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The great God of Nature who has appointed, as this psalm tells us, a season, a use, a function, a duty, for every created thing, has ordained for man the day wherein to labour, and the evening wherein to rest. Work and leisure alternately are His ordinance.

I. WORK. Wise men, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero taught that it was unworthy of a free-born citizen to engage in trade or commerce; and agriculture which, with the sanction of , held longest an honourable place among civic avocations, came also at last to be regarded with contempt. Any profession that exchanged its products for money was despised. Even intellectual work, done for money, was counted unworthy of respect. "The freeman was degraded by acting as tutor or schoolmaster. Only the liberal arts, such as medicine, philosophy, architecture, commerce on a large scale, were regarded as honourable and suitable to the position of citizen." But, in contradistinction to this pagan teaching, our Bible puts the highest dignity on work. Our first parents, even in their innocency, were "to dress and keep" the garden. The Lord of Glory Himself worked as a carpenter. St. Paul — the free-born Roman citizen — deigned to soil his hands at tent-making. In his epistles he again and again comes down, as with a shattering sledge-hammer, on the idleness of some professing Christians. "If any will not work, neither let him eat." The law of work is, moreover, stamped on our being. The anatomy of our body shows that work is a necessity for its health and vigour. "It is not work," says Beecher, "that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear." Work is not only a negative good, saving us from the "mischief" which "Satan finds for idle hands to do," but it is also a positive good. Besides keeping us physically healthy, it also calls out our intelligence; and when done honestly, it strengthens us in many a virtue such as patience, courage, endurance, fidelity. These moral gains we may find as readily in sweeping the street or performing trivial household duties as in sowing our grain or in attending to a piece of delicate machinery.

II. LEISURE. By many a voice God says to each of us in the words of the poet, "Work like a man, but don't be worked to death!"

1. The leisure of the evening is appointed for rest. The machinery of our body is such that it soon wears out under too lengthened physical toil; and the balance of our mind is such that it is liable to give way under the monotony and overstrain of too many hours of application.

2. The leisure of the evening is appointed for wholesale recreation. The bent mind, like the bow, needs to be occasionally unbent for a while. And innocent amusement for the man who has been working hard is as a strengthening medicine. But alas for the recreations of some! It is more killing than their work.

3. The leisure of evening is appointed for spiritual improvement. Were we only physical beings, then it were right that we should only live to eat — to secure the comforts and luxuries which are dear to our animal appetites. Or were we only the social creatures of a day, then it were pardonable that we should give the great bulk of our leisure hours to gratify our selfish taste for exciting amusements and companionships. But if it be true that we are undying souls in need of salvation, and of that sanctified fitness which must be acquired for the heavenly state, then surely there ought also to be daily leisure for spiritual meditation and private prayer.

(T. Young, M.A.)

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KJV: Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.

WEB: Man goes forth to his work, to his labor until the evening.