240 LAND AND LABOR. 



obey the primal law of man's existence. In violating 

 it we have brought all these evils upon ourselves. 



When God thrust Adam from the garden of Eden 

 he declared the law of his existence to be, that "in 

 the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread all the days 

 of thy life." When Jehovah with his finger wrote 

 upon the tablets of stone, He indelibly inscribed, " six 

 days shalt thou labor, and upon the seventh only shalt 

 thou do no manner of work." The Divine Master 

 taught his disciples the same lesson when he bade 

 them to pray that day by day they might obtain their 

 daily bread. 



Here we have the Divine law, that it is only by 

 daily labor that man can obtain the right to live, and 

 all the blessings of life. This is the whole law in the 

 case, and as certain in. its effects as is the law that 

 your finger will be burned if you hold it in the fire. 



It goes without saying that all sound human eco- 

 nomic laws are and must be in perfect harmony with 

 the Divine, and that their violation must entail disas- 

 ter and distress just so long and in exact degree with 

 the extent of the violation. But in place of obeying 

 this first of all laws, man is exerting every power of 

 which he is possessed to violate it, to devise means 

 whereby the masses shall not work ; shall not eat 

 bread in the sweat of the face ; shall not labor on any 

 day ; shall not day by day receive their daily bread. 

 The supreme effort has been to force the greatest pos- 

 sible number into idleness by altogether "saving" 

 tlii-ir labor, with the resulting demoralization and dis- 

 tress that is sure to come from any and every attempt 

 to nullify or oppose fundamental human or Divine 



