“We must buy and sell in the markets, we must earn
Our daily bread.
But just in the doing of these usual acts, may the
Soul be helped and fed.
It is not by keeping the day’s work and the day’s
Prayer separate so,
But by mixing the prayer with the labour that the
Soul is taught to grow.
“For sweeping a room by God’s law, is a service he
Designs to bless,
And mending a kettle worthily, is working for him
No less
Than steering steady the ship of state, or wielding
The sword in war,
Or lifting the soul of man by songs to the heights
Where the angels are.”
One of the later Old Testament prophets predicts a coming golden age when the bells of the horses shall be as sacred as the garments of the high priest, and the common cooking utensils in the people’s homes as holy as the vessels of the temple. St. Paul teaches this lesson when he says, “Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” This covers all our acts and all our words. It applies to our Bible reading, but not less to our other reading. We must read our morning newspaper, our Tennyson, our school text books, in the name of the Lord, so as to honour him and to get knowledge that will add to the beauty and the strength of our life. We are to pray in the name of the Lord Jesus, but we are also to go to our business in the same blessed name. We regard the Lord’s house as holy, and say that we should do nothing in it but that which is reverent, which yields honour and praise to God. True; but the house we live in is sacred also, and nothing ever should take place in it which would not be fitting and proper to do in the presence of Christ himself.
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