ich
labour was held appears from the whole artistic output of the Middle
Ages. 'Many of the simple artists of the time represented the saints
holding some instrument of work or engaged in some industrial pursuit;
as, for instance, the Blessed Virgin spinning as she sat by the cradle
of the divine Infant, and St. Joseph using a saw or carpenter's tools.
"Since the Saints," says the _Christian Monitor_, "have laboured, so
shall the Christian learn that by honourable labour he can glorify
God, do good, and save his own soul."'[3] Work was, alongside of
prayer and inseparable from it, the perfection of Christian life.[4]

[Footnote 1: _Christianity and Economic Science_, pp. 26-7.]

[Footnote 2: _Op. cit._, vol. i. p. 187.]

[Footnote 3: Janssen, _op. cit._, vol. ii. p. 9.]

[Footnote 4: Wallon, _op. cit._, vol. i. p. 410.]

It must not be supposed, however, that manual labour alone was thought
worthy of praise. On the contrary, the necessity for mental and
spiritual workers was fully appreciated, and all kinds of labour
were thought equally worthy of honour. 'Heavy labourer's work is the
inevitable yoke of punishment, which, according to God's righteous
verdict, has been laid upon all the sons of Adam. But many of Adam's
descendants seek in all sorts of cunning ways to escape from the yoke
and to live in idleness without labour, and at the same time to have
a superfluity of useful and necessary things; some by robbery and
plunder, some by usurious dealings, others by lying, deceit, and all
the countless, forms of dishonest and fraudulent gain, by which men
are for ever seeking to get riches and abundance without toil. But
while such men are striving to throw off the yoke righteously imposed
on them by God, they are heaping on their shoulders a heavy burden
of sin. Not so, however, do the reasonable sons of Adam proceed; but,
recognising in sorrow that for the sins of their first father God has
righteously ordained that only through the toil of labour shall they
obtain what is necessary to life, they take the yoke patiently on
them.... Some of them, like the peasants, the handicraftsmen, and the
tradespeople, procure for themselves and others, in the sweat of their
brows and by physical work, the necessary sustenance of life. Others,
who labour in more honourable ways, earn the right to be maintained by
the sweat of others' brows--for instance, those who stand at the head
of the commonwealth; for by their laborious exe