not the man who buys it.

Work is for the worker.

What becomes of the product of your work, and how the world receives it,
matters little. But how you do it is everything. We are what we are on
account of the thoughts we have thought and the things we have done. As a
muscle grows strong only through use, so does every attribute of the mind,
and every quality of the soul take on new strength through exercise. And
on the other hand, as a muscle not used atrophies and dies, so will the
faculties of the spirit die through disuse.

Thus we see why it is very necessary that we should exercise our highest
and best. We are making character, building soul-fiber; and no rotten
threads must be woven into this web of life. If you write a paper for a
learned society, you are the man who gets the benefit of that paper--the
society may. If you are a preacher and prepare your sermons with care, you
are the man who receives the uplift--and as to the congregation, it is all
very doubtful.

Work is for the worker.

We are all working out our own salvation. And thus do we see how it is
very plain that John Ruskin was right when he said that the man who makes
the thing is of far more importance than the man who buys it. Work is for
the worker.

Can you afford to do slipshod, evasive, hypocritical work? Can you afford
to shirk, or make-believe or practise pretense in any act of life? No, no;
for all the time you are molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting