hours, and includes their higher and wider interests. There seems to be
something in the putting forth of effort upon the same material or for the
same end which binds men together with ties which are not wholly the
result of proximity. Those who have given no thought to the educational
side of work, and who are ignorant that it has such a side, are,
nevertheless, brought within the unifying influence of a process which,
using mainly the hands and the feet, is insensibly training the whole
nature.

There is a deeper unity in the work of the world than has been clearly
understood as yet; there is that vital unity which binds together those
who are not only engaged in a common task, but who are also involved in a
common spiritual process. The very necessity of work carries with it the
implication of an incomplete world and an imperfectly developed society.
The earth was not finished when it was made ready for the appearance of
man; it will not be finished until man has done with it. In the making of
the world man has his part; here, as elsewhere, he meets God and co-
operates with him; the divine and the human combining to perfect the
process of unfolding and evolution. Until the work of men has developed
it, the earth is raw material. It is full of power, but that power is not
conserved and directed, it is full of the potentialities of fertility, but
there are no harvests; all manner of possibilities both of material and
spiritual uses are in it,--food, ore, force, beauty,--but these
possibilities must await the skill of man before they can be turned into
wealth, comfort, art, civilisation. God gives the earth as a mine, and man
must work it; as a field, and man must till it; as a reservoir of force,
and man must make connection with it; as the rough material out of which
order, symmetry, utility, beauty, culture may be wrought, and men must
unfold these higher uses by intelligence, skill, toil, and character. At
some time every particle of the civilised world has been like the old