ncreasing the well-being of others, and the safety of
others, you increase your own. So it is, and so it should be; for
God has knit us all together as brethren, members of one family of
God; and the well-being of each makes up the well-being of all, so
that sooner or later, if one member rejoice, all the others rejoice
with it.

But more. And here I speak to young people; for their elders, I
doubt not, have found it out long since for themselves. Work, hard
work, is a blessing to the soul and character of the man who works.
Young men may not think so. They may say, What more pleasant than
to have one's fortune made for one, and have nothing before one than
to enjoy life? What more pleasant than to be idle: or, at least,
to do only what one likes, and no more than one likes? But they
would find themselves mistaken. They would find that idleness makes
a man restless, discontented, greedy, the slave of his own lusts and
passions, and see too late, that no man is more to be pitied than
the man who has nothing to do. Yes; thank God every morning, when
you get up, that you have something to do that day which must be
done, whether you like or not. Being forced to work, and forced to
do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control,
diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content and a
hundred virtues which the idle man will never know. The monks in
old time found it so. When they shut themselves up from the world
to worship God in prayers and hymns, they found that, without
working, without hard work either of head or hands, they could not
even be good men. The devil came and tempted them, they said, as
often as they were idle. An idle monk's soul was lost, they used to
say; and they spoke truly. Though they gave up a large portion of
every day, and of every night also, to prayer and worship, yet they
found they could not pray aright without work. And 'working is
praying,' said one of the holiest of them that ever lived; and he
spoke truth, if a man will but do his work for the sake of duty,
which is for the sake of God. And so they worked, and worked hard,
not only at teaching the children of the poor, but at tilling the
ground, clearing the forests, building noble churches, which stand
unto this day; none among them were idle at first; and as long as
they worked, they were good men, and blessings to all around them,
and to this land of England, which they brought out of heathendom to
t