Fellowship

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Title:     Fellowship
Author: Hamilton Wright Mabie [More Titles by Mabie]

The comradeship of work is an element which is rarely taken into account, but which is of great importance from many points of view. Men who work together have not only the same interests, but are likely to develop a kinship of thought and feeling. Their association extends beyond working hours, and includes their higher and wider interests. There seems to be something in the putting forth of effort upon the same material or for the same end which binds men together with ties which are not wholly the result of proximity. Those who have given no thought to the educational side of work, and who are ignorant that it has such a side, are, nevertheless, brought within the unifying influence of a process which, using mainly the hands and the feet, is insensibly training the whole nature.

There is a deeper unity in the work of the world than has been clearly understood as yet; there is that vital unity which binds together those who are not only engaged in a common task, but who are also involved in a common spiritual process. The very necessity of work carries with it the implication of an incomplete world and an imperfectly developed society. The earth was not finished when it was made ready for the appearance of man; it will not be finished until man has done with it. In the making of the world man has his part; here, as elsewhere, he meets God and co- operates with him; the divine and the human combining to perfect the process of unfolding and evolution. Until the work of men has developed it, the earth is raw material. It is full of power, but that power is not conserved and directed, it is full of the potentialities of fertility, but there are no harvests; all manner of possibilities both of material and spiritual uses are in it,--food, ore, force, beauty,--but these possibilities must await the skill of man before they can be turned into wealth, comfort, art, civilisation. God gives the earth as a mine, and man must work it; as a field, and man must till it; as a reservoir of force, and man must make connection with it; as the rough material out of which order, symmetry, utility, beauty, culture may be wrought, and men must unfold these higher uses by intelligence, skill, toil, and character. At some time every particle of the civilised world has been like the old frontier on this continent, and men have reclaimed either the desert or the wilderness by their heroic sacrifices and labours. It is a misuse of language, therefore, to say that the world is made; it is not made, because it is being made century by century through the toil of successive generations.

Now, this creative process, in which God and men unite, is what we call work. It is not a process introduced among men as an afterthought or as a form of punishment; it was involved in the initial creative act, and it is part of the complete creative act. The conception of a process of development carries with it the idea, not of a finished but of an unfinished world; it interprets history not as a record of persons and events separate from the stage upon which they appear, like actors on the boards, but as the story of the influence of an unfinished world upon an undeveloped race, and of the marvellous unfolding through which the hidden powers and qualities of the material and the worker are brought into play. Work becomes, therefore, not only a continuation of the divine activity in the world, but a process inwrought in the very constitution of that world. Growth is the divinest element in life, and work is one of the chief factors in growth.

The earth is, therefore, in its full unfolding and its final form, the joint product of the love and power of God and of the toil and sacrifice of men; the creative purpose is not accomplished in a single act; it is being wrought out through a long progression of acts; and in this continuous process God and men are brought together in a way which makes the labour of the hand the work also of the spirit. If one reflects on all that this intimate cooperation of the divine and the human in the fields, the factories, and the shops means, the nobility of work and its possibilities of spiritual education become impressively clear. In this fellowship men are trained in ways of which they are insensible; spiritual results are accomplished within them of which they are unconscious. The Infinite is nowhere more beneficently present than in the strain and anguish of toil; and the necessity of putting forth one's strength in some form of activity is not a hardship but a divine opportunity.

To well-conditioned men work is a joy; under normal conditions, for healthful men, it is always a joy. The spiritual meaning behind the hard face which toil wears makes itself dimly understood at times, and men sing at their tasks not only out of pure exuberance of good spirits and sound health, but because there is something essentially rhythmical and harmonious in their toil. The song of the sailor at the windlass is a song of fellowship; an expression of the deepened consciousness of strength and exhilaration which come from standing together in a joint putting forth of strength. When a man honestly gives himself to any kind of work he makes himself one with his fellows in the creative process; he enters into deepest fellowship with the race. And, as in the intimacy of the family, in its structure and habit, there lies a very deep and rich educational process, so in the community of work there lies a training and enrichment which go to the very centre of the individual life. The ideal development involves harmonious adjustment of the man to the world, through complete development of his personality and through complete unity with the race; and the deepest and most fruitful living is denied those who fail of entire unfolding in either of these hemispheres, which together make up the perfect whole. In genuine culture solitude and society must both find place; a man must secure the strength and poise which enable him to stand alone, and he must also unite himself in hand, mind, and heart with his fellows. In isolation the finer parts of nature wither; in fellowship they bear noble fruitage. To work in one's day with one's fellows; to accept their fortune, bear their burdens, perform their tasks, and accept their rewards; to be one with them in the toil, sorrow, and joy of life,--is to put oneself in the way of the richest growth and the purest happiness.

[The end]
Hamilton Wright Mabie's essay: Fellowship

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