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WORK.


1. What is wise work, and what is foolish work? What the difference
between sense and nonsense, in daily occupation? There are three tests of
wise work:--that it must be honest, useful and cheerful.

It is _Honest_. I hardly know anything more strange than that you
recognize honesty in play, and do not in work. In your lightest games, you
have always some one to see what you call "fair-play." In boxing, you must
hit fair; in racing, start fair. Your English watchword is
"fair-_play_," your English hatred, "foul-_play_." Did it never
strike you that you wanted another watchword also, "fair-_work_," and
another and bitterer hatred,--"foul-_work_"?

2. Then wise work is _Useful_. No man minds, or ought to mind, its
being hard, if only it comes to something; but when it is hard and comes
to nothing, when all our bees' business turns to spiders', and for
honey-comb we have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the next
breeze,--that is the cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever ask
ourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is coming to
anything or not?

3. Then wise work is _Cheerful_, as a child's work is. Everybody in
this room has been taught to pray daily, "Thy Kingdom come." Now if we
hear a man swearing in the streets we think it very wrong, and say he