---

This psalm is the creation-story of Genesis, set to music and brought down to our own day and our own doors. As in Genesis, so here, the crown and master of creation is man. We must never let go either the dignity or the responsibility of this. Since the Incarnation, when the Infinite Worker Himself stepped forth into the midst of human affairs, creation itself, with our own place and part in it, has a new meaning for us — a tenderness, a livingness, a sacredness, which nothing else we can conceive could have given it.

I. HUMAN LABOUR IS UNIVERSAL. Let a tribe be just clear of the grade of savagism: you find the men, with fishing-net, or fowling-gear or rude implements of husbandry, earning a regular livelihood by labour, while the women fill up the blanks in the daily toil by the lighter occupations which befit them. Let a people be rising in civilization: you find fewer idlers, less of wandering, less of mere sport or mere fetching of food, and more of settled labour. And let a people be standing high in the ranks of humankind: you note that labour has become general, varied, skilful, steady, honourable, more evidently a thing which speaks of manhood at its best. "Man goeth forth unto his work."

II. HUMAN LABOUR BELONGS TO THE REGULAR SYSTEM OF THINGS. Man was made for work; he did not fall into it. He fell into sin, and sin has cast its shadow upon his work as upon all else that concerns him. "The curse of labour," then, means no more than that particular part of the shadow of the general curse of sin which lies upon labour, as one of the most important and essential and radical elements in human existence. For labour, work, belongs to humanity as humanity, and not to merely sinful humanity or to human sin. We may be tempted often to sigh for a life that has no labour in it. But do not permit your work to overbear and oppress you thus. In the best sense of the words, you must keep above your work, and must keep your work beneath you. You must never feel it a thing you have to endure, to put up with, to slave to or to serve. Do not degrade your work to task-work. Let it be work to you still — a thing honourable, a thing appointed, a thing human, a thing amid which you are able to lift up your head in God's creation as a being who is thus, and now, claiming and affirming your likeness to the Divine.

III. HUMAN LABOUR HAS UPON IT GOD'S EYE AND GOD'S SMILE. He sets our work for us, and He looks on continually while we do it, with no indifferent gaze, but with His great fatherly approval when we do it well. He would have us to seek His help in it, and His blessing upon it. Every day, it is certain, He knows well what we are doing, what we have done, and how we have done it. His interest in our work, in ourselves as workers, is deep and unwearied. We wrong Him and ourselves if we think of our daily work as being of no account to Him — if we cut it off from Him because we deem it too lowly, too secular, too common, too much our own needful affair, for Him to trouble Himself, or to be troubled by us, concerning it. It is the balsam of a labouring life — it is oil to every wheel in our daily round of toil — this felt interest of God in it all, and this unearthly geniality touching it all with a holy sweetness of dignity and peace.

IV. Human labour is MAN'S ORDINARY METHOD OF SERVING AND GLORIFYING GOD. Men speak of doing "God's work" when they are doing work which bears closely upon the spiritual welfare of their fellow-men; and worthy work it is, and momentous, when done in wisdom and love and humility. Men talk of "Christian work" when they mean the definite doing of good around them upon plans and motives that recognize the kingdom of Christ in the world; and all success to every one who puts his hand to it thoughtfully for the Lord's sake. But really, ought not all our work to be made "God's work"? "Christian work"? It shall be just this if it be done for God and for Christ. Let us "go forth unto our work" when the morrow breaks, let us stay our labour when the morrow closes, let us go forth and return as morning and evening pursue each other along our little life, making each day a day of Gospel work, of evangelic labour, "until the evening" of our earthly sojourn itself closes in, and we "go forth" into our Lord's eternity, at our Lord's bidding still — go forth to "our work," our true life-work, which has so little of "labour" in it, and so much of rest — the work of the day which shall always be brightening in its happy perfectness, and always be fresh in its cloudless peace.

(J. A. Kerr Bain, M.A.)

---

---

KJV: Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.

WEB: Man goes forth to his work, to his labor until the evening.