find this verse of Scripture: "Man goeth forth
unto his work, and to his labor, until the evening." It teaches that the Creator's plan of
worlds implies human industry. The word
man, here, is general; it includes all men and
all women -the aggregate of humanity; it
267 
268    WORKDAY CHRISTIANzITY.
associates labor with every individual of the
race. Daily work is announced as a settled
fact in the arrangement of nature, and sung
as a pean of praise to the Lord. The will of
Heaven toward men is that they should have
regular employment. Labor is as necessary
and as dignified as the revolving of the sun in
his circuit, the changing of the moon, the harvest-yield of the earth, the coursing of the
waters down the valleys and among the hills,
the distribution of the rain, the errands of the
wind, the sweep of the tides, or any other of
the movements of inanimate creation. The
Psalmist puts all celestial and terrestrial operations in sublime accord with the every-day
duties of men. It is as much the divine will
and plan that human hands should be busy, as
it is that nature should observe her appointments from the beginning until the end of
time. Every created finger has its place and
its work, and is, in its errands, as important in
the grand summing of things, as any star that
shines, or any world that yields its increase.
The Bible makes human labor a sacred ordinance, and claims a special service from 
THE DAY-LAB ORER.
every hand, as well as from every head and
every heart. The gift of reason includes the
obligation to work. Man's physical existence
is dependent on the use of his own hands.
His food and raiment are to be wrought out
of crude elements by toil, tact, and patience.
The beasts have matured provision for all
their wants. They are fed and clothed by the
Hand that created, and have ample and seasonable supplies. But man must coax the
earth for his bread; he draws his comforts
from reluctant sources. He must build his
own shelter, weave his own garments, invent
and provide his own accommodations.   Nature
is a storehouse of ready-made wares, free and
full, for brute and bird, for fish and fowl, for
insect and reptile, all the year and every where;
but man must look out for himself. He is
furnished with raw materials only. He must
work them into supplies, or shiver and starve.
Nature gives to man but hints and helps. She
hides her gold deep in the mountains, her
pearls deep in the sea, and says, "Now dig and
dive, and you shall have them. She puts her
bearded wheat and delicious fruits forward of
269 
270    WORAKDAY CHRIS TIANI7' Y.
the seedtime and the planting by tedious
months and years, with storm and snow between; and the sower and the planter must
wait, watching and tilling the ground until the
gleaning days. Dwellings are to be delved
out of the quarries, cut out of the forests;
clothes are to be spun from the wool, the cotton, and the flax, and woven in the loom; all
essentials and all luxuries are alike to be
reached only by search and struggle and
sweat; and no era shall ever dawn to change
this divinely appointed method of living by
labor, day by day, and century by century,
while the world endures.
"No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him; there is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil."
So  it is  in intellectual attainments.   A
wealthy man, on visiting his daughter in a
fashionable boarding-school a long way off,*
and learning that she was behind her classes,
inquired what was wrong. "Why, sir, your
* How singular that the best boarding-schools always
happen to be those a long way off! 
THE DAY-LA B 0LE       l e.
daughter has no capacity to keep her place in
this school."   "Capaci/y!  No  capacity -is
that what she needs? Then, sir, I'll buy her
one this very day!"  That would be a convenient arrangement for the rich in purse and
the proud in spirit who are poor in intellect.
But nature preserves a broad democracy in
human brains. Pockets get unbalanced and
unequaled in the speculations of a day; but
heads are only and always what they are made
by study. Man must work for knowledge.
He never wins it in a game. It is not in the
markets. It is only in the mines. The lower
orders of creation are furnished with a peculiar kind of knowledge- ready made-and it
is packed under their skulls in a kind of predestined fixedness in the form of instinct, the
same from the world's first mornings till now;
but man comes into being helpless, ignorant, and slow of sense -a next thing to nothing, without any idea of his place, his wants,
or his possibilities; and he would remain so
during sonme sort of a forever, unless he were
trained and strengthened into a knowledge of
his nature. The scholar implies the student.
27I 
272    WORKDA Y CHRISTIANITY.
The mind is developed and disciplined only
by labor. There are grandeurs, delights, and
glories in mental attainment; but work-hard
work -is the price that brings them into possession.
The same principle holds good in morals.
There could be no saving religion without
obligation, without duties to perform, trials to
endure, deeds to accomplish, powers to develop, penalties to avoid, happiness to attain,
a God to love, obey, and honor, and a self to
grapple and subdue. Heaven is not so low a
place that men may drift into it as rubbish; it
is high, pure, and holy, and must be entered
by flight as on eagles' wings -by faith, by
working, overcoming faith.
Man glorifies himself by work. It is man
that goeth forth to his work and to his labor;
not a slave, not a menial, not a second-rate
biped in the shape of a man; but man him self. He takes his manhood into his toil, and
adds to his manhood by his toil. The word
man has a clearer ring than gentleman. When
man becomes too gentle to work, he is too
gentle to be a man; he is less and meaner 
THE DAY-LAB ORER.
than man. The Bible talks about men, and
not about gentlemen. Gentleness may be
becoming in a dove or a sheep; but a man is
the nobler for nerve, courage, grit,-for muscle, for brawniness, tan, bronze, bone, blood,
brain, knuckle, knot; he must have breadth
and strength and solid build of body. Man is
himself fearfully and wonderfully made-made
for a purpose, for positive power, for daily
work. He has the planning intellect and the
executive hand to match; he has ambition and
affection, like the tides of a mighty sea, pressing all his powers  into action.  He  is unmanned and begins to fall into ruin the moment he ceases to work.  A man with nothing
to do is as unsightly and pitiable as Nebuchadnezzar at grass alongside of the oxen in the
field.
What  wonders  man  has done!  He  has
changed the face of the world. He has leveled mountains and exalted valleys, harnessed
the winds to his commerce, seized and trained
the lightnings into obedient messengers, bound
continents together in iron bands, established
nations, built cities, turned deserts into gar    24
273 
274    WO R D A Y CHRA ISTIA A,;'I 7' Y.
dens, and made the wild elements bow at his
bidding.
It is only by activity that man can understand himself and develop his powers. From
the beginning the command has been, "Till
the earth, and keep it." In the days of Adam's
innocence he was required to work. It was a
condition in the enjoyment of earthly paradise. God speaks to all classes and orders of
humanity -to rich and to poor in equal emphasis-  " Six days shalt thou labor and do all
thy work." After this direct teaching, seeing that the whole order of our being is involved in our responsiveness to the demands
of labor, it is clear, that, not to work is morally
wrong. It is a violation of the rules by which
the universe is governed. All men are appointed to labor; and to disobey or to neglect
is rebellion against heaven. Laziness is a sin,
as positive and punishable as theft, robbery,
or murder. God says, "Thou shalt not steal;"
and in the same decalogue, with equal emphasis, he says, "Six days shall thou labor." If
the obligation to work is limited to a class, so
may a class claim that it is not crime for them 
THE DAY-LAB O AR E R.
to kill and steal. If one man can be honorably
excused from labor, the very same reasoning
will excuse and make honorable the cutting
of a neighbor's throat for his money. These
"shalts" and "shalt nots" on the tables of
stone are the Almighty's words, and demand
attention.  There is not a superfluous letter in
the Decalogue. There is not a tone or syllable
in the Sinai thunders intended for rhetorical
effect. There is no escape from daily work by
any maneuver of interpretation. You may
profess to be religious; commit to memory the
commandments, and recite them with angel
eloquence; build churches with spires to pierce
the clouds; attend service every Sabbath, rain
or shine; hear sermons; make prayers; sing
praises; support the gospel, - you may be orthodox to the shading of the last period in
your book of faith, and evangelical to the
measure of sobs and tears toward the heathen; but if, after all, as individuals, you do
not put your own hands to some steady work,
and drive forward with your own life-powers
some legitimate calling, you disobey the plain
command of God, and are held in stricter
275 
2V O h e D A  Y CHR IS TIA NI 7'Y.
accountability than a pagan or a cannibal.
Lounging is sinning. Mere sentiment in
Christianity is miserable heresy. Indolence,
where there are brain, heart, and hand to be
engaged,  is outright  crime.   In the grand
economy of worlds and souls, it is the Divine
plan that man shall go "forth to his work and
to his labor, until the evening."
Inaction is injurious to the physical being.
The body needs the perpetual exercise of
work. The mind needs the constant stimulus
of thought. The heart needs the ceaseless
impulses of hope and expectation. You find
neither brightest intellect, healthfulest form,
nor happiest spirit under the feathers of fashion. There may be tinsel and glitter and elegance without, but it is assumed; it is put on
for effect; it is but the thin borrowal from
books; it is artificial, and fades with the breaths
of the passing hour. Robustness, vigor, grace,
symmetry of body, force of character, real personality, and genuine charm of life are found
only by the ways of every-day work.   The
medicine-takers, the grumblers, the whimsical
women, the moping, melancholy men, the deli
276 
THE DAY-LAB OR E R.
cate young people who dare not venture out
in the rain, or sun, or snow, or storm, the feeble mothers, the insipid fathers, -the world's
whole motley herd of unhappy and invalid
people, are generally the idle and inactive
- the gentlemen and ladies of society. The
wholesome bodies, the ruddy cheeks, the happy
souls are found among the laboring masses.
They who go forth in the morning to their
work and to their labor move in the order
and share the dignity of stars that shine in the
firmament, and of crystal waters that dance
and sing among the hills. The laws of true
living demand a regular occupation for head,
and heart, and hand.
Not only is indolence self-abusive, but it injures others.  It makes a man a sponge.  The
idler lives on the efforts of others. He is a
thief. All want, all hunger, all nakedness, all
ordinary physical suffering, may be traced to
the delinquency of hands which God made for
work. In the judgment-day there will be a
fearful reckoning against soft, white hlands, as
well as against hard, black hearts.
Labor is not to be estimated as drudgery.
24*
277 
WORXKDAY CHkRISTITANITIY.
If equally divided and promptly done, it would
give sweetest rest and amplest reward.  "Man
goeth forth unto his work and his labor, until
the evening." The day is work-time, as a
general rule. No man is to drag his service
into the dark hours of the night. The day in
which hle begins, must, in its evening, furnish
him release, reward, and rest. There is a proper time with limit to labor.  "Six days," shalt
thou labor; not six days and nights, and Sunday, too! Day-laborers are overtaxed.  Employers would get more work done, and better
(lone, by exacting less time.  Who  that toils
from twelve to fifteen hours each day, can claim
an evening as his own?   Uniti  the evening
means into the midnight, too often.
Because of the fashions and follies of many,
others are compelled to sacrifice health and
home - comforts to the cruelty of overwork.
There are mothers, sisters, and wives in Christendom, wearing their lives away under relentless bondage. In dark alleys, in narrow rooms,
with scanty clothing and unwholesome fare,
without social recognition or sympathy, unknown, patient and uncomplaining, there are
278 
THE DAY-LABORER.
some of God's poor spending their days in
drudgery, awaiting the release of death. And
this pinching poverty comes of the extravagance of the rich,-for wherever there is overindulgence in one direction, there are overwork
and distress in another. It is because some
men and some women do nothing at all, that
others are made to bear such heavy burdens;
and so both the idle and the overworked are
prematurely old in spirit and broken in body.
There is a dreadful responsibility resting upon
the fashionable portion of the community who
despise work and grudge the laborer his
bread.
' Go till the ground,' said God to mailn,
'Subdue the earth, it shall be thine;'
How grand, how glorious was the plan!
How wise the law divine!
And none of Adam's race can draw
A title, save beneath this law,
To hold the world in trust.
Earth is the Lord's, and he hath sworn,
That ere old Time has reached his bourn,
It shall reward the just! "
Some people draw a line between religion
279 
280    WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY.
and common work; they imagine a broad gulf
between this life and the life to come. They
fancy that worldly employments are misfortunes of the fall and hindrances to spiritual
life. They think that, if only they could escape labor, they could elude the devil and
make sure advance toward heaven. This notion arises from the false teaching of that theology that would reduce Christianity to mere
doctrine, tone, way, and professionality.
We must study Christ and his gospel on the
uncumbered page of inspiration for ourselves.
We shall see that God places all his creatures
in the best possible training-schools for higher
life. He does not bewilder men with theories,
nor tantalize them with conditions which they
may not easily accept. The caterpillar is exactly adapted to the future career of a moth:
and the chrysalis is best conditioned in its
dumb helplessness to the coming glory of the
butterfly. Infancy is the easiest and most
graceful introduction to childhood; and childhood laughs and leaps with shout and spring
into muscular manhood. The analogy holds
good in reference to our immortality. It is by 
THE DAY-LABORER.
the necessities put upon us for work, and by
our very struggles forward and upward, that
we get from shell to wing, and attain the
heights  of the heavenly kingdom.   David,
when a shepherd, with crook and harp and
sling, was training for kinghood over men, and
out on the grassy sunlit hills he qualified himself for his scepter and his crown. Peter, and
Andrew, his brother, by fishing in Galilee, acquired the skill to catch men in the gospel net.
Seining the sea toughened them into courageous apostleship. Yet a shepherd lad in
the fields would hardly have been selected by
worldly - wise men as the rising ruler of the
Hebrew nation; nor the plodding fishermen,
amidst the slime and scale and smell of their
seines, pointed out as eloquent apostles of the
world's Messiah. No one can prophesy what
a Christian laboring man may become in the
kingdom of heaven. For it doth not yet appear what he shall be. Hugh Miller, the
workday schoolmaster, says that one of the
best persons he ever knew, and his acquaintanceship was large and royal, was a poor
widow of Inverness, in Scotland, - a woman
28I 
282    WORKDAY CHRISTIANzITY.
who was always patient, always busy, always
happy, always content. "She was an humble
washerwoman," he remarks, "but I am convinced that in the other world, which she must
have entered long ere now, she ranks considerably higher." The example of Christ, the
carpenter, constantly presents itself before the
day-laborer, as a motive of commanding power.
For there is something grand and satisfying
above us which can be attained unto only by
way of toil, tears, and spended strength; but it
is well worth the cost, and comes into the possession of every soul made weary and worthy
by the strife.
"In the world's great harvest-day,
Every grain, on every ground Stony, thorny, by the way -
Shall a hundred-fold be found."
When Satan comes to tempt any soul, it is
a hero-heart that makes itself bound with the
bliss of telling him to his face: I am not at
leisure to listen to your propositions.   I am
otherwise employed. I am in the service of
God and of my fellow souls; my work is law 
THee DAY-L AB OREIR.o
ful and joyous; my thoughts nor my energies
are in the market for bidders.  I have a permanent situatzi  with Chi'st Jesus.   Such a
speech would move the devil to confusion and
retreat. But some professed Christians are
so persistently idle and worthless - so vacillating, restless, and inquisitive, that they even
fernrit Ihe tempter to temil (hem;, and it is no
wonder that they are utterly undone at last.
They have deliberately crossed the enemy's
lines and put themselves in his grasp. They
have played with adders and scorpions as pastime, and been bitten for eternity.
"Man walks in a vain show:
He knows, yet will not know;
Sits still when he should go;
But runs for shadows:
While hle might taste and know
The living streams that flow,
And crop the flowers that grow
In Christ's sweet meadows."
An old poet represented Pluto to be the god
of riches and of hell, -as if hell and riches
were under one jurisdiction! The deity so
283 
284   WORKDAY CHRISTIANITY
pictured was lame, yet fleet as fire or the wind.
When Jupiter sent him to a soldier or a scholar.
he went limping, but when to a fool or a harlot,
he went like lightning.   The moral is plain,
and applies in Christendom to-day. The riches
that come from God and to honest men, come
slowly; but the riches that come by unjust
dealing and fraud, flow in like lava from a
belching volcano. The man who throws aside
religion, and opens all his soul for gold, and
grabs after wealth as a wrecker for spoils, may
soon be rich. When the spring of conscience
is screwed up to the highest pin that can be
touched without breaking; when Christianity
is frowned outside the exchange, the office,
and the store, and locked up as a prisoner
in the somber sanctuary all week long, and
forbidden on pain of excommunication to look
into private business transactions, then the
devil is on his throne. For he will rush a man
into hell in a cushioned chariot as willingly as
drag him there through the gutters on his back.
But the honest, busy day-laborer acquires
vigilance, builds granite character upon sure
foundations, appreciates and enjoys his slow
* X
J, * *e 
THE DAY-LABOIRER.
but steady gains, and is overmatch for the
cunning Destroyer. tie has taken religion
into his heart, and it now courses in his blood,
- it makes bone, fiber, muscle; it permeates
and purifies his inmost being, and serves the
Lord through soul and body, which is the most
reasonable service. Such a man works as if
he believed.
"Until the evening!"  Every day has its
special duties, and they must be done in their
day. Every morning should find men up and
doing. The sunlight is kindled for work, and
not for show or idle play. The birds sing
welcomes to the dawning day, brushing in diamond drops the dew from bough and twig in
the tremble of their throbbing melodies. The
flowers are sweetest and fairest in the morning, the sunshine cheeriest, the air purest and
clearest of all the day. Nature is eloquent in
invitations to labor. The most delicious daily
bread is daily earned. "Give us, this day, our
daily bread." A modern Christian economist,
the head of some wholesale establishment,
would amend this petition by praying, "Give
us, this year, our daily bread," and make the
25
285 
286    WORKIDA Y CHRISTIANITY.
one asking do for a thousand eatings, and call
it a stroke of business! Any thing to escape
the thought of daily obligation, daily need,
daily duty, and daily service!  "Yes, yes," the
retired merchant or manufacturer may say to
himself in his easy chair, "It is well enough
for those poor people who live from hand to
mnouth to go regularly to church and to say
their prayers-they need the comforts of religion; but as for me, the place is too dull and
the society too common. I'm ahead of the
Lord, now, for a good living these many years
to come. Heaven owes me a premium for my
credit at the banks, for my investment in steeples, missions, and Bibles, and for my patronage of the obscure Christ in the sunny Sabbath morning service."
Nothing can destroy selfishness but the
gospel. Political reform- even the most impartial suffrage-will not make the love of
neighbor equal to the love of self. Unsanctifled political power may only robe and crown
a moral demon in a nation's heart. Not only
intelligence, but affection must have the ballot.
Science, law, art, literature - all these things 
THIIE DA4Y-LAB OR~ER.
have been tried a thousand times, and have as
often failed to reach and change the heart and
control its carnal nature.  The gospel only
the gospel of labor and love, of equal rights
and universal brotherhood -goes to the motive centers of the soul, and saves men in their
bodies and their spirits, which are the Lord's.
The gospel-not our theories about the gospel; the truth-not our interpretations of the
truth; the Christ - not the garbs in which we
clothe him for introduction to our invited
guests, - the living Christ, the people's delivering Lord, the poor man's sympathizing
Friend - He is the power to "cast down every
imagination and every high thing that exalteth
itself against the knowledge of God."
The world wants a new translation of the
gospel; not into letters, but rather into men's
lives, into daily experience - made radiant in
countenances, warm in deeds, a translation
that will beam forth in beatitude and benediction wherever Christians move and breathe.
Rowland Hill used to say that he would give
very little for the religion of a man whose
very dog and cat were not the better for it.
287 
238    IVORKDAY CHRISTIA,NITY.
The church wants more open-faced and readyhanded religion, and fewer gossiping, slandering, grumbling, gluttonous, fretful, conceited
bigots as gospel representatives, especially
in such a thinking, active age as this.
We little heed Isaiah's wondrous words,
Lift up thy voice like a trumpet." Voice is
a great thing in religion, but it is not every
thing. Boisterous prayers and exhortations
are common enough. Men will sing themselves hoarse in times of revival who move
never an inch in search of Christ's suffering
poor. Why does Isaiah say, "Lift up thy
voice like a trumpet?"  There  are  many
things that sound louder than a trumpet.
The roaring of the sea is louder. The pealing of thunder is deeper. The wails of the
tempest are bolder. Yet the prophet does
not say, "Lift up thy voice like the sea;" or,
"Lift up thy voice like the thunder;" or,
"Lift up thy voice like the tempest." Why
does he say as a trumpet? Because a trumpeter, when he sounds his trumpet, fills its
throat with his breath, and holds it up with his
hand. Voice and arm are both engaged. It 
THE DAY-.LA B       O R E R.
is word and work in the trumpet-blast. And
so every Christian is a trumpeter, going forth
daily to proclaim the gospel of God. He
must not merely report with his mouth, but
support with his hand. His profession must
be sustained by his practice. The tongue is
the advocate and the hand is the executor of
God's will; and when a man both speaks and
works in religion, then does he lift up his voice
like a trumpet. If the churches of Christ
would thus sound forth the glad tidings, the
remotest islands of the sea and the interiors
of idolatrous continents would hear the music
of millennial glory, and nations would be born
in a day!
"UNTIL TiHE EVENING." I have read some
where of a beautiful custom among the Swiss
mountaineers. The Alpine herdsmen employ
the echoing horn, not merely as a call to their
flocks, but also for a religious service. As
soon as the sun has disappeared in the valleys,
and his last lingering rays are glimmering and
glancing upon the snowy summits of the
mountains, the shepherd who dwells in the
loftiest pasture takes his horn and trumpets
25*
289 
[V0 RA'DAY CHRISTI,ANI7'1
forth, "Praise God the Lord!" All the herdsmen on the neighboring cliffs take their horns
and repeat the words, "Praise God the Lord!"
This is continued for several minutes, while
on all sides, as the -shades of evening deepen,
the mountains echo the name of God -the -
Lord!  A  solemn stillness follows.  Every
man, woman, and child is on bended knee in
secret prayer as the stars beam out in benediction on the Switzers' homes and hearts.  By
this time it is dark. The night has fully come.
" Good night!" trumpets forth the herdsman
on the loftiest summit.   "Good night!" is
repeated from all the mountain-slopes below.
Then the shepherds and all their flocks are at
rest, and universal peace prevails.
Thus may the shepherds on Zion's holy
mountains say, as Time's evening shadows
gather round, and the weary worker's work is
done, "Praise God the Lord!"  " Good night!
good night!"
So he giveth his beloved sleep, and joy
cometh in the morning. Yes, GOOD NIGHtT!
290 
INDEX.
291  
INDEX.
SSOCIATION and Communion, 43.Arguments in Storms, 44.
A Refuge Needed, 53.
Ancient Bricks, 59.
Arduous Toil in Brickmaking, 59.
Asiatic Architecture, 63.
Avariciousness, 70.
Alloy in Human Nature, 94.
At White Heat, IOO.
Air an Obstacle, I02.
All or None, IO04.
A Common Metaphor, I38.
Adam- Clay, I39.
Assyrian Potteries, 139.
Ancient Vases, I42.
Aztec Monuments, 143.
Acrostical Book, An, I45.
Anthem of Minor Chords, An, I46.
All Things are the Christian's, I48.
Apathetic Churches, I53.
Arab Women's Mirrors, 171.
As in a Glass Darkly, I74.
Animals and the Gospel, I76.
B UILDING, The Church, A,
33.
Bethel, 35.
Breadth of Foundation, 41.
Babylonian Bricks, 59.
Bond or Free, 70.
Breaking Bonds, 70.
Building Character, 7I.
Beginning Right, 76.
Bible Object-Lessons, 8I.
Business Men, 92.
Blasting, 94.
Blowing Out, I02.
But One Model, I04.
Bible Science, I13.
293
I
Annealing Process, The, i8i.
Accident on the Ohio, igg.
Angel Pilot, The, 201.
Aimless Lives, 203Alexandrian Library, 221.
Ancient Libraries, 2.2I.
Art of Printing,:233Alpine Herdsman's Horn, 289. 
IA9D E X.
Babylonian Clay-Work, 140.
Bible Proofs in Pagan Temples,
I41. 
But One Master, 150o.
Backsliding and Renewal, I54.
Bible Glass, I71I.
Bible and Science, The, 173.
Beauty out of Rubbish, 178.
Brittle Converts, 182.
Believer's Compass, The, 202.
Block-page Printing, 223.
Block-print Books, 224.
Benjamin Franklin, 230.
Blanks, 238.
Backsliders, 239.
Brevity of Life, 250.
Beginnings of Apostleship, 281.
Bargaining for Grace, 286.
Christ's Church, I05.
Canons Become       Cannons, Io6.
Carpet-loom, The, i I I.
Cain-craft Chronology, I I4.
Compensation, 120.
Combined Forces, I2I.
Chao       s        and Cosmo s,  126.
Christianity Triumphant, 132.
Chinese Earthenware, 143.
Crosses and Conflicts, 148.
Conscience Brokers, 150.
Customers Instead of Christian-,
I52.
Clay in the Potter's Hands, 155.
Clay Coffins, I64.
Crystal Christianity, i80.
Christian Growth, 182.
Christian Activity, I85.
Chinese Civilization, I93.
Chinese Immigration, I95.
Christ a Pilot, 202.
Conscience a Signal-b)ell, 2o6.
Copperplate Printing, 223.
Chinese Alphabet, The, 223.
Cast-metal Types, 225.
Composition of Character, 234.
Character a Weaving, 252.
Ceaseless Labor, 259.
REATOR   and  Redeemer
One, Io.
Carpenter, The Young, 13.
Convenient Revivals, 22.
Christianity Makes Common In  terests, 27.
Christ the Rock, 38.
Condescension, 39.
Church Greater than Sect, 40.
Church a Home, The, 42.
Church a Lighthouse, The, 50.
Courageous Builders, 51.
Church and the Mills, The, 89.
Capitalists, 9I.
Carnal Pulse-Beats, 98.
Christianity Alloyed with Mam  mon, 98.
Christian Work Incessant, 102.
Creed Changes - Christ the Same
Forever, I05.
Christians  Chilled  into  Secta  rians, 105.
IVINITY of Christ, Io, 38.
Dignity of Labor, 14, 245,
268, 282.
Divine Democracy, 24.
Duty always Noble, 25.
Destructionism versus Denomina  tion      alism,  44.
Divine Temple, The, 73.
Dangers of Temporal Prosperity,
97.
Divine Skill, I 12.
294 
IA"DEX.
Darwinian Development Theory,
ALSE Methods, 22.
Fact the Corner-stone, 34.
Foundation of the Church, 35.
Fellowship, 44.
False Prophets, 49.
From Tent-life to Citizenship, 57.
Fire-Brick, 6I.
From Acorn to Oak, 76.
First Principles in Founding, 82.
Founding a Gradual Invention,
86.
Finished Creation, The, I 24.
Full Salvation, I33.
Free Salvation, I58.
Female Self-denial, I72.
Fervency in Business, I97.
Fog-bell, The, 207.
First Printing in Europe, 224.
First Adjustible Wooden Types,
227.
Faust, 228.
First Printing-Press in America,
229.
First American Newspaper, 230.
Fashionable Churches, 238.
First Woven Fabrics, 243.
Female Industry, 247.
Faith and Works, 254.
Free Agency, 255.
Future Satisfaction, 26I.
114~
Doing as Honorable as Think  ing, 128.
Days of Desolation, 147.
Denominationalism, 44, 152.
Delight or Drudgery in Work,
197.
Definition of Printing, 222.
Distinguished Printers, 231.
Deterioration of American Society,
248.
Dignity of Human Life, 258.
Death and Judgment, 263.
Day-time for Work, 285.
VERY-DAY  Religion, 23,
206, 284.
Ecclesiastical Independence, 43.
Eddystone Lighthouse, 48.
Earliest Brickmaking, 57.
Egypt, The Devil's, 68.
Educational Symmetry, 7I.
Early  Experiments  in  Metals,
84.
Egyptian Bronze, 85.
Evidences  of Supreme  Intelli  gence, 113.
Early Triumphs of Art, I I8.
Economy of Labor, I20.
Ecclesiastical Egotism, 145.
Empty Forms, 15 I.
Earthen Pitchers, I5 IEddy-drops, 157.
Early Writing Facilities, 220.
Epistolary Correspondence, 22I.
Engraving, Art of, 222.
Evangelism, 236.
Egyptian Weavers, 243.
Equal Rights, 248.
Elements of Character, 252.
GROUNDWORK  Invisible,
38.
God the Builder, 45.
Grecian Ornaments, 86.
Gathering Ore, 93.
Genius and Invention, I I I.
God a Worker, I 12.
God a Benefactor, I 25.
i God a Controller, I29.
295 
IAD RE X.
God Manifested, I30.
Glazed Coffins, I40.
Garnished  Surfaces  in Morals,
I50.
Glass, Discovery of, I63.
Glass, Manufacture in Rome, 165.
Glass a Luxury, I65.
Glass-making in Pittsburgh, I69.
Gospel for Glassblowers, I70.
Grace through Nature, 174.
Glass, Commerce in, I78.
Glimpses Heavenward, I86.
Guttenberg, 227.
Grecian Looms, 244.
God's Workmanship, 257.
Glory of Work, The, 272.
NFLUENCE of Industry, 15.
Infidel Assaults, 39.
Infallibility, 47.
Invincible Men, 63.
Israel in Bondage, 65.
Imagery of Ezekiel, 8I.
Ironmen, 89.
Idle Mills and Idle Churches, IOI.
Inventor's Joy, Th      e, 122.
Inventor's Victory, The, 122.
Ingenuity as Displayed in Nature,
I23~
Indian Mounds, 144.
Idols Crumbling Down, I54.
Impediments, 157.
Introduction of Glass to England,
167.
Introduction of Glass to the United
States, I68.
Imagery  of Ancient  Scriptures,
I73.
Ingredients of Glass, I75.
Invention of Mariner's Compass,
The, I94.
Invention of Letters, 219.
Invention of Pages, 221.
Invention of Movable Types, 226.
Influence of Printing, 228.
Intelligence of Printers, 231.
Individuality, 256.
Idleness a Sin, 274.
Idleness a Snare, 283.
IDDEN Power, I I.
Humble Advent of Jesus, I 2.
Holy Family, The, 13.
Human Foundations, 46.
Human Body a House, The, 72.
How to Build Manhood, 72.
Home of the Soul, 75.
Honor in the Blood, 91.
Human Ingenuity, II2.
Heralds of Christianity, I I4.
Human Imperfections, 12I.
Harmony, I32.
Heresy Hunters, I53.
Horace, Tribute of, to Glass, 166.
Heaven, A Present, 204.
Heavenly Pilot, The, 209.,
Heavenly Invitations, 2IO.
Headline Reputation, 235.
Human Ability, 257.
Harmony of Nature, 267.
Health and Industry, 277.
Human Sponges, 277.
Honest Riches, 284.
EWS and Gentiles     One, 51I
Jesus Only, 53.
Jerusalem  as  a Blast - Furnace,
296
95Jesus a Deliverer, 212.
job's Creed, 217job's Afflictions and Faith, 26o. 
INDEX.
INGS May Come to Want,
K
67.
Knowledge  Attainable  only by
Study, 271.
Miracles, I29.
Making gods for Market, I42.
Mariner's Compass, 192.
Many 13ooks, 229.
Mummy-Cloth, 244.
Materials for Life-weaving, 26I.
Mental Capacity, 271.
Moral Obligation, 272.
Man's Achievements, 273.
OWLY and Ioly, 3o.
Little by Little, 74.
Law of Resemblances, The, 83.
Leeching for a Livelihood, 9I.
Lamechl's Wives,  115.
Lost Arts, II8.
Lost River, The, i i 9.
Looking-glasses, 17 I.
Laws of Pilotage, I92.
Living Epistles, 236.
Legible Gospel, A, 240.
Life a Web, 250.
Looms of Life, The, 255.
light and Dark in a Day, 259.
Labor a Condition of Life, 268.
Living Orthodoxy, 287.
NEW and Old, 33.
.   No Clans in Christianity, 40.
No National Church, 42.
Necessity of Organization, 42.
New Jerusalem Currency, I49.
No Monopoly of Truth, 150.
Ninth of Romans, I55.
No Unisavable Humanity, 158.
Need of a Guide, i99.
Necessity for an Alphabet, 225.
Not Now, 260.
Necessity of Labor, 270.
ECHANIC of Nazareth, 16.
Matrimonial Problem, 27.
Making and Mending, 27.
Masonry in Architecture, 35.Method in Salvation, 37.
Mental Masonry, 37.Ministerial Monopoly, 40.
Mystic Masons of the Sea, 75.Metals of Britain, 87.
Mills  and  Foundries  in  Pitts  burgh, 88.
Men as Rubbish, 95.
Men Warmed and Worked, ioo.
Means and Ends, io6.
Mechanism, I I6.
Man a Creature, I24,
Mlan a Creator, I25.
Men as Moons, I27.
O RTHODOXY  of Work,
19.
Outdoor Devotion, 26.
Origin of Ref      orms-, 29.
Opinions as Theologies, 45.
Out of Bondage, 63.
Old Things New Again, I I18.
Oldest of Arts, I37.
Origin of Methodism, I44.
Our Destiny What we Make
it, I59.
Object of Life, 205.
Orthodoxy, 236.
Outs, 237
Orthodoxy Safest with Working  people, 276.
Overwork, 279.
26
297 
I29D E A VX.
ERSONAL Creator, A, 9.
Patience in Evangelism, 2I.
Peter the Great, 24. -
Prejudice Against Labor, 28.
Preaching Through Nature, 28.
Peter or Jesus, 47.
Plains of Shinar, 57.
Poetry of Paganism, 64.
Pharaoh's Tyranny, 66.
Prophet on Iron, The, 82.
Pittsburgh the "Iron City," 87.
Philosophies Tested, 96.
Preparation for the Gospel, 103.
Progression Backwards, I 15-.
Primitive Architecture, I 15. 
Prophetic Pictures, I28.
Potter's Wheel, The, 142.
Pottery a Universal Art, 143.Potteries of England, I44.
Poetic Imagery of Jeremiah, I46.
Par, Premium, and Discount, 147.
Plaster-of-Paris Religion, 1 5 I.
Protestant Idols, 15 I.
Potter's Work, 152.
Pittsburgh, First Glass  Manufac  ture in, I69.
Patmos Visions, I85.
Pilot of Lake Erie, The, 21 I.
Pilots Piloted, 2I3.
Promulgation of Divine  Truth,
218.
Pre-alphabetic Letters, 219.
Printing in Mexico, 230.
Printer's Case, 232.
Pages of Life, 234.
Punctuated Christianity, 235.
Poetical Piety, 238.
Picture of By-gone Days, 249.
Power of Prayer, 25 I.
Personal Accountability, 256.
Patience   and Perseveran ce, 262.
Power and Majesty of Life, 273.
Probation and Discipline, 280.
Plain Gospel, 287.
Profession and Practice, 288.
UARRYING and Polishing,
45
REGISTRIES of Masonry,
35.
Royal Fraternity, 36.
Rock of Ages, 38.
Register of Believers, 4I.
Roman Bricks, 60.
Religious Intolerance, 83.
Roman Art, 87.
Refiner's Fire, 96.
Reinventions, I 17Ruins of Inventions, 126.
Redemption Accomplished, I32.
Relics of Earliest Days, I37.
Roman Antiquities, I42.
Royal Occupation, A, I67.
Religion in Remnants, I72.
Reflection from an Old Looking  glass, I73.
River Pilots, I98.
Romai n Industry,       244.
Reputation and Character, 252.
Riches and Hell, The God of, 284.
S  CORN  for Labor Rebuked,
|      17.
i Simplicity of the Gospel, 20.
Servant of All, The, 20.
Social Affinities, 27.
I Solomon's Temple, 35.
!Sectarian Chaff, 45.
I Stability, 46.
298 
I N'ID E.Y,
Sand or Granite, 47.
Soul-Growth, 65.
Straw in Brickmaking, 66.
Slavery, 68.
Satan's Bondmen, 69.
South Sea Islands, 74.
Secular Illustrations of the Spirit  ual, 8I.
Steps in Founding, 86.
"Strike While the Iron is Hot,"
101.
IOI.
Saving Strength, I20.
Steam an Evangelizer, I23.
Sect-Patents, 15I.
Spiritual Potteries, 152.
Sectarian Jealousy, I53.
Spiritual Workmanship, I79.
Self-Sacrifice, 21 I.
Schoffer, 228.
Sound Doctrine, 237.
Solomon's Estimate of Woman,
246.
Sphere of Woman, The, 246.
Sudden Death, 25I.
Selfishness, 286.
Shepherds of Zion, 290.
NITY of Effort, 36.
Unity in Variety, 37, 1o7,
176.
Universal Welcome, 54Universe a Machine, The, I24.
Universal Brotherhood, I50.
Utility of the Mariner's Compass,
195Underwork, 279.
ARIOUSLY Colored Bricks,
V6o
60.
Variety in Unity, 37, I07, I76.
Voyage of Life, 200.
Vital Religion, 237.
Voice and Hand, 288.
RADITION of Jesus, A, I4.
Tried Stone, The, 39.
Truth Impregnable, 40.
True Church, The, 40, I79.
Temple, Divine, The, 52.
Tower of Babel, 58.
Tried as by Fire, 62.
Tubal Cain's Inventions, I I6
Terra-Cotta Libraries, I39.
Terra-Cotta Tiles, 14I.
Tallying Testimonies, I41
Tests of Discipleship, I49.
INDING-Stair, The, 64.
Tua  CWorkts o f the Coral, 74.
Workday Analogies, 82.
Workingmen, go.
Worldly-mindedness, 99.
Wholesome Bitters, I49.
Whom He Will and Whosoever
Will, 156.
Window-Glass, The First, I67.
World a Workshop, The, I75.
Woman's Work, 245.
299
Theology Necessarily Fragi-nent'  ary, 157- -
Touch-me-nots,
183Tests of Usefulness, i 84.
Trades' Unions, i92.
Tyrian Navigation, i96.
Tyrian Ships, i96.
Time a Weaver, 253Time for Labor, 278.
Tempting the Tempter, 283 
ND~X.
Ian, 247.   V ESTERDAY,  To-Day, and
W.    Forever, 23.
Youth of Jesus, I I.
,86.
BEAL, Mistaken, 22. 
YLI Books,  Z     Zion's Precious Sons,
145.
Woman the Equal  of 2
Warp and Woof, 249.
Work a Duty, 269.
Wholesale Moralities, 2
.APR "A'  917
300
YLOGRAPHIC
227.
ir