im to make his dinner
the principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but
their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthily
minded people like making money--ought to like it, and to enjoy the
sensation of winning it; but the main object of their life is not money;
it is something better than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly
wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay--very properly
so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it--still,
his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winning
them. So of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of
course; but yet, if they are brave and well educated, the pew-rent is
not the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the
sole purpose of the baptism; the clergyman's object is essentially to
baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. They
like fees no doubt,--ought to like them; yet if they are brave and well
educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the
whole, desire to cure the sick; and,--if they are good doctors, and the
choice were fairly put to them,--would rather cure their patient, and
lose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And so with all other brave
and rightly trained men; their work is first, their fee second--very
important always, but still _second_. But in every nation, as I said,
there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, and more or less
stupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, and
the work second, as with brave people the work is first and the fee
second. And this is no small distinction. It is the whole distinction in
a man; distinction between life and death _in_ him, between heaven and
hell _for_ him. You cannot serve two masters;--you _must_ serve one or
other. If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is your
master, and the lord of work, who is God. But if your fee is first with
you, and your work second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, who
is the Devil; and not only the Devil, but the lowest of devils--the
'least erected fiend that fell.' So there you have it in brief terms;
Work first--you are God's servants; Fee first--you are the Fiend's. And
it makes a difference, now and ever, believe me, whether you serve Him
who has on His vesture and thigh written, 'King of Kings,' and whose
service is perfect freedom; or him on whose ve