It is only when we are at work that we are vitally and essentially a part of God’s great creative scheme. Idleness is an abnormal condition. It is not to be found in nature. There everything works, and in the special task allotted to it, each conscious atom finds its life and joy. The smallest seed _works_, as it slowly but surely pushes its way up through the soil;--the bird _works_, as it builds its nest and forages the earth and air to find food for its young. We cannot point to the minutest portion of God’s magnificent creation and say that it is idle. Nothing is absolutely at rest. There is--strictly speaking--no rest in the whole Universe. All things are working; all things are moving. Man clamours for rest,--but rest is what he will never get,--not even in the grave. For though he may seem dead, new forms of life germinate from his body, and go on working in their appointed way,--while, with the immortal part of himself which is his Soul, he enters at once into fresh fields of labour. Rest is no more possible than death, in the Divine scheme of everlasting progress where all is Life.
Nature is our mother, from whose gentle or severe lessons we must learn the problems of our own lives. And whenever we go to her for help or for instruction, we always find her working. She never sleeps. She never has a spare moment. “Without haste, without rest” is her eternal motto. When we, like fretful children, complain of long hours of toil, scant wages and short holidays, she silently points us to the Universe around us of which we are a part, and bids us set our minds “in tune with the Infinite.” The Sun never takes holiday. With steady regularity it performs its task. For countless ages it has worked without any attempt to swerve from its monotonous round of duty. It shines on the just and on the unjust alike; it gives life and joy equally to the gnat dancing in its beams, as to the human being who hails its glory and warmth as the simple expression of “a fine day.” It gets no wages. It receives very little in the way of thanks. Its duty is so evident and is always so well done, that by the very perfection of its performance it has exhausted the far too easily exhausted sense of human gratitude. Like a visible lamp of God’s love for us it generates beauty and brightness about us wherever we go,--and it invites us to look beyond the veil of creation to the Creator, who alone sustains the majestic fabric of life.