Here you have a shoemaker who lives by making shoes, and makes them with
just enough care and attention to keep his clientele together without
losing custom. Another shoemaker lives on a somewhat higher spiritual
plane, for he has a proper love for his work, and out of pride or a
sense of honour strives for the reputation of being the best shoemaker
in the town or in the kingdom, even though this reputation brings him no
increase of custom or profit, but only renown and prestige. But there is
a still higher degree of moral perfection in this business of
shoemaking, and that is for the shoemaker to aspire to become for his
fellow-townsmen the one and only shoemaker, indispensable and
irreplaceable, the shoemaker who looks after their footgear so well that
they will feel a definite loss when he dies--when he is "dead to them,"
not merely "dead"[56]--and they will feel that he ought not to have
died. And this will result from the fact that in working for them he was
anxious to spare them any discomfort and to make sure that it should not
be any preoccupation with their feet that should prevent them from being
at leisure to contemplate the higher truths; he shod them for the love
of them and for the love of God in them--he shod them religiously.
I have chosen this example deliberately, although it may perhaps appear
to you somewhat pedestrian. For the fact is that in this business of
shoemaking, the religious, as opposed to the ethical, sense is at a very
low ebb.
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