"But look here, Wynnie; listen to this," I said, "'And he went down with
them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.' Was that not doing
his Father's business too? Was it not doing the business of his Father in
heaven to honour his father and his mother, though he knew that his days
would not be long in that land? Did not his whole teaching, his whole
doing, rest on the relation of the Son to the Father and surely it was
doing his Father's business then to obey his parents--to serve them, to be
subject to them. It is true that the business God gives a man to do may be
said to be the peculiar walk in life into which he is led, but that is only
as distinguishing it from another man's peculiar business. God gives us
all our business, and the business which is common to humanity is
more peculiarly God's business than that which is one man's and not
another's--because it lies nearer the root, and is essential. It does not
matter whether a man is a farmer or a physician, but it greatly matters
whether he is a good son, a good husband, and so on. O my children!" I
said, "if the world could but be brought to believe--the world did I say?--
if the best men in the world could only see, as God sees it, that service
is in itself the noblest exercise of human powers, if they could see that
God is the hardest worker of all, and that his nobility are those who do
the most service, surely it would alter the whole aspect of the church.
Menial offices, for instance, would soon cease to be talked of with that
contempt which shows that there is no true recognition of the fact that
the same principle runs through the highest duty and the lowest--that the
lowest work which God gives a man to do must be in its nature noble, as
certainly noble as the highest. This would destroy condescension, which
is the rudeness, yes, impertinence, of the higher, as it would destroy
insolence, which is the rudeness of the lower. He who recognised the
dignity of his own lower office, would thereby recognise the superiority of
the higher office, and would be the last either to envy or degrade it. He