1.J 04. Love of the Work
Love of the Work.
Now it is to the use of this principle in a few directions that I shall ask your attention this after noon. First, for your own soul’s sake, you cannot afford to be ministers if your work is not love-work, if it is a burden to you, if your parishes are to you what a bound boy is to the fanner, a nuisance rather than a help, and, on general principles of humanity, to be got along with in the best way possible. If you are carrying your work in that way, you have no business where you are. He who takes the wants of a community into his keeping he who undertakes to teach the young, to comfort the old in the midst of their earthly sorrows, and to solve all those endless problems that are coming up day by day must love his work and his people, and be conscious that his heart goes out to them and yearns for them, as, in the last days of winter, we yearn to hear the singing of the birds, and watch for the trees to put forth their odorous buds, and spread their fragrance through the air. How we do long for spring and summer, and for their sweetness! The preacher ought to stand to his work all the time longing for the development of men as we do for flowers, and as the vintner does for the time of the grape. When you have this love, how patient it will make you, and how easy it will make the hard tasks of your ministry! How full of suggestion it will be! How it will bring sermons out of people, and how it will multiply the occasions of bounty!
What a discernment of clear interpretation there is through the medium of sympathy and benevolence, and how it carries its own reward with it!
Some men work from a sense of duty and bet ter that than nothing; others work from various motives; but the best motive of all is love of the work. Having that, you cannot help working.
Why do birds sing? Because the song is in them, and if they did not let it forth they would split; it must come out. It is the spontaneity and the urgency of this feeling in them that impels their utterance. Why should men work, or visit, or preach? Because their hearts want some outlet, some vent, to give expression to the feeling of ear nest sympathy that is in them. Where a man has this strong and large benevolence, he will always be busy, and pleasantly busy.