if
you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, if
you stunt his body, and blast his soul, and at last leave him not so
much as to reap the poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that for
yourself, and dismiss him to the grave, when you have done with him,
having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of that grave everlasting
(though, indeed, I fancy the goodly bricks of some of our family vaults
will hold closer in the resurrection day than the sod over the
labourer's head), this you think is no waste, and no sin!

III. Then, lastly, wise work is CHEERFUL, as a child's work is. And now
I want you to take one thought home with you, and let it stay with you.

Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, 'Thy kingdom
come.' Now, if we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very
wrong, and say he 'takes God's name in vain.' But there's a twenty times
worse way of taking His name in vain, than that. It is to _ask God for
what we don't want_. He doesn't like that sort of prayer. If you don't
want a thing, don't ask for it: such asking is the worst mockery of your
King you can mock Him with; the soldiers striking Him on the head with
the reed was nothing to that. If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't
pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must
work for it. And, to work for it, you must know what it is: we have all
prayed for it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that
is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, it is not to be a
kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also, it is not to come all at
once, but quietly; nobody knows how. 'The kingdom of God cometh not with
observation.' Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in the hearts
of us: 'the kingdom of God is within you.' And, being within us, it is
not a thing to be seen, but to be felt; and though it brings all
substance of good with it, it does not consist in that: 'the kingdom of
God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy
Ghost:' joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, and helpful Spirit.
Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enter
into it, there's just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter
it as children, or not at all; 'Whosoever will not receive it as a
little child shall not enter therein.' And again, 'Suffer little
children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the
kingdom of