On Working for a Price and Against a Principle

It would be interesting to know how many men devote their lives to working for things they don’t believe in. We raise the question because it is an important factor in success and failure and in happiness and unhappiness among men. No man can be happy or successful when he is devoting his time, his energies, his thought, or his moral support to something he doesn’t believe in. We do not refer to the humdrum things of life which at times we all find ourselves doing. There are times when virtually all of us are under the necessity of performing services that are tiresome and treadmill. Most men who have to earn their way in the world, at some time or other do jobs that are not particularly inspiring or stimulating. And with such necessity we have no quarrel. Someone has to do the uninteresting work. Perhaps all of us should do our share of it. Indeed, we might well take the view that it is good for everyone to do some things he doesn’t like to doso long as such tasks are honorable, useful, and necessary. But we do have a quarrel with those who sell their services for what there is in it, in violation of their own principles and convictions, in violation of ethics, in violation of law, or in violation of truth. Unfortunately there are many who, merely to acquire a little more of this world’s goods or a little of what some men call success, or for other reasons which are no better, use the force of their energies, the fertility of their minds, the appeal of their art, the weight of their influence in the furtherance of things in which they have no faith or belief, and against which their own consciences protest. Time, energy, creative talents, the power of thought are of the very essence of life, and any man who uses any of these in a cause which he cannot honestly support is, to that extent, profaning the gifts which the Lord God has given him, and is inevitably contributing to his own unhappiness. And inasmuch as we are accountable for our time and our talents and all that we do with them, surely he who has misused his abilities, his energies, and his influence is going to have to answer to his own conscience. Blessed is he who devotes himself to an honest cause in which he honestly believes; but greatly to be pitied is he who sells himself to a cause in which his principles, his convictions, and a quiet conscience cannot go with him to his work each day.