Christian worker

“ In facts from Christian and philosophical standpoints it has been demonstrated that the infallible Supreme Ruler of all human spirits has made His final provision for the safety of each and every individual soul for its temporal and eternal welfare. Now I must prove to my readers' perfect satisfaction that to discard all the dignities and privileges of a high priest and become a lowly worker for Christ, it is not a mere accident nor is it an act of necessity as far as temporal necessities are concerned ”

“ If Christians as a whole had really submitted their lives in every detail to God, do you suppose that there would be something like fifty thousand Christian ministers and ten times that number of Christian workers at home, while scarcely a twentieth of that number have gone out from us to labour abroad? ”

“ If this course was persistently pursued by all Christian workers how manifold would be the blessings conferred on our labors. It would be found that many a poor sin-burdened heart would be instantly relieved of its load of care. ”

“ In this pamphlet, he says the labour question is one which it is his business, both as a Christian and as a bishop, to deal with: as a Christian, because Christ, as Saviour of the world, seeks not only to redeem men's souls, but to heal their sorrows and soften their condition ”

“ MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Verses 10–12.
Christianity and Work.
Christianity is the Gospel of work. Its clarion-call thrills along the nerves of human life and summons the world to labour. It gives to work meaning, purpose, dignity, and exalts drudgery into a blessedness. While full of sympathy for the feeble and maimed, it has no pity for the indolent. Its Founder and first apostles were giants in labour, and their example animates the world to-day with a spirit of noblest activity. It is not the drone, but the worker, who blesses the world. ”

“ Labor must become, in short, the category to which all belong who really earn their living and do not seek to "make" more than they earn.
2. Labor must recognize the Christianness of its own principles.
I do not say Labor must become Christian. It is profoundly and vitally Christian in its insistence on the right of the humblest man or woman to human conditions of life, in its corresponding denial of the right of any human being to live on the labor of others without rendering his own equivalent of service, in its devotion to the fundamental Christian principle of brotherhood. ”

“ They would there read the programme of our work, as recently sketched by a great bishop of the holy church: “We should believe in the people, hope in them, love them.” For you must not imagine that alms will here suffice, and that the people will accept them; they exact all our heart, our esteem, our respect. He who does not respect the workman can do nothing. Thus, this doctrine of respect for the workman, the truly Christian doctrine, is the base upon which the Catholic Circle of Workingmen has erected its edifice: may God prosper and bless it! ”

“ We can show men what Jesus really came to do, and, as His servants, we can help Him to do it. We can definitely recognise that the movement toward social regeneration is really and truly a spiritual movement, and that it must never be captured by materialism. I deplore the fact that, for the moment, the main current of the great Labour movement which, perhaps more than any other, represents the social application of the Christian ideal, should appear to be out of touch with organised religion. ”

“ You are living in the dawn of a happier day for labour. There are Christian men in business, and some few connected with railroads, who are trying to apply the principles of Christianity to the business and frame of the world. My probable successor in these shops is such a man. ”

“ And I believe, from experience, that when you put workmen into human dwellings, and give them a Christian education, so far from wishing discontentedly to rise out of their class, or to level others to it, exactly the opposite takes place. They become sensible of the dignity of work, and they begin to see their labour as a true calling in God's Church, now that it is cleared from the accidentia which made it look, in their eyes, only a soulless drudgery in a devil's workshop of a World. ”

“ This question of the unemployed and the social well-being of the people is strictly a religious one: When I first entered into public life some of my closest friends with whom I had been in Christian society for several years were astounded when on one occasion I preached a sermon on the Labour movement on the Sunday, and I was severely taken to task for so doing. ”

“ We say at first and without circumlocution that between Christian society and the working world there exists to-day a certain misunderstanding, and it is this misunderstanding we would wish to dissipate, and we beg of the divine Workman of Nazareth to direct our words, blessed by him, to the understanding and heart of the workmen of Paris. ”

“ In some cases the worker honours the work, but in religion the worker is ennobled by the work. How glorious is our Master, how pleasant his service, and how great the reward! Who would not say, Thine are we, O David! and on thy side thou son of Jesse: Peace be to thee, and to thine helpers, for thy God helpeth thee. Compared to this, every other employment is despicable and paltry; every other honour is disgrace; and all other pleasures are stale and insipid. ”

“ But to the Christian its signification is negative. It says to him: "Do not believe you can do good to mankind while overwhelming them with labor for others, and while not earning your food with your own hands." ”

“ It is the work of educated men and women to add their insight, their zeal for truth, their scholarship, their training and ideals to the Christian community: to sweep thought and practice out of ancient ruts, to clarify the spiritual vision of the world, and to present new aspects of truth and new goals of human endeavor! Let Research join hands with Prayer.
A third class which the Church needs to-day is that of the working-man. The hand of the working-man is the hand that has really moulded history. Working-men lead a brave and self-sacrificing life. ”

“ The preacher called the attention of his hearers to the fact that the founder of the Christian religion, in His early manhood, had been a laborer. He had gone about, with hammer and axe, working for wages, as did the carpenter of to-day. He was born of humble parents, reared in adversity, hardened to toil. Why should not the wage-earner of the twentieth century listen to His gospel and follow in His footsteps? His message was especially to the humble and the poor. His condemnation was for the haughty and self-sufficient rich. He founded His Church on the brotherhood of man. ”

“ Is it not a christian doctrine, that the labourer is worthy of his hire? And hath not the Lord, by the mouth of his prophet, pronounced, "Wo unto that man who buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; who uses his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him nought for his work?" ”

“ We have hardly the right to call ourselves Christian men and women unless we can relate our week-day labours to the fact of Christ.
So let us try to strengthen that link. Let us look at our daily work in the light of religion.
First, let me remind you that our work is by divine commandment. It is not something that God allows us to do when we are not worshipping. It is His ordinance that we should all work at something. The business of life is labour of some sort. I do not know if we all realise how the Fourth Commandment begins--"Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work." ”

“ The Christian Endeavour is a particularly strong branch of the work, and has produced a body of capable workers, one main object of the society being to train men, women and children to take part in Christian service of some kind. ”

“ Not that the Christian ever forgets God in his labor, but he needs to be on the alert, and to keep every faculty busy. But when the shades of evening gather, he begins to think of going home, and of the result of his labor. ”

“ Is it not, then, the obvious duty of every one of his followers, to seek opportunities of conversing with the impenitent upon the great subject of their soul's salvation? We are bound to labor for the conversion of every sinner, for whom we have an opportunity of laboring. God requires us to do all we can. The primitive Christians carried out this principle in its fullest extent. ”

“ That bond which in former times united employers and workmen so that they became almost like members of the same family, the employer looking after the best interests of his workmen, and the workmen looking upon the business of their employer as if it were their own, has for the most part ceased to exist.
Most of the complaints that we hear about workmen would be silenced if they would turn with more earnestness to their holy faith. It is faith that teaches us the nobility of work; by faith we learn that work is commanded us by God. God Himself instituted labor. ”

“ In other ways also, medical and industrial, Christian work has broadened out so that it reaches the people at all points and lifts up the Christian community into a self-respecting power which will abide and grow in influence. ”

“ The missionary looks upon his four thousand villagers, though nominally Christian perhaps, yet still in this state of destitution, degradation and ignorance. He sees, that to elevate them requires the labors not only of a preacher of the Gospel, but the labors of the civilian, the physician, the teacher, the agriculturist, the manufacturer, the mechanic and the artist. Can all these professions and employments be united in one man? Can one missionary sustain all this variety of labor? Yet all these departments of labor are absolutely indispensable to the improvement and elevation of society. ”

“ There are times when the Christian laborer has a right to ask for the sympathy, the prayers and the co-operation of our fellow-citizens, and to make a strong appeal in behalf of this most wretched race of heathen men on the face of the earth. ”

“ Again, therefore, the Church teaches that, as Religion and things spiritual and mental are among the workingman's main concerns, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions ; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings. Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work-people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex or age. His great and principal duty is to give every one a fair wage. ”

“ They well knew that if I succeeded in inducing the people to become Christians their occupation would be gone, and they would have to settle down to work for their own living, like other people, or starve. ”

“ Let us work unanimously and for the same object, and we shall see the number of Christian laborers increase. We shall see them living more and more in one another, associating with one another, and being strengthened by that association. When we have such men, and not before, it will be possible to make those associations really useful in the improvement of the material condition of the laboring classes. ”

“ But the most striking fact in these diverse opinions is, that Christian sects all agree that the number who will escape from whatever dangers there may be, depends upon the self-denying labor and sacrifices of the followers of Jesus Christ. ”

“ To re-establish labor and the condition of the workman, it was necessary that Christ, making himself a laborer, should wield with his own royal and divine hands, in the workshop of Nazareth, the axe and the tools of the carpenter. ”

“ Labor is a curse until communion with God in it, which is possible through Jesus Christ, makes it a blessing and a joy. Christ, in the sweat of His brow, won our salvation; and our work only becomes great when it is work done in, and for, and by Him. ”

“ O greatness of the Christian workman!
We promise to labor as unceasingly for the amelioration of your material condition as for the enlargement of your understanding. Evil be to us if we did not think of the lodging, warming, nourishment of the workman’s family; if we would confiscate science to our profit, and not extend to you the treasure; if we ceased for a single instant to open [760] schools, asylums, circles, conferences, institutions of peace and of light. We do not recoil before progress; no light terrifies us. ”

“ In my field of labor I have met with much success and encouragement, though, indeed, there are more cases very trying and painful to witness, but all difficulties can be encountered, and many overcome, by prayer. I feel more and more the blessedness of the privilege I enjoy in being permitted to labor for Christ in the salvation of so many poor souls, and in being the means of aiding so many who are sick, cast down, and discouraged. ”

“ Not because we have not power - We have the power, εξουσιαν, the right, to be maintained by those in whose behalf we labor. The laborer is worthy of his hire, is a maxim universally acknowledged and respected; and they who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel: the apostle did not claim his privilege, but labored for his own support, that he might be an example to those whom he found otherwise disposed, and that he might spare the poor. ”

“ There are encouraging signs that the influence of the workers at this mission is extending to the interior, and that the representatives of its schools and churches who are engaged in secular callings are a credit to the same, and are advertising the value of Christian training and character to those who are as yet strangers to both. One faithful laborer has, during the last twelvemonth, fallen at his post, after a service of fifteen years, Rev. ”