We are prone, at times, to feel as though we were not placed in the right niche; and that, if we were differently situated, and occupied with employments more worthy our capacities, we should work with pleasure and assiduity; but our present duties are so much beneath us, it seems degrading to spend our time and thoughts upon them. Here is a radical error of judgment, for it is not a high or low duty that degrades or elevates man, but the performing any duty well or ill. It is as true as it is trite, that the honor or shame lies in the mode of performance, not in the quality of the duty. We all, perhaps, know and say, and yet need to be reminded, that a bad president stands lower in the scale of being than a good town officer; a wicked statesman, let him occupy what social position he may, fills a lower place than a conscientious slave who faithfully fulfils the duties of his station.
The first Church, represented by Adam, fell because it ceased to look to the Lord as the source of all life and light, and looked only to itself for all things. It thus lost all conception of the legitimate aim of life. Seeking only the enjoyment of the present moment, labor seemed a dire calamity; for the eternal end of labor, that is, the development of the powers of the soul, so as best to fit it for the performance of heavenly uses, passed out of the knowledge of man, and he learned to look forward to heaven as a place of idle enjoyment; toiling sorrowfully through this world, in the sweat of his face, for bread that, when attained, gave him no true life. To eat bread in the sweat of the face signifies by correspondences, to receive and appropriate as good only that which self may call self-produced and self-owned; and to turn away with aversion from that which is heavenly. This is precisely what we all do when we shrink from, or despise, any labor which duty demands at our hands. The Lord places us in that position in life which is best adapted to overcome the evil dispositions of our nature, and to cultivate our souls for heaven. Perhaps we have capacities that would enable us to perform duties that would be considered by the world of a higher character; but perhaps, on the other hand, we have vices that the Lord is striving to overcome by placing us in this very position which so frets and disgusts us. If we will but remember that the mercy and love of the Lord strive to bless us by fitting us for heaven, and not by making us eminent in the eyes of men, we shall probably find it much easier to comprehend why we are placed as we are in this world. When we torment ourselves by thinking of the inappropriateness of our position in this world, we are always viewing our position with regard to this world only, and therefore all things are dark to us. When we look humbly to the Lord, and seek to find out the eternal ends of his providence in the circumstances of our lives, gradually the scales pass from our eyes, and at last we go in peace, seeing.