Daily Inspiration Quote by Albert Barnes

Praise, for Barnes, is not a mood but a job description. The line carries the brisk certainty of a theologian trying to reframe spirituality away from private sentiment and toward disciplined practice. “Duty” does a lot of work: it drags worship out of the realm of taste and into the realm of obligation. Praise isn’t a garnish on the redeemed life; it’s the redeemed life’s central labor, as binding as any moral command.

The subtext is a quiet critique of religious minimalism. Barnes isn’t talking to skeptics; he’s aiming at believers who treat gratitude as optional, or who imagine salvation as a ticket to comfort. “Employment for ever” is an intentionally prosaic phrase, swapping the gauzy language of “rest” for something closer to vocation. Heaven, in this framing, isn’t endless leisure; it’s endless orientation. The redeemed don’t merely receive; they respond. Eternity becomes purposeful, structured, even repetitive - which is precisely the point. Praise is practice for a life ordered around God, not around the self.

Context matters. Barnes wrote within a Protestant world that prized earnestness, regular devotion, and moral seriousness. His era was also thick with industrial rhythms: duty, work, time, productivity. He borrows that register to make transcendence feel concrete. If modern ears hear “employment” and flinch at the idea of eternal work, Barnes is betting that a sanctified kind of work - the steady articulation of gratitude - is not burdensome but liberating. Praise becomes the final antidote to spiritual consumerism: you don’t just get saved; you become someone who can’t stop giving thanks.