arge extent a question of climate and
temperament. What of the dwellers in a rich and fertile country, where
a very little work will produce the means of livelihood, and where the
temperature does not require elaborate houses, carefully warmed, or
abundance of conventional clothing? A dweller in Galilee at the time of
the Christian era, a dweller in Athens at the time of Socrates--it was
possible for each of these to live simply and comfortably without any
great expenditure of labour; does morality require that one should work
harder than one need for luxuries that one does not want? Neither our
Lord nor Socrates seems to have thought so. Our Lord himself went about
teaching and doing good; but there is no evidence that he began his
work before he was thirty, and he interposed long spaces of reflection
and solitude. If the Gospel of work were to be paramount, he would have
filled his days with feverish energy; but from the beginning to the end
there is abundance of texts and incidents which show that he thought
excessive industry rather a snare than otherwise. He spoke very sternly
of the bad effect of riches. He told his disciples not to labour for
perishable things, not to indulge anxiety about food and raiment, but
to live like birds and flowers; he rebuked a bustling, hospitable
woman--he praised one who preferred to sit and hear him talk. His whole
attitude was to encourage reflection rather than philanthropy, to
invite people to think and converse about moral principles rather than
to fling themselves into mundane activities. There is far more
justification in the Gospel for a life of kindly and simple leisure
than there is for what may be called a busy and successful career. The
Christian is taught rather to love God and to be interested in his
neighbour than to love respectability and to make a fortune. Indeed, to
make a fortune on Christian lines is a thing which requires a somewhat
sophistical defence.

And thus the old theory of accepting salvation rather than working for
it is based not so much upon the theory that in the presence of
absolute and infinite perfection there is little difference between the
life of the entirely virtuous and the entirely vicious man, as upon the
fact that if one's limitations of circumstance and heredity are the
gift of God, one's salvation must be his gift also. We do not know to
what extent our power of choice and our freedom of action is limited;
it is quite obvious that it i