Life tenure

“ In this chapter we shall consider, first, some aspects of Christian obligation; and, second, the particular duties which arise therefrom in relation to the self, others, and God.
I ASPECTS OF DUTY 1. Duty and Vocation.—'While duty stands for a universal element there is a personal element in moral requirement which may be called vocation.' [2] As soon as the youth enters upon the larger world he has to make choice of a profession or life-work. Different principles may guide him in his selection. First of all, the circumstances {200} of life will help to decide the individual's career. ”

“ O God, who hast ordained that whatever is to be desired should be sought by labour, and who, by thy blessing, bringest honest labour to good effect, look with mercy upon my studies and endeavours. Grant me, O LORD, to design only what is lawful and right; and afford me calmness of mind, and steadiness of purpose, that I may so do thy will in this short life, as to obtain happiness in the world to come, for the sake of JESUS CHRIST our Lord. ”

“ We observe the aged, the infirm, and those engaged in occupations of immediate hazard, trembling as it were upon the very brink of non-existence, but we derive no lesson from the precariousness of their tenure until it has altogether failed. ”

“ Some great mistake in life is the chief condition of admittance into this class. Here are members of the learned professions, whom Providence endowed with special gifts for the plough, the forge, and the wheelbarrow, or for the routine of unintellectual business. We will assign to them, as partners in the march, those lowly laborers and handicraftsmen, who have pined, as with a dying thirst, after the unattainable fountains of knowledge. ”

“ You look as though you’d climbed. You haven’t the air of an eldest son whose way is cut out for him, with fifty thousand a year for compensation. What have you been doing? What has been your work in life? ”

“ At fourteen culminates the desire for a business career in bank or office among the boys, the consciousness of life's uncertainties which appeared first at twelve, the desire for character, and the hope of doing the world good. ”

“ This fancy has some truth, but more of nonsense. “Men at some time are masters of their fates.” Create your place in life and fill it, or adapt yourself to the best place you can find. The choice of occupation is important, but filling well the profession chosen is more important. Turn your [Pg 233] knowledge and power to the performance of to-day’s duty. ”

“ Birth—blood—family connections—what have they done for me, except it be to entail upon me the necessity of selecting a career amidst the two or three that are supposed to suit the well-born? I may be a Life Guardsman, or an unpaid attaché, but I must not be a physician or a merchant. Nor is it alone that certain careers are closed against us, but certain opinions too. I must not think ill of the governing class,—I must never think well of the governed. ”

“ At thirty we are all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this tenement of life; twenty years later we have carved it, or shut up our jack-knives. Then we are ready to help others, and care less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. ”

“ Our claim to be capable servants of our Master and reincarnations of his life is judged in our little world by the good work we do; if as surgeons or nurses, by our skill; if as storekeepers and labor employers, by the clean deals we give. ”

“ Your future career is a matter of your own selection, and will be regulated by the conduct which you choose to follow. That career may be one of happiness or self-regret, one of honour or of obscurity, one of wealth or of poverty. ”

“ Beside the education of our powers and faculties, employment is a blessing in helping us to bear the severest trials of this life. When bereavement or disappointment overwhelms the soul with anguish, so that this world seems only the dark habitation of despair ”

“ And because the emphasis is now for ever shifted from the accidents to the substance of life, it will matter little where and how this career is actualised--whether in convent or factory, study or battlefield, multitude or solitude, sickness or strength. ”

“ For on the supposition that you will be suitably remunerated, an opportunity for work is afforded which may perhaps raise you for good above your insignificant occupation, and which, if dutifully carried out, will entitle you not only to our warmest thanks, but to those of the whole learned world. Your conduct here may therefore be decisive for the rest of your life. Remember, also, every hour, Mr. Magister, that you have to show conscientiousness and fidelity, not only to learning, but also with respect to the property of the prince who has called you to this post of confidence. ”

“ We proceed, therefore, to consider other sources of happiness. And among these, we shall—perhaps to the surprise of some—assign the first place to a man's profession, his office, his regular occupation and work in the world. It is too common, at the present day, for men to consider the duties of their profession or regular occupation as a task, as drudgery, to be got through with and away from, as soon as possible. ”

“ Some talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty. Others readily allowed, that there was a time when the claims of the publick were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself, to review his life, and purify his heart. ”

“ In that alone you are wrong; but also understand that time is given us to be employed aright; that is tilt tenure, so to speak, on which we hold our existence; our intellects, our talents, our strength, our faculties of mind and body, were bestowed on us for that object. Boys and young people, and even grown men and women, fancy they were sent into the world only to amuse themselves. ”

“ A poet of our day quaintly but not irreverently writes of the future life, “When the Master of all Good Workmen shall set us to work anew.” There we shall work for the joy of it; there we shall know things in their reality; there we shall enjoy the perfect appreciation of the Master, and know the blessedness of labor performed in His service. ”

“ Whatever may be the degree of success that I have met with in life, I attribute it, in a great measure, to the adoption of such rules. One was never to let the mind be idle for want of useful occupation, but always to have in reserve subjects of thought or study for the leisure moments and quiet hours of the night. ”

“ A career well begun—a life commenced properly, with wise forecast, with prudent rules of action, and under the influence of sound and pure, moral and religious principles—is an advance, half-way at least, to ultimate success and prosperity. ”

“ The whole tenour of his life was a perpetual lecture against the idle, the extravagant, and the proud. It was his principal aim to inspire mankind with a love of industry, temperance, and frugality, and to inculcate such duties as promote the important interests of humanity. ”

“ He is even rewarded for the proper discharge of those functions; and all the natural exercises which relate to himself, as well as to his fellow creatures, not only occupy without distressing him, but, in many instances, are attended with positive pleasures, and fill up the hours of life with agreeable occupation. ”

“ Youth, Manhood, and Age. In Youth, as Entered Apprentices, we ought industriously to occupy our minds in the attainment of useful knowledge; in Manhood, as Fellow Crafts, we should apply our knowledge to the discharge of our respective duties to God, our neighbor, and ourselves; so that in Age, as Master Masons, we may enjoy the happy reflections consequent on a well-spent life, and die in the hope of a glorious immortality. ”

“ Besides, while perpetual tenure is the general rule of landed property, as it is in all the countries of Europe, a tenure for a limited period, however long, is sure to be regarded as a something of inferior consideration and dignity, and inspires less of ardour to obtain it, and of attachment to it when obtained. ”

“ In either service a good and honourable career is open to you—for you have everything found for you, food, housing, clothing, and hospital, with good pay and the certainty of promotion and pension for the rest of your life if you make up your mind to serve loyally, steadily, and well. ”

“ He then enters upon his career. The same motive that will govern his behaviour for the rest of his life comes into operation, and he wants to use this new-found power for some purpose that will increase his enjoyment of life. ”

“ Another normal interest of this period is that of vocation, choosing one’s life-calling. If the young man or young woman has not already started to work to support himself, the question of his life-work begins to press hard for an answer. ”

“ To prefer one future mode of life to another, upon just reasons, requires faculties which it has not pleased our Creator to give us.
'If, therefore, the profession you have chosen has some unexpected inconveniencies, console yourself by reflecting that no profession is without them; and that all the importunities and perplexities of business are softness and luxury, compared with the incessant cravings of vacancy, and the unsatisfactory expedients of idleness. ”

“ The inner labor, the inner values, and the inner difficulties and frictions are too often unknown to those who decide for a vocation, and they are unable to correlate those essential factors of the life-calling with all that nature by inheritance, and society by surroundings and training, have planted and developed in their minds. ”

“ Such then, gentlemen, are the duties arising from your present position that I would exhort you to discharge:—to labour for the acquisition of knowledge and of wisdom, in order that your intellectual being may grow into the glorious thing it is fitted to become; then to see to it that you employ in the service of men and for their good, all the skill and all the influence that through your own development you thus will gain. ”

“ Let your time be fully occupied in some useful employment and although you may not be called upon to encounter the fierce contest of the world, as your brothers, fathers, or husbands, yet your path shall so closely entwine itself with theirs, as to strengthen, nourish, and sustain them, be a present help in every time of need ”

“ In one year, or two, or three, you will be perfectly at home in the new life, and able to see, according to your abilities, the path that offers you the best prospect of the greatest success. During [Pg 60] your new-chum days of apprenticeship you must consider yourself as a common peasant, like the men you will probably have to associate with ”

“ To the influence of her early counsels and manners, he has always attributed the firmness with which, in maturer years, thrown upon a way of life, commonly not the best adapted to gravity and self-retirement, he has been able to maintain a serious character, untinctured with the levities incident to his profession. ”

“ No one is necessarily tied down to any special occupation of life. According to your disposition and character, your ability and inclination, education and training, you are free to select any sphere of action within your reach and opportunity. ”

“ If time permitted I could take up every occupation, every avocation, every profession and every calling, and show you that no matter which way we turn—no matter what we do—we are always and everywhere weighing the Soul. ”

“ The difference between your tenure and mine is trifling, and I therefore tell you to be prepared. I am prepared. You all have a heavy responsibility, and it behooves you to prepare more than it does me. ”

“ The occupations of these young residents of the higher life, and also their studies, are various; but whatever each undertakes to learn to do is accomplished with earnestness and by diligence. We have no dull scholars, because all delight to study; and we have no loitering idlers, because each takes pleasure in practicing or experimenting in some line of labor for themselves. ”

“ The strength of the will, the power of exercising judgment and discretion, the spirit of enterprise, the love of command, and other such mental impulses, are growing and strengthening every day, in every healthy boy, and they are all clamorous for employment. The instinct that impels them is so strong that they will find employment in some way or other for themselves, unless an occupation is otherwise provided for them. ”

“ How little did he dream of the drudgery inseparable from the duties of a lad of his age, in a country where the old and young, the master and the servant, are alike obliged to labour for a livelihood, without respect to former situation or rank! ”

“ With regard to working for life, this also our Lord has expressly commanded us. "Labour" (Ἐργάζεσθε—literally, "work") "for the meat that endureth to everlasting life." And, in fact, every believer, till he comes to glory, works for, as well as from, life. ”

“ For as long as he lived those who knew him felt confident that he would be in the fullest sense, and at every moment, alive: this or that interest might pass, one or another occupation be taken up or discarded, but the interest of living, the occupation of creating and working, would never lessen or falter. ”

“ A condition of good behavior, and a tenure during good behavior, are distinct things. The condition for good behavior is necessarily implied, and adheres to every officer. The tenure during good behavior belongs only to those officers in whose commissions that tenure is expressed. ”

“ But if this is the first matter to be considered in deciding upon a profession, it is by no means the last, and the practical considerations of a fair return for good work, bread and butter for a man and his family, the certainty or uncertainty of employment,—such questions as these must have their full share of attention. ”

“ In the question betwixt a master and a servant, we must distinguish betwixt benefits, duties, and actions ministerial. By benefits, we understand those good offices that we receive from strangers, which are voluntary, and may be forborne without blame. ”

“ All of a tenor was their after-life,
No day discolour'd with domestic strife; ”