May 10, We are apt to regard our own times as being pre-eminently the age of hurry. And yet there is sentence in the New Testa ment which describes the Mes-stab and his followers as "having_no leisure so much as to eat." It is rather hard to think of quiet Galilee, in olden days, ax Veing so hurried, as we must infor from the quotation given above, that it wae, The truth ig "it was Galilee of the Gentiles." The population must have resembled that of certain parts of America where the immigrants outnumber the natives and the folks there probably counted themselves very much up-to-date and hustled in a way that was disconcerting to their conservative neighbours in Ju-dea, "No leisure so much as to eat" very well describes the life of the average business man in these days; he has to scratch, and scratch hard, for a_ living but with the change in his eircumstances has also come a change in his mental outlook. If his oft-expressed desire were granted and he were shunted into'a quiet backwater where hi could spend his time feeding chickens and raising giant cabbages, he would be ten times more miserable than he is now.
Indeed, he is not miserable at all but! merely takes pleasure in imagining that he is. No busy person is ever unhappy unless he is busy at some distasteful and futile task. Let the busi ness he is engaged in be really worth while and, even if at first he finds it irksome, it will, by and by, win him to itself and he will fit into it like a glove. It is true some jobs are monotonous but monotonous work is also necessary work and must be done by someone. It will usually be found that whatever the nature of the task entrusted to us, if it be well done, it bring: faction to the doer. There are misfits, tobe sure. A poet doing the work of a dustman could scarcely be happy in his task, though it is likely that he would be happier than a dustman wrestling with a poet's job. The happiest man in the world is he who has found some niche that peculiarly fits his predilection and endowments and that gives him the satisfaction of supposing that he is accomplishing work that no other could do so well, Sych men are few for most of us are merely coxs in the great wheel that could be replaced or dispensed with, at any time, without loss to the efficiency of the machine, And we carry on with increasing weariness until a blessed spell of release comes or nature steps in and calls a halt.
It is because of this tendency of life to become mathematical and irksome that it was ordained in the ten words given on Sinai that man should have one day in seven as his share of space and time. It was specified that there were certain things he should not do: the things that he was in the habit of doing every day; from these there was to be an absolute and welcome surcease. There was no command given as to the duties that must be performed on this rest day, for this is the very essence of leisure, that, that day, the factory horn shall not sound its raucous reveille, the clock shall not point its ominous finger to the hour for putting the neck into the yoke. One good turn deserves another and the first sleepy turn over on the morning of our holiday demands a turn back. Sleep will not come. but one can take delight in mocking the flying minutes and be even tempted to make faces at the clock. To-day we shall do those things that are rerbotcn at other times. We shall read the neglected book, put a nail under that picture that has been hanging awry, write the letter that is long" overdue and stroll through the pastures that have been alluring us in fancy during the days that we have been chained to the oar.
But Jefsure to be enjoyed must be earned. The charter for the Sabbath, the day of rest, reads six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work." IE this com. mand has not been obeyed, lei sure is ravourless and becomes tedious. All good thi to be paid for, "tis only heaven can be had for the asking," and assuredly relaxation is' only grateful to the tired nerves. The miners in South Wales have been, unfortunately, idle for more than a year. The call to descend into the bowels of the earth and win coal from the face would be responded to with more alacrity, if it were to come to-morrow, than ever schoolboy answered to the shout of his comrades to join him in the playing fields. And even the jaded Shanghai business man who has been basking on the sands at Weihaiwei or squatting on a hilltop in Kuling like Balboa "silent upon a peak in Darien" returns joyfully to the task he professed that he re-Hinguished with such pleasure less than a month ago. He enters the dingy office, sinks into the well worn chair at his desk, settles himself comfortably and takes up his scratchy pen with a sigh of relief that the Inbour of doing nothing ix past for another year. Something at~ tempted, something done, will put new zest into life and prepare him to enjoy his leisure again when the revolution of the moons brings it back on another day
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.