A Time to Work

We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.—John 9:4.

These words were drawn from Jesus Christ by a remarkable question addressed to Him by His disciples. Our Saviour’s attention had been arrested by the sad but familiar spectacle of a blind beggar. We may reasonably infer from the Evangelist’s account that this afflicted man’s case was notorious. He was “blind from his birth.” Thus he presented to view in its most pathetic because its least disciplinary shape the very common, but not on that account more tolerable, phenomenon of physical affliction. This, then, was the occasion of the remarkable inquiry on the part of Christ’s disciples: “Rabbi, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?” From the point of view of Jewish monotheism, suffering appeared to be in all cases the consequence of sin. But the difficulty was how to apply this principle to the present case. The only two alternatives presented to their minds, and indicated by the question of the disciples, viz. that either his own sin or that of his parents was the cause of his misfortune, seemed equally inadmissible.

The context sufficiently explains our Lord’s reply. He does not deny the existence of sin either in this man or in his parents; but neither does He recognize the necessity of any moral connection between this individual or family sin and the blindness with which the unfortunate man was visited. Individual suffering is not often connected, except in a very general manner, with the collective sin of humanity. Hence it gives us no right to judge those who suffer, but only furnishes a summons to fulfil a Divine mission towards them by assisting them. As truly as evil exists in the world, so truly has God His work on earth; and His work consists in finding matter for good in evil itself. Hence all the acts by which we concur in the accomplishment of this Divine purpose are called “the works of God.” But this word is here applied more specially to acts which bear the seal of Divine Omnipotence, such as the physical cure of the blind man, and his spiritual illumination. The call to heal this unhappy one had made itself felt in the Lord’s heart at the very moment when His eyes beheld him, and it was with this feeling that He fixed them upon him. Jesus seeks to make His disciples share with Him the point of view from which He regards suffering, by applying it to His personal task during His sojourn on earth.

I

We Must Work

1. Christ felt this necessity.—With Christ it was not, “I may if I will”; not, “I can if I like”; not the mere possibility and the mere potentiality of work, but an imperious necessity—“I must.” He could not help Himself. If we may use such words concerning One who was none the less Divine that He was human, He was under restraint; He was bound; He was compelled. The cords which bound Him, however, were the cords of His Deity. They were the cords of love which bound Him who is love. “I must work.” It was because He loved the sons of men so well that He could not sit still and see them perish. He could not come down from heaven and stand here robed in our mortal flesh, and be an impassive, careless, loitering spectator of so much evil, so much misery. His heart beat high with desire. He thirsted to be doing good, and His greatest and grandest act, His sacrifice of Himself, was a baptism with which He had to be baptized, and He was straitened until it was accomplished.

What a friend Necessity is! It stops our standing on one foot; it ends our looking at our watches, and wondering about three or four things; it moves the previous question; it says, “This one thing you do!” It is good discipline to conquer indecision, but it is better for us and for the world, knowing “what must be,” to be about it. It saves time. Goethe spoke of the “dear must.” Emerson calls a man’s task his life-preserver. Let us recognize the purpose of God in the inevitable, and accept it gracefully, whether discipline or duty. Swift adjustment means peace and power. Necessity will then be but the iron band inside the golden crown.1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 40.]

2. As Christ’s followers, this necessity is ours.—“We must work.” Christ associates His disciples with Himself in His Divine enterprise of mercy. They, too, are commissioned to “destroy the works of the devil,” and the range of their activity must be coextensive with their Lord’s. Physical suffering, and all that makes for physical suffering—unjust conditions of living, insanitary dwellings, inadequate and misdirected education, harsh and unequal laws, oppressive social conventions—all the perennial springs of human misery and disgrace are within the sphere of that redemptive mission which was Christ’s in Palestine nearly two millenniums ago, and is Christ’s still, wherever His true disciples are found. Has He not identified Himself with them, clothing them with the authority of His own person? “He that heareth you heareth me; and he that rejecteth you rejecteth me.” “We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day.” The exemplary worth of Christ’s conduct follows from this identity of His mission with ours, and the abiding importance of the Gospel but reflects the conviction of men that in the life therein recorded they can learn their own practical obligations.

The work which Christ appeals to us to do is not left to our single-handed weakness or timidity. We are sustained by the example and the co-operation of a goodly fellowship, the goodliest and mightiest fellowship that ever banded together to cheer a fainting soul; no less a fellowship than God and Christ and all things. “For my Father worketh even until now,” said Jesus—no night for Him—“and I work,” and “all things,” said His Apostle, “work together.” Was ever band of workers like this: God, His Son, and all His universe, working for ever, working together, for good? Should the thought of that magnificent, harmonious fellowship, whose work is from everlasting to everlasting, marching triumphantly on through the generations, not brace the weakest will, strengthen the faintest heart, nerve the slackest hands of men whose day at the longest is short and rounded with a sleep? So Christ’s appeal is charged with all the forces of heaven and of earth, when He says, “We”—not I, as the Authorized Version has it—“we must work the works of him that sent me.” We—for He is not ashamed to call us brethren; and we, His brethren, must work. The Divine necessity lies upon men whose hearts can be touched by an appeal of Christ, and by the weird power of the night that is coming to bring to an end all the work of the day, be it never so faithful and never so earnest.1 [Note: J. E. McFadyen, The Divine Pursuit, 155.]

3. God has appointed a work for each and all.—Vain are the complaints so often made, that we have no distinct work in life appointed for us; that we stand idle because we have not been called into the vineyard to labour. God has made duties for us, and placed us in the midst of them, just as He has made light for the eyes, and air for us to breathe. There is not an action of our life that may not become an act of worship, if it is consecrated by the love of God in the heart of the doer. But the common round of our common daily life is full of occasions of Christian duty. Who is he that stands idle because he is not hired? One it must be who can find neither poverty, nor ignorance, nor wickedness at his hand; who cannot influence one person by the Christian tone of his own life; who cannot sweeten the daily life of his home with kindness; who never comes near a sinner rushing headlong to his ruin; who cannot even find a child to encourage in struggling with an evil temper, or a stricken heart to be consoled by a word of sympathy.

In the summer vacation of 1856 I remained behind for a few days. A message came from Royston that there was a German woman dying there who could not speak English, and was a Catholic. They asked if anybody could go to her from the College. Dr. Vaughan, who spoke German, at once volunteered to go. He asked me to go with him, and I drove him to Royston, which was thirteen miles from the College. In was in the month of July, and I remember it was a very hot drive. He found the poor woman alive, heard her confession, and gave her the Last Sacraments. I believe she died the next day. Some forty years afterwards, on my recalling this to his memory, he said, “Ah yes; I remember it well, and I have often quoted it as an instance that we never know how anything we learn may be turned to God’s account. He has His own design in prompting us to acquire, say, a language, and I have often cited this example of my visit to that poor German woman as an illustration of this, for it was the only occasion in my whole life that I ever had any practical need of the German language. I have no doubt that God inspired me to study German for the sake of that poor woman’s salvation.”2 [Note: Mgr. Fenton, in The Life of Cardinal Vaughan, i. 91.]

Lord, send us forth among Thy fields to work!

Shall we for words and names contending be,

Or lift our garments from the dust we see,

And all the noonday heat and burden shirk?

The fields are white for harvest, shall we stay

To find a bed of roses for the night,

And watch the far-off cloud that comes to sight,

Lest it should burst in showers upon our way?

Fling off, my soul, thy grasping self, and view

With generous ardour all thy brothers’ need;

Fling off thy thoughts of golden ease, and weed

A corner of thy Master’s vineyard too.

The harvest of the world is great indeed,

O Jesus! and the labourers are few.1 [Note: Martha Perry Lowe.]

II

How We must Work

1. It must he God’s work.—Much has been said in these days as to work. Some of the most piercing and emphatic voices which the century has heard have made work the keynote of their message, proclaiming it as at once the end of man’s being and the gospel of his deliverance. So far, there is no fault to be found with them, for anything that will wake men and shame men out of idleness must be good. But, after all, work for the mere work’s sake is a doubtful evangel to preach. It is true that inactivity has its sins, but it is true that work has its own sins also. There are those who work till their work carnalizes them, and their being becomes sense-bound and earth-bound, dense as the clods that they break in their fields, mechanical as the wheels that they turn in their mills, shrivelled as the parchments that they study in their office-rooms. No, there is nothing that is necessarily elevating, nothing that is necessarily purifying, nothing that is necessarily acceptable, in work. Work may be done that is wrong work; work that is right may be wrongly done; and the only reception for which the workman is toiling may be this: “Unfaithful and unprofitable servant, who hath required these things at thy hand?” But here is a text for the labourer, both defining the scope of his tasks and ennobling and sanctifying their nature: “I must work the works of him that sent me.” That is, “What I do, I will do because God has assigned it, and I will do it, too, because God will therein be glorified, His character unfolded, His purpose proclaimed, and His gospel adorned among men.” And with that as our great guiding principle we have all that we need. It contains the secret of labour’s redemption, it yields the germ and the pledge of labour’s reward.

It may be questioned whether any work of fiction ever produced so tangible an effect as the impetus which Uncle Tom’s Cabin gave to the destruction of American slavery. The author’s account of the matter was characteristically simple: “I did not write it; God wrote it.”1 [Note: G. W. E. Russell, Afterthoughts, 70.]

I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God’s name! ’Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.2 [Note: Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, bk. ii. ch. x.]

2. To do God’s work we must have received His Spirit.—We cannot do God’s works unless we have received His Spirit and accepted His will as the law of our lives so as to have become fellow-workers with Him. It is only those who surrender their hearts in faith and love to God, only those in whose souls God savingly works by His Holy Spirit, who can truly labour in God’s service. Otherwise than through regeneration there is no possibility of becoming one of His workmen. His works are spiritual works which can be performed only by spiritual men. If we have not repented of our sins and turned from them to God; if we have not believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; if we have not come under the influence of the Holy Spirit; then, no matter how diligently and strenuously we may toil, or how useful our exertions may seem to ourselves or others, the works we do are not the works which God would have us to do, for they are not done in dependence on His Spirit.

III

When We must Work

1. Christ’s interpretation of the “day.”—Christ uses the language of urgency. His Divine mission must be fulfilled in the brief space of His “day” of opportunity, or not fulfilled at all. We gain a glimpse of our Lord’s view of His own career. He, like all His brethren, worked under the hard conditions of risk and uncertainty. His “day” was a short one. The life of Jesus in the world had ended when most human lives may be said to be but beginning. It is, indeed, true that His earthly career is but an episode in His warfare against evil, but it is no less true that it is the supreme episode on which hung the issue of men’s redemption. After the Passion the conditions of Christ’s life changed; there was no longer any opportunity for the performance of those works by which, in terms of human experience, the character of the unseen, unknown Father might be discovered to human view. The life of Christ constitutes the revelation of God, and that revelation is adequate and faithful as that life is perfect.

This image partially finds place in the “Sayings of the Jewish Fathers”: R. Tarphon said, “The day is short, and the task is great, and the workmen are sluggish, and the reward is much, and the Master of the house is urgent.”

2. The brevity and uncertainty of life.—“The day is short.” When another year has gone into the dead past beyond our recall for ever, when we look back and think how rapidly, and, it may be, how unprofitably, it has glided away, the impression of this truth may be vivid upon us; but we seldom feel it as we ought. It is not useless admonition that Scripture gives us when it insists so often on life’s brevity, comparing human existence to the most fleeting things in nature; to the mist which disappears before the sun, to the cloud driven by the winds, to the shadows that flit across the landscape, to the smoke that ascends and mingles with the atmosphere, to the leaf of the forest tree, and to the flower of the field. It cannot be compared to any of the more stable objects of nature. How many generations of men has the earth successively borne on her bosom; on how many generations have the sun and the moon looked down! There is many a tree still fresh and vigorous, although the hands that planted it have for centuries been dust. Man is far more fragile even than many of his own works. From the pyramids of Egypt more than “forty centuries look down upon us”; but where are the builders?

The day of our life is as uncertain as it is short. It is a day in which there is often no gradual fading away of the light to warn us that it is drawing near to a close. It is often with man’s life as with countries in other zones than ours, where night, instead of climbing gradually up the heavens and giving evidence of its approach by an ever-deepening twilight, overspreads it at once and envelops all living creatures in sudden darkness. In the course we have to run there is no point, however near the one from which we started, where our race may not terminate. In the whole period of life usually allotted to man there is no year, month, week, day, or even instant, but it may be the last to each individual. There is no truth of which we are more frequently or strikingly reminded.

Have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that—that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow?1 [Note: Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (Works, xviii.62).]

It is not merely of the literal shortness of our time, or the possible nearness of death, that our Lord’s words should set us thinking, when He warns us that we must work while it is day. If we measure our life by the things we should accomplish in it, by the character it should attain to, by the purposes that should be bearing fruit in it, and not by mere lapse of time, we soon come to feel how very short it is, and the sense of present duty grows imperative. It is thus that the thoughtful man looks at his life; and he feels that there is no such thing as length of days which he can without blame live carelessly, because in these careless days critical opportunities will have slipped away irrecoverably; he will have drifted in his carelessness past some turning-point which he will not see again, and have missed the so-called chances that come no more.2 [Note: Bishop Percival, Sermons at Rugby, 27.]

I have long said: “The night cometh,” etc., but that does not make it right to act in a hurry. Better not do a thing than do it badly. I must be patient and wait on God. If it is His Will I should do more He will give me time. I am not serving Him by blundering.1 [Note: Newman, in Wilfrid Ward’s Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, ii. 126.]

Our life is long. Not so, wise Angels say

Who watch us waste it, trembling while they weigh

Against eternity one squandered day.

Our life is long. Not so, the Saints protest,

Filled full of consolation and of rest;

“Short ill, long good, one long unending best.”

Our life is long. Christ’s word sounds different:

“Night cometh; no more work when day is spent.”

Repent and work to-day, work and repent.

Lord, make us like Thy Host, who clay nor night

Rest not from adoration, their delight,

Crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” in the height.

Lord, make us like Thy Saints, who wait and long

Contented: bound in hope and freed from wrong,

They speed (may be) their vigil with a song.

Lord, make us like Thyself: for thirty-three

Slow years of toil seemed not too long for Thee,

That where Thou art, there Thy Beloved might be.

(1) The need for diligence.—We ought to be misers of our time and opportunities. If Jesus Christ said, “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day; the night cometh,” some of us ought very specially to say it, and to feel it, because the hour when we shall have to lay down our tools is coming very near, and the shadows are lengthening. If you had been in the fields in these summer evenings during the last few days, you would have seen the haymakers at work with more and more diligence as the evening drew on darker and darker. Some of us are at the eleventh hour. Let us fill it with diligent work.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

When he was urged to desist and take rest his favourite expression was, “No, I will never be a loafer. If there are no meetings to be addressed, I will return to my work in Australia and the Islands.” “You tell me I am working too hard,” he would say, “but my time to work for Jesus cannot be long now. I only wish I could press three times the quantity of work for Him into each day, resting on His promise for the needed help: ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end.’ ”1 [Note: John G. Paton, iii. 44.]

(2) Postponement of duty is loss.—Postponement of the obvious duty means irretrievable loss and inevitable incompleteness when the day is done. Our Lord’s more immediate meaning would seem to be that the work and the moment are so adjusted that what is missed at one time cannot be made up at another. Not only does the day bring its task, but every separate hour has its appointed portion of the work. So that if the work of the third hour be missed, there is no time in which to do it. Each subsequent hour brings its own responsibility, and there is no room for any work that does not belong to that hour. The work of the passing moment must be done in it, or remain for ever undone. This is a law of life that will be acknowledged the moment it is mentioned, and yet we are apt to grow strangely indifferent to it. But consider what it means. The omission of this moment tells upon the work of the next. One stone is left out, and the wall shakes for the want of it. A word is left out of the sentence, and the sense of it is thereby obscured. An exercise is skipped in the lesson, and the examination is rendered unsatisfactory. Christ’s work was cumulative, and every step in the staircase was fitted in its place. So must it be with us if we would be prime and perfect workmen.

Sins of commission are the usual punishment for sin a of omission. He that leaves a duty, may well fear that he will be left to commit a crime.2 [Note: Gurnall.]

I should have said your letter delighted me, but for the news you gave me of D——’s death.… My dear, it is awful; not that death is awful or even to be regretted, but I could have borne with more composure the news of the death of my most intimate friend. Learn from me what I never so fully realized before, the self-reproach that follows upon the omission of duty. I am most deeply grieved when I think that D——’s appearance, manners, peculiarities, stood in my way of doing what I might have done: time after time I have thought of his real merits, of his honesty, integrity, zeal, conscientiousness, and I have thought, “Some day, when I have more time, when I am less worried, I will try and see if I cannot make his solitary life happier, make him less eccentric.” I have felt that it was hard for him to be condemned to loneliness, to be cheered by scanty sympathy on his course, which was an honest hard-fought one, because his voice was loud, and other little matters. I feel that I have weakly disregarded a noble human soul because it had an unsightly body; and now he has gone, and I cannot ask his pardon or make amends.1 [Note: Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, i. 105.]

“But who art thou, with curious beauty graced,

O woman, stamped with some bright heavenly seal?

Why go thy feet on wings, and in such haste?”

“I am that maid whose secret few may steal,

Called Opportunity. I hasten by

Because my feet are treading on a wheel,

Being more swift to run than birds to fly.

And rightly on my feet my wings I wear,

To blind the sight of those who track and spy;

Rightly in front I hold my scattered hair

To veil my face, and down my breast to fall,

Lest men should know my name when I am there;

And leave behind my back no wisp at all

For eager folk to clutch, what time I glide

So near, and turn, and pass beyond recall.”

“Tell me; who is that Figure at thy side?”

“Penitence Mark this well that by decree

Who let me go must keep her for his bride.

And thou hast spent much time in talk with me

Busied with thoughts and fancies vainly grand,

Nor hast remarked, O fool, neither dost see

How lightly I have fled beneath thy hand.”2 [Note: J. E. Flecker, Forty-two Poems, 28.]

IV

Why We must Cease from Working

1. The coming night.—It was Jesus who assured us that God was the God of the living, not of the dead; yet it was Jesus who told us that the night was coming. In the glamour and fretful haste of the day, we too often forget the blackness of the night into which it is rushing, and thereby lose all the directness and concentration of aim, which would chase away the terror of the night when it falls. And yet terror there should be none; for in the beginning God ordained that in every night the moon and the stars should shine, and no night can be very dark into which Christ the Light has passed. Yet, with all its gracious possibilities, it is night that awaits us. The longest day dies into night, and though out of the darkness a new day will be born, yet that darkness is the grave of a day that is gone.

The greatest of English moralists felt this so strongly, that on the dial of his watch—ready to catch his eye whenever he looked at it—he had these words engraved in their original tongue—“For the night cometh.” He thought it fit that every time he looked to see how time was going on, he might be reminded of the end of it. He thought there was something he might be the better for remembering, at the commencement of every engagement, in every company, in every place, in every occupation; in the bustle of the street when crowds of men went by; in the quiet chamber over his papers and his books, where the hours passed on so silently; in the view of regal state, and youthful beauty; still something worth remembering in that most suggestive truth expressed in the simple words—“For the night cometh!”1 [Note: A. K. H. Boyd, The Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson, ii. 255.]

“Work while you have light,” especially while you have the light of morning. There are few things more wonderful to me than that old people never tell young ones how precious their youth is. They sometimes sentimentally regret their own earlier days; sometimes prudently forget them; often foolishly rebuke the young, often more foolishly indulge, often most foolishly thwart and restrain; but scarcely ever warn or watch them. Remember, then, that I, at least, have warned you, that the happiness of your life, and its power, and its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend on the way you pass your days now.2 [Note: Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (Works, xviii. 37).]

Bishop Whipple tells a story of an old man among the North American Indians who was confirmed late in life. His rheumatism made kneeling very painful to him. He said to the Bishop: “I put it off too long. I ought to have done it when my knees were not rheumatic.”3 [Note: D. Williamson, From Boyhood to Manhood, 172.]

Just on the Borders of Enchanted Land

We linger,—culling here and there some bloom;

From distant gardens sweet and rare perfume

The soft breeze gently wafteth where we stand.

We might have enter’d—you and I, dear Heart!

Lo, the dusk falleth—and ’tis time to part.1 [Note: Una, In Life’s Garden, 3.]   

2. Man is immortal till his work is done.—Let us grasp this thought that no good man dies with his work half done. We may not see its last touch. It may appear to our dim vision to be sunset at noon. But He in whose hand is our time, and from whom we receive our task, sets His seal and attestation upon the work done in His name. Sometimes you will hear it said that a good man has died prematurely; you have even heard it said that Christ died early. By what false standard do we reach such extraordinary decisions as these? All standards are false that are not in harmony with this great utterance. “We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day.”

Edward Thring, of Uppingham, wrote out this prayer when he was a student at Cambridge: “O God, give me work till the end of my life, and life till the end of my work; for Christ’s sake, Amen.”2 [Note: Morning Watch, 1903, p. 10.]

Lord, I read of the two witnesses, And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. They could not be killed whilst they were doing, but when they had done their work; during their employment they were invincible. No better armour against the darts of death than to be busied in Thy service. Why art thou so heavy, O my soul? No malice of man can antedate my end a minute, whilst my Maker hath any work for me to do. And when all my daily task is ended, why should I grudge then to go to bed?3 [Note: Thomas Fuller.]

Let me not pass till eve,

Till that day’s fight is done;

What soldier cares to leave

The field until it’s won!

And I have loved my work and fain

Would be deemed worthy of the ranks again.

Let twilight come, then night,

And when the first birds sing

Their matin songs, and light

Wakens each slumbering thing,

Let some one waken me, and set

My feet to steps that lead me upward yet.

A Time to Work

Literature

Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Temptation and Toil, 241.

Arnold (T.), Sermons, vi. 164.

Bellew (J. C. M.), Sermons, i. 53, 73.

Boyd (A. K. H.), The Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson, ii. 253.

Bramston (J. F.), Fratribus, 50.

Brooke (S. A.), The Gospel of Joy, 279.

Channing (W. E.), The Perfect Life, 155.

Cox (S.), Expositions, iv. 179.

Cunningham (W.), Sermons, 303.

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Gray (W. A.), The Shadow of the Hand, 239.

Henson (H. H.), Light and Leaven, 165.

Houghton (C. A.), Problems of Life, 95.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Lent to Passiontide, 367.

Lamb (R.), School Sermons, i. 155, 173.

Little (W. J. Knox), Characteristics and Motives of the Chiristian Life, 1.

McFadyen (J. E.), The Divine Pursuit, 153.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John ix.–xiv., 1.

Mortimer (A. G.), Lenten Preaching, 118.

Paget (F. E.), Sermons for Special Occasions, 233.

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Stuttard (J.), The Man who was Born Blind, 39.

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Church of England Pulpit, xliv. 207 (Perry); lv. 158 (Henson); lix. 197 (Tupholme); lxii. 396 (Henson).

Churchman’s Pulpit: First Sunday in Advent: i. 312 (Pope).

Expositor, 1st Ser., vii. 197 (Milligan).