PRESENTED '■^c::r^. ^ ^^<^;^^2^ J. W. KIMBALL, J. A. WHIPPLE, THK AUTHOB THE PUBLISHER. May 14, 1884. J PRINCETON, N. J. ^^ Christ ! Believe that Jesus is 7iea7'er to you than the nearest and dearest of all beside." Just now, as truly as eighteen hundred years ago, Jesus is ever saying, " According to your faith be it unto you ; " " If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth ; " I am ready to reveal Myself to you to the utmost of your desire to receive Me ; you may be as near and as dear to Me as your heart craves ; but remember, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he can- not be My disciple ; much more can he not be specially near to me and conscious of My nearness to him, and of My peculiar love for him. Are you exclaiming, " There it is again ! I don't understand it ! If Jesus is so near, so tender, so loving, as you represent Him, why must I forsake all 218 CHRIST HERE AND NOW. 219 for Him ? Does he grudge us the human friend- ships he himself has formed us to appreciate ? Would He stifle the tastes He created in us ? Is there any religion or virtue in turning our hearts to stone toward all human relations ? Must one be insensible to all that is good and lovely in order to be acceptable to Christ ? " My dear brother, Jesus Himself has answered you; "According to your faith be it unto you." He has said enough. Only your faith can interpret what He has said. His words do not perplex the heart that is full of faith. " The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him." There is a secret for love to unlock. The key is freely tendered you. To them that are without the pale of tender love, all these things are spoken in parables. Is this peculiar to Jesus only.? Do we not find the same thing everywhere among men ? Do you reveal yourself to all alike ? Could you do it if you would ? Is it not impossible to open yourself fully except to loving sympathy ? Can you find such loving sympathy in one who will run no risks for you, who is closely cal- culating whether or not it will pay to be outspoken and unlimited in devotion to you ? Would not the world be a wilderness and a desert to you, if you could not feel that you had some friend or friends whose friendship had no limits but your need of them and your love for them ? Well, as it is with you in this matter, so is it with Jesus ; He desires devoted friends. To such he is 220 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. both willing and desirous to reveal himself. Are you a devoted friend ? Are you in truth prepared to ask, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? Then seize your privilege. Lay yourself anew at His feet. Consider well how much you mean by it. Are you desirous that He should employ in His service every talent He has entrusted to you ? Then tell Him so. Look about you, and consider how you can invest your powers so as most to honor Him, and to induce others to do the same. Quench not the Holy Spirit ever prompting you to holy enterprise, but encourage His suggestions by your promptitude in turning them to the best account. Be sure there are revelations of Jesus' love await- ing His devoted friends, far, far excelling anything you have ever received from any dear friend of your family. If you would have them, do not waste pre- cious time in bandying questions as to why things are thus and so ; or why they need be so ; but put Him to the proof by renewed, earnest, well-consid- ered, and all-including consecrations of yourself and all you have and are, and all you may possibly be- come. And so shall you know for yourself that the love of Jesus far exceeds all other love ; that Jesus Himself is the chiefest among ten thousand and alto- gether lovely. O where is our enthusiasm for Jesus ? It ought to dim the lustre of all other enthusiasms as the rising sun puts out the twinkling stars. XXIV. IS GOD GOOD? SOME minds are never at rest, because, they say, there is so much unhappiness in the world. If God were good would He permit so much suffering ? There are others who dare not question the goodness of God, whose question is. How can a good God permit it ? All this questioning proceeds from one mistaken assumption, namely this : that happiness, immediate, present happiness, is the first thing to be considered. Their notion is that a good God would surely put this first in all His thoughts and plans for man. I suspect that to most men it never once occurs to question if they are surely right in thus thinking. But persons who think thus, make one grand leap over all God's holiness and man's sinful- ness^ as something not needful to pause over ; some- thing which has no relation whatever to the matter in hand. " We were speaking," say they, " of the goodfiess of God." But God is just as holy as He is good. And He hates sin as strongly as He loves holiness. And as 222 THR CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. His holiness fills heaven and makes the atmosphere of the place ; as it fills the earth and makes all that is really good in it; as sin is the direst of evils and entirely opposed to His holiness ; the first and greatest thing God can do for man, is to wean and purge him from his sin, and transform him into His own likeness. This, unquestionably, is the first thing with God. In pursuing this grand paramount aim it often be- comes necessary for God to invade man's happiness. Many a time only the sharpest trial will wean a man from his idols ; only such trials will secure attention to those Christian graces which God holds in the highest esteem. And so it is written, " My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations ; knowing this, that the trial of your faith worketh pa- tience." When we place a child in a good school, is the child's immediate happiness the first consideration with us ? No ; our first consideration is the most valuable, useful, and suitable education. This edu- cation, we say, will greatly contribute to the happi- ness of our child in the end. For the present, it will call for many a self-denial and much patience ; not with the intent to diminish the child's happiness, but to modify, to ennoble, and ultimately greatly to increase it. God's care for man's happiness is incomparably greater than we think. But God's estimate of hap- piness and what makes happiness is very unlike ours. IS GOD GOOD ? 223 Mere freedom from physical pain and inconvenience does not weigh with Him as it commonly weighs with us. The skilful surgeon whose operation is to save a life does not bestow very much thought upon the brief pain which his operation incidentally in- volves. As a humane man he would give as little unnecessary pain as may be ; but his absorbing con- cern is to save life. Our heavenly Father's care is to save life ; to de- liver us from every spiritual malady ; to recreate us in the perfect image of His Son. In persistently following out this design, through a lifetime, with infinite patience, tenderness, and skill, is there not more abundant evidence that God is good than we could infer from the filling of our cup with natural pleasures, or the screening us from poverty and pain? XXV. AM I A CHRISTIAN ? AM I really in Christ ? To many a man this is a distressing and unanswerable question. Not merely to such as ask it casually and carelessly and then forget it, but to those who ask it often and thoughtfully, who in fact never lay the question by. Let me tell you, brother, why you find the question unanswerable. 1. There is no probability that it is, as you have thought, because there must needs be some who cannot know; and because you are probably one of that number. 2. It is not because you are a sinner. All men are sinners. All men are /^r/^//Vzr/j/ sinful. All men are great sinners. The answer to all this is, Christ died for the chief of sinners, and is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by Him. 3. The real reason is, that you have never settled in your own soul that God is. Observe, I do not say that you have any doubt that there is a God. Of course, you believe that. Every one believes that. 224 AM I A CHRISTIAN ? 225 ■ But to believe there is a God is one thing ; to believe that the God of the Bible is, and that He is ever present with you ; that He is what He says He is to you ; a loving, helpful, constant, omnipotent Friend ; — that is much more. Now it is written, " He that Cometh to God must believe that He is'' Your trouble is that you have n't settled that. You ask, How can I settle it ? I answer, By obeying your Lord's command: Believe! Do not think to evade your obligation by replying. That is the very thing I cannot do. You can obey. You can believe. I know that faith is the gift of God. I know too that He is willing to give it to you. When God made you in His own image. He gave you a power to will, sav- oring almost of His own omnipotence. He made you, in this, able to trample your hinderances under foot. Let me tell you my own experience : When I began to pray, I said, as I kneeled at the foot of my bed, " Now I am not going to pray to this bed-post, the bureau, the walls, or the gelling, I am going to pray to my Lord. He is here ; I know that he is here. Were my father in the adjoining room, though I see him not, hear him not, yet, assured of his being there, by raising my voice I could make him hear. I know Jesus is here. There is no need to raise my voice ; there is no wall between us ; only a thin veil of sense ; only a mist of habit, the habit of not realizing. I. am going to break through that veil and mist. I will speak with Jesus, I will tell Him all my heart ; He will hear me, and I will therefore tell Him just 226 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. what I think, fee], wish, intend ; and I will not let Him go except He bless me. Not one single wish or utterance of any kind will I permit but what expresses just what I wish Him to hear, but just what I mean He shall hear ; and I will never give over praying until I know He hears me ; until I realize His hearing, as entirely as I reahze that my father and my mother hear me when I am speaking with them." Some- times it required a struggle of two, three, or even five minutes to break through the veil ; occasionally even a longer struggle was required ; it might extend to seven or eight minutes ; until the Spirit taught me this bit of common sense ; that a speedy and sure cure for wandering thoughts is, to tell the Lord all about the things wandered to. Now, my dear brother, if you will adopt this manner of dealing with your Lord and with yourself, you will settle for once and forever that God is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. 4. The real reasonjvhy you have been unable to assure yourself that you are in Christ, is, that you have been wiilifig to be elsewhere. You have never seized the fight to say, " I'm a poor sinner and nothing at all, But Jesus Christ is my all in all.''^ You have not been willing to be nothing at all. You have had your pride to save, your self-love, your love of ease, love of money, of man's esteem, or what not ; — you know what. And you know Jesus says, AM I A CHRISTIAN ? 22/ "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple ; " and much more can he not have the joy of knowing that he is my disciple. 5. The reason you do not know whether you are in Christ is, that you are not prompt and thorough in repentance and in confessing to Him your sins. You are ready to assure me that there I am mistaken ; sin is such a burden to you, you are always confessing it ; owning in every prayer that you are a miserable sinner, erring and straying like a lost sheep, and with no health in you ; you set apart monthly seasons for self-examination and for humiliation, and bow your head like a bulrush. Yes, my brother, I know all about that. For aught I know, that may answer some occasions, but it will not answer j^/zr occasions. Vital union to Christ has the same vitality in it that the most intense and tender human friendship has. Are you always regaling your dearest friend with wholesale complaints of your unworthiness ? If a breath of mist even l)egins to rise between you and your dearest friend do you indulge in figures of lost sheep and filthy rags ? Do you not rather instantly ask, " Beloved, what is it ? Have I given you pain 1 " Does not your quickened spirit instantly scent out your failure in faithfulness at any point .'' And are not the confession and the reparation instantaneous ! 6. The real reason why you do not know yourself vitally one with Christ is, you do not believe in the forgiveness of sins — of your sins ; and this notwith- 228 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. Standing He has said, " If we confess our sins, He is fahhful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." You do not believe that the " blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." You have no doubt that it cleanses from sin in general ; but you consider that there is a peculi- arity in your sin that not even the blood of Jesus can or does cleanse. In so doing you imagine that you are cherishing a becoming modesty; whereas your modesty is merely unbelief, and you are frustrating the grace of God. That favor to the undeserving which He is so willing and eager to bestow you will not permit Him to bestow. And the reason why you will not accept His proffered forgiveness of your sins, is that on which Naaman acted when Elijah was ready to remove his leprosy ; " I thought he would do it in my way ; after the pattern in my mind ; as he did with some one of whom I have read or heard." You propose to wait for deeper or different impres- sions ; for some new revelation or manifestation. My dear brother, in this you are wrong, all wrong. Not content with God's method of justification and of sanctification, you go about seeking some way more in accordance with your ideal. In doing this you postpone indefinitely your own happiness, and, which is worse, you grieve the Spirit of God, that in- finitely tender and gracious Friend and Comforter who dwells with you and in you, for the very pur- pose of guiding you into all truth and into perfect peace. AM I A CHRISTIAN ? 229 You have but one thing to do : BeUeve ! BeUeve His precious assurance ; " If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." That means yoic ; that means now. And it is always now. Pro- crastination is not only the thief of time, it is the thief of peace also. Believe in the very instant of your confession ; believe in the fulness of His for- giveness. Accept that forgiveness on the instant. In the same instant render grateful thanks ; and go on your way rejoicing, and renewing the total con- secration of yourself, and all you have, and are, and ever can become, to Him who loved you, died for you, and washed you in His blood. XXVI. DESPISING OUR PRIVILEGE. YES, that is just what we do ; we despise our highest privilege. Is there a greater privilege than that of realizing habitually the presence and tender love of Jesus ? a love incomparably greater than that of our most intimate friend. " No," you will answer, " certainly not ; but to charge us with despising this privilege ! — what is that but one more instance of the reckless use of language which is so common in our day ? " Hold a moment, dear friend, and I think I shall convince you that this is not one of the unconsidered expressions which exceed all warrant. When the invitations to the supper of the king were issued, and the invited guests began with one consent to make excuse — "I have bought a piece of land, or five yoke of oxen ; I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come" — did they not in fact despise the invitation ? Do not paltry excuses for not accepting a proffered boon mark a low estimate of that boon ? Our Lord says, " If a man love me he will keep my DESPISING OUR PRIVILEGE. 23 1 words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him." Here is surely a glorious offer, on most available terms. Not to catch at it eagerl}-, and with grati- tude, is to hold it in small esteem. To make a few and intermittent endeavors for this incomparable possession and then to give it up is to despise it. The habitual realization of Jesus as his present, personal, loving Friend is the highest privilege con- ferred on man. This privilege is offered to me, to you, to each and to every disciple; it is freely of- fered ; it is earnestly pressed upon our acceptance. Not to accept it is to despise it. Do you say " Nay, not so : for though I cannot deny that in words it is in some sense offered, yet practically it is as though it were not, for I cannot lay hold upon Him ; I cannot make Him real ? " Then, dear friend, you fail either because you have not so desired this friendship with Jesus as promptly and always to subordinate all other friendships to this ; or because you have not given heed to the declaration, " He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the re warder of them that diligently seek Him." To tolerate a shadow of a doubt that God is, is to throw away all satisfying friendship with Him. Do you ask, " How can I be blamed when, do the best I can, there still remains this discouraging feeling ; perhaps He is here, per- haps hot; perhaps He is listening to me, perhaps He does n't care to ? " 232 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. Take His own answer to your question : " Then shall ye know, if ye follow on to know the Lord." You perhaps remember that in Bunyan's Pilgrim armed men resisted Christian's entrance into the house where he was to learn much that was to speed him joyfully on his M^ay. God tests your earnestness to enter into the closest friendship and fellowship with Him, by permitting obstacles to stand across your path ; obstacles, mainly, of your own creating. Can you wonder that when you have for years treated Jesus as though He were not near you, nor interested in you, you now cannot easily gain the consciousness which you have permitted to pass away from you ? But if you are in true and deep earnest to possess this consciousness, the way is open to you. Begin at once. Remember that there is measureless power in the deter7nined will. Be resolved that you will call upon your Lord in unwavering confidence in His presence, and in His kind attention to every word you utter. Be careful to say to Him only and ex- actly what you think, and feel, and wish, and intend. Find out what is the one thing which hinders your realizing Jesus as your ever present, real, helpful Friend. Then hasten to put the hinderance from you. Cry mightily to "your Lord for help. Set yourself to do the work of a friend. Stimulate your ingenuity to find out ways of pleasing and of honor- ing Him. If you are but earnest and persistent in so doing, nothing but a miracle can possibly prevent your success. XXVII. HOW TO BE SAVED. WHEN any one asks, " What must I do to be saved ? " he is answered : " Repent and be- lieve the Gospel ; " " Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins ; " " Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out ; " " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved ; " " Repent, and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance ; " " God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life ; " " He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life ; " and it is sometimes added, " I dare not answer you but in these very words of the Bible." We may well fear to return any answer that does not accord with these declarations of the Bible ; but it is a serious error to suppose that we have dis- charged our duty, and have done all we can do for an inquirer, when we have given him some one or more of these Scriptural directions. We might as -3J 234 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. well think that we had done all we could for a hun- gry child, when we had given him a bag of meal or flour. We know indeed that every troubled sin- 'ner wants a Saviour, and a Gospel of Salvation ; but we also know that he must taste before he will see that the Lord is good, and that he must trust before he can know the blessedness of the man that trusteth in Him ; and it is our business to tempt his taste, and to encourage his trust, by offering the invitations of the Gospel in winning words, seasoned with abun- dant illustrations of the love and tenderness of Christ. These are abundantly furnished in the Bible, and so varied as to fit the necessities of a great variety of cases. It is for us to find out what are the particular necessities of the individual who needs our help, and this we may do by encouraging the inquirer to state his own case. Thus one will say, " I know it is necessary to be- come a Christian ; I am not content to continue as I now am ; I know that I am a sinner ; but I can't say that I have any deep conviction of this, or that I feel very much about it. What can you say to me ? " I would say, that, like the prodigal son, you have wandered very far away from your father's house. You may not have spent all, or any, of your substance in riotous living ; yet, have you none the less at- tempted to satisfy the hunger of a famishing soul with husks. For that you know it is necessary to become a Christian, is proof that your soul has been starved. You already labor and are heavy laden. HOW TO BE SAVED. 235 and your labor will become more laborious, and your burden more heavy, until you come to Christ. It may, or may not be, that you will have a deeper con- viction of your sinfulness before you give yourself up to Christ ; that may depend upon circumstances not within your control. But it is very proper that you shall call to mind God's unnumbered kindnesses to you ; and that you should inquire what return you have made to Him ; that you should consider how you have been treating him, while his mercies have been inviting you to repentance." But you say, I don't know what it is to come to Christ, or how to get to him. I am sure I should be glad to do so, if I did or could. Are you sure of this ? That you would be glad to escape unhappiness, and to be free from the fear of punishment, I can easily believe; but coming to Christ is much more than this. Every unconverted man has a will of his own ; a will to be and to do many things contrary to the will of Christ. In com- ing to Christ, the very first step is to subordinate our self-will to the will of Christ ; one must be willing to sit at the feet of Jesus and be taught by him in all things, and immediately on being taught the will of Christ, he must adopt that will as the rule of his life. If you are prepared to do thls^ then you are prepared to come to Christ ; you are prepared to look on Christ without prejudice, which no man can do till he is ready to subordinate his own will to Christ's will. When you are ready to do this, it is not difficult to 236 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. come to Christ, which is, in fact, to love Christ. When once you surrender your will to Christ, you need nothing but knowledge. It is true that no man can come to Christ except the Father draw him ; but when a man is ready to bow his will to the will of Christ, it is because the Father has already sent his Holy Spirit to draw him. By the light of this truth you may see where you are, and what you have to do ; so, if you are ready, say and do this : — "Just as I am, without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me, And that thou bid'st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come. XXVIII. THE INDWELLING COMFORTER. THE unbelief of avowed Christians in the in- dwelling of the Holy Ghost is one of the greatest evils of our day. What would be the answer, if we should ask of a score of the members of any one or more of our churches, " Have you received the Holy Ghost ? " And what if it should be further asked, " Have you the Holy Ghost dwell- ing in you ? " Some would answer, " It would not be modest in me to say it, even if I thought so." Ah, is modesty inconsistent with truth ? Is it immodest for you to profess supreme love for Christ ? Immod- est to admit that you have received the seal of his responsive love ? Surely, not if you have it ; for has He not commanded you to let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Pather in heaven ? Can you in any way more effectively witness a good confession than by the fearless avowal that the Holy One dwells in you, and that you are in all things governed by his coun- sel ? and by a life consistent with this avowal ? 237 238 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. Some would plead their fear of self-righteousness as a bar to an ingenuous answer ; some would actu- ally make a righteousness of refusing " to witness a good confession ; " they would persuade themselves, and others, that they are too good, too virtuous, too reverent of God, even to pretend that they entertain that Heavenly Visitant from day to day, from hour to hour. The truth is, the consciousness of the in- dwelling Spirit depends upon the ever-conscious pre- ference of God's will to our own. As in the early days of the Church, " no man could (or would) say that Jesus was the Christ, except by the spirit of the Lord," so now no man can truly and ever say, " Not my will, but thine be done," except by the spirit of the Lord. Of course, those of the disciples who are daily doing their own work, rather than the Lord's, cannot have the conscious indwelling and guidance of the Holy Ghost. There is such a thing as being filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost from the beginning of the religious life and thenceforth. The command to be led by the Spirit, to live in the Spirit, to walk in the Spirit, is in full force ; and enforced by the assur- ance, "He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." Woe to the man who refuses to believe, or to receive the boon ; good were it for that man that he had never heard the gracious offer, rather than that he should set no value upon this purchase of the Saviour's blood. Many affect to deplore the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit ; some actually deceive themselves into THE INDWELLING COMFORTER. 239 believing that lie does, at times, withdraw from very good Christians, and leave them, as our Saviour said he would not leave them, orphaned. Such are little alarmed when the pall of insensibility settles down upon their souls ; they content themselves with thinking that such is the way of the Spirit, and with feeble wishes that he may some day come again to his temple. How different is this from the teaching of inspiration : " As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God ; " " If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his ; " " Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates ? " Heedless of Christ's explicit promise, John xiv : 16-18 : "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter. ... I will not leave you comfortless ; I will come to you ; " multitudes have forsaken the obvious meaning of the promise and gone about to seek a solace and a substitute for what is here promised to simple faith in a supposed second physical coming of Christ. They cannot live by faith on the Son of God, they must have sight. They seem to have forgotten that St. Paul himself declared, " Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." And this for the obvious reason that we know him through the indwelling Spirit. He that has thus received the promise of the Father, and of the Son, needs no such stimulus to his faith as is alleged to be found in the 240 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. expectation of another personal or physical coming of Christ in 1868, or in 1886. I WOULD give all I have in the world to know that I am certainly a child of God." Our Heavenly Father will not sell the assurance you desire at that or at any other price ; but he will make you a free gift of it, simply upon 3^our com- plying with certain conditions which are indispen- sable. " What are those conditions ? " The first is that you shall be a child. It is plain that you cannot certainly know yourself to be a child until you are a child. " I hope I am that now." A well-founded hope is an excellent possession ; but I understood you to wish for more ; you wished to know absolutely. This implies, does it not, that you are not entirely satisfied with your hope ? " That is true ; I do wish to convert hope into certainty." This can be done only by complying with the en- treaty of the Apostle Paul : " I beseech you, there- fore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, unto God ; which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." For one who covets conformity to the worldly ways and worldly princi- ples of those about him ; for one who is unprepared THE I x\ DWELLING COMFORTER. 24 1 to give himself wholly and entirely away to Christ, it is quite useless to sigh for the spirit of adoption ; to long for the certainty of being a child of God. That certainly arises from- the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. He will not dwell with idols ; he will not make his abode in a heart that is not wholly and heartily surrendered to him. But into every heart that is thus wholly and heartily offered to him — that is made ready for him, he will come, and come at once. He will feed the soul that hungers and thirsts after righteousness ; for he says such are blessed, and that they shall be filled. XXIX. RECEIVING CHRIST. HOW is it with you now, M. ; have you made any progress Christ-w^ard since I saw you ? " " I can't say that I have. It 's just about the same ; and I don't see what I am to do to make it different. I have done everything I know how to do ; and if I had my life to hve over again, I don't see how I could do differently." "Do you pray daily, and study the Bible ?" " Yes ; but I don't see that it does any good." " When you pray, do j^ou realize Christ's presence, and his interest in you ? " " No ; I can't say I do. I don't see how he can feel any interest in me. I have lived a mere selfish life, and haven't deserved his love, and don't see how I can expect it." "Do you desire it ? " " Oh, yes ; I should like very much to have it, if I could." " Well, if that be really so, and if you will just tell him so, and ask him what he would have you to 242 RECEIVING CHRIST. 243 do to win it, that will be real prayer, and one that he will be likely to answer." " But it don't seem to me as if it would accom- plish anything, or make any change in my future life. I can't feel sure that I shall do any better in the future." " One thing at a time, my dear friend ; if you desire God's love — really desire it — you can have it, if it be the one absorbing desire of your heart." " But it don't seem so to me. It don't seem to me that he can find anything in me to love." "You have but too much reason to say it; but, fortunately, what cannot be found in you is found in Christ ; he has bought you with his blood ; and now offers to dwell with you and in you. If you receive Jesus, all will go well with you ; for it is written, ' As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.' You want power to be- come a child ; receive Christ, and he will give you the powder." " But if I tell him that I do receive him, I shan't feel any differently ; I shan't act any differently." " In short, you don't believe that there is any effi- cacy in obedience ; that God values it, or will rew^ard it ; and all your unbelief has no better ground than that it don't seem to you that it w^ould do any good. What right have you thus to reject the plain testi- mony of God ? You have never put him to the proof. You have never received Christ, though he has long knocked for admittance. You have never 244 '^^^E CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. entrusted the keeping of yourself to him. Thou- sands of times his gentle and winning entreaty, * Come unto me,' has been repeated in your hearing, but you have never come. You reject all evidence of the reality and earnestness of the invitation." "Well, I 've tried, and I can't change my heart. I know I have got to feel, and to do, differently ; but somehow I can't get hold of it." " Do you remember the story of the man who had a withered hand ? Christ said to him, ' Stretch forth thine hand.' Now, this man's arm, as I understand the narrative, was completely withered. He might, I suppose, have said with entire truth, ' Lord, I cannot stretch forth mine hand ; it is an utter im- possibility ; I haven't the power to do it.' He had no power to do it ; but one thing he could do ; he could put forth the will to do it. He did that ; that was obedience ; and Christ gave the power ; and he was healed. I know that the faith in Christ, wdiich I wish you to exercise, and without which it is impos- sible to please God, is the gift of God; but he gives it to those who exercise the will to obey. The Lord invites you to prove him. Do it." XXX. LAY WORK A BOUNDEN DUTY. SOME things are plain ; this for one ; if we pray . honestly, "Thy kingdom come," we ought studi- ously to inquire : " What can / do in furtherance of my prayer ? " Well, I can examine some of the hinderances to the grace of God. He desires the salvation of men. In order to their salvation, He would have them en- lightened, instructed as to his kind desires and in- tentions in their behalf, and invited to accept eternal life. One of the most serious hinderances is the supposi- tion that this work devolves chiefly, ay, almost ex- clusively on ministers. Nothing can be more untrue. Ministers are captains of the Lord's hosts. Leaders, guides, instructors, they may and ought to be ; but the hosts of the adversary are to be encountered man by man ; and God has given to the rank and file the force which is to do the work, as truly as to their leaders. It is quite true that every man is not a Moody ; but it is just as true, that to ever}^ man has 245 246 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. been entrusted some one or more talents to be used for the Master ; and no man knows how much has been entrusted to him, until he has most energetically and persistently endeavored to employ all he can find to use. Do you think Moody knew what the Lord had given him when he first attempted a few words in the prayer-meeting, and was advised by a pastor of large experience to refrain from such en- deavors ? It was an essential part of the very disci- pline that developed him, to push on in the face of this opposing opinion. He chose not to wait for Saul's armor, but to use smooth or rough stones from the brook in a less public place, and where such ordnance as he had, might and did do execu- tion. It is an utter and dire mistake to suppose that the salvation of men through " preaching the Word," means only by the pronouncing of well-labored ser- mons by highly educated and ordained ministers. We may well be instructed by those who are arrayed against us. The Romish system provides for the discovery and enlistment of capability of every kind, and in every degree. It taxes every income ; it uses its entire resources; it maintains an unrelaxing hold upon the conscience of its subjects. We have not as yet asserted the claim of our Sovereign head upon each member of His Church for service ; at all events have not made it to be felt. Any formal assent to this claim is commonly given with a mental reserva- tion, and with a private interpretation ; as for ex- LAY WORK A BOUNDEN DUTY. 24/ ample : I am not to be expected personally to dissem- inate the Gospel. I can't speak to men, teach or give them tracts or books. My business is to earn money. I will help support those who do this work. The Master says : " Freely ye have received ; freely give." The servant replies : " I pray thee have me excused." And the leaders of the host too often unwisely think such may be excused if they will give ten or more per cent of their accumulations to Church charities. The Master demands total con- secration of himself and of all he is and has ; the servant proposes a compromise of ten per cent, — not even then of what he is, but of the moftey he is permitted to acquire. Is this to be allowed ? Never ! It is worse than compounding felony. The unalter- able demand remains in unabated force. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength." Not a single man in all the Lord's host is at liberty to engage in any business which precludes his living, and preaching the Gospel every day. No Christian may engage in any busi- ness transaction which will arrest the flow of Chris- tian love — love for a single soul, or hinder his free utterance of his Master's claim upon that soul. By this sure standard every business must be tried. To engage in any business which forbids or hinders this care for souls, is to rob God. Really consecrated souls may not contend with worldly men for wealth and business reputation. XXXI. WHAT CHRIST ASKS OF LAYMEN. IT is pretty generally admitted, that the layman is as strongly bound to total consecration as the minister. In the face of the two tables of the law, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself," who would dare take any other position ? Every layman, then, is bouud freely to receive and freely to give the Gospel of Christ. He is an enlisted soldier. As such he may not entangle himself in any disqualifying affairs. He must separate himself to the service of Christ. It is his supreme honor and privilege that he may do so. "But," asks some one, "do you mean to deny that he may properly engage in any secular business or profession ? " He may engage in any business or profession that does not divert or subtract from the largest, purest, most effective service for Christ and His church; any business compatible with his living in Christ, as a branch in the vine ; and upon Christ as one who 248 WHAT CHRIST ASKS OF LAYMEN. 249 eats His flesh, and drinks His blood ; to whom Christ is as manna and as bread ; who feeds upon Christ by unintermittent faith, and is daily and hourly growing into His image. No business or profession incompatible with this is open to any brother in Christ. "It strikes me you are putting this pretty strong; he may engage in nothing, you say, that would sub- tract from the largest, purest, most effective service for Christ. Why, you can't mean that a business man must be praying and preaching all the time ? " He must be always in Christ ; on Christ's own testimony, " If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered." And, again, " Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." He must "pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks." Whether he eat or drink, or whatsoever he does, he must "do all to the glory of God." These are the business rules divinely established, and never re- scinded. He must be always a witness for Christ; his life must be always a true rendering, though his tongue be not always quoting the Gospel of Christ. " If you are familiar with business, you must know that in these days any business worth pursuing is very absorbing. It is as much as any man's reputa- tion is worth, to be known to be interested in any- thing outside of business. Are you prepared to risk the consequences of wdiat you recommend ? " 250 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. Do you think it unsafe to " seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness ? " " I think that an intelhgent man undertaking any business in our times, will find it wise, and absolutely necessary to give that business his undivided atten- tion. You are familiar with the saying, 'A man who attempts several instruments will find himself beaten by him who keeps to one.' Our successful business men are men of no ordinary powers ; every faculty is strung to the highest tension ; and they exhaust their trained powers to the limit of endurance, six days in every week. Of course you will agree with me that the Christian lawyer, doctor, or merchant is found, to the extent of his capacities, to be the ablest lawyer, doctor, or merchant in his place. He ought to be that, if he is to be an example to others." It is written, " Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." Can it be shown, do you think, that the Christian most nearly perfect, could we identify him, would necessarily be found " the ablest merchant ? " " Well, each profession has its own canons, its qualifications and its tests. I suppose some charac- teristics which recommend a man as a Christian, would be thought not quite up to the mark in a man of business." In such cases, may I ask, which standard is enti- tled to take the precedence .? " No doubt each is good in its place ; but you can't mix up business and religion." You are quite right, my friend. You mean that WHAT CHRIST ASKS OF LAYMEN. 25 1 the attempts now made to harmonize present and final salvation with most kinds of business, or with any business as most generally conducted, are and must needs be abortive. The gate is as strait, and the way as narrow, for the child of God to-day, as at any former time. It must be frankly and fearlessly avowed, that the occupations which to-day permit the man of average ability to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and at the same time acquire an ample livelihood, are far from numerous. And as for wealthy no child of God can reasonably reckon the acquisition of that^ his call from God. They "who will be rich," go where no child of God can follow. " Do you mean to assert that wealth must hence- forth be confined to the wicked ? " I mean to assert that the majority of our " church members in good and regular standing," have been betrayed into modes of life inharmonious with the aspirations for holy living which we may hope come to them in their more thoughtful moments. Little by little, and doubtless all unconsciously, step by step, they have been tempted to forget that gain is not godliness, and that a goodly estate is no satisfactory substitute for the smile of their Lord. Even our good brethren in the ministry have some- times been tempted to overestimate the desirableness of well-to-do church members. No, dear brethren ! However necessary money may be for Christian purposes, the one want of our times is, men filled 252 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. with faith and the Holy Ghost ; men who dare en- treat that Christ may be formed in them at any cost; men who dare venture wholly on the command and promise, " Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." It is for the lack of this Christian brav- ery, in part at least, that the present business depres- sion has come upon us. No doubt much might be truly affirmed of over-production, over-trading, and lavish expenditure, as procuring causes : and 3^et more might be truly said, of the various influence of the greed of gold ; but over and above all this let us think of the law of Jesus, restraining and constrain- ing us to ask to be " filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that we may walk worthy of our Lord unto all pleas- ing, being fruitful in every good work, and filled with the knowledge of God." When this becomes our controlling desire and prayer the sons of God will not lack any good thing. If they can find no way to earn the money the church of Christ is supposed to need, our God will supply all the need from His inexhaustible stores. XXXII. A PROTEST AGAINST A BUGBEAR. I T is written, " We are not ignorant of Satan's de- vices." A servant of our Lord said this, one who was taught of God. But not all of the servants of the Lord can affirm so much. I propose to show that one of Satan's devices is so adroitly covered as to deceive many who are otherwise both well-informed and abundantly competent. The bugbear with which we have now to do, expresses itself substantially thus : To speak of your own personal experiences is ego- tism ; egotism is always offensive ; therefore, if you would avoid the just condemnation of God and man, you must very seldom, if ever, mention a manifesta- tion of the grace of God to men, in which you have had any participation. This persuasion cometh not of Him who called you to glory and vigorous efficiency. An enemy hath done this. Behold the evidence. The man out of whom Jesus cast many devils besought Him that he, might be with Him. But Jesus sent him away, saying, " Return to thine own house, and show how 254 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. great things God hath done unto theeT The men whom Jesus selected to preach the Gospel to every creature had neither philosophy, theology, nor science of any kind. It was, therefore, utterly beyond their power to present truth in the abstract. Even John, the beloved disciple, was enforced to say, " That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life, declare we unto you." Peter and John declared to the rulers, elders, scribes, and high priest, that the good deed done by them to the impotent man was by the name of Jesus Christ. Our Lord has said, " Ye are my wit- nesses." It is required of witnesses to tell what they themselves have witnessed, seen and known. Chris- tian witnesses in our day have not seen the incarnate Chrisi ; they have known and do know God in Christ ; they know also the Comforter in their own souls ; and their testimony must needs be of what they have veri- fied in their own experience, for it is thus we see and know " the invisible things of God." And to close the mouth of one who would tell what God has done in and through hi^n, because it has been so done, is to silence God's witnesses, under the specious but false pretext that what you and I have participated in cannot be told to the praise and glory of God, be- cause it is egotistical, and so sinful. To give in to , this falsehood is to strangle our prayer and confer- ence meetings. Abstract statements of truth beget abstract prayers. Said Rev. John Angell James, A PROTEST AGAINST A BUGBEAR. 255 " If I have had any considerable usefulness with my people it has arisen very much out of my habit of showing them my heart ; of sharing with them my joys and sorrows in all the many and various chances and changes in life. It is thus our Lord has dis- closed to us in the Gospel, and in all the Holy Scrip- tures, his experience in life, and the consolation of His Father and of the Holy Spirit. It is thus he de- mands of us that, in bearing one another's burdens, we comfort them with the very comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. Is it not the united testimony of the people of God that Jesus has met and manifested himself to them peculiarly and most fully when they have been trying to help, guide and comfort others ? It is when they state, to the glory and praise of God, what He has enabled them thus to do ; nay, rather what He has condescended to do by and through them, that they do most truly honor Him, and most persuasively encourage their fellows to hope in the Lord, and to strive most vigorously to advance His interests in the hearts of men." Away then with this false and monstrous represen- tation, that we must not mention the ways and walks of usefulness to w^hich God has admitted us. Speak- ing, within a week, to a prominent and earnest preacher on the duty of the brethren to take up and echo the word of life, he said, "Yes; but when we press the obligation to work for Christ, we are imme-^ diately met with the question, ' But what is there for me to do ? We have few or no poor in our parish. 256 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. The sick and the afflicted are visited by the minister ; and so there is nothing.'" Wonderful simplicity; but not innocence ; for there is never a time when dozens, and scores, ay, hundreds, are not perishing before our very eyes for lack of knowledge ; and it is not doctrinal knowledge they lack so much as prac- tical knowledge, the homely experiences of men and women of like passions and like trials with themselves. What they most need to know is what Jesus and the Comforter is doing and will do for those who are struggling with the burdens and the trials of common life to-day ; and this they would learn, not from the pulpit, and on the Sabbath, but at every turn in life, from those who, in virtue of a daily and hourly walk with Jesus, are both able, willing and prompt to tell them of the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love and sympathy of Christ, which passeth knowledge. Brethren and sisters, we can never do our full duty, nor enjoy our full privilege in this, until we have obtained grace from our God ut- terly to repudiate this Satanic bugbear, this false affirmation that we may not properly and profitably tell of God's grace to us in opening many and various ways and means of Christian usefulness. The first disciples found an unegotistical way of giving glory to God for His grace to men through their endeavors, and so may and must we, or we shall forfeit our claim to be called God's witnesses. XXXIII. BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED IN THAT OF A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. [You are, it may be, wondering what possible place in such a volume this chapter can have. I will tell you. Some years ago, before the erec- tion of our present post-office, one of our most successful merchants said to me : " You know how utterly ignorant of the toils and cares of the merchant's life, our professional men are. I want you to illumi- nate their benighted minds with an article in the Atlantic. Our law- yers, doctors, and ministers plume themselves with the modest assump- tion that their occupations are of a higher grade than ours, and that their mental powers and various cultivation entitle them to a place and esteem among men very much above any that could with propriety be awarded to dealers in merchandise. No one of these " learned professions," as they are often called, has greater need to know the true status of business men than the minis- try. You are to preach to them. It is yours to instruct them in the things that pertain to the kingdom of God. Before you can instruct them you must know them, and how and where to take them up. It may chance to some of you to find there is less need to descend than to ascend to their level ; and it can scarcely happen to any grad- uate of the schools, bent on enlarging his area, not to make some valuable acquisitions in this field of investigation. On the other hand you are to be alive to the peculiar temptations of these active spirits ; to keep in mind the inspired warnings ; e. g., " They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil ; which while some coveted after, they 257 258 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." Beware how you encourage men to get rich, "because much money is needed for Christian purposes." Do what you can to save the few who seem to be predestined to this most undesirable dis- tinction ; warn them against the hurtful assumption and presumption that gain is godliness, or that they are in any degree better for being rich ; but rather make them comprehend the great danger that riches will corrupt and degrade them. Poverty may enforce humility, purity and gentle courtesy : " The poor useth entreaties ; but the rich an- swereth roughly." " Do not rich men oppress you ? Do they not blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called ?" It would be a miracle if riches did not beguile a man into thinking of himself more highly than he ought to think, because the overestimate of wealth being well-nigh universal, the race combine, — I had almost said, conspire^ in their deference and worship, to befool the rich. True wealth can be only in what a man zV, not in what he has. There is a mausoleum on Fifth Avenue, New York, on which might well be inscribed, — "Stop, traveller, and consider this cenotaph. Where he lies, for whom this monument was built, cannot be told. Its founda- tions should be deep, for the reasonable hopes of millions lie beneath. The insatiable cravings of a not too thoughtful one engulfed them all. All that made man in the image of his Maker, — noble, benign, beneficent, and hopeful of the beatific, — went down with them, and like the baseless fabric of a vision not a wreck remains behind. Con- sider what I tell thee and be warned in time. You can do no busi- ness wisely or well, that you do not leaven with holiness to the Lord and kindUness to your fellow-men. " Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness."] WHAT is a dry-goods jobber ? No wonder you ask. You have been hunting, perhaps, for our peripatetic post-office, and have stumbled upon Summer Street and Devonshire Street and Franklin Street. You are almost ready to believe in the lamp of Aladdin, that could build palaces in a night. Looking up to the stately and costly structures which A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 259 have usurped the place of once-familiar dwelUngs, and learning that they are, for the most part, ten- anted by dry-goods jobbers, you feel, that, for such huge results, there must needs be an adequate cause ; and so you ask, " What is a dry-goods jobber ? " It is more than a curious question. For parents desirous of finding their true sphere for promising and for unpromising sons, it is eminently a practical question. It is a question comprehensive of dollars and cents ; also of bones and sinews ; of muscles, nerves, and brains ; of headache, heartache, and the cyclopaedia of being, doing, and enduring. An ade- quate answer to such a question must needs ask your indulgence ; for it cannot be condensed into a very few words.^ A dry-goods jobber is a wholesale buyer and seller, for cash or for approved credit, of all manner of goods, wares, and materials, large and small, coarse and fine, foreign and domestic, which pertain to the clothing, convenience, and garnishing, by night and by day, of men, women, and children, from a button to a blanket, from a calico to a carpet, from stock- ings to a head-dress, from an inside-handkerchief to a waterproof, from a piece of tape to a thousand bales of shirting ; not forgetting linen, silk, or woollen fabrics, for drapery or upholstery, for bed or table, including hundreds of items which time would fail me to recite. All these the dry-goods jobber pro- vides for his customer, the retailer, who, in his turn, will dispense them to the consumer. 26o BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. A really competent and successful dry-goods job- ber in our day is a new creation. He is begotten of the times. Of him, as truly as of the poet, and with yet more emphasis, it must be said, " He is born, not made." He is a poet, a philosopher, an artist, an engineer, a military commander, an advocate, an attorney, a financier, a steam-engine, a telegraph- operator, a servant-of-all-Vv'ork, a Job, a Hercules, and a Bonaparte, rolled into one. *' Exaggeration," do you say ? Not at all. You asked for information ? You shall have it to your heart's content. To a youth, for a time interrupted in his prepara- tion for college, I said, — " Never mind : this falls in exactly with my well- considered plan. You shall go into a dry-goods store till your eyes recover strength ; it will be the best year's schooling of your life." " How so ?" was the dubious answer. "What can I learn there ? " " Learn ? Everything, common sense included, which is generally excluded from the university cur- riculum ; for example, time, place, quantity, and the worth of each. You shall learn length, breadth, and thickness; hard and soft; pieces and yards; dozens and the fractions thereof; order and confusion, cleanliness and dirt (to love the one, and hate the other) ; materials, colors, and shades of color ; pa- tience, manners, decency in general; system and method, and the relation these sustain to indepen- A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 26 1 dence ; in short, that there is a vast deal more out of books than in books ; and, finally, that the man who knov/s only what is in books is generally a lump of conceit, and of about as much weight in the scales of actual life as the ashes of the Alexandrian Librar}^, or the worms in any parchments that may have sur- vived that conflagration." "Whew!" was his ejaculation: "I didn't know there was so much." " I dare say not. Most of your limited days have passed under the training of men who are in the like predicament ; whose notion of the chief end of man is to convert lively boys into thick dictionaries, and who honestly believe that the chief want of the age is your walking dictionary. Any other type of hu- manity, they tell us, 'won't pay.' Much they know of what will and what won't pay ! This comes of partial education, — of one-sided, of warped and biassed education. It puts one out of patience, this arrogance of the university, this presuming upon the ignorance of the million, this assertion of an indis- pensable necessity to make the boy of the nineteenth century a mere expert in some subdivision of one of the sciences. The obstinacy of an hereditary abso- lutism, which the world has outgrown, still lingers in our schools of learning. Let us admit the Divine right of Science, admit the fitness of a limited num- ber of our youth to become high priests in her tem- ple, but no Divine right of fossil interpreters of Science to compel the entire generation to disem- 262 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. bowel their sons, and make of these living temples mere receptacles of Roman, Grecian, or Egyptian relics. We don't believe that " mmnmy is medici- nal," the Arabian Doctor Haly to the contrary not- withstanding. If it ever was, its day has gone by. Therefore, let all sensible people pray for a Crom- well, — not to pull down university science, but to set up the commonwealth of common sense ; to sub- ordinate the former to the latter; and to proclaim an education for our own age, and for its exigencies. Your dry-goods jobber stands in violent contrast to your university man in the matter of practical adap- tation. His knowledge is no affair of dried speci- mens, but every particle of it a living knowledge, ready, at a moment's warning, for all or any of the demands of life." You are, perhaps, thinking, "Yes, that is suppos- able, because the lessons learned by the jobber are limited to the common affairs of daily life, are not prospective ; because, belonging only to the passing day, they are easily surveyed on all sides, and their full use realized at once ; in short, a mere matter of buying and selling goods, a very inferior thing as compared with the dignified and scholarly labors of the student." How mistaken this estimate is, will appear as we advance to something like a comprehensive survey of the dry-goods jobber's sphere. First, then, he is a buyer of all manner of goods, wares, and materials, proper to his department in A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 263 commerce. He is minutely informed in the history of raw materials. He knows the countries from which they come ; the adaptation of soils and cli- mates to their raising ; the skill of the cultivators ; the shipping usages ; the effect of transportation, by land and sea, on raw materials and on manufactured articles, with all the mysteries of insurance allow- ances and usages, the debentures on exportation, and the duties on importation, in his own and in other lands. His forecast is taxed to the utmost as to what may be the condition of his own market six, twelve, or eighteen months from the time of ordering goods ; both as to the quantity which may be in market, and as to the fashion, which is always chang- ing ; and also as to the condition of his customers to pay for goods, which will often depend upon the fer- tility of the season. As respects home-purchases, he is compelled to learn, or to suffer for the want of knowing, that the difference between being a skilful, pleasant buyer, and the opposite, is a profit or loss of from five to seven and a half or ten per cent, or, in other words, the difference, oftentimes, between success and ruin, between comfort and discomfort, between being a welcome and a hated visitor, between being honored as an able merchant and contemned as a mean man or an unmitigated bore. Is your curiosity piqued to know wherein buyers thus contrasted may differ ? They differ endlessly, like the faces you meet on the street. Thus one man is born to an open, frank, friendly, and cour- 264 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. teous manner ; another is cold, reserved, and sus- picious. One is prompt, hilarious, and provocative of every good feeling, whenever you chance to meet ; the other is slow, morose, and fit to waken every dormant antipathy in your soul. An able buyer is, or becomes, observing to the last degree. He knows the slightest differences in quality and in style, and possesses an almost unerring taste ; knows the con- dition of the market ; knows every holder of the article he wants, and the lowest price of each. He knows the peculiarities of the seller, — his strong points and his weak points, his wisdom and his foi- bles, his very temperament, and how it is acted upon by his dinner, or the want of it. He knows the esti- mate put upon his own note by that seller. He knows what his note will sell for in the street. He knows, to a feather's weight, the influence of each of these items upon the mind of the seller of whom he wishes to make a purchase. Talk about diplomacy ! — there 's not a man in any court in Europe who knows his position, his fulcrum and his lever, and the use he can make of them, as this man knows. He can unravel any combination, penetrate any dis- guise, surmount any obstacle. Beyond all other men, he knows when to talk, and when to refrain from talking; how to throw the burden of negotiation on the seller ; how to get the goods he wants at his own price, not at his asking, but on the suggestion of the seller, prompted by his own politely obvious un- willingness to have the seller part with his mer- A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 265 chandise at any price not entirely acceptable to himself. The incompetent man, on the other hand, is pre- suming, exacting, and unfeeling. He not only de- sires, but asserts the desire in the very teeth of the seller, to have something which that seller has prede- termined he shall not have. He fights a losing game from the start. He will probably begin by depre- ciating the goods which he knows, or should know, that the seller has reason to hold in high esteem. He will be likely enough to compare them to some other goods which he knows to be inferior. He will thus arouse a feeling of dislike, if not of anger, where his interest should teach him to conciliate and soothe ; and, if he sometimes carry his point, his very victory is, in effect, a defeat, since it procures him an in- creased antipathy. This the judicious buyer never does. He repudiates as a mere half-truth and a relic of barbarism, the maxim, " There is no friend- ship in trade." " But," you are asking, " do only those succeed who are born to these extraordinary endowments ? And those who do succeed, are they, in fact, each and all of them, such wonderfully capable men as you have described ? " If by success you mean mere money-making, it is not to be denied that some men do that by an in- stinct, little, if at all, superior to that of the dog who smells out a bone. There are exceptions to all rules ; and there are chances in all games, even in 266 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. games of skill. Lord Timothy Dexter, as he is face- tiously called, shipped warming-pans to the West Indies, in defiance of all geographical objections to the venture, and made money by the shipment, — not because warming-pans were wanted there, but be- cause the natives mistook, and used them for mo- lasses-ladles. It must be owned, that a portion of the successful ones are lucky ; that a portion of them use the blunt weapon of an indomitable will as an efficient substitute for the finer edge of that nice tact and good manners which they lack. Their very rudeness seems to commend them to the rude natures which confound refinement with trickery, and assume that brutality must needs be honest. But there are other things to be said of buying. The dry-goods jobber frequents the auction-room. If you have never seen a large sale of dry-goods at auction, you have missed one of the remarkable inci- dents of our day. You are not yet aware of how much an auctioneer and two or three hundred jobbers can do and endure in the short space of three hours. You must know that fifty or a hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods may easily change owners in that time. You are not to dream of the leisurely way of disposing of somebody's household-furniture or library, which characterizes the doings of one or two of our fellow-citizens who manage such matters within speaking distance of King's Chapel, but are rather to picture to yourself a congregation of three hundred of the promptest men in our Atlantic cities, A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 26/ with a sprinkling of Westerners quite as wide awake for bargains, each of them having marked his cata- logue ; an auctioneer who considers the sale of a hundred lots an hour his proper rble^ and who is able to see the lip, eye, or finger of the man whose note he covets, in spite of all sounds, signs, or opaque bodies. The man of unquiet nerves or of exacting lungs would do well to leave that arena to the hard heads and cool bloods who can pursue their aim, and secure their interests, undisturbed either by the frac- tional rat-a-tat-tat of the auctioneer's " Twenty-seven af — naf — naf — naf, — who '11 give me thirty ? " or by the banter and comicalities which a humor-loving auctioneer will interject between these bird-notes, without changing his key, or arresting his sale a moment. If you would see the evidence of compre- hensive and minute knowledge, of good taste, quick wit, sound judgment, and electrical decision, attend an auction-sale in New York some morning. There will be no lack of fun to season the solemnity of business, nor of the mixture of courtesy and selfishness usual in every gathering, whether for philanthropic, scientific, or commercial purposes. Many dry-goods jobbers will attend the sale with no intention of buy- ing, but simply to note the prices obtained, and hav- ing traced the goods to their owners, to get the same in better order, and on better terms ; the commission paid to the auctioneer being divided, or wholly con- ceded by the seller to the buyer, according to his es- timate of the note. 268 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. A dry-goods buyer will sometimes spend a month in New York, the first third, or half of which he will devote to ascertaining what goods are in the market, and what are to arrive ; also to learning the mood of the English, French, and Germans, who hold the largest stocks. Sometimes these gentlemen will make an early trial of their goods at auction. Un- satisfactory results will rouse their phlegm or fire ; and they declare they will not send another piece of goods to auction, come what may. For local or tem- porary reasons, buyers sometimes persist in holding back till the season is so far advanced, that the for- eign gentlemen become alarmed. Their credits in London, Paris, and Amsterdam, are running out; they are anxious to make remittances ; and then en- sues one of those dry-goods panics so characteristic of New York and its mixed multitude. An avalanche of goods descends upon the auction-rooms, and prices drop ten, twenty, forty per cent it may be ; and the unlucky or short-sighted men who made early pur- chases are in desperate haste to run off their stocks before the market is irreparably broken down. Whether, therefore, to buy early or late, in large or in small quantities, at home or abroad, are questions beset with difficulty. He who imports largely may land his goods in a bare market, and reap a golden harvest, or in a market so glutted with goods, that the large sums he counts out to pay the duties may be but a fraction of the loss he knows to be inevit- able. A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 269 In addition to the problems belonging to time and place of purchasing, to quantities and prices, there is a host of other problems begotten of styles, of colors, of assortments, of texture and finish, of adaptation to one market or another. The profit on a case of goods is often sacrificed by the introduction or omis- sion of one color or figure, the presence or absence of which makes the merchandise desirable or unde- sirable. Little less than omniscience will suffice to guard against the sometimes sudden, and often most unaccountable freaks of fashion, whose fiat may doom a thing, in every respect admirably adapted to its intended use, to irretrievable condemnation and loss of value. And when you remember that the pur- chases of dry-goods must be made in very large quantities, from a month, to six or even twelve months, before the buyer can sell them ; and that his sales are many times larger than his capital, and most of them on long credit, — you have before you a combination of exigencies hardly to be paralleled elsewhere. The crisis of 1857 brought a general collapse. Scores and scores of jobbers failed ; very few dared to buy goods. Mills were compelled to run on short time, or to cease altogether. The country became bare of the common necessaries of life. In process of time, trade rallied, manufacturing recommenced, orders for goods poured in ; and for a twelve month, and more, the manufacturer had it all his own way. His goods are all sold ahead, — months ahead of his 270 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. ability to manufacture. He makes his own price, and chooses his customer. This operates not un- kindly on the jobbers who are wealthy and independ- ent; but, for those who have but lately begun to mount the hill of difficult}^, it offers one more impedi- ment ; for, to men who have a great many goods to sell, it is a matter of moment to secure the customers who can buy in large quantities, and whose notes will bring the money of banks or private capitalists as soon as offered. Against such buyers, men of limited means and of only average business ability, have but a poor chance. There will always be some articles of merchandise in the buying or selling of which they cannot compete. When a financial crisis overtakes the community, we hear much and sharp censure of all speculation. Speculators, one and all, are forthwith consigned to an abyss of obloquy. The virtuous public outside of trade washes its hands of all participation in the in- iquity. This same virtuous public knows very little of what it is talking about. What is speculation? Shall we say, in brief and in general, that it consists in running risks, in taking extra-hazardous risks, on the chance of making unusually large profits ? Is it that men have abandoned the careful ways of the fathers, and do not confine themselves to small stores, small stocks, and cash transactions? And do you know who it is that has compelled this change ? That same public who denounce specula- tion in one breath, and in the next clamor for goods A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 2/1 at low prices, and force the jobber into large stores, and large sales at small profits, as the indispensable condition of his very existence. Those who thus rail at speculation are generally quite unaware that their own inexorable demand for goods at low prices is one of the principal efficient causes of that of which they complain. They do not know that the capacious maw of the insatiable public is yearly filled with millions on millions of shirtings and sheetings, and other articles of prime necessity, without one farthing of profit to the jobber. The outside world reason from the assumption that the jobber might, but will not, avoid taking considerable risks. They do not consider, for they do not know, how entirely all is changed from the days and cir- cumstances in which a very small business would suffice to maintain the merchant. They do not con- sider that an immense amount of goods being, of compulsion, sold without profit, a yet other huge amount must be so sold as to compensate for this. Nor do they consider that the possibility of doing this is often contingent upon the buyer's carefully cal- culated probability of a rise in the article he is pur- chasing. Many a time is the jobber enabled and in- clined to purchase largely only by the assurance, that, from the time of his purchase, the price will be ad- vanced. The sdli?ig of dry-goods is another department in high art about which the ignorance of outsiders is in- effable. I was once asked, in the way of courtesy 2/2 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. and good neighborhood, to call on a clergyman in our vicinity; which I did. Desirous of doing his part in the matter of good fellowship and smooth conversation, he began thus : — " Well, now, Mr. Smith, you know all about busi- ness. I suppose, if I were to go into a store to buy goods, nineteen men out of twenty would cheat me if they could ; would n't they ? " " No, sir," I answered, with a swelling of indigna- tion at the injustice, a mingling of pity for the ignor- ance, and a foreboding of small benefit from the preaching of a minister of the Gospel, who knew so little of the world he lived in, — "no, sir; nineteen men in twenty would not cheat you, if they could, for the surest of all reasons, — it w-ould be dead against their own interest." Not a day passes but the question is asked by our youths who are being initiated in the routine of sell- ing goods, " Is this honest ? Is that honest ? Is it honest to mark your goods as costing more than they do cost.^ Is it honest to ask one man more than you ask another ? Ought not the same price to be named to every buyer ? Is n't it cheating to get twenty-five per cent profit ? Can a man sell goods without lying ? Are men compelled to lie and cheat a little in order to earn an honest living ? " What is the reason that these questions will keep coming up ? that they can no more be laid than Banquo's ghost ? Here are some of the reasons. First and foremost, multitudes of young men, whose A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 2/3 parents followed the plough, the loom, or the anvil, have taken into their heads that they will neither dig, hammer, nor pl}^ the shuttle. To soil their hands with manual labor they cannot abide. The sphere of commerce looks, to their longing eyes, a better thing than lying down in green pastures, or than a peaceful life beside still waters, procured by laborious farming, or by any mechanical pursuit. Clean linen and stylish apparel are inseparably asso- ciated in their minds with an easy and elegant life ; and so they pour into our cities ; and the ranks of the merchants are filled and over-filled many times. Once, the merchant had only to procure an inviting stock, and his goods sold themselves. He did not go after customers ; they came to him ; and it was a matter of favor to them to supply their wants. Now all that is changed. There are many more mer- chants than are needed. Buyers are in request; and bu3^ers whose credit is the best, to a very great ex- tent, dictate the prices at which they will buy. The question is no longer, How large a profit can I get ? but, How small a profit shall I accept ? The compe- tition for customers is so fierce, that the seller hardly dares ask any profit, for fear his more anxious neigh- bor will undersell him. In order to attract cus- tomers, one thing after another has been made " a leading article," a bait to be offered at cost, or even less than cost, — that being oftentimes the condition on which alone the purchaser will make a beginning of buying. 2/4 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. "Jenkins," cried an anxious seller, "you don't buy anything of me ; and I can sell you as cheap as any. Here 's a bale of sheetings, now, at eight cents, will do you good." " How many have you got ? " " Oh, plenty ! " " Well, how many ? " " Fifteen bales." "Well, I '11 take them." " Come in, and buy something more." " No : nothing more to-day." Here was a loss of seventy-five dollars to the seller ; and yet his customer did not dare buy other goods. It will be obvious that the selling a part of one's goods at less than cost enhances the necessity of getting a profit on the rest. But how to do this, under the sharp scrutiny of a buyer who knows that his own success, not to say his very existence, depends upon his paying no profit possible to be avoided, — no profit, at all events, not certainly paid by some sharp neighbor, who is competing with him for the same trade. " But is there anything in all this," you are asking, " to preclude the jobber's telling the truth } " — " Nothing." — " Anything to preclude strict honesty } " — " Nothing." — " Why, then, do the questions you have quoted continually recur ? " I answer : In order to get his share of the best custom in his line, the dry-goods jobber has taken a A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 2J^ Store in the best position in town, at a rent of from three to fifty thousand dollars a year; has hired men and boys at all prices, from fifty dollars to five thou- sand, and enough of these to result, in an aggregate, of from five to fifty thousand dollars a year for help, without v/hich his business cannot be done. Add to this the usual average for store expenses of every name, and for the family expenses of two, five, or seven partners, and you find a dry-goods firm under the necessity of getting out of their year's sales somewhere from fifteen to a hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars' profit before they shall have saved one cent to meet the losses of an unfavorable season. Now, though there is nothing even in all these urgencies to justify a single lie or fraud, there is much to sharpen a man's wits to secure the sale of his goods ; much to educate him in all manner of ex- pedients to baffle the inquiries of customers v/ho would be offended if they could discover that he ever charged them the profit without which he could never meet his expenses. And the jobber's problem is complicated by the folh^, universally prevalent among buyers, of expecting som.e partiality, or peculiarity of favor over their neighbors, who are just as good as themselves. Every dry-goods jobber knows that his customer's foolish hope and expectation often de- mand three absurdities of him, — first, the assurance that he has the advantage over all other jobbers in a better stock of goods, better bought ; secondly, that he has a peculiar friendship for himself ; and, thirdly, 276 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. that, though of other men he must needs get a profit, in his special instance he shall ask little or none ; and that, such is his regard for him, it is a matter of no moment whether he live in Lowell or Louisiana, in New Bedford or Nebraska, or whether he pay New England bank-notes within thirty days, or wild- cat money and wild-lands, which may be converted into cash, with more or less expense and loss, some- where between nine months and nine and twenty years. And yet the uninitiated " can't understand how an honest merchant can have two prices for the same goods." An honest man has but one price for the same goods ; and that is the cash price. All outside of that is barter, — goods for notes. His first inquiry is " Whal* is the market value of the note offered ? " True, he knows that many of the notes he takes can- not be sold at all ; but he also knows, that the notes he is willing to take will, in the aggregate, be guar- anteed by a reservation of one, two, or three per cent, and that the note of the particular applicant for credit will tend to swell or diminish the rate ; and he can- not afford to exchange his goods for any note, except at a profit which will guaranty its payment when due, which, in other words, will make the note equal in value to cash. Now, it is just because all business-contingencies cannot be worked into an unvarying form as regular as the multiplication-table, and as plain to the appre- hension of all men, that a vast amount of Iving and A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 277 of dishonesty is imputed where it does not exist. Merchants are much like other men, — wise and un- wise, far-sighted and short-sighted, selfish and unself- ish, honest and dishonest. But that they are, as a class, more dishonest than other men, is so far from being true, that I much doubt if we should overstrain the matter if we should affirm that they are the most honest class of men in the community. There is much in their training which contributes directly, and most efficiently, to this result. Their very first lessons are in feet and inches, in pounds and ounces, in exact calculations, in accounts and balances. Careless- ness, mistakes, inaccuracies, they are made to under- stand, are unpardonable sins. The boy who goes into a ftore learns, for the first time, that half a cent, a quarter of a cent, an eighth of a cent, may be a mat- ter of the gravest import. He finds a thorough book- keeper absolutely refusing himself rest till he has detected an error of ten cents in a business of six months ; and every day's experience enforces the lesson. It is giving what is due, and claiming what is due, from year's end to year's end. Among mer- chants, it is matter of common notoriety, that the prompt and exact adherence to orders insisted on by merchants, and prompt advice of receipt of business and of progress, cannot be expected from our worthy brethren at the bar. (The few honorable exceptions are respectfully informed that they are not referred to.) We do not expect them to weigh or measure the needless annoyance to which they often, subject 278 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. US, because they have never been, like ourselves, trained to the use of weights and measures; and therefore we are not willing to stigmatize them as dishonest, though they do, in fact, often steal our time and strength and patience by withholding an answer to a business letter. None but those who are in the business know the assiduous attention with which the dry-goods jobber follows up his customers. None but they know the urgent necessity of doing this. The jobber may have travelled a thousand miles to make his customer's acquaintance, and to prevail upon him to come to Boston to make his purchases ; and some neighbor, who boards at the hotel he happens to make his rest- ing-place, lights upon him, shows him attention, tempts him with bargains not to be refused, prevails upon him to make the bulk of his purchases of him, before his first acquaintance even hears of his arri- val. To guard against disappointments such as this, the jobber sends his salesmen to live at hotels, haunts the hotels himself, studies the hotel-register far more assiduously than he can study his own com- fort, or the comfort of his wife and children. Of one such jobber it was said facetiously, " He goes the round of all the hotels every morning with a lantern, to wake up his customers." I had an errand one day at noon to such a devotee. Inquiring for him in the counting-room, I was told by his book-keeper to follow the stairs to the top of the store, and I should find him. I mounted flight after flight to the attic ; A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 279 and there I found, not only the man, but also one or two of his customers, surrounding a huge packing- case, upon which they had extemporized a dinner, — cold turkey and tongue, and other edibles, taken standing, with plenty of fun for a dessert. The next time we happened to meet, I said, " So you take not only time, but also customers, by the forelock." " Yes, to be sure ! " was his answer. " Let 'em go to their hotel to dinner in the middle of a bill, and somebody lights upon 'em, and carries 'em off to buy elsewhere; or they begin to remember that it is a long way home, feel homesick, slip off to New York as being so far on the way, and that 's the last you see of 'em. No : we're bound to see 'em through, and no let-up till they've bought all they've got on their memorandum." We have not yet touched the question of credit. To whom shall the jobber sell his goods ? It is the question of questions. Many a man who has bought well ; who, in other respects, has sold well ; who pos- sessed all the characteristics which recommend a man to the confidence and to the good-will of his fellows, — has made shipwreck of his fortunes be- cause of his inability to meet this question. He sold his goods to men who never paid him. To say that in this the most successful jobbers are governed by an instinct, by an intuitive conviction, which is supe- rior to all rules of judgment, would be to allege what it would be difBcult to prove. It would be less diffi- cult to maintain that every competent merchant, how- 280 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. ever unconscious of the fact, has a standard of judg- ment by which he tries each appHcant for credit. There are characteristics of men who can safely be credited, entirely familiar to his thoughts. He looks upon the man, and instantly feels that he is, or is not, the man for him. He thinks his decision an in- stinct, or an intuition, because, through much practice, these mental operations have become so rapid as to defy analysis. Not being infallible, he sometimes mistakes ; and, when he so mistakes, he will be sure to say, " I made that loss because I relied too much upon this characteristic, or because I did not allow its proper weight to the absence of some other ; be- cause I thought his shrewdness or his honesty, his enterprise or his economy, would save him ; " imply- ing that he had observed some non-conformity to his standard, but had relied upon some excellency in ex- cess to make up for it. What are the perplexities which beset the ques- tion, " To whom shall the jobber sell his goods ? " They are manifold : and some of them are peculiar to our country. Our territory is very extensive ; our population very heterogeneous ; the economy and close calculation which recommend a man in Massa- chusetts may discredit him in Louisiana. The very countenance is often a sure indication of char- acter and of capacity, when it is one of a class and a region whose pecularities we thoroughly understand ; but, coming to us from other classes and regions, we are often at fault, — more especially in these latter A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 28 1 days, when all strong-mindedness is presumed to be foreshadowed in a stiff beard. Time was, when something could be inferred from a lip, a mouth, a chin ; when character could be found in the contour and color of a cheek ; but that time has passed. The time was, when, among a homogeneous people, a few time-honored characteristics were both relied on and insisted on; for example,, good parentage, good moral character, a thorough training, and su- perior capacity, joined to industry, economy, sound judgment, and good manners ; but Young America has learned to make light of some of these, and to dispense altogether with others of them. Once, the buyer was required to prove himself an honest, worthy, and capable man. If he wanted credit, he must humbly sue for it, and prove himself deserving of it ; and no man thought of applying for it who was not prepared to furnish irrefragable evi- dence. Once, a reference to some respectable ac- quaintance would serve the purpose ; and neighbors held themselves bound to tell all they knew. The increase of merchants, and fierce competition for cus- tomers, have changed this. Men now regard their knowledge of other men as a part of their capital or stock-in-trade. Their knowledge has been acquired at much cost of labor and money ; and they hold themselves absolved from all obligation to give away what they have thus expensively acquired. More- over, their confidence has sometimes been betrayed, and their free communications have been remorse- 282 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. lessly used to their disadvantage. Alas, it cannot be denied that even dry-goods jobbers, with all their ex- traordinary endowments, are not quite perfect ; for some of them will " state the thing that is not," and others " convey " their neighbor's property into their own coffers, — men who prefer gain to godliness, and mistake much money for respectability. There are very few men, in certain sections of the country, w4io will absolutely refuse to give a letter of introduction to a neighbor on the simple ground of ill-desert. Men dread the ill-will of their neighbor, and particularly the ill-will of an unscrupulous neigh- bor ; so, when such a neighbor asks a letter, they give it. I remember such a one bringing a dozen or more letters, some of which contained the highest commendation. The writer of one of these letters sent a private note, through the mail, warning one of the persons addressed against the bearer of his own commendatory letter. Those who had no w^arh- ing sold, and lost. It would be difficult to find a man, however unworthy, who could not, from some quarter, obtain a very respectable letter of introduc- tion. One of the greatest rogues that ever came to Boston brought letters from two of the foremost houses in New York to two firms second to none in Boston. Neither of these gentlemen was in fault in the matter ; the train had been laid by some obliging cousin in a banking-house in London. In making up our account of the difficulties with which a dry-goods jobber has to deal in conducting a A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 283 successful business, it must be distinctly stated, that on no man can he count for information, which will, however remotely or slightly, compromise the interest of the one inquired of. Never, perhaps, was it so true as now, that " the seller has need of a hundred eyes." The competent jobber uses his eyes, first of all, upon the person of the man who desires to buy of him. He questions him about himself, with such directness or indirectness as instinct and experience dictate. He learns to discriminate between the sensitiveness of the high-toned honest man and the sensitiveness of the rogue. Many men of each class are inclined to resent and resist the catechism. Strange as it may seem, the very men \vho would inexorably refuse a credit to those who should de- chne to answer their inquiries are the men most inclined to resent any inquiry about themselves. While they demand the fullest and most particular information from their customers, they wonder that others will not take them on their own estimate of themselves. The jobber next directs his attention to the buyer's knowledge of goods, — of their qualit}^, their style, their worth in market, and their fitness for his own market; all of which w'ill come to light, as he offers to his notice the various articles he has for sale. He will improve the opportunity to draw him out in gen- eral conversation, so guiding it as to touch many points of importance, and yet not so as to betray a want of confidence. He sounds him as to his know- 284 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. ledge of other merchants at home and in the city ; takes the names of his references, — of several, if he can get them, — puts himself in communication with men who know him, both at his home and in the city. If he can harmonize the information derived from all these sources into a consistent and satisfac- tory whole, he will then do his utmost to secure his customer, both by selling him his goods at a profit so small that he need have little fear of any neigh- bor's underselling him, and also by granting every possible accommodation as to the time and manner of payment. A moderately-thoughtful man will by this time begin to think the elements of toil and of perplexity already suggested sufficient for the time and strength of any man, and more than he would wish to under- take. But experience alone could teach him in how many ways indulged customers can and do manage to make the profit they pay so small, and the toil and vexation they occasion so great, that the jobber is often put upon weighing the question, Should I not be richer without them ? Thus, for example, some of them will affect to doubt that the jobber wishes to sell to them, and propose, as a test, that he shall let them have some choice article at the cost, or at less than the cost, — now on one pretext, and now on another, — intimating an indisposition to buy, if they cannot be indulged in that one thing. If they carry their point, that exceptional price is thenceforth claimed as the rule. Another dav, the A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 2^5 concession will be asked on something else ; and, by- extending this game so as to include a number of jobbers, these shrewd buyers will manage to lay in an assorted stock on which there will have been little or no profit to the sellers. To cap the climax of vexation, these persons will very probably come in, after not many days, and propose to cash their notes at double interest off. Only an official of the Inqui- sition could turn the thumb-screw so many times, and so remorselessly. But we have yet to consider the collection of debts. The jobber who has not capital so ample as to buy only for cash is expected invariably to settle his purchases by giving his note, payable at bank, on a fixed day. He pays it when due, or fails. Not so with his customers; multitudes of them shrink from giving a note payable at bank ; and some alto- gether refuse to do so. They wish to buy on open account, or to give a note to be paid at maturity, if convenient ; otherwise not. The number of really prompt and punctual men, as compared with those who are otherwise, is very small. The number of those who never fail is smaller still. The collection- laws are completely alike, probably, in no two States. Some of them appear to have J)een constructed for the accommodation, not of honest creditors, but of dishonest debtors. In others, they are such as to put each jobber in fear of every other ; a first attach- ment taking all the property, if the debt be large enough, leaving little or nothing, usually, for those 286 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. who have been willing to give the debtor such indul- gence as might enable him to pay in full, were it granted by all his creditors. No jobber can open his letters in the morning in the certainty of finding no tidings of a failure. No jobber, leaving his breakfast-table, can assure his wife and children, sick or well, that he will dine or sup with them : any one of a dozen railroad trains may, for aught he knows, be sweeping him away to some remote point to battle with the mischances of trade, the misfortunes of honest men, or the knavery of rogues, and the meshes of the law. Once in the cars, he casts his eye around in uneasy expectation of finding some one or more of his neighbors bound on the same errand. While yet peering over the seats in front of him, he is unpleasantly startled by a slap on the shoulder, and, " Ah, John ! bound East? What's in the wind? Any ducks in these days ? " — " Why, — yes, — no, — that is, I 'm going down along, — little uncertain how far, — depends on circumstances." — " So, so, — I see, — mum's the word." Well, neither is quite ready to trust the other, neither quite ready to know the worst : so long as a blow is suspended, it may not fall ; and so, with desperate exertions, they change the subject, converse on things indifferent, or subside into more or less moody meditations upon their respective chances and prospects. Any jobber who has seen service will tell you stories without number of these vexatious experi- A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 28/ ences, sometimes dashed with the comical in no common measure. He will tell you of how they arrived at the last town on the railroad, some six or seven of them ; of how not a word had been lisped of their destination ; of the stampede from the rail- road-station to the tavern ; of the spirited bids for horses and wagons ; of the chopfallen disap^Doint- ment of the man for whom no vehicle remained ; of his steeple-chase a-bare-back ; and of their various successes with writs and officers, in their rush for the store of the delinquent debtors. Of three such Jehus, the story goes, that, two of them having bought the monopoly of the inside of the only vehi- cle, and in so doing, as they thought, having utterly precluded any chance for the third, their dauntless competitor instantly mounted with the driver, com- menced negotiations for the horse, which speedily resulted in a purchase, and thereupon detached the horse from the vehicle, drove on, and effected a first attachment, which secured his debt. The occurrence of " a bad year " compels many a jobber to abandon his store and home for one, two, or three months together, and visit his customers, scattered all over the land, to make collections. Then it is that the power of persuasion, if possessed, is brought into efficient use ; discrimination, too, is demanded, good judgment, and power of combina- tion ; for a debt that cannot be paid in money may possibly be paid partly in money, or in merchandise of some sort, and in part secured : and, among the 288 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. securities offered, to choose those which will involve the least delay is generally no easy matter. To those who, without experience, are commenc- ing a jobbing business, a capital of thirty, forty, or fifty thousand dollars, seems an inexhaustible fund. Experience teaches, that an incautious and unskilful man may easily bury even the largest of these sums in a single season. If not actually lost, it has, in effect, ceased to be capital, because it cannot be collected ; and the notes he has taken are such as will not be discounted. Success in the jobbing business makes such de- mand on talent and capacity as outsiders seldom dream of. Half a dozen secretaries of state, with a governor and a president thrown in, would not suffice to constitute a first-class jobbing-firm. The general or special incompetency of these distinguished func- tionaries in their several spheres may probably be covered by the capacity of their subordinates. The President of these United States — of late years, at all events — is not supposed to be in a position to know whether the will is or is not " a self-determin- ing power." But no jobbing-firm can thus cloak its deficiencies, or shirk its responsibilities. Goods must be bought and sold, and paid for ; and a master- spirit in each department, capable of penetrating to every particular, and .of controlling every subordi- nate, cannot be dispensed with. He must know that every man to whom he delegates any portion of his work is competent and trustworthy. He must A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 289 be able to feel that the thing which he deputes to each will be as surely and as faithfully done as though done by his own hand. No criticism is more common or more depreciatory than that " such a one will not succeed, because he has surrounded himself with incompetent men." It is much to be regretted that it cannot be said, that no man can succeed in the jobbing business who is not a model of courtesy. Unhappily, our com- munity has not yet reached that elevation. But this may with truth be affirmed, — that many a man fails for the want of courtesy, and from the want of that good will to his fellows from which all real courtesy springs. There is small chance for any man to suc- ceed who does not command his own spirit. There is no chance whatever for an indolent man, and, in the long run, little or no chance for the dishonest man. The same must be said for the timid and for the rash man. Nor can we offer any encouragement to the intermittent man. From year's end to year's end, the dry-goods jobber finds himself necessitated to be studying his stock and his ledger. He knows, that, while men sleep, the enemy will be sowing tares. In his case, the flying moments are the enemy, and bad stock and bad debts are the tares. To weed out each of these is his unceasing care. And, as both the one and the other are forever choking the streams of income which should supply the means of paying his own notes, his no less constant care is to provide such other conduits as shall insure him 290 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. always a full basin at the bank. Nobody but a job- ber can know the vexation of a jobber who cannot find money to cash his notes when they are begin- ning to be thrown into the market at a price a shade lower than his neighbor's notes are sold at. In conclusion, a few material facts should be stated. As a general proposition, it is not to be denied, that those who are in haste to get rich will find in the dry-goods jobbing business many temptations and snares into which one may easily fall. A young man who is not fortified by a faithful home-training, and by sound religious principle, will be likely enough to degenerate into a heartless money-maker. While the young man \vho has been well trained at home, who appreciates good manners, good morals, and good books, will derive immense advantage in acquiring that quick discernment, that intuitive ap- prehension of the rights and of the i^leasure of others, and that nice tact, which characterize the highest style of merchants, he who has not been thus pre- pared will be more than likely to mistake brusqiccrie for manliness, and brutality for the sublime of inde- pendence. As in a great house there are vessels unto honor, and also unto dishonor, so, in the pur- lieus of the dry-goods trade, there are gentlemen who would honor and adorn any society, and also men whose manners would shame Hottentots ; whose language, innocent of all preference for Worcester or Webster, a terror to all decent ideas, like scare- A DRY-GOODS JOBBER. 29I crows in cornfields, is dressed in the cast-off garments of the refuse of all classes. Success in retailing does not necessarily qualify a man to succeed in the dry-goods jobbing business. The game is played on a much larger scale ; it in- cludes other chances, and demands other qualifica- tions, natural and acquired. Instances are not want- ing of men, who, in the smaller towns, had made to themselves a name, and acquired an honorable inde- pendence, sinking both capital and courage in their endeavors to manage the business of a city-jobber. It should be well remembered, that while it is not indispensable to success in the jobbing business that each partner should be an expert in every department of the business, — in buying, selling, collecting, pay- ing, and book-keeping, — it is absolutely necessary that each should be such in his own department, and that the firm, as a unit, should include a completely competent man for each and every one of these de- partments. The lack of the qualities which are indis- pensable to any one of these may, and probably will, prove an abyss deep enough to engulf the largest commercial ship afloat. Finally, to avoid disappointment, the man who would embark in the dry-goods trade should make up his mind to meet every variety of experience known to mortals, and to be daunted by nothing. He will assuredly find fair winds and head winds, clear skies and cloudy skies, head seas and cross seas, as well as stern seas. A wind that justifies 292 BUSINESS LIFE ILLUSTRATED. Studding-sails may change, without premonition, to a gale that will make ribbons of topsails and of storm- sails. The best crew afloat cannot preclude all casu- alties, or exclude sleepless nights and cold sweats now and then ; but a quick eye, a cool head, a prompt hand, and indomitable perseverance, will overcome •almost all things. [This outline of a business life was sketched in the heyday of New England's jobbing history. The number of her jobbers was larger than at any period before or since. Their ambition as a class might be considered to have reached its climax. As a class they were viewed with envy. The good results of a successful business were more evenly diffused than in more recent days. There was competition then, as I have indicated. But the day had not then fully come for the illustration of how a few ambitious men, with unusual facilities, and great capacity for hardness and endurance, could monopolize a business and drive almost all competitors out of it. The best and happiest period for any business, is that in which a competent number of per- sons dedicated to it may acquire a fair support in its pursuit without injurious toil, without detriment to body or soul, without such oppress- ive strain as precludes the best cultivation of mind and heart. We live in hope of a day in which the intelligent and well-educated minis- ter may find a way to point out the metes and bounds which define the fields of legitimate labor, whether for body, mind, or heart. It is cer- tain that many, very many business men at present miss the divisions which should enable them to make the most and the best of life. Me who would be a useful religious teacher cannot take refuge always in abstract tmth ; he must know as much as possible of the formative influences which are making the people of his charge what they are. After carefully considering all that may be truly affirmed of the war- rant to do a very large business, because of one's finding himself endued with the genius for doing it, it is also to be considered whether any man, however largely endowed with a genius for drawing all the business into his warehouse, has a moral right to do this to the destruc- tion of the livelihood of ten, twenty, or a hundred neighbors. Obvi- ously only one or two in a hundied, or in a thousand, can succeed in this A DRY-GOODS JOBBER, 293 modern scheme of monopolizing all the business, by underselling, and so annihilating others. That our Lord Jesus would not countenance any such selfish course, needs no argument. " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," begins and ends the argument. His warning precedes and follows this : " They that will be rich, fall into tempta- tion and a snare, which drown men's souls in destruction and perdi- tion." Said a wealthy merchant to his physician and intimate friend : " No man ever made a million of dollars honestly.''^ He had nearly a million and a quarter when he said it.] COMMENDATIONS. " Heaven. — I have seen nothing on the subject which pleased me so much. The views are original, and I think just. Some of them 1 do not remember to have seen presented at all ; and others not so well." — Rev. Dr. Mark Hopkins., Williams College, Mass. " The book is full of beautiful ideas, consoling hopes, and brilliant representations of human destiny ; all presented in a chaste, pleasing, and very readable style." — New York Chronicler " I LIKE his way of approaching the subject. The book develops in a very pleasing manner a line of thought peculiar and untouched by any of the many who have written on it." — Rev. Prof. Saimiel Harris^ Yale College, Conn. " We welcome this contribution to our religious literature. Free from pedantry, and the conventionalities of logic and style, it comes to us with a freshness of thought and a fervor of feeling that are ofteji wanting in a scholar's page. The author draws illustrations some- times from scenes with which the professional teacher is little conver- sant." — Neiv York Independent. " Death, as seen from Mr. K.'s point of view, is a natural event in the order of the Christian's life. Instead of recoiling from inevitable destiny, we are led by this more familiar view to look upon the change without fear, yea, with cheerfulness."^— A'^t'. Dr. H. B. Hackett, Newton Theological Seminary. " Full of pointed illustrations, fresh, vigorous writing ; nothing dull ; short, crisp sentences ; the reader is borne on rapidly ; the writer speaks as though his thoughts rushed upon him. A fullness of nature, and joy in life runs through it." — S. K. B. COMMENDATIONS. " I HAVE read it a second time, and more reflectively than at first ; and under this second reading its value has risen in iiy estimation. His method is the true one; for Scripture makes Heaven to be but the full development and perfection of the spiritual life in an appropriate world, and in fitting circumstances ; and this is the Heaven whicii this book sweetly and beautifully sets forth. Sounder doctrine concerning Heaven J have not seen." — Rev. Dr. Thomas H. Skinner, Union Theological Seminary, New York. "The author is certainly an independent thinker, as well as a vigorous writer, and has written a book that will' please the thoughtful, and will astonish pious people, who seldom, and always timidly, think. Free from the technicalities of theological science, his style is all the more pleasing. In short, everything about the book is fresh and racy. The author's views of the society, joy, and occupations of Heaven are somewhat peculiar, but not the less philosophical and acceptable. We admire him intensely, and wish him God-speed." — Western Literary Messenger. " It is one of the most interesting books I have ever perused. I purpose that many of my friends and neighbors shall read it. No one can read it, certainly no Christian, without profit." — Rev. E. Bridgman, Shanghai, China. " I HAVE read Mr. K.'s book with no small pleasure. The trans- parency of its style carries you along most agreeably, and the vigor of its thoughts impresses you and sets you a thinkinf^ for yourself. The book is full of thought, and there is much beauty both of sentiment and words ; and no one will be wearied with its chapters, nor think them too many, nor too long." — Rev. Dr. Horatius Bonar, Edinburgh, Scot- land. Date Due J % # Prrnceton Theological Semmary-Speer Lil 1 1012 01028 1519