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 sin in my sewing up this seam carelessly, or in my using bad mortar in this wall, or in my putting inferior timber in this house, or a piece of flawed iron in this bridge." But we need to learn that the moral law applies everywhere, just as really to carpentry, or blacksmithing, or tailoring, as to Sabbath-keeping. We never can get away from this law.