onstitute our greatest happiness. All men, then, must have their
trestle boards; for the principles that guide us in the discharge of our
duty--the schemes that we devise--the plans that we propose--are but the
trestle board, whose designs we follow, for good or for evil, in our labor
of life.

Earth works with every coming spring, and within its prolific bosom
designs the bursting seed, the tender plant, and the finished tree, upon
its trestle board.

Old ocean works forever--restless and murmuring--but still bravely
working; and storms and tempests, the purifiers of stagnant nature, are
inscribed upon its trestle board.

And God himself, the Grand Architect, the Master Builder of the world, has
labored from eternity; and working by his omnipotent will, he inscribes
his plans upon illimitable space, for the universe is his trestle board.

There was a saying of the monks of old which is well worth meditation.
They taught that "_laborare est orare_"--labor is worship. They did not,
it is true, always practise the wise precept. They did not always make
labor a part of their religion. Like Onuphrius, who lived threescore years
and ten in the desert, without human voice or human sympathy to cheer him,
because he had not learned that man was made for man, those old ascetics
went into the wilderness, and built cells, and occupied themselves in
solitary meditation and profitless thought. They prayed much, but they did
no work. And thus they passed their lives, giving no pity, aid, or
consolation to their fellow-men, adding no mite to the treasury of human
knowledge, and leaving the world, when their selfish pilgrimage was
finished, without a single contribution, in labor of mind or body, to its
welfare.[200]

And men, seeing the uselessness of these ascetic lives, shrink now from
their example, and fall back upon that wiser teaching, that he best does
God's will who best does God's work. The world now knows that heaven is
not served by man's idleness--that the "_dolce far niente_," though it
might suit an Italian lazzaroni, is not fit for a brave Christian man,
and that they who would do rightly, and act well their part, must take
this distich for their motto:--

"With this hand work, and with the other pray,
And God will bless them both from day to day."

Now, this doctrine, that labor is worship, is the very doctrine that has
been advanced and maintained, from time immemorial, as a leading dogma of
the Order