blur where there
ought to have been something beautiful. As another says, "The universe
is not quite perfect without my work well done."

One man is a carpenter. God has called him to that work. It is his
duty to build houses, and to build them well. That is, he is required
to be a good carpenter, to do the very best work he can possibly do.
If, therefore, he does careless work, imperfect, dishonest, slurred,
slighted work, he is robbing God, leaving only bad carpentering where
he ought to have left good. For even God himself will not build the
carpenter's houses without the carpenter. Or, here is a mother in a
home. Her children are about her, with their needs. Her home requires
her skill, her taste, her refinement, her toil and care. It is her
calling to be a good mother, and to make a true home for her household.
Her duty is to do always her very best to make her home beautiful,
bright, happy, a fit place for her children to grow up in.
Faithfulness requires that she do always such service as a mother, that
Jesus shall say of her home-making, "She hath done what she could." To
do less than her best is to fail in fidelity. Suppose that her hand
should slack, that she should grow negligent, would she not clearly be
robbing God? For even God cannot make a beautiful home for her
children without her.

So we may apply the principle to all kinds of work. The faithfulness
which God requires must reach to everything we do, to the way the child
gets its lessons and recites them, to the way the dressmaker and the
tailor sew their seams, to the way the blacksmith welds the iron, and
shoes the horse, to the way the plumber puts the pipes into the new
building and looks after the drainage, to the way the carpenter does
his work on the house, to the way the bridge-builder swings the bridge
over the stream, to the way the clerk represents the goods, and
measures or weighs them. "Be thou faithful" is the word that rings
from heaven in every ear. God's word for the doing of every piece of
work that any one does. How soon it would put a stop to all
dishonesty, all fraud, all scant work, all false weights and measures,
all shams, all neglects or slightings of duty, were this lesson only
learned and practiced everywhere!

"It does not matter," people say, "whether I do my little work well or
not. Of course I must not steal, nor lie, nor commit forgery, nor
break the Sabbath. These are moral things. But there is no