So do we find Jesus putting himself with willing sacrifice into his varying tasks. He had said to his parents in Jerusalem, "Wist ye not that I must be amid my Father's matters?" and then he went into what men call the silent years. But they were not wholly silent. The attentive can hear the sound of the hammer. The point is that in passing from the Jerusalem temple to the Nazareth shop Jesus did not depart from his Father's business. We may all resent the particular descriptions of the quality of his work as a carpenter; and we may be quite content in our faith that all his work was done faithfully and well. Holman Hunt's "Shadow of the Cross" relates Jesus's work in the shop to his sacrificial character. At the end of a weary day the Nazareth Carpenter extends his arms to relieve his weariness. The sunshine coming through the window casts his shadow on the wall in the form of a Cross. His mother glancing in through another window sees the Cross foreshadowed there and gets her glimpse of the sword that should enter her own heart. Nor did Jesus escape hardship and exhaustion when he became a healer and teacher of the people. The crowds thronged him wherever he went. The hillside became like an open-air hospital. The multitudes hung upon his words of instruction. Some have said that one reason why he commanded men who were healed or who were told the deeper secret of his nature that they "should tell no man," was that he might avoid the greater press of the throngs. Be that as it may, we are surely justified in saying that he gave himself lavishly to the work of each period. In each section of his life his action said, "I must work." It would be easy, however, to overstate Jesus's relation to work. He did not labor all the time. Knowing how to toil he knew likewise how to rest. Men may plead the example of Satan against a vacation season, but they cannot plead the example of Christ! He rested after he had worked and in order that he might work again. When the crowd became importunate and the drain upon his power had become severe, he sought the desert and in its quiet restored himself for the new labors. He bade his weary disciples to come apart to the spot of respite. He was the exemplar of proper rest even as he was the exemplar of proper work. Industrious men often need one lesson even as lazy men need the other. There are persons who are greedy of toil. They are as avaricious for it as the miser is for gold. They are what Carlyle would call "terrible toilers." They die before their time because they work after their time. Jesus knew this danger. He wished to guard against it by keeping the Sabbath for man. He wanted to save the resting place between the weeks because he wanted to save man to his best self and work. He prescribed the working day and the shop, and he prescribed the resting day and the desert.