Lives for whom He died,
He whom Jesus nameth
Must be on His side.
By Thy love constraining,
By Thy grace divine,
We are on the Lord's side;
Saviour, we are Thine!

FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL

What is work? Work is energy applied to the creation of either material
or immaterial products. The digging of the soil preparatory to raising a
corn-crop is work; the making of brooms; the writing of fugues. There is
no one who does not work, at one time or another, and a man's social
value depends largely upon the amount of work that he can do.

Even the energy which is seemingly applied to destructive tasks is
really subsidiary to a constructive ideal. Thus the hewing of timber is
a destructive task, but its object is not to scatter trees around, but
to make a clearing on which to plant wheat; or to have lumber, in order
to build a house. So, also, we blast rock, in order to get stones for a
stone wall, or for the filling of a road-bed. And we rip up old clothes
in order to have rags, and to make room in our homes for other things.
Destructiveness from a sheer love of destructiveness is not work--it is
vandalism. The true Man works. When Adam's crook-stick turned over the
brown earth to make it fertile, he began the industry of the world. The
whole horizon of man's endeavor is spanned by one word, Work. It has
built cities, bridged rivers, united continents, and sent the myriad
spindles of trade whirring under a thousand changing skies.

Work is the open-sesame of success. It is curious to see how uneasily
some men will roam from one end of the earth to the other, trying to
find an easy place, a place where work will not be needed or required.
There is no such place. The higher the honor, the harder the work. The
power to work is ordinarily the measure of a man's possibilities of
success. Long hours, hard toil, lack of recognition and appreciation,
drudgery, a thousand attempts to one successful issue,--these are the
ways in which the colossal achievements of mankind have been built up.
Work, as has well been said, is an ascending stairway. On its broad base
are ranged all the multitudes of the earth. Those who can climb mount
the higher and ever-narrowing stair.

The great man can begin anywhere, or with any task. He says, If I am
going into the giant-business, I may as well begin now! Born and bred in
the forest, he lays hand to his axe, and looking up at some tall