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1. There is probably no means of grace more strengthening against temptation, more healthful for the spirit, more uplifting towards God, than honest, earnest work. When God placed man in the Garden of Eden, He placed him there not for the sole purpose of contemplation, but to dress the garden and keep it. The Saviour is reputed to have worked at His foster father's bench, and thus to have consecrated all human toil. Even His Sabbaths were spent in worship and in doing good. The most religious life is often thus a life of unremitting toil.

2. Upon the scroll of Nature is written the gospel of work. For Nature seldom supplies our necessities or meets our conveniences by provisions ready made for use. Nature furnishes the raw material: the Clay to be fashioned into bricks, the iron to be converted into machinery, the fertility of the soil to be husbanded by cultivation, the produce of distant lands to be first transferred by the seaman's endurance and the merchant's enterprise to the place of manufacture, and then to be spun and woven by the diligence of the artizan into cloth suitable for wear. Even Nature declines to satisfy our wants unless we work in her laboratories, and recognize the Divine obligation of earning our bread by the sweat of the brow. Nature thus exalts every labourer into a disciple of God, learning in the Book of Nature the dignity and value of toil.

3. History harmonizes with Nature in the pronouncement of this verdict upon the blessedness of work. The most forward nations of the world are those which have been compelled by the necessities of climate and geographical position to labour most diligently for their daily sustenance. The most backward races are those which dwell in sunny lands, where fruits grow without strenuous husbandry, and where the glow and inspiration of effort are only partial and weak.

4. The experience of the Church may be added in favour of the elevating influence of work. Where does infidelity most abound? Not among the busy and industrious classes, but among the luxurious, the leisurely, the indolent. Doubters may not be always drones, but drones are commonly doubters. The pests of the commonwealth and the poisons of society are its loungers, its idlers, its non-working element; those who simply "eat the fruits of the earth and do no good and die"; who neither work for their own private advantage, nor devote themselves to the public weal. The idle man is in the full glare of temptation, and upon the high road to iniquity.

5. Work is a great preservative for the soul. It drains off the evil humours of the flesh; it parries the thrusts of temptation; it yields the fruits of a peacable heart; it delights with the reflection of useful service to others; it gives to man the exalted sense of being a cooperator with God in Nature, in the world, and in the Church,

(J. W. Diggle, M. A.)

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KJV: For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies.

WEB: For we hear of some who walk among you in rebellion, who don't work at all, but are busybodies.