I love you I will surely work for you—in this way I reveal my love. And to manifest my love in this manner is a joy and a gratification to me. Thus, work is for the worker alone, and labor is its own reward. These things being so, if it is wrong to work on Sunday, then it is wrong to love on Sunday; every smile is a sin, every caress is a curse, and all tenderness a crime. ¶ Must there not come a time when we shall cease to differentiate and quit calling some work secular and some sacred? Isn’t it as necessary for me to hoe corn and feed my loved ones (and also the priest) as for the priest to preach and pray? ¶ Would any priest ever preach and pray if somebody did not hoe? If life is from God, then all useful effort is divine; and to work is the highest form of religion ❦ If God made us, surely He is pleased to see that His work is a success. If we are miserable, willing to liberate life with a bare bodkin, we certainly do not compliment our Maker in thus proclaiming His work a failure. But if our lives are full of gladness and we are grateful for feeling that we are one with Deity—helping God do His work—then, and only then, do we truly serve Him. ¶ Isn’t it strange that men should have made laws declaring that it is wicked for us to work? [Illustration] [Illustration] Reciprocity The first requisite in life is that we shall be able to earn a living. For our own good we must be able to produce as much or more than we consume, and to make two grins grow where there was only a grouch before. And we can help ourselves only by helping others. A transaction where only one side makes money is immoral. ¶ Reciprocity, Co-operation, Mutuality, are the three big words. To be of genuine advantage, all human effort must be reciprocal. The worker who works merely with his own benefit in mind doesn’t get much benefit ❦ Personal good comes incidentally, and to go after a gain direct is to have it elude you. The very effort you put forth to secure the thing sets in motion an opposition that makes it slip away beyond your reach. The man who seizes culture by the cosmic scruff will never secure her tender confidences. ¶ If you want to study the birds you do not go in wild search for them; you simply seat yourself on a log in the woods and, lo! soon the branches are vibrant with song. To clutch for love and demand it makes you both unlovely and unlovable. If you would have friends, be one. ¶ This great spiritual law which provides that we lose the thing for which we selfishly strive has seemingly been overlooked in our universities and institutions that foster the so-called Higher Culture. Fond parents send their sons to college for but one reason—not to earn a living, not to render the world a service, not to perform some necessary task—they send them to college in order to absorb and appropriate a certain imaginary good. The idea of reciprocity in a college is a barren ideality. The