The Honor of Handicraft
By George Macdonald
The day will come—and may I do something to help it hither—when the youth of our country will recognize that, taken in itself, it is a more manly, and therefore in the old, true sense, a more gentle thing, to follow a good handicraft, if it make the hands black as a coal, than to spend the day in keeping books and making up accounts, though therein the hands may remain white. Not but that from a higher point of view still, all work, set by God and done divinely, is of equal honor; but where there is a choice I would gladly see a boy of mine choose rather to be a blacksmith, or a watchmaker, or a bookbinder, than a clerk. Production, making, is a higher thing in a scale of reality than any mere transmission, such as buying and selling. It is, beside, easier to do honest work than to buy and sell honestly. The more honor, of course, to those who are honest under the greater difficulty. But the man who knows how needful the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," knows that he must not be tempted into temptation even by the glory of duty under difficulty. In humility we must choose the easiest, as we must hold our faces unflinchingly to the hardest, even to the seeming impossible, when it is given us to do.—George Macdonald.