r
calculations, Newton meditations, all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all
acted Heroisms, Martyrdoms,--up to that 'Agony of bloody sweat,' which
all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not 'worship,' then
I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet
discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life
of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow
Workmen there, in God's Eternity: surviving there, they alone
surviving: sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Bodyguard of the
Empire of Mankind. Even in the weak Human Memory they survive so long,
as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving; peopling, they
alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time! To thee Heaven, though
severe, is _not_ unkind; Heaven is kind,--as a noble Mother; as that
Spartan Mother, saying while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my
son, or upon it!" Thou too shalt return _home_ in honour; to thy
far-distant Home, in honour; doubt it not,--if in the battle thou keep
thy shield! Thou, in the Eternities and deepest Death-kingdoms, art
not an alien; thou everywhere art a denizen! Complain not; the very
Spartans did not _complain_.

And who art thou that braggest of thy life of Idleness; complacently
showest thy bright gilt equipages; sumptuous cushions; appliances for
folding of the hands to mere sleep? Looking up, looking down, around,
behind or before, discernest thou, if it be not in Mayfair alone, any
_idle_ hero, saint, god, or even devil? Not a vestige of one. In the
Heavens, in the Earth, in the Waters under the Earth, is none like
unto thee. Thou art an original figure in this Creation; a denizen in
Mayfair alone, in this extraordinary Century or Half-Century alone!
One monster there is in the world: the idle man. What is his
'Religion'? That Nature is a Phantasm, where cunning beggary or
thievery may sometimes find good victual. That God is a lie; and that
Man and his Life are a lie.--Alas, alas, who of us _is_ there that can
say, I have worked? The faithfulest of us are unprofitable servants;
the faithfulest of us know that best. The faithfulest of us may say,
with sad and true old Samuel, "Much of my life has been trifled away!"
But he that has, and except 'on public occasions' professes to have,
no function but that of going idle in a graceful or graceless manner;
and of begetting sons to go idle; and to address Chief Spinners and
Diggers, who at least _are_ spinni