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twenty-four hours; but reason and prudence would suggest, sometimes, the propriety also of an especial retreat; more particularly of a religious abstraction, the importance of which may not be felt sometimes by worldly men at last, as it is by those who have then the duty of waiting upon them.

Yet, while it may be inferred from the comparison now made, that in the present complicated state of society, more retirement than travelling and social intercourse is required to moral perfection; it must yet be owned, that self-seclusion and retirement of any kind are not at the same time unalloyed with danger; as scarcely any advantageous property or possession ever is. So, not to mention other dangers and inconveniences, it may be observed, that seclusion and retirement have too often a tendency to make men surly and morose, in the same way that dogs are said to acquire fierceness by being tied up and kept from their usual society.

* 3: 4, There are other sorts of operation, or other universal motive properties that savour of the general character of locomotion, if not so decidedly as travelling and retirement, or going abroad and going home. Such are, e. g. the parts of labouring and housekeeping, which may be proposed as parallel to those in some measure; 1. as the whole subject is generally unsettled in either case; 2. as labouring is usually abroad like travelling, and housekeeping like retirement, within doors. If either of these were necessarily good, it would deserve to rank as an improvement on this class of properties: but such does not appear to be the case. For if, as the wise man says, "In all labour there is profit" (Prov. xiv. 23): and if his royal father tells the young housekeeper, "O well is thee, and happy shalt thou be!" (Ps. cxxviii. 2); the former is to be understood with a restricted meaning, as applied to our daily and regular avocations, by which we fulfil our several parts in society, and the latter to our domestic part, by which society is maintained. But we find also another sort of

labour, the very reverse of that by which society is benefited, the labour of those "who plough iniquity and sow wickedness" (Job iv. 8). And, to say nothing of ordinary faults in housekeeping, there is also a sort of it that can only answer the purpose of corruption, being directed more to that than either to hospitality or domestic comfort. On the other hand, good housekeeping is equivalent to good labour; or however, if to labour and to provide the necessaries of life be honourable for one sex, to lay them up and have them ready for use may be honourable for the other, and good housewifery as honourable as good husbandry. So thought Martha, perhaps, when she called upon Jesus to enforce this good part; and it is not necessary to suppose that he meant to discommend this in commending a better.

As the choice of labour therefore seems a matter of some consequence, a word or two may not here be unseasonable respecting its latitude and direction. In the first place, there can be no reason, why a man's necessary labour should not also constitute his favourite exercise and amusement, if it do not happen to be of an unhealthy description. And it must constitute a happy feature in any man's lot when the same part serves him at once for labour and recreation. But as the bare necessity of an useful part is revolting to many, the next best condition after that of making a necessary part pleasant, though some may think it better, will be the liberty to choose our employment, and either to labour or study as we will at any time, whether for profit or for amusement. Here is this, however, to be observed, that whether it be from choice or necessity that a man labours, he will find, that his turn for one is not much improved by the effect of the other: he will find, that while study enervates the body, and renders it unfit for labour, labour, on the other hand, i. e., actual labour, like a day's work for example, does not improve a man's inclination for study, and hence learn to excuse the indifference to mental pursuits, that is gene

rally observed in the labouring class; if there have been instances as well in that, as in an higher class, of men endued with such extraordinary powers of body and mind as to be able to labour equally with both, and excel in both departments at once.

If one were asked, what sort of labour is most honourable? one should answer, The most necessary. So the Romans thought once, and shewed their wisdom in choosing for a dictator one who honoured the plough even more than the dictatorship. So thought another Cincinnatus perhaps," as he was following the ewes great with young" (Ps. lxxviii. 72). And if the most useful employment was not the best, it exceeded the capacity of a Solomon to find any better for himself; which would surprise many. For a more eminent example of good fortune is hardly to be met than we find in his case. The station which he enjoyed was prepared for him, and he for his station by a remarkable providence: and his long reign would have been a continual feast of wisdom and power, of peace and respect; if he could have made this discovery, and if his life had not been troubled by an unworthy failing towards the conclusion. But admitting that even this single deduction had not taken place, and that Solomon's greatest felicity had continued without intermission as long as he lived, would he have gained any ground in all this time by his labour? Would he have placed his success on any sure footing? Would he have made any progress in establishing and perpetuating, not to say, increasing this good "fortune for either himself or his successors? We know he would not: his successors in the kingdom were all of them to begin again where he began; but never one of them, to make so great an end. If they could only have begun where he left off, and continued the part that he had been at such pains in maturing, this might have afforded some consolation to the illustrious monarch on being obliged to resign it. But this, he knew, was not to be relied on and it occurred to his penetrating mind as

moré probable, that the beginning he had made in the sovereignty would be abandoned by the next taker, and all his work unravelled, as soon as his hand should be taken off, by hands that were only formed for undoing. "In all points as he came so shall he go: and what profit hath he that laboured for the wind" (Eccles. v. 16)? This cruel anticipation wrung his heart with anguish, and drew from him many a bitter reflection on the vanity and insufficiency of all human endeavours when it occurred to him, as he informs us in the review of his experiments, "to see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits; I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees; I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me; I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and those of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all they that were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them; I withheld not my heart from any joy: for my heart rejoiced in all my labour; AND THIS WAS MY PORTION OF ALL MY LABOUR. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit; and there was no profit under the sun. Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun; because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth, whether he

shall be a wise man or a fool? Yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is all vanity" (Ib. ii. 3, &c.; 18, &c.). It therefore remained for a greater than Solomon (Mat. xii. 42), to teach mankind the most needful and consequently most honourable part as aforesaid. "Martha, Martha, (said he,) thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her" (Luke x. 41, 42).

But any part that is not bad in itself must be better than idleness, as intimated in the forecited saying of Solomon, "This was my portion of all my labour." For continual experience has shewn, that labour is good in itself, and that an ingenuous nature will flourish in employment; but be enfeebled and dispirited by inactivity. Every one who has enjoyed it must be sensible of the benefit of a regular vocation. And it is obvious enough to be notorious, that labour and occupation are generally a greater source of enjoyment than their consequent gains, even when these are not inconsiderable.

Therefore we are apt to carry our care of ourselves or our faculties, as we call them, too far sometimes, when we talk of unbending them, or of assuaging their fatigue by idleness, and that before they have ever been strained or exercised perhaps. Indeed leisure and rest do not depend so much on exemption from employments and offices as on a facility in discharging them: and it is possible to conceive how by an improvement of our faculties in a future state we may be able to do more, infinitely more, than at present; and at the same time, experience in that state what we cannot in this, which is rest. "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (Heb. iv. 9).

It seems, too, as if we had something more than hypothesis in this case, we seem to have something like experience of the fact occasionally in our dreams; being thus engaged sometimes in the detail of various and lengthened

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