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MENIAL SERVICE

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 17, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 43.

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MENIAL SERVICE

NO PERSON is really fit to control a business till he knows how to do anything that is to be done in connection with it. No man can command a fleet properly till he knows every rope in the ship, and understands how to do every duty from those of cabin boy up to those of the highest officer. So no woman is fit to preside in a mansion till she is competent to supervise a kitchen, and direct and teach and show every servant in the house how to do her work, and see that it is done properly.
If you want to fill a high place, learn first how to fill a low one. If you want to be a mistress, learn how to be a handmaid. If you desire to be greatest, learn to be servant of all. When you thoroughly learn lowly work, and prove yourself to be faithful in it, you will hear a voice saying, "Come up higher;" but it is hard to build a chimney from the top down; and this is what many persons seem to be trying to do when they spurn menial occupations and seek for higher things.
Many a person has got above his business when he had good work and a prospect of slow but steady advancement, has resigned his position, gone farther and fared worse, and finally been obliged to take a lower place than that he left, and be a menial when he might have been a master.
A true man is not above doing any work which he needs to have done. He may be too busy to do everything; and he may have higher work to do which others may be unable to perform; but a true worker knows nothing of this feeling which spurns honest and necessary work because it is beneath his dignity. He can do anything within the range of his strength and ability; and the man who can do everything, and is willing to do anything, has a better chance to do the choicer kinds of work, than he who knows how to do but a few things and is above doing some even of them.
As for Christians, they are followers of a Master who washed his own disciples' feet, and they know that "the servant is not above his Lord."—The Christian.