No. XLV.

THE FOLLY OF EXCESSIVE LABOR.

A Sermon,

DELIVERED ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JANUARY 17, 1858,

BY THE REV. HENRY MELVILL, B. D.,

(Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty, and Canon Residentiary of St Paul's),

IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, LONDON.

"If the iron be blunt and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct."-Ecclesiastes x. 10.

THE first meaning of these words is so obvious as scarcely to require that it be pointed out. A man is engaged in some manual occupation, using an iron instrument, such as an axe or a chisel; and the nature of his business tends to blunt the tool with which he works, so that after proceeding for some time he is not only fatigued with his labor, but less able to prosecute it from the diminished efficiency of the instrument. Under these circumstances, he might put out more strength, endeavoring to supply by the exertion of greater force the loss resulting from the deterioration of the tool; but it is easily seen that this method would not answer. He would only be rapidly exhausting his already tasked powers, whilst his continuing to use the blunted instrument would only blunt it still more, so that he must soon be compelled to give up his work in despair. Whereas if he ceased for a little while from his toil, and used the ordinary and known methods of sharpening his tool, all his difficulties might be overcome and he would carry on his trade with both ease and success-so profitable is wisdom to direct. The brute force would be presently exhausted if there were no skill in its management; but let there be only a due share of prudence, and science, and strength might be so used as to surmount every obstacle. If the iron be blunt and a man refuse or neglect to whet the edge, he must of necessity increase the amount of force which he applies; and it is not possible with a nature constituted as ours is, that such a system should long be of any avail. But if, as soon as he perceives that the instrument grows blunt, he will bring it to the grinding stone and give it a new edge he may expect through this wise husbandry of his strength to accomplish what he wishes, and greatly to prosper in his labor. Such is evidently we think, the drift of the statement under review, and this having been ascertained and admttted, we proceed to furnish those illustrations of the principle which is brought before us, and to the drawing those inferences which we may judge at once the most pertinent and the most practical.

Now it must often have struck you as a very surprising feature in God's dealings with this earth, that though he has abundantly stored it with all necessaries for the purposes and comforts of civilised life, he has left the discovery and employment of such materials dependent upon human industry and ingenuity. We do not know, for example, that he gave any instructions to the first fathers of our race as to agriculture or handicraft: we have rather reason to believe that he left them as he has left their descendants, to learn by experience the uses and properties of different substances, and determine by successive trials the best methods of turning them to account. We are quite aware that many of the most valuable productions of nature, which we even now reckon amongst the necessaries of life, are not attainable in any shape except by dint of vast labor, nor available to our wants except when subjected to curious and elaborate processes. The very metal for example, iron, mentioned in our text-to deprive the world of which would be to threaten it with starvation-with what toil is it wrung from the bowels of the earth, and under how much costly and curious operation does it pass ere it can come to the husbandman under the form of a spade or of a plough. God has nowhere instructed man where to find or how to prepare iron; he has only furnished man with faculties for discovery, placed him under circumstances favoring, or rather requiring, the developement of those faculties, and then left him to his own industry and ingenuity, placing a sure reward within reach, if he will make full use of the communicated power.

And how marvellously has discovery gone on from age to age, how have new properties been ascertained, new resources unfolded, new virtues established, so that every century, we may almost say every year, has witnessed some addition to human convenience and comfort; an addition which has resulted from the detection of some fresh power in nature, or from a fresh application of some already known law. You read of Tubal Cain, the seventh in descent from Adam, that he was the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. The human race was then vastly on the increase, and it had become a matter of great importance to it that there should be such improvements in husbandry as could not be effected without the use of metals; and industry and ingenuity had been so turned on discoveries and inventions whilst the necessity was only beginning to be felt, that they were ready with implements and arts when that necessity began to be urgent. And we believe that this has been the order of things from the earliest days down: we believe that God who has appointed labor as man's inheritance because best adapted to a state of moral discipline, has also crowned labor with such measures of success as should just meet existing wants, but not supersede the necessity for fresh efforts. This is wonderfully observable with regard to all those surprising inventions which have multiplied man's power almost beyond human calculation. The mighty steam engine, which now does with ease what would have required and baffled an army; and the machine which a child can

manage which effects the work of a thousand hands-these have practically no tendency to produce idleness or even distress; on the contrary, they are but means through which industry is enabled to meet increased demands, and every one is now busier though the vapor and the wheel have apparently taken his business on themselves. This is a very beautiful and striking arrangement of Divine Providence. Man is allowed to acquire prodigious powers, and those powers are augmenting with such amazing rapidity, that one hardly dares surmise what they may be in a few more years; but nevertheless, through some mysterious order of God, these powers are never more than commensurate with the demand; employment grows with every discovery that you might have thought likely to encourage idleness if not make it an inevitable lot—and this is the first point of view under which we desire to present to you our text. There is an extraordinary display of the carefulness and wisdom of God in those arrangements through which practically industry and discovery are made to go hand in hand. If nothing had been left to human invention, if all the arts and manufactures of civilised life had been matter from the first of explicit revelation, it may well be supposed that the mind of man would have grown listless through the want of sufficient stimulus for its powers; and hence it has been a most merciful appointment that man has been so circumstanced as to be compelled to use his faculties, that he has been necessitated to search out methods for sharpening the blunted edge of iron. But then it might have been expected that as discovery grew and nature gave up to human search her secrets and her powers, there would cease to be a sufficient demand for labor, so that man would escape from that most wise and benevolent ordinance, "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." If in the earlier days of our race man's progress in useful arts could have been foreseen, if his course could have been traced as he advanced from the rude instrument with which he could scarce turn the clod, to the varied and powerful implements which now make the mountain and the valley obedient to his wants, from the simplest contrivances which just sheltered him from the elements, to the wonder-working machines which make those elements his servants, and scatter over a land the clothing of its thousands, why the prognostication must have been that so vast an increase in power would bring with it an indisposition to exertion, and that men would settle into an indifference fatal to all moral greatness. But God has taken care to defeat such prognostication, and has provided, as we have shown, that the progress of discovery should keep pace with the progress of population, that wants should multiply just as fast as the means of supply, and that thus idleness should be no more at men's option when they had pressed into their service all the agencies of nature, than when they stood alone upon the earth, ignorant of its simplest properties, and had not developed the most ordinary resources. Oh! I do look on this as strikingly indicative of God's goodness in his providential arrangements. To bring the mat

ter under the imagery of our text, he might have afforded man no means of whetting the edge, and then man, compelled to put to more strength, must hage spent his days in the worst drudgery, and there never could have been constructed the goodly fabric of a diversified community. On the other hand, he might have given man such a power of whetting the edge as would have destroyed all necessity for putting out his strength, and then there must have followed that universal dissoluteness which would be necessarily the produce of universal idleness. But God has guarded equally against both these disastrous results. The edge may be so whetted that man's strength shall not be overtasked; the edge cannot be so whetted that man's strength is no longer needful. Wonderful, then, art thou, God, in thy providential arrangements! I see all that is worthy of thee in the ordinance that demands human industry; I see all that is worthy of thee in the limits that have been set to human discovery, and I extract nothing but cause for admiring and adoring God in his dealings with our race, from meditation on this simple but comprehensive appointment, "If the iron be blunt and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct."

Now, up to this point we have taken a very general view of our text, but one, we think, that has enabled us to survey Divine Providence under a most interesting aspect. We will now bring before you more precise illustrations of the passage, but still under such forms as may best excite you to observe and to praise the benevolence of God. It is the property, we might almost say the infirmity of man, that he cannot give himself incessantly to labour, whether bodily or mental, but must have seasons of relaxation and repose. The iron will grow blunt after having been a certain time in use, and if a man will then go on insisting in using it, there must be a desperate putting forth of strength, which is certain, ere long, to bring about a total prostration. But if he have wisdom to direct him, so that by a lawful recreation he duly whet the edge of his powers, he may, through God's help, long retain his strength and his usefulness. And however in general there may be more cause for fear that men will be too inert than too active, we are still persuaded of the frequency of cases in which the caution most needed is, that men whet the edge. The old proverb which one often hears, and which involves a great fallacy, "better to wear out than to rust out," would seem constructed in opposition to our text, just as if the iron must rust, if it do not rapidly wear out; whereas, the truth is, that although through the putting to more strength the iron will be worn out, it will not be rusted out through the wetting the edge, seeing that in whetting the edge we brighten what we sharpen. And it is melancholy to think how frequently it happens in our seminaries of learning, that youths of high promise, with fine powers of imagination, and of large capacities for science, sink beneath the pressure of an over-tasked mind— working for themselves an early grave, and depriving world of the benefits

which might have been derived from their literature, or their piety, through the incessant use of the iron, and the continued neglect of the whetting the edge. And it is yet more melancholy to think how many of the ministers of Christ have shortened their period of usefulness, by devoting themselves to their work with uncalculating eagerness, even assuming as their principle the mistaken, or at least misapplied proverb, "better to wear out than to rust out," regarding it as their duty to give themselves no respite, just as though to relax for an instant would mark a failing in their loyalty to God. They must be acting erroneously, though we readily confess there is a beauty in the error which might well cause it to captivate and mislead. They must be acting erroneously, for God is undoubtedly too merciful a master to require-if we may use so homely an expression -that his servants should work themselves to death.

And something of the same kind may be said generally of all men, whatever the nature of their occupations. You are all aware of the obligations that men should devote themselves to various callings, and of the truth that they are all equally serving the Lord Christ when engaged in the diligent performance of their several duties; and I now speak of the duty that, in pursuing their respective vocations, they take care not to overwork their powers, and thus entail upon themselves a premature debility. I believe that such a caution is far enough from out of place in a community like our own, where there is such a vast play for mercantile activity, where one man may be said to urge on another by the boldness of an enterprise, or the hardihood of a speculation. I do not believe that philosophy with all its mystery, nor theology with all its majesty, is more likely than commerce is to engross and work up the mind so as to produce a rash disregard of the consequences of excessive labor. You must all see that where a pursuit is one that has much greater agreement with natural inclination, there is increased likelihood of a man's devoting himself to it without sufficient pause. The clergyman is tasked with an occupation in which it can hardly be said that nature prompts him to excessive exertion; the merchant, on the contrary, has all the wishes in which he was born engaged on the side of his business, and the probabilities, therefore, are far more considerable of his disregarding the bluntness of the iron, and omitting to whet its edge. And we do consider it in every case a sin; and certainly, if in that of the minister, it must be in that of the merchant, to follow an occupation with such unremitting perseverance, that health is thereby sacrificed, and life is thereby shortened. We shrink from the thought and the mention of suicides, but there are other modes of self-destruction beside that of laying violent hands on one's own person. There is the suicide by intemperance, the suicide by over-labor; and we cannot suppose a man altogether innocent in God's sight of the crime of self-destruction, who digs himself a premature grave, through unsparing demands on his mental and bodily powers, any more than another who wastes his strength on guilty pleasures, or daringly