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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS 
 
 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 
 
 MEN OF AFFAIRS 
 
 HENRY A. STIMSON 
 
 PASTOR OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE CONGREGATIONAL 
 CHURCH 
 
 Vh% 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH 
 & COMPANY (Inc.) 
 
 l82 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 Iv 
 

 Copyright, 1894, by 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 
 
 (incorporated) 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 EDWARD O. JENKINS' SON, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
BUSINESS MEN 
 
 TO WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY PRIVILEGE TO PREACH, 
 AMONG WHOM ARE SOME OF THE NOBLEST 
 MEN AND THE PUREST, TRUEST CHRIS- 
 TIANS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Fishers op Men 9 
 
 II. God as a Partner 27 
 
 III. Business in Religion 41 
 
 IV. Religion in Business 57 
 
 Y. Business and Christian Service .... 75 
 
 VI. The Demand for Progress 93 
 
 VII. The Home and the Business 109 
 
 VIII. The Sure Promise 123 
 
 IX. Christ and the Poor 135 
 
FISHERS OF MEN". 
 
" And He saith unto them, Follow me, and I will 
 make you fishers of men. And they straightway 
 left their nets and followed Him."— Matt. iv. 19 20. 
 
 (» 
 
FISHERS OF MEN. 
 
 LUKE tells us that the call of the disciples fol- 
 lowed immediately upon the miraculous draught 
 of fishes. You remember that Peter, with Andrew, 
 his brother, and James and John, his partners, were 
 engaged in their avocation of fishermen upon the 
 Lake of Galilee, when Jesus came to them. It is 
 said that to-day one little crazy boat is the sole 
 representative of the fleet of vessels that was en- 
 gaged in the business in the time of the Gospel. 
 The lake is still abundantly stocked with fish. The 
 catching, curing, and sale of these constituted so 
 important an industry that the Jews have a tra- 
 dition to the effect that one of the ten laws of 
 Joshua decreed that the lake should always be open 
 to all comers. Not only did the dwellers on its 
 shores derive an important part of their sustenance 
 from the waters of the lake, but fish formed one 
 of the chief articles of their commerce with other 
 places. The indications are that several, at least, 
 of the apostles had acquired some property, and 
 conducted what would to-day be called a fishing 
 business. They employed men and boats. 
 
 While they are engaged, then, in their daily avo- 
 cation, and after the wholesome fashion of the 
 
 (9) 
 
10 FISHERS OF MEN. 
 
 olden times, when the head of an establishment 
 knew the details of his business at least as well as 
 his employees, and worked with them, they are in 
 the boats superintending, and aiding in the draw- 
 ing of the nets, Jesus comes to them along the 
 shore. At the moment they have drawn the boats 
 upon the beach preparatory to going home. They 
 have toiled all night and have taken nothing. 
 
 At the command of Jesus they embark and draw 
 their nets once more. To their amazement the net 
 is full to the point of breaking. Two boats are re- 
 quired to empty it, and they both are loaded to the 
 water's edge. The Lord has set the stamp of His 
 approval upon their occupation. What a joy to 
 them ! "What a pleasure it is to any man to have 
 the choicest of bis friends, whose companionship 
 he cherishes, whose influence he values, show an 
 interest in his business; come to see him at it, walk 
 through his store or his factory, hear the story of 
 its growth, and rejoice with him in his prospects ! 
 Where is the artisan so dull that he does not show 
 to such a friend with pride the product of his skill? 
 And here is the Lord, whom they have already 
 learned to love, coming to the disciples' place of 
 business, interested in their affairs ; and, what is 
 more, finding them in the condition to which all 
 business men, even the most successful, are exposed, 
 of temporary ill-success, giving them the benefit 
 of His wiser counsel and larger resources, so effect- 
 
FISHEES OF MEN. 11 
 
 ively that when they act upon His suggestion and 
 resume their disappointing labor, they have great 
 returns. 
 
 This was just the approving blessing that we all 
 want. We each know our business better than we 
 know anything else. Our heart is in it. We often 
 talk differently. We wish we were out of it. We 
 envy others. We say, " Times have changed." ' 
 "There is no profit." "Competition is cruel." 
 But after all, it is the only thing we know thor- 
 oughly. The best years of our life have gone into 
 it. That store, those goods, that machinery repre- 
 sent just so much of your brain and heart. Per- 
 haps from the day you left your father's house, or 
 came to New- York a poor youth, you have worked 
 in this one line. For it you have labored and 
 struggled. A self-forgetfulness so constant that it 
 has become a habit that sets the claim of business 
 always first, patience that has brooked all forms 
 of trial, labor often unrewarded and unrecognized, 
 and which takes no account of weariness, cour- 
 age which fire and blood, pestilence and panic have 
 not daunted, have all gone into it, till you may say 
 with Jacob, " These twenty years have I been with 
 thee. I bore the loss of it, of my hand didst thou 
 require it whether stolen by day or stolen by night. 
 In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost 
 by night, and my sleep departed from mine eyes. v 
 
 In any case it is your business ; all you have. I 
 
12 FISHERS OF MEN. 
 
 might almost say, all you are ! What a joy it would 
 be if the Lord would come to you as He did to 
 Peter and John and set His blessing on your 
 work! 
 
 I am sure you would not ask at His hand a 
 miraculous draught. You do not care so much for 
 pecuniary success, pleasant as that would be. It 
 would be enough for many of you, dear friends, 
 shall I not say for all, if the Lord would come and 
 bless your business ; if He would say, " This is 
 honorable. This, and not something else, is what 
 I want you to do. Keep on. Be calm and stead- 
 fast. Here is your true service. Here you are to 
 win your final reward. At least, here, where the 
 necessities of life have placed you, there is nothing 
 incompatible with true service, nothing to prevent 
 your achieving all your heart and mine could 
 desire." 
 
 A sense of blessing such as these words give 
 would have filled the disciples' hearts had Jesus 
 quietly withdrawn, saying nothing more, after the 
 draught of the net. If He had so done, the same 
 blessing would come to us to-day, and every one of 
 you business men could go to your work to-morrow 
 cheered and strengthened. You would say, "If 
 the Lord Jesus in the three brief troubled years of 
 His earthly ministry, could care to go and help down- 
 hearted and unsuccessful fishermen, He cannot be 
 unmindful of me. If He were here and should 
 
FISHERS OF MEN. 13 
 
 walk into my store, or stand at my bench, or sit at 
 my desk, I have reason to believe that He would 
 cheer and help me. In any case He would not 
 disapprove because I sell dry-goods, or run a 
 printing-press, or make shoes, or handle iron, or 
 oil, or paper, or cloth, or what not, and tell me to 
 give it up, and go and do something else." 
 
 This is what you might say if it were not for our 
 text. For we find that Jesus did not so leave the 
 fishermen, saying nothing. On the contrary, when 
 their net was filled, and full because He had helped 
 them fill it, He gives them the sudden and unlooked- 
 for command. " And He saith unto them, Follow 
 me and I will make you fishers of men." And that 
 there might be no mistake about it, no thought 
 that He was not in earnest, the evangelist adds, 
 " And they straightway left their nets and followed 
 Him." 
 
 Here, then, dear friends, where we were not ex- 
 pecting it, is the lesson for us. We express it in 
 these words, "Success in business, or the posses- 
 sion of special and recognized talent for worldly 
 things, is no ground of exemption from special 
 religious service." 
 
 It would be a false inference that, because our 
 Lord called Peter and his companions to leave their 
 fishing and become His apostles, every Christian 
 must leave his business and go to preaching. The 
 New Testament is full of the opposite truth. In- 
 
14 FISHERS OF MEN. 
 
 deed far the largest number of believers must in 
 every age " abide in the calling wherein he is 
 called." 
 
 But here is the real lesson. Just as little as Peter 
 might have acceptably said, " Lord, I have a large 
 business, indeed very large; my nets are full; unless 
 I give my whole attention to them I shall suffer 
 loss, therefore I cannot come." So little can the 
 Christian say to-day, "Lord, you have given me 
 ten talents, I have a great business, or I am in a 
 first-rate place, or I see a chance of making a pile 
 of money, or I have a gift for music, or art, or 
 literature, and I must devote all my strength and 
 care to cultivating it. I cannot take the time to do 
 any religious work; or, indeed, to care particularly 
 about religious things." 
 
 Jesus' voice is heard addressing you, successful 
 business men and women, you prosperous, you effi- 
 cient, you hard-working ones, in the day of your 
 largest prosperity, when His blessing has been 
 upon you in your temporal affairs, and saying to 
 you, not, "Leave your business"; not, "Disregard 
 and neglect your gift"; but, "Follow me. This 
 business, these gifts, you yourself, are mine. Be 
 mine. Live for me. Plunge your hands into your 
 business. Do it with your might, but keep your 
 heart open. Lift up your eyes and look about you. 
 Tou have a soul to save, and so has your fellow- 
 man. These are temporal things. They perish in 
 
FISHERS OF MEN. 15 
 
 the using. There are eternal things. Heed them. 
 The fields are white for harvest. Follow me. Yes, 
 you business men. I have work for you. I will 
 make you fishers of men." 
 
 Surely, dear friends, this is not a hard command. 
 It is not so much a command as it is a promise, and 
 a privilege. At your business in the day of your 
 largest success, your heaviest duties, you are called 
 to the special service of Christ, you are permitted 
 to do your part and win your reward as fishers of 
 men. Out of this your most frequent, your most 
 natural excuse, there shall come, if you will, largest 
 blessing. Let me unfold this truth for you. 
 
 I know that you are ready to recognize, first of 
 all, that your business, large as it may be, your 
 duties, pressing as they may appear, all belong to 
 God. 
 
 I am aware that it is common to make a distinction 
 between things secular and things religious. But 
 the distinction is unsound and misleading. In no 
 circumstances of life can we draw a line and say on 
 that side lie my relations to God ; on this side my 
 relations to the world. If we may venture to say 
 what is the most important contribution of modern 
 thought to the life of the world it is the emphasis 
 which is now laid upon what is called "the im- 
 manence of God," i.e., the real presence of God in 
 nature as the centre and source of all existence and 
 life. Men have held that God is the creator of all ; 
 
1G FISHERS OF MEN. 
 
 but arresting the thought there, they have regarded 
 the creation as something quite apart from the 
 Creator, as something, therefore, transient, non- 
 essential, and possibly in its nature harmful — in any 
 case a clog and hindrance to the upward flight of 
 the soul in its effort to reach its true life in God. 
 Our life on earth has made certain duties necessary, 
 at least to some, that the work of the world may 
 go on. These are secular. We are to commiserate 
 ourselves so far as we are bound by them, and to 
 escape them when we may, that we may give our- 
 selves to things religious : the things of God and 
 the soul. 
 
 It is an impossible distinction. It will not work. 
 More than a century ago a great philosopher, Eman- 
 uel Kant, from the standpoint of pure metaphysics, 
 foreshadowed the difficulty into which we have fallen. 
 He said, " Without God and without a world in- 
 visible to us now, but hoped for, the glorious ideas 
 of ethics may indeed be objects of admiration and 
 approbation, but cannot be the springs of purpose 
 and action." Yet men have tried to create a world 
 that would run by itself. We have sought a foun- 
 dation for morals in utility, or in self-interest, or in 
 humanity. We have attempted to build States on 
 the basis of reference only to the issues of this life. 
 We have measured the relations of one State to 
 another by policy. We have exalted statesmen 
 who were shrewd. We have tried to shut out the 
 
FISHERS OF MEN. 17 
 
 consideration of private character from the ques- 
 tion of fitness for public office; we have attempted 
 a scheme of general education without the Bible. 
 We have suffered the Sabbath to lose its sanctity. 
 In short, we have tried to do that which the philos- 
 opher showed to be impossible. We have erected 
 a scheme of the universe in which there shall be a 
 moral law without the sanction and authority of 
 religion. We have sought to set God outside of 
 daily life. 
 
 Now the reaction has come ; Philosophy, and 
 Science in her larger realms, have come to our aid. 
 They emphasize this truth, that God is in all life, 
 or He is in none. This world is not the prelude and 
 portal to another world, nor even a preparation for 
 it. It is a part of it. Life does not give place to 
 eternity, it stretches out into it. Eternity is here 
 and now, if it is anywhere. The grave alters 
 neither character nor destiny. Every act of ours, 
 every duty, stands in immediate relation to God, or 
 no act, no duty, can have such relations. To-day, 
 to-morrow, yesterday, are to us as truly days of 
 destiny as any day can be. 
 
 In other words, the prevalent distinction between 
 the secular and the religious has utterly broken 
 down. A man who has one code of morals for his 
 home and church, and another for his business, has 
 in fact no morals. A man whose public character 
 is reputable, and his private character vicious, is 
 
18 FISHERS OF MEN. 
 
 without character. A man, even, who would do 
 business for himself, who is indifferent to the wel- 
 fare of his neighbor, who holds might to be right, 
 who is cruel in competition, who cares not for the 
 city in which he dwells except in those things in 
 which his interests are concerned, and who would 
 leave God and the ministers to look after the world 
 at large, because these are things secular, and 
 those things religious, has no standing ground 
 whatever. He is not simply unmoral ; he is im- 
 moral. A world so organized would go to ruin. 
 If we are not governing our daily conduct by 
 the code of heaven, we are governing it by the 
 code of hell. There is no third alternative. 
 The commands of God are comprehensive and 
 exclusive. He is in all. All life is His. All 
 that we do is to Him, or you and I are not His in 
 anything. 
 
 Consider now for a moment, in the second 
 place, how this thought exalts and ennobles all 
 life. 
 
 Here and there we see a life that is beautiful 
 without religion ; pure, large-minded, beneficent. 
 How is it to be explained? It is a fact often 
 noticed and commented upon. The late Professor 
 Renan not long since referred to it as a witness of 
 the survival in men of the influences of the past, 
 the home in which they were bred, the faith of 
 their childhood, the stock of which they come. He 
 
FISHERS OF MEN. 19 
 
 speaks of such a man as being in the "shadow" 
 of his past. "We might perhaps better say the 
 afterglow. But that is all that can be said. It has 
 no future. The children, the pupils of such a man, 
 will have, as M. Renan points out, only " the shadow 
 of a shadow" as their moral atmosphere. There 
 is no warmth, no impulse, no life in that. It is at 
 best a decadent, evanescent force. Such fine char- 
 acters in their best estate are but like the fly-wheel 
 of an engine which keeps up its stately motion for 
 a time after the steam has been shut off. It has 
 the semblance of force, but is without productive 
 power. 
 
 On the contrary, the Christian, be he high or 
 low, in favorable or in adverse circumstances, if he 
 is a true Christian, a child of God, has God in all 
 his life. He is at his work. You see him there in 
 his office, on the board of trade, at his work-bench, 
 on the railway train, he is living for God ; imper- 
 fectly it may be, but none the less truly. His busi- 
 ness is large, his mind is full, his hours engrossed, 
 but when the pressure is off, his thoughts spring back 
 erect to God. His true self is there with him at 
 his work, and it is his better self. There is no dis- 
 tinction between them. Call his occupation " secu- 
 lar " if you will : it is for this age (the world must 
 have clothes, and shoes, and railways, and houses to 
 dwell in), it is none the less religious, for it is 
 l>ound to God. He is a layman — one of the peo- 
 
20 FISHERS OP MEN. 
 
 pie, as distinct from the clergy, — but none the less 
 dedicated to God and God's work, because to him 
 all the people are God's. So this truth ennobles 
 and glorifies common life. 
 
 But that this ennobling of life may be to us 
 something more than a sentiment, dear friends, we 
 must live in this way. The Lord has spoken to us. 
 He has opened to us the high place of privilege. 
 Let us then, in the third and last place, ask, " What 
 are some of the tests by which we may know that 
 we are thus following Him ? " 
 
 "Am I making an excuse of the pressure of 
 business?" Is it leading me to do what I once 
 would not have done? Is it lowering my stand- 
 ard of morals and of character? Is it trespass- 
 ing upon my duties in my home as a husband and 
 father? Is it drying up the wells of personal re- 
 ligion, shutting me out from prayer and the Bible ? 
 Is it keeping me from the prayer-meeting and from 
 church ? Is it an excuse from taking a part in the 
 thought, the labor, the giving which are necessary 
 if the cause of God is to go forward in New- 
 York and in the world? That is the first ques- 
 tion. Its force lies in the command of Christ 
 to the disciples at the hour when their nets were 
 full. 
 
 But furthermore, we must ask ourselves, " In my 
 business am I really living as a Christian ? " It is 
 so easy to say that we are Christians, and all we 
 
FISHERS OF MEN. 21 
 
 have is God's, and to be content with registering 
 the declaration. 
 
 " How easier far is devout enthusiasm 
 Than a good action : and how willingly 
 Our indolence takes up with pious rapture, 
 Though at the time unconscious of its end: 
 Only to save the toil of useful deeds." 
 
 What Lessing thus expressed of himself in Ger- 
 many, is as true of us to-day in America. Recently 
 a young Christian said to me that one chief ob- 
 stacle in the way of his religious life is the conduct 
 of the superintendent of the shop in which he 
 works, who is a professed Christian. 
 
 Peter and Andrew had to leave their business to 
 follow Jesus. So Jesus calls to many a lad, many a 
 young man, to turn aside from tempting openings 
 for business and enter the ministry. It is a rare 
 privilege. The Lord has need of you as He had of 
 Peter. But all cannot do this. We often think, 
 " If we could only do it, how easy it would be to 
 be disciples, and to win men." The Lord thinks 
 differently. He needs witnesses in the machine- 
 shop, in the store, in every business, as truly as in 
 the ministry, and that is your duty. There died, 
 not very long since, in New York, a business man 
 of my acquaintance who years ago was living 
 in the West. He was then young and prosperous. 
 He was a Christian of high character and consecra- 
 tion, and the thought came to him that he should 
 
22 FI8HEE8 OF MEN. 
 
 turn aside from business and fit himself for the 
 ministry. He sought counsel of his pastor, who 
 said to him, " No, you have pre-eminent gifts for 
 business. God has so endowed you. Accept the 
 gifts and the responsibility. Do business for God." 
 He took the advice. He set apart at once a certain 
 and a large portion of his income to beneficence ; 
 he interested himself deeply and widely in religious 
 things. He lived to advanced life. A uniform and 
 remarkable prosperity attended him, and when Mr. 
 Winthrop Gilman died, the cause of Christianity, as 
 represented by the great Presbyterian Church of 
 the United States, lost one of its wisest and most 
 widely useful men. 
 
 Kemember, beloved, that God needs you more 
 than He does your work in the world. Ask, then, 
 constantly, "Am I His? Is my heart set on Him? 
 In my affections, my desires, my purposes, my am- 
 bitions, am I living for God ? is God and His cause 
 my inspiration, my aim ? " 
 
 "Follow me!" Yes, you, dear friend, who to- 
 morrow must bend yourself to the weary toil of 
 another week. In your counting-room, at your 
 desk, in the factory, with your hands upon a full or 
 a breaking net, Jesus, your Lord, has come to bid 
 you follow Him. Till He releases you, you are to 
 serve Him there. You are to seek no present re- 
 lease. That is the post of high privilege, because 
 the post of present service. 
 
FI8HEE8 OF MEN. 2d 
 
 "I will make you fishers of men." How? By 
 the power of Christ dwelling in you, and speaking- 
 through you. "I pray not that Thou shouldest 
 take them out of the world, but that Thou should- 
 est keep them from the evil," is our Lord's prayer 
 for you. Accept your privilege, then, and your ser- 
 vice. Take up your business to-morrow, and each 
 day, for God, who has placed you in it. Open your 
 heart and lift up your eyes to the cause of Christ 
 that you may forward it, and try so to live that at 
 last of you it shall be said, " He was one, 
 
 ' ' Who from no task of Christ so'er, 
 True soldier, sought indulgence. 
 To him it wore so grand an air, 
 Was lit with such effulgence," 
 
 because in it you saw Christ, and found an oppor- 
 tunity of serving Him. 
 
GOD AS A PARTNER. 
 
"Neither shall any man desire thy land when 
 thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy 
 God thrice in the year." — Exodus xxxiv. 24. 
 
 (26) 
 
GOD AS A PAKTNER 
 
 TF there is any promise in the Bible which can 
 -*- be taken as meaning just what it says, it is this. 
 Nothing could be more solemn than the circum- 
 stances in which it was uttered. The people had 
 sinned in the matter of the golden calf. The two 
 tables of the law had been broken to pieces, and 
 only in response to Moses' throwing himself into 
 the breach and making supplication for the people, 
 did the Lord refrain from visiting them in judg- 
 ment, if not consuming them altogether. 
 
 But He hearkened to the prayer of His servant. 
 Alone on the smoking mount, while the conscience- 
 stricken people waited in terror at its base, the 
 Lord had passed before Moses, and, covered in the 
 cleft of the rock from the glory which no man can 
 see and live, he had heard repeated the words 
 which answered the broken covenant: "The Lord, 
 the Lord God merciful and gracious, long suffering 
 and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping 
 mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and trans- 
 gression and sin, and that will by no means clear 
 the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon 
 the children, and upon the children's children unto 
 the third and to the fourth generation." 
 
 (27) 
 
28 GOD AS A PARTNER. 
 
 Then came the repetition of the commandments 
 as the basis of the new relation between God and 
 His people, coupled with solemn warnings as to 
 keeping them, and the certain, definite, and far- 
 reaching promise of blessing, among which is this 
 of our text. In the new land Israel was to be sur- 
 rounded with many powerful and rapacious ene- 
 mies — enemies far too great for their unaided 
 strength. But Jehovah would go with them. He 
 would drive out the Amorite, the Canaanite, and 
 the Hittite to give them the land. And, once in it, 
 their sole duty would be to live exactly as God had 
 commanded them, and God would take care of the 
 rest. Among other things, tbrice in the year they 
 were to leave their homes and their fields and go 
 up with their children to appear before the Lord 
 in united and public worship. And they were to 
 do it without fear of the enemies that hung about 
 them eager to seize every opportunity to pounce 
 upon their defenceless possessions, for the Lord 
 would be their defence. So complete was to be the 
 protection, that while they were away on the Lord's 
 business there would even be no fighting. The 
 enemy would be made to see the hopelessness of it, 
 and no man would so far desire their land as to 
 venture to lay hands upon it. 
 
 " Would that we could trust God to do that now- 
 adays," some one says. Hard experience has taught 
 us that a man must look out for himself. He must 
 
GOD AS A PARTNER. 29 
 
 keep his eye on the main chance, and let no oppor- 
 tunity slip. Eeligion is all very well. The pre- 
 cepts of the Bible are all right. That is the way to 
 heaven. But for this life theory has to be qualified. 
 Sunday-school politics don't work. Neither does 
 Sunday-school business. You have to fight for 
 what you get. If you go into trade you must fol- 
 low the laws of trade. If you would succeed in the 
 world, you must meet the world on its own ground 
 and do business with the tools of business. I think 
 I am not putting it too strongly. Business men 
 tell me what their competitors do. Christian men 
 say, "You cannot know what the pressure is until 
 you are in it yourself." Young men are counselled 
 to get ahead when they can. We all feel how much 
 depends upon ourselves. We are tremulous lest 
 we lose some passing opportunity, or lest others 
 will think less well of us because we let it slip. 
 The very women innocently wonder how a man 
 who does not read the Sunday newspaper can get 
 along without the news. The young business man 
 fears if he does not go to the post-office or get his 
 mail on Sunday something may happen, and the 
 older one thinks that unless he disregards Sunday 
 by travelling at one end of the day or the other he 
 will lose something. 
 
 Somehow we seem to drop God out ; not pro- 
 fessedly but actually. God will care for us ; i.e., 
 if we take good care of ourselves. God's laws are 
 
30 GOD AS A PARTNER. 
 
 good and right ; i.e., if you do not apply them too 
 closely, or take them too literally. We may trust 
 in the Lord ; particularly if we have on our side 
 the heaviest battalions. His word will do for a 
 lamp for our feet, especially if we add to it con- 
 siderable worldly wisdom. How utterly opposed 
 to this is the word of God itself : " Trust in the 
 Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine 
 own understanding." " Commit thy way unto the 
 Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to 
 pass." "Go up to appear before the Lord thy 
 God" : i.e., take that command as a type of all ; 
 do what He has told you to do ; obey His word 
 just as He has given it — and no man shall desire 
 thy land. Did ever any trust in Him and be con- 
 founded? 
 
 This is the question, dear friends, we are all 
 called to face! Are we to trim and qualify and 
 walk delicately with the commandments of God, or 
 are we to obey them and leave the rest to God ? 
 
 Let us point out three or four plain truths, and 
 then make an apphcation. 
 
 First of ah, I think no one will seriously claim 
 that the earth is so far developed as to have escaped 
 from God's hands. "The earth is the Lord's." 
 He may choose to deal with it in one way or 
 another. We may trace His hand in natural law, 
 or in sudden cataclysm, but that the earth did not 
 create itself and does not run itself is plain. It 
 
GOD AS A PARTNER. 31 
 
 was made by God and belongs to God in all its 
 length and breadth, and has not for one instant 
 oscaped out of His control. Its forces are His 
 movements. Its laws are simply His ways, whether 
 they be laws of gravitation or laws of trade. The 
 swing of the planets in their courses, and the de- 
 composition of the gray matter in your brain which 
 issues in thought are alike obedient to Him. The 
 silver and the gold — all of it — is His. And so is 
 success in business, and health and prosperity, 
 and fame and triumph over enemies, and the wel- 
 fare of your family and all that your heart can 
 wish. 
 
 It is well to remember this : that not a man can 
 get any one of these possessions, or hold it, except 
 by the will of God. When God undertakes to be- 
 stow it upon a man nothing can prevent his having 
 it ; and when God undertakes to withhold it from 
 a man no skill or cunning of his can obtain it. 
 Riches take to themselves wings and fly away. 
 "Why? Because God scatters them. They come 
 again and our cup is full. Why? Because God 
 fills it. And that whether we know the reason or 
 not. Utterly above any use we may make of it is 
 God's ownership of the earth and everything upon 
 it. We may be permitted to understand His ways 
 of dealing with it and with us by and by ; we do 
 not now. But that does not alter the fact that not 
 one least atom of matter, not one least impulse of 
 
32 GOD AS A PARTNER. 
 
 force has escaped out of God's sure possession — 
 His absolute control. 
 
 Equally sure is it in the second place that God 
 cares infinitely more for men than He does for 
 property. "What shall it profit a man if he 
 shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " 
 is not asked as a conundrum. It is the solemn an- 
 nouncement of the valuation which God puts upon 
 the soul. Without a moment's hesitation Jesus suf- 
 fers the devils to enter the two thousand swine and 
 destroy them, that the devil may the more readily 
 come out of a man, because He is giving Himself to 
 save men. Doing this, He can regard nothing in 
 the universe for an instant as comparable in value 
 to a man. When the brilliant young McCall of the 
 Livingstone-Congo mission, dying, the other day in 
 mid- work, said, " Lord, I gave myself, body, mind, 
 and soul to Thee. I consecrated my whole being 
 to Th} r service, and now if it please Thee to take 
 myself instead of my work which I would do for 
 Thee, what is that to me ? Thy will be done ! " 
 he only fell back on the truth before us. 
 
 Therefore, when God commanded the Israelites 
 to go up to worship Him three times in the year, 
 because it was His peculiar service, and they were 
 to be benefited and brought nearer to Him by it, 
 there was no room for any excuse on the ground 
 that their work was of especial worth to God at 
 home, or that the land which was now the Lord's 
 
GOD AS A PARTNER. 33 
 
 needed their watchful presence. The Lord wanted 
 them; the houses He would care for Himself. 
 
 Thirdly, we learn from the text that God governs 
 men through their desires. "Neither shall any 
 man desire thy land when thou shalt go up to ap- 
 pear before the Lord." Here two things appear — 
 the hearts of God's people are released from a 
 clutching desire after lands and houses and money, 
 that they may be free to serve the Lord; and be- 
 cause God's people have thus committed themselves 
 to God their enemies are withheld by God from so 
 coveting their possessions as to seek to seize them 
 in their absence. "Ah! but that will not work 
 nowadays," you say. " A man has to look sharply 
 after his property or he will lose it. He must pro- 
 tect his interests or he will suffer." Yes, but when 
 you have been never so sharp, what guaranty have 
 you ? See how large a percentage of business men 
 sooner or later fail. In spite of all our shrewdness 
 how easily riches take to themselves wings and fly 
 away, and how often, while your regular business, 
 that to which you give your whole thought and 
 strength and all your experience, returns the small- 
 est profits, some chance investment, some mere side 
 interest, of which you have thought little or noth- 
 ing, makes your fortune ! At least this occurs often 
 enough in the business world to show that there 
 are elements in the problem of worldly success 
 which are not tabulated by the mercantile agencies. 
 
34 GOD A3 A PARTNER. 
 
 God has His hand upon men and upon their prop- 
 erty. He plays upon the keys of the human heart 
 and leads men to do this or that as easily and as 
 surely as He " causes it to rain upon the earth where 
 no man is," or brings the seed-time and the harvest. 
 
 If, then, it is sure that the earth is the Lord's, 
 that He cares for men infinitely more than for 
 property, and that He governs men through their 
 desires, it is equally sure, in the fourth place, that 
 God can and will give temporal prosperity to His 
 children when it is for their best good. " A hun- 
 dredfold in this present world," is the word of the 
 New Testament. Not inevitably, or by any hard 
 and fast rule or promise, still less as a bribe, but 
 because He is no mere taskmaster, but a Heavenly 
 Father who delights to bless, and who always gives 
 out of the fullness of His father's hand when it will 
 be a blessing. 
 
 The service of our God is not a poor and nig- 
 gardly service, a service of limitations and restric- 
 tions, a service of loss and pain, as it is sometimes 
 conceived. On the contrary, it is a right royal 
 service, the service of the Lord of the universe, 
 who has use for every power and faculty of the 
 least and the greatest of His servants, with abun- 
 dant reward and satisfying joy for all of them. 
 When He says, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness, and all these things shall be 
 added unto you," He means what He says. When 
 
GOD AS A PARTNER. 35 
 
 He points to the fowls of the air and the lilies of 
 the field, and says, " Take no thought, saying, what 
 shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or where- 
 withal shall we be clothed, — for that is what the 
 heathen do, — the men who do not know God 
 or believe in God, — and your Heavenly Father 
 knoweth that you have need of all these things," 
 ought we not, dear friends, to be willing to believe 
 Him and to trust Him ? 
 
 And now for a brief application. It is manifestly 
 -wise to choose God. 
 
 We must make some choice. Here is the earth 
 and here are we. The question is not of heaven, 
 and by and by, but of life and to-day. How are 
 you going to live ? No ! How are you living now ? 
 What is your aim, what your purpose, what are 
 your principles ? « Principles ? I have no princi- 
 ples ; I am in the show business," as the humorist 
 said. Very well, let it be the " show business," or 
 railroads, or dry-goods, or clothing, or flour, or 
 stocks, or provisions, or what you will, you are 
 making your decision over that. My point is that 
 it is wise to choose God in your business. Do not 
 reply, " It is for you, the minister, to look after our 
 souls, and tell us how to get to heaven — we under- 
 stand business better than you do." I still press 
 upon you, that in the light of the truths we have 
 been considering it is the part of wisdom to take 
 God distinctly and definitely into your business, 
 
36 GOD AS A PARTNER. 
 
 and from Monday morning to Saturday night to 
 make your reckoning with Him. 
 
 You would count it folly for a chemist to refuse 
 to notice in an analysis an important element which 
 he but imperfectly understands, or for an engineer 
 to leave out of his calculations a present force that 
 is inadequately measured, or for a merchant to 
 ignore influences upon the market that are power- 
 ful though hidden. In each instance you would say, 
 " That disregarded element, that unknown quantity, 
 may overthrow all your work," and that, even, in 
 dealing with the simplest affairs and the most ap- 
 preciable forces. But here is many a one of you 
 thinking it enough that you have mastered the 
 details of your business, or are giving yourself 
 strenuously to the purpose of working out what 
 you choose to call the practical part of your affairs 
 and deliberately disregarding the one decisive in- 
 fluence without which not a wheel moves in the 
 factory, not a thought stirs in the brain, not a pur- 
 pose reaches its result, not a plan carries its ac- 
 complishment, persuading yourself that you can 
 finally succeed without God. You are like the 
 splendid salmon dashing here and there in the 
 broad river, now out of the water, now deep be- 
 neath it, now rushing down the stream, now prov- 
 ing his great strength by as easily darting up it, 
 delighting in difficulties, challenging dangers, alike 
 master of all, but never once breaking the slender 
 
GOD AS A PARTNER. 37 
 
 line to which he is hooked, never once freeing him- 
 self from the power of the master hand that reels 
 him in at last as he wills. Ah, dear friend, it is 
 wise to make your reckoning with God. 
 
 So, also, it is safe to trust God. Often you can- 
 not see how things will come out. Before you is 
 the opening door, the glittering temptation. Now 
 is your chance. Catch fortune by the heel. Fickle 
 dame ! She may not return. Other people do it. 
 Many will call you a fool if you let it slip. Or, you 
 are already in the mesh, you are doing what you 
 ought not to do. Conscience troubles you, but 
 how can you escape ? Here is profit. Here, and it 
 may be here only, is success. Many a business 
 man finds himself so circumstanced. He has been 
 drawn in unwittingly. Perhaps his partner is un- 
 scrupulous. Perhaps it is a custom of the trade. 
 Perhaps he was swept into it by the pressure of 
 competition. No matter how it came about. Here 
 he is in a false position, doing dishonest or unchris- 
 tian things, whatever he may be at home and in 
 church, aloof from God, antagonizing God in his 
 business, and persuading himself that he cannot 
 succeed if he does differently. It is an old snare 
 of the evil one — to get a man into a wrong position 
 and then persuade him there is no way out, or no 
 way except at a great loss. Is the world the Devil's, 
 dear friend, or is it God's ? Is it ever safe to do 
 wrong? 
 
38 GOD A8 A PARTNER. 
 
 It is wise to choose God. It is safe to trust Him, 
 and finally it is best to serve Him. 
 
 You may not become rich, you may not prosper, 
 you may not escape want, — God knows what is best 
 for His children, — but you will be blest, you will 
 have peace. God will have in you what He prizes 
 above all else — a man made in His own image, a 
 soul that is His own. How much God needs such 
 men and how much He loves them ! By such men 
 as you who know God, and believe God, and trust 
 God, He keeps alive in a sinful and sordid world, 
 a world skeptical of all that is pure and unselfish 
 and good, the knowledge of Himself. 
 
 " Servants of God— or sons, 
 Shall I not call you ? Because 
 Not as servants ye know 
 Your Father's innermost mind ; 
 His who unwillingly sees 
 One of His little ones lost. 
 Yours is the praise, if mankind 
 Hath not in its march 
 Fainted and fallen and died." 
 
 And think you that your Heavenly Father will 
 not, cannot provide for you and yours? Go up, 
 then, and appear before Him to-day and every day 1 
 Do always and everywhere what in the eyes of men, 
 and in your own heart, will be your testimony to Him, 
 that He is your God, and that you are His child ; 
 and you need not fear about your land, no man shall 
 desire it. " For the Lord knoweth the way of the 
 righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.'* 
 
BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 
 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." 
 — Deut. vi. 5. 
 
 "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the 
 whole world and lose his own soul ? "— Maek via. 36. 
 
 (40) 
 
BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 
 
 IF ever there wars a time when a line could be 
 drawn around certain occupations, and it could 
 be said, " Within this line the rules and methods of 
 business prevail, outside of it they do not," that 
 day has passed. In the management of the home, 
 the school, the church, there must be system, order, 
 purpose ; in short, a recognition of business and 
 business ways, or success cannot be expected. 
 
 This being true in the outer and practical life, it 
 has occurred to me that something may be learned 
 from it for the conduct of the inner and spiritual 
 life. If business means so much and accomplishes 
 so much in the world, may it not have a value if it 
 can be applied to religion ? 
 
 There are certain great principles that underlie 
 all business and determine success or failure. I 
 have from time to time talked on this subject with 
 many successful business men, and I am surprised 
 to learn what a striking unanimity there is in their 
 testimony. Quite independently of what may be 
 their personal character, or their religious convic- 
 tions, in the main they all agree as to the principles 
 of business which they regard as essential to suc- 
 cess. I am encouraged to believe, therefore, that 
 
 (41) 
 
42 
 
 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 
 
 these may be helpful in throwing light on religion. 
 They all agree, in the first place, that to be suc- 
 cessful one must have a method, a plan, for the conduct 
 of his business. 
 
 To trust to luck, to work at haphazard, is sure 
 to end in failure. Sometimes this plan is adopted 
 instinctively as a result of a man's character, or his 
 training. One gentleman told me that when they 
 organized their firm he and his partners sat down 
 and in long and careful conference determined the 
 plan by which the business was to be conducted. 
 This is perhaps unusual, as generally only those 
 unite whose methods already harmonize. But plan 
 there must be. 
 
 Moreover, the plan, once settled, must be adhered 
 to. It must not be changed under stress of weather 
 or adverse circumstances. A leading miller said 
 to me some time since, " Our plan is to succeed by 
 making the best flour that can be produced. We 
 believe it is the surest way of success. If things 
 go against us, and some one makes better flour, we 
 do not rest until we learn how to inrprove our grade." 
 Another manufacturer said, " One of our rules is to 
 make a profit on every order we take. If we find 
 we are losing orders we don't change our rule ; we 
 study economy until we discover some way of doing 
 the work at a smaller cost." Another has quite a 
 different method. He feels the need of a very wide 
 and large market for his product, and to secure it 
 
BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 43 
 
 he will often sell for a time below cost. -But what- 
 ever the plan adopted, all agree that to have no 
 plan or to change one's plan from day to day is as 
 disastrous as to change one's business. And for 
 the same reasons. A man cannot be a grocer this 
 year, a dry-goods dealer the next, a banker the 
 third, and hope to succeed. He must commit 
 himself to some one business ; fix his plan for 
 conducting it ; and then stick to it. 
 
 Furthermore, I find in the second place that all 
 agree that a man cannot succeed without giving his 
 undivided attention to his business. 
 
 He must make a business of it. Very few men 
 can successfully conduct several kinds of business 
 at the same time. New York is full of men who 
 have failed from dabbling in things foreign to their 
 legitimate line. Outside things may be taken up 
 merely for recreation or rest. If they compete with 
 a man's regular business in their demand upon 
 either his time or his thought, they are sure to 
 work him evil. One thing with all the mind, the 
 heart, the strength, appears to be the rule. 
 
 But this requires, in the third place, that a man 
 have a business to which he can give himself. He 
 must regard it as worthy of his efforts. He must 
 believe in it, and take pride in it. 
 
 " We stake all we have on our business," said a 
 manufacturer to me. "We draw out of it only 
 enough to live on, and we are living economically. 
 
44 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 
 
 We put all we can into our plant." Others stake 
 everything on their plan of accumulation. They 
 sacrifice comfort, ease, sometimes even friends or 
 character itself, to the chosen line of success. A 
 man can hardly hope to succeed in anything unless 
 he puts his heart into it. He cannot put his heart 
 into it unless lie believes in it. A man, therefore, 
 must have some business in which he can believe, 
 and of which, as a measure of his success, he can 
 be proud. 
 
 Again, I find, in the fourth place, that a special 
 training is regarded as very essential to business 
 success. 
 
 " It is absolutely indispensable in our business," 
 said one merchant. " We have daily to make de- 
 cisions on the instant, which largely involve our 
 success or failure. No man can do it who is not 
 trained to the business " " Competition," said 
 another, " is now so close that education in busi- 
 ness is going to be a more and more important 
 element of success. It did not require much train- 
 ing when a retailer could make a dollar of profit 
 on a sack of flour. It is a different matter when 
 he has to sell it on a margin of a few cents." 
 Many fail from too great haste to get rich. They 
 are not content with slow accumulations ; nor are 
 they willing to begin at the bottom and work up. 
 Patient, steady, constructive growth is more im- 
 portant to-day than it ever was. 
 
BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 45 
 
 Once more : all agree that to succeed a man must 
 be prompt to adapt himself to changes which from time 
 to time take place both in markets and methods of 
 
 One manufacturer said to me, " So great are the 
 changes in our business that I would rather take 
 into my mill a green hand than one who learned 
 the trade ten years ago, and has learned nothing 
 since." Men are everywhere on the lookout for 
 novelties, in fabric, in style, in adaptation. A mer- 
 chant said, "We used to depend for our trade 
 largely upon advertising. We should soon run out 
 if we did that now. We hunt up customers and 
 keep after them." Even the banks, I am told, have 
 greatly changed their methods of business within 
 recent years. 
 
 Again, and this point is somewhat remarkable in 
 view of what is constantly said about the dishonesty 
 of business men. I find that our successful business 
 men are doing business on the basis of trust in others. 
 One says, "In our business we get security when 
 we can, but a man cannot do business who does 
 not trust somebody." There is no such thing as 
 trusting no one and succeeding, or doing business 
 on an absolute certainty. Another says, "We do 
 business on the basis of our belief that men are 
 honest. We trust those with whom we deal, abso- 
 lutely. Our business rests almost entirely upon 
 verbal contracts " Another of whom I inquired, 
 
46 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 
 
 said, "Certainly, the basis of our business is the 
 confidence we have in others. We never could 
 have succeeded unless others had had this confi- 
 dence in us." "This is the whole foundation of 
 my business career," said one gentleman with evi- 
 dent feeling. " If men had not trusted me I could 
 have done nothing." The tendency of business 
 seems to establish the principle that a man's word 
 is his capital. It is conclusive proof that the entire 
 structure of commercial enterprise is erected on 
 the doctrine of probabilities. Certainty is not re- 
 quired, and is not to be had. Faith in one another, 
 faith in one's judgment, faith in one's principles 
 and methods of business, is the foundation of every 
 successful career. Unless a man is willing to ac- 
 cept this, and to order his affairs by a reasonable 
 faith, he cannot do business, much less succeed in 
 business. 
 
 Still further, I find all to agree that attention to 
 details is a first principle of success. One man said 
 to me, " We know what every man in our employ 
 is doing, all the time." Another said, " My partner 
 or myself is familiar with every department of our 
 business. We watch every man and every process. 
 We keep exact account of every item." " We at- 
 tend more closely to detail," said a manufacturer, 
 " than any other mill in the country." " I mark 
 the price on every article in my store," said another 
 man. "We know exactly what every one of our 
 
BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 47 
 
 salesmen is making for us," said still another. A 
 man content with, generalities, or who drifts with 
 the crowd, cannot succeed nowadays. 
 
 Finally, I observe that successful business men 
 are liberal in their dealing ivith others and exact in 
 their dealing with themselves. 
 
 One man, who holds himself to the most careful 
 rules, and prides himself upon his exact account- 
 ability, and that of every man in his employ, says 
 that as a matter of policy his firm makes it a rule 
 to settle every claim liberally, even when it involves 
 temporary loss. It promotes good-will and helps 
 business. Another says, " We give a customer the 
 benefit of the doubt." And another, though I fear 
 his kind is rare, "We could get our labor consider- 
 ably cheaper, but we want the good-will of our 
 men." It seems to be a rule of successful business, 
 especially on the largest scale, that while a man can 
 hardly be too generous in his business dealings 
 with others, and that narrowness or closeness in 
 this relation is sure to defeat itself, in dealing 
 with oneself a man can hardly be too exacting. 
 He must have himself always in hand. He must 
 know his own purposes ; he must constantly revise 
 his knowledge and keep his experience brought 
 down to date ; he must deny himself in leisure, in 
 luxury, in ease. He must have an aim and a plan 
 and hold to them. He must concentrate his mind, 
 his strength, his heart upon what he has to do, or 
 
48 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 
 
 he cannot succeed. It is no wonder that when a 
 man does business in this way he takes pride in his 
 business. He may at times get discouraged and 
 talk differently, but where is there a successful 
 business man who, beyond the money he is mak- 
 ing, does not take pride in his business, his factory, 
 his store, his system, as representing himself in his 
 effort to do his best ? 
 
 There, I believe you have what you will recog- 
 nize as the more important principles that underlie 
 successful business life. The list might easily be 
 enlarged. Doubtless there are other rules or prin- 
 ciples of more immediate application to your own 
 especial affairs. But these are enough, and they 
 are genuine. Now let me ask you to turn with 
 them to the matter of religion. 
 
 First answer me this. ""What shall it profit a 
 man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his 
 own soul ? " Don't turn away from it You have 
 said that a man must choose an object in life, and 
 set his heart upon it. You have said that it must 
 be an object worthy of him, worthy of his best 
 efforts, worthy of all there is in him ; or he cannot 
 do his best, he cannot hope fairly to succeed. 
 Before we go any further, answer me this : You 
 successful business man, you young man who would 
 be successful. You have made your choice, you 
 are in full career, you have staked everything 
 gladly, willingly, on your business or your pro- 
 
BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 4:9 
 
 fession ; tell me what will it profit you, where you 
 will be at the end, if you gain all you seek— and 
 lose your own soul? 
 
 Again, you have said, a man must have a fixed 
 and earnest purpose ; a plan, clear and intelligent, 
 if he would succeed in business — how many of you 
 are applying this principle to religion ? I ask you 
 unconverted men, and you who are contented with 
 a merely nominal religion. Have you a plan, a pur- 
 pose ? You have wishes, hopes ! You mean, some 
 day, to be a different man from what you are. 
 How different this from your method in the affairs 
 of the world. Where is your honest, manly pur- 
 pose ? Where is the settled plan by which you are 
 approaching steadily, surely, with the determina- 
 tion to succeed, the salvation of your soul ? You 
 meant once to be a Christian. You once were in 
 earnest, and you have grown cold. You were of- 
 fended by the conduct of some Christian. You did 
 not like what was said in the pulpit. You were not 
 pleased at the prayer-meeting. And you are the 
 man who says that a man cannot succeed in busi- 
 ness who does not stick to his purpose and hold 
 his plans no matter what arises to thwart him. 
 You were once in full view of Christianity. Where 
 are you now ? What is your purpose now ? 
 
 A man must give his undivided attention to his 
 business if ,he would succeed in it. " Undivided 
 attention ! " " Ye shall seek for me and find me 
 
50 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 
 
 when ye shall search for me with all your heart." 
 That looks as if the method of religion were very 
 much like the method of business, does it not ? 
 You know the conditions of success in business, 
 and you are only too eager to meet them. Do you 
 meet them, are you meeting them in religion ? 
 Why do you go on from year to year in this half- 
 hearted, slow-footed way, hanging on the skirts of 
 the sanctuary, keeping within reach of the Gospel, 
 but without paying any real attention to it ? Do- 
 ing nothing to make it real to yourself ? 
 
 You say, a man, to succeed, must stake some- 
 thing on his business ; he must believe in it. How 
 much have you staked on Christianity ? " If Christ 
 be not risen from the dead, then is our preaching 
 vain, and your faith is also vain/' Can you say 
 that ? Has Jesus Christ risen for you ? Have you 
 staked the forgiveness of your sins, and the hope 
 of heaven, on Him as a living, present Saviour, 
 dwelling in your heart, inspiring and governing 
 your life ? Don't put the question aside. Answer 
 it fairly. 
 
 You say, a man must have training in business. 
 How much have you in religion ? How much are you 
 trying to get ? Do you really believe your maxim ? 
 Is a man's place, is his joy, his usefulness, his 
 growth in spiritual things to be determined, as in 
 business, by his training for these things? Is it 
 true that the nobler the work a man would do, the 
 
BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 51 
 
 higher the prize he would win, the more necessary 
 the spiritual training ? Is it true that in religion 
 early years are best years, and that a man can never 
 make up for early years thrown away, or Bible neg- 
 lected, or opportunities squandered, or commands 
 of God disobeyed, or God kept far off ? Is all this 
 true ? Deep in your heart do you know it to be 
 true ? And yet you are content to put off becoming 
 a Christian, Or content not to be a truer one ? 
 
 You say, a man must be watchful of changes in 
 methods of business. And how many of you are 
 waiting for some old-time experience to come round 
 again ? Once you were stirred by some great 
 preacher, and you are patiently waiting now to be 
 stirred by some powerful appeal. Once you were 
 caught up in a great revival and swept on to the 
 very gates of the kingdom. You sit there helpless 
 to-day, waiting a return of the wave. Once you 
 were under deep conviction of sin. God strove with 
 you manifestly. The fountains of your heart were 
 broken up, but you held out until the springs ran 
 dry. Once you were interested in the Christian 
 life and service. Now you are waiting for that 
 witness to come back to life. Thus in one way and 
 another you excuse yourselves. 
 
 "Why, dear friends, does business refuse to go 
 round in a circle? Why do things happen but 
 once, and nothing repeat itself ? Are the drowsy and 
 the careless left behind, and is there no progress 
 
52 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 
 
 in God's ways ; has His voice only one call, is there 
 no present requirement, no living, earnest, present 
 necessity upon you if you would enter the kingdom 
 of heaven ? " Behold, the bridegroom cometh ! " 
 What does that mean except that you are to arise 
 at once ? " Choose you this day whom ye will serve." 
 What does that mean except you are to decide — 
 to be wholly Christ's — now ? 
 
 This is God's method, to lay responsibilit}' upon 
 us each for himself, to address us thus personally-, 
 as I am trying to address you, and to say, " Arise, 
 follow me." Shake off your lethargy. Make your 
 decision, and do it now. 
 
 You have said a man must act upon probabili- 
 ties. No business can be done otherwise. And 
 there is no religion apart from faith. God says, 
 " Trust me. There is my word ; believe it, obey 
 it, and thou shalt live." But you say, '• I am not 
 convinced. I want a certainty. I do not yet un- 
 derstand it all. I do not see through to the very 
 end." No, you never will, and in your daily affairs 
 you never do. Things are not so constituted. 
 
 Exactly in the line of what we have shown to be 
 the underlying principle of daily life — namely, 
 trust, — God draws us to Himself. We are to be- 
 lieve in Him ; and because we believe in Him we 
 are to give ourselves to Him. 
 
 Have you done it ? Come down to details. Look 
 into your life, and into your heart. Are you living 
 
BUSINESS m RELIGION. 53 
 
 for God, really, truly ? Not, are you professing to ? 
 But are you doing it ? Are you looking after your 
 motives, your purposes, your thoughts, your words ? 
 Are all made to tell for God and for Christ because 
 you are His ? If not, what ? 
 
 You could not succeed in business otherwise ; 
 can you serve God, can you be truly His, without 
 the same watchfulness of little things ? 
 
 Be as liberal as you will in your judgments of 
 others ; are you exact with yourself ? Ah, dear 
 friends, how many deceive themselves here. You 
 do not believe in the eternal punishment of the im- 
 penitent sinner. You do not believe that God is 
 angry with the wicked every day. Woe to you if 
 you are taking advantage of your liberality to others 
 to apply this doctrine to yourself. Where is the man 
 who could hope to succeed in business on that prin- 
 ciple ? You never do it. You hold yourself to 
 strictest accountability. You do not rest until you 
 make every uncertainty tell in jour favor. Suppose 
 the word of God is true. Suppose, that except a 
 man believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and go into 
 the other world His servant, His child, he cannot be 
 saved ; what then, dear friend ? Where will you 
 stand ? You are dealing with a righteous as well 
 as a loving God. An account is to be given to 
 Him. Are you ready for it ? 
 
 And are some of you ashamed to be Christians ? 
 You rejoice in your business. You are proud to 
 
54 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 
 
 be identified with it. You want to be known as 
 one of the merchants, one of the manufacturers, 
 one of the business men of New York. You hesi- 
 tate to be known as one of the Christians of New 
 York. Is there anything nobler ? There goes 
 A. B., one of our merchants, one of our lawyers, 
 one of our bankers ; yes, but more than that, and 
 before all that, one of our Christians, — a follower 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ. A prominent believer ; 
 a conspicuous one. Why ? Because his whole life 
 proclaims it. He is a Christian with a purpose. 
 He believes in his religion ; he stakes everything 
 upon it ; he lives up to it ; he glories in it. And 
 when he dies the town will lose in him, before all 
 else, a man who loved the Lord Jesus Christ and 
 faithfully served Him. Is not that something worth 
 living for ? Will you not then, after this fashion, 
 carry your business into your religion ? Begin to 
 be a Christian now, and be such a Christian that 
 the angels and the little children may be glad 
 over you. 
 
 
EELIGION IN BUSINESS. 
 

 " Say ye to the righteous that it shall be well 
 with him, for they shall eat the fruit of their do- 
 ings. Woe unto the wicked ; it shall be ill with 
 him ; for the reward of his hands shall be given 
 him."— Isaiah iii. 10-11. 
 
 (56) 
 
RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 
 
 T AM to speak to you this morning upon " Relig- 
 -*- ion in Business." Let me disclaim at the out- 
 set the thought of possessing any special wisdom 
 with reference to business affairs. I have no pre- 
 scription for ensuring success. Religion in busi- 
 ness does not mean success in business. No amount 
 of religion will make afterthought serve for fore- 
 thought, or erroneous judgment take the place of 
 correct judgment, or heedlessness do the work of 
 painstaking, or ignorance answer for experience. 
 Religion does not make the small great, or the sim- 
 ple shrewd, or the weak strong, or the sick well, or 
 the foolish wise — at least not in business. 
 
 But for all that, G-od's word abundantly declares 
 that there is a very close connection between busi- 
 ness and religion. If there is one thing plainer 
 than another in the Bible it is that God makes a 
 difference between honesty and dishonesty, and 
 that He rewards men according to their deeds. 
 "Whatever may be the relative standing of men 
 upon earth, God tries them by their integrity, or 
 want of integrity, and blesses the one while He 
 curses the other. 
 
 Here, then, is the ground on which I have some- 
 
 (57) 
 
58 RELIGION IN BC8INE88. 
 
 thing to say to you this morning. I have not to 
 teach you how to make money, but how to serve God. 
 
 Furthermore, let me say that I know something 
 of your burdens and perplexities. Far be it from 
 me to make light of tbem. Because the world at 
 large knows what are the temptations of business 
 men, the world gives high honor to honorable men 
 of business. Christian men are the backbone of the 
 business community. I well remember when, as a 
 boy, I was a clerk in a great house down-town, hear- 
 ing a fellow-clerk, an infidel and a foreigner, curse 
 because in New York, if a merchant was known to 
 be a church-member, he had better credit. What 
 was it but his unwilling testimony to the fact that 
 the average Christian business man is more trust- 
 worthy than the average business man not a Chris- 
 tian. "We may praise God that it is so generally true. 
 
 At the same time we must not be blind to the 
 struggle. All do not stand. Temptations ai-e hot. 
 The pressure is often terrific. Many get involved 
 in doubts and perplexities and weak compromises. 
 Many fall. What can we do to clear the vision, to 
 brace the courage, to strengthen the purpose ? 
 How can we help one another to serve God brave- 
 ly, each in his place ? 
 
 Let me put what I have to say in the form of 
 a few propositions which will, I trust, need but little 
 discussion, and may serve to make some things 
 clearer. 
 
RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 59 
 
 First, you will all admit that religion in business 
 is the same as religion out of business. 
 
 When God says, " The soul that sinneth it shall 
 die," He does not add, " Except the sin be a com- 
 mercial sin." When He says, " Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor 
 as thyself," He does not say, " Except you are in 
 business." When a man approaching the question 
 of personal religion feels as most do, that he must 
 begin to do business differently, his feeling is per- 
 fectly correct. There are not two standards of 
 morality : one for private life and Sundays, and 
 the other for business and week days ; one for the 
 pulpit, the other for the street. 
 
 Christianity has but one code of morals. I know 
 it is often claimed that there are two, and if this 
 proposition were opened to discussion a good deal 
 would be urged about the necessity of doing busi- 
 ness in a different way from that enjoined in the 
 New Testament, and that many Christian men do 
 business in that way. But when all is said, there 
 remains in your heart the deep conviction that 
 there can be but one right way, and you despise 
 the man who, professing to be a Christian, departs 
 from it. Religion in business is the same as relig- 
 ion out of business. 
 
 Second, if a man's religion does not keep him 
 honest, it is worthless. 
 
 This does not mean, " If a man's religion does 
 
60 RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 
 
 not keep him as honest as other men are in the 
 same business." Nor, " If a man's religion does 
 not keep him honest when dishonesty is likely to 
 be found out." It carries the question back to the 
 forum of a man's own conscience, and the laws of 
 God. If a man's religion does not hold him to do- 
 ing that and that only which is right in God's 
 sight, and which needs no justifying, his religion 
 is so far worthless. 
 
 He may be a decent man ; he may be a success- 
 ful man ; he may be an honest man, as the world 
 counts honesty ; but a religious man — a Christian 
 
 man— no 
 
 The sole function of religion is to bring a man in 
 heart and life into accord with God, and to keep 
 him there, and any man whose religion does not 
 hold him to that standard, in business or out of 
 it, is self-deceived. 
 
 I do not say he may not at last be forgiven. 
 God's uncovenanted mercies are great. But such 
 religion as a present reality, and as a witness to 
 God, is vain. 
 
 Third, there is no honest occupation in which an 
 honest man is required to be dishonest. 
 
 I speak of honest men, not of those who would 
 like to be honest, but are not. There are such 
 men, who approve honesty, who deeply regret that 
 they are in circumstances which compromise them, 
 who mean some day to do differently, and who are 
 
RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 61 
 
 very anxious to be taken, like a patent medicine, 
 at their estimate of themselves. Such men, I 
 know, are often engaged in honest occupations in 
 which they think they are required to be dishonest. 
 But I am speaking of honest men ; and of them I 
 say, that in no honest occupation are they required 
 to be dishonest. 
 
 Why ! dear friends, God made the world, and 
 He made it right. We are here to till the earth 
 and to subdue it. God has established the condi- 
 tions of successful existence. You talk of the laws 
 of trade. So far as tbere are laws — i. e., fixed rela- 
 tions from which sound principles of procedure can 
 be deduced, — they are as truly God's laws as are 
 the Ten Commandments. God has not made the 
 earth, and then left it to be set to any purpose and 
 used for any iniquitous device that man may con- 
 coct. It is His world. He is everywhere in it, 
 guiding, controlling, accomplishing with it His own 
 purpose, as truly now as at the beginning. Despite 
 the loss and confusion from man's wrong-doing, 
 the world is steadily advancing in the accumula- 
 tions of industry and all that constitutes temporal 
 progiess. 
 
 Compare our circumstances with those of our 
 ancestors, say five hundred years ago. Their floors 
 had no carpets, their rooms no chairs, their win- 
 dows no glass, their tables no forks, their houses 
 no books. Societv meant the unrestrained domin- 
 
f>2 RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 
 
 ion of the strong over the weak. The laborer lived 
 in a hovel and slept on the ground, was unshod 
 and almost unclad. Within the memory of men now 
 living steam in all its thousand applications, elec- 
 tricity, illuminating gas, coal oil, stoves, anthracite 
 coal, cheap postage and transportation ; dress goods 
 printed from rollers, cheap cotton fabrics and 
 scores of articles now in common use, have been 
 either invented or given to the world. The average 
 comfort and the average possessions of men have 
 vastly increased ; and that despite all that men by 
 war and crime have done to prevent it. The poor- 
 est laborer enjoys many things daily which one 
 hundred years ago the wealthiest man could not ob- 
 tain. Can you suppose for a moment that this vast 
 advance, this steady and rapid accumulation of the 
 best products of industry and skill, is the result of 
 fraud or dishonesty, or is the outcome of obedience 
 to laws, whether they be of trade or of the State, 
 which are antagonistic to the laws of God ? Doubt- 
 less there is much rascality in the world. Doubtless, 
 " Because," as of old, " sentence against an evil 
 work is not executed speedily, the heart of the sons 
 of men is wholly set in them to do evil." But two 
 things cannot be denied : that God made the world, 
 and men to live in it ; and that the world, according 
 to God's plan, is steadily advancing in the accumu- 
 lations of man's industry and the facilities of man's 
 life. 
 
RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 63 
 
 Therefore, progress cannot rest upon dishon- 
 esty. The occupations of men by which the world 
 is helped forward are honest occupations, and hon- 
 est men can engage in them and deal honestly. It 
 is idle for a man to say that he cannot succeed in 
 "business and be honest. It is untrue. The whole 
 history of the race is against it. Why have vice 
 and immorality eaten out the heart, and so destroy- 
 ed nations which the most vigorous foes could not 
 overthrow ? It is because vice and immorality ar- 
 rayed God against them, and the very forces of life 
 and of society which God has established, and which 
 they disregarded or defied, mustered to destroy them. 
 
 Is not this just as true of dishonesty as of vice ? 
 Where is there a single business house that has 
 been built up and stood through the centuries but- 
 tressed in dishonesty ? There is not one. The 
 very thought is absurd. The hosts of God are 
 arrayed against such business, and sooner or later 
 they hurl it to the ground. Has not the world 
 long since recognized this ? Has it not framed for 
 its own selfish ends the maxim, " Honesty is the best 
 policy " ? Victor Hugo said Napoleon failed at 
 Waterloo, not because of the rain the previous night, 
 not because of Grouchy's delay ; but because he 
 " embarrassed God." So business men fail when 
 they think they can insure success by business 
 methods that embarrass God. 
 
 Fourth, any occupation in which a man cannot 
 
64 
 
 KELIGION EN BUSINESS. 
 
 be honest, or thinks he cannot be honest, and suc- 
 ceed, is for him a nefarious occupation, and he 
 should quit it. 
 
 God does not require that we succeed in what 
 we undertake. He does require that we main- 
 tain our character. If we find ourselves placed 
 where we cannot do that, our course is perfectly 
 plain. The occupation, be it what it may, is for us 
 nefarious. It is of no consequence who may be in 
 it, or what others may think of the propriety of it ; 
 if you are persuaded that you cannot succeed in 
 the business in which you are engaged without do- 
 ing what in your heart you feel to be dishonest, 
 your duty is, at any cost, promptly to get out of it. 
 Now, with these propositions before us, which I 
 believe to be, and which I think you will accept as 
 foundation truths, let me try to say some things 
 which will strengthen you against temptation. 
 
 I believe that loose business habits have much to 
 do with loose business morals. 
 
 "What are the loose business habits ? They are 
 numerous. Trusting to luck is one of them. Hop- 
 ing that things will come out right when you don't 
 take the trouble to see that they do. Ignorance 
 as to exact facts. Half-understood and indefinite 
 agreements. Carelessness as to your spoken word. 
 Promising to do or agreeing to do what you have 
 no thought of doing exactly. Easy excuses with 
 yourself for disregarding other people's interests, 
 
RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 65 
 
 or wasting their time in not keeping your appoint- 
 ments to the minute. That slovenliness in dealing 
 with employees which takes no note of idleness and 
 incompetency, and equally fails to appreciate fidel- 
 ity and to reward valuable service. Overlooking 
 the human element that enters into all work and 
 trade, and makes a friend worth more than tem- 
 porary profit. Foolish competition that thinks it 
 does not matter how you get your business pro- 
 vided you get it. Untruthful advertising. 
 
 Do you think a man can tell lies in the newspa- 
 per, or in his circulars to his trads, without becom- 
 ing careless of truth, and even blind to truth in 
 other relations ? Do you think a merchant can de- 
 ceive his customers without teaching his clerks to 
 deceive both them and him ? A self-respecting 
 man does not easily fall before temptation. A busi- 
 ness man who has himself well in hand can general- 
 ly keep his business in hand. 
 
 A second snare to business men is moral cow- 
 ardice. 
 
 Bear with me. I must call things by their right 
 names. I want to help you if I can. I know some- 
 thing of the pressure that you are under. You feel 
 that you must succeed. You have a family to sup- 
 port, or a position to establish. You know that for 
 a man of character to fail is to inflict a more or 
 less serious evil on the community. It brings 
 Christian character into question ; it does harm to 
 
06 RELIGION IX BUSINESS. 
 
 religion. The cause of his failure may have been 
 entirely beyond his control. The world only knows 
 that he has made engagements which he cannot 
 meet, and his name is dishonored. You are under 
 obligation, therefore, to succeed. 
 
 Moreover, you are in competition with unscrupu- 
 lous men, or perhaps you happen to be in partner- 
 ship with them. They are found in all departments 
 of business. Men who know no law but self-inter- 
 est ; they care nothing for God ; they have no 
 conscience ; they misrepresent goods; they de- 
 ceive the public ; they hesitate at no mean advan- 
 tage ; they jump at the chance to work you harm. 
 I know all this. But for this very reason the temp- 
 tation to moral cowardice is strong. The pressure 
 is so great you are carried away in spite of 
 yourself. Satan springs upon you sudden tempta- 
 tion. He touches you in the sensitive spot. Your 
 trade will be injured. A customer may be won 
 away, and in the fear of thus giving advantage to 
 competitors in a struggle that is so hot, you betray 
 yourself. You let down or hide your principles. 
 You give place to the devil. It is, perhaps, little 
 to be wondered at, but, dear friends, it is none the 
 less disastrous. 
 
 A rival manufacturer is adulterating his goods ; 
 how can you afford to sell a genuine article ? A 
 dangerous competitor has opened a line of trade 
 from which you have scrupulously held aloof. You 
 
RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 67 
 
 •could strain a point, and call it legitimate, but hith- 
 erto you have not done it Your conscience would 
 not let you. But it is very profitable. 
 
 Or you can advance your work, or gain a little 
 advantage by having your clerks work on Sunday, 
 or by getting your mail on Sunday ; or you consent 
 to work on Sunday yourself. Or you learn that 
 your neighbor has discovered a trick by which he 
 -gets great advantage, we will say, of the railroad 
 company. His shipping tickets give wrong weights ; 
 he overloads cars ; he ships goods under false de- 
 scriptions ; he secures wrong classification. He 
 pays commission on surreptitious rebates ; or per- 
 haps he sells his goods by bribing the purchasing 
 agent. Now, shall you not do the same ? 
 
 Or you have suffered loss through fraud or theft, 
 and it will cost you some trouble, and possibly fur- 
 ther loss, to punish the wrong-doer, and do your 
 part toward protecting the community. 
 
 Or the community is seeking to rid itself of some 
 public evil, and there is occasion for united pro- 
 test ; and you may lose trade and offend some cus- 
 tomer if your name is seen with others, if your 
 voice is heard on the side of the public welfare. 
 I have known wealthy business men, Christian men, 
 to hasten to take their names off such protests, or 
 asseverate that they signed them through a misun- 
 derstanding, when they had been published, because 
 they were suddenly alarmed. " "We sell our mer- 
 
68 RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 
 
 chandise, not our principles," said one indignant 
 merchant to some customers who waited upon him 
 after such a protest had been signed. The snares 
 of Satan are innumerable, and many a weak and 
 timid soul is beguiled. How cheaply many men 
 sell themselves ! But Satan is a coward. I received, 
 the other day, a communication from a detective 
 agency which had as a standing heading these 
 words, " Responsible shadows and private watch- 
 men furnished." That is exactly what is wanted. 
 A responsible shadow, and a private watchman ! 
 Christian men who watch the workings of their 
 own thoughts, and with such a sense of exact ac- 
 countability that the very beginnings of temptation 
 are discovered, and whose shadow even is respon- 
 sible. They do nothing, however unwittingly, of 
 which they have reason to be ashamed. 
 
 Once more. The community at large owes it to 
 business men that the temptation to dishonesty be 
 made as slight as possible. 
 
 This in several ways. You should refuse to trade 
 with dishonest men. It is not enough that you are 
 honest j*ourself. You have not done your whole 
 duty until you have striven to make honesty success- 
 ful by boycotting dishonesty. 
 
 If a man can cheat you, and still have your cus- 
 tom ; if a firm can be notoriously untruthful and 
 dishonest, and still hold a large business and make 
 plenty of money, and nobody seem to care so long 
 
RELIGION IN" BUSINESS. 69 
 
 as goods can be had of them cheap, what wonder 
 that the defense of honest tradesmen is broken 
 down, and business turned into a headlong scram- 
 ble for shekels. 
 
 For the same reason the community owes it to 
 business men that they make the laws such as to 
 remove and not increase the temptation to dishon- 
 esty. I have nothing to say as to the inherent 
 desirability and wisdom of the Interstate Commerce 
 laws — but look at the situation as it has been under 
 this law. I recently sat in a company of most re- 
 spectable merchants, and heard one of their num- 
 ber say, " You know that three-fourths of you gen- 
 tlemen could be sent to the penitentiary for what 
 you are doing under that law." And what was the 
 reply ? A gentle and genial smile around the cir- 
 cle. Not a word, not a look, not a hint of indignant 
 protest at such an amazing charge ! 
 
 A prominent railway official, a gentleman and a 
 Christian, said to me not long since, " It is simply 
 impossible to do business honorably. I have thrown 
 honor to the winds." Think of a community get- 
 ting into a condition in which its greatest corpora- 
 tions, the railways, and its merchants alike unite 
 to do business by evasions, and subterfuges, and 
 go-betweens, and rebates, and greenbacks carried 
 around in satchels and passed through clerks into 
 the hands of reputable merchants ! Such a system 
 would have made apples and a serpent superfluous 
 
70 
 
 RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 
 
 in the Garden of Eden. It would breed a race of 
 knaves anywhere. Though recent decisions have 
 relieved the pressure, the law remains. 
 
 Then when you have proper laws, you need to 
 set honest men to administer them. Look at the 
 state of things to-day in New York. This great 
 city left year by year in the hands of a gang of 
 thieves; the very Legislature of the State the instru- 
 ment of doing its will. Our local courts are a 
 mockery of justice, our police a system of constant 
 oppression. No man is safe in person or property 
 or business. Money or a "pull" carries every- 
 thing. Women are assaulted, men are kicked 
 about, even in the court-room; petty tradesmen 
 are bled by officials of every grade, and no man 
 can do business without exposure to all sorts of 
 obstructions and blackmail. Whole departments 
 of the municipal administration are so corrupt as 
 to be notorious. " Of course, what do you suppose 
 we are here for ? " was the answer of an official the 
 other day to one of our business men, inquiring if 
 he was expected to pay for a mere matter of routine 
 sanction, to which he was entitled freely. The 
 most sacred right a man has is the right to choose 
 his religious faith, and we see that right imperilled. 
 In New York a public man is not free to join the 
 Koman Catholic Church without the suspicion that 
 he is doing it for office or influence. And you 
 lawyers and business men talk lightly of these 
 
RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 71 
 
 things, as if they could not be helped, and adjust 
 yourselves to them complacently in the calm con- 
 sciousness that you at least are safe. 
 
 Much more might be said, but surely this is 
 enough to show how great are the responsibilities 
 of a Christian business man, and how great are his 
 privileges. He is a man chosen of the Lord, and 
 set by Him in the midst of a sinful and rebellious 
 world to witness for Him. Honor and truth and 
 righteousness are on His side. He is in the fore- 
 front of the battle. Yes, you, dear friends, are 
 standard-bearers for Christ. What if the conflict 
 is hot? What if the smoke of battle fills the air? 
 What if many fall? "Blessed is the man that 
 walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor 
 standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the 
 seat of the scornful." " Set yourselves, stand ye still 
 and see the salvation of the Lord with you," is the 
 Lord's voice to you to-day, as it was to the men of 
 old. Only be true to your calling. 
 
 Eemember that there is woe to him that gains 
 an evil gain, for he sins against his own soul. 
 Watch well your conscience. Respect its question- 
 ings. Guard yourself against haste to be rich. A 
 large business is a large trust; be sure you can be 
 trusted before you set your heart on the large busi- 
 ness. Many a man loses his head in a high place 
 who walked safely when he was in a low one. I 
 have known more than one to reverse the parable. 
 
72 
 
 RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 
 
 He got along very well so long as the Lord gave 
 him only one pound. When he found himself 
 possessed of ten he went to pieces. 
 
 Your wives have a great deal to do with this. 
 When the wife gets into her head the idea that her 
 husband is going to be a rich man, and begins to 
 urge him on, then there is peril. How often your 
 plain, hard-working, unambitious husband who was 
 but now generous, friendly, helpful to all, is seen 
 becoming with prosperity close, selfish, and vain- 
 glorious. The Lord gives such people the desire 
 of their heart, and sends leanness into their soul. 
 "A snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts that 
 drown men in destruction and perdition ! " It is 
 well not to be too eager for success. You may be 
 sure of wealth of character without fear, but wealth 
 and character come not surely together. A Chris- 
 tian business man may well be proud of such suc- 
 cess as God gives him; and may rightly pray that 
 God will suffer him to die in the harness. He 
 needs no larger field to fight his fight, and win his 
 crown for God. 
 
BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE 
 
"I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that 
 abidetb in me, and I in him, the same bringeth 
 forth much fruit/'— John xv. 5. 
 
 (74) 
 
BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 
 
 I WANT to set before you to-day not so much the 
 duty, as the privilege of the life of a Christian. 
 It is the privilege of service; a service accepted of 
 the Lord and fruitful in His kingdom. I want to 
 show you that such a service is not the privilege of 
 the favored few; but that it is the high calling of 
 all who love the Lord Jesus Christ; no matter how 
 limited their gifts or how pressing their cares. 
 
 You will recognize the text as from our Saviour's 
 farewell address to His disciples. The little com- 
 pany had, perhaps, paused in the court of the 
 house where in the upper chamber they had just 
 celebrated the supper, and where the Saviour had 
 spoken the comforting and tender words of the 
 14th chapter of John, in order that they might 
 hear further from Him before they go out to face 
 the final separation. 
 
 His words turn upon the essential relation that 
 is henceforth to exist between Him and His dis- 
 ciples. "I am the true vine," is His first word. 
 There are other vines of which we are branches, 
 but this is the true vine from which alone comes 
 the fulness of the life that we all need. " I am the 
 vine," He repeats, " ye are the branches." The 
 
 (75) 
 
76 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 
 
 word describes the relationship so characteristically 
 as to need no explanation. The branch is nothing 
 apart from the vine. The proof of its life and 
 character is the fruit it is to bear. In this conde- 
 scending grace in which God has given His Son to 
 come into the world, the fruit borne by those who 
 are joined to Him is to be, not straggling, or hap- 
 hazard or unworthy, but the « much fruit " which 
 shall be worthy both of the branch and of the 
 vine that bears it. The service of the Christian is 
 to be the joy of his Lord, and his own crown and 
 reward. 
 
 The question before us is, how can business men 
 so take up Christian service that it shall be the 
 measure of their fidelity to Christ ? 
 
 I am not going to speak of the worth of uncon- 
 scious influence. That is always important. We 
 will admit at once all that may be said for it as the 
 paramount influence of the Christian. If the at- 
 mosphere which a man carries about with him is 
 not Christian; if he does not seem filled with the 
 spirit of love and honor, and truth, and gentleness 
 and self-discipline-in short, with the spirit of 
 Christ-his spoken words and his active service 
 profit little. This was the chief characteristic of 
 our Saviour. He did many wonderful works. He 
 uttered words which still hold the attention of the 
 world; but more than His words or His works was 
 the manifest spirit that filled Him. This was what 
 
BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 77 
 
 lifted Him above all other men, and gave meaning 
 to His works and weight to His words. 
 
 No man can be an efficient follower of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ who has not caught something of His 
 spirit, and whose silent and unconscious influence 
 does not convince others that the life of Christ is 
 indeed hid in his heart. But it is not of this that 
 we are to speak to-day. 
 
 Nor am I to speak of the moral value of a busi- 
 ness man's daily work. The disciples were called 
 to be fishers of men, but that meant something 
 more than the testimony they were to give to 
 Christ while fishing for fish. 
 
 Six days in the week you are to do business, and 
 you must do it with all your heart and strength. 
 That God approves of the business of life is shown 
 by the fact that most men must needs be engaged 
 in it all their days, and that it stands in such im- 
 portant relations to the individual happiness, no 
 less than to the individual's worth in the world. 
 The business man certainly has no reason to apolo- 
 gize for his work, either to the Lord or to himself. 
 God is served in the toil of the men who plow the 
 fields, or grind the grain, or weave the fabric, or 
 build the houses, or distribute the products, or 
 carry on the exchange, or heal the sick, or grade 
 the streets, or guide the State, or administer the 
 laws, or do anything useful in the complicated work 
 of daily life. The progress of the world in its long 
 
<6 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 
 
 path from creation to glory is so forwarded; and 
 God shows us that this work is dear to Himself and 
 worthy of His eternal thought, in that He has 
 planned it all from the beginning, and is not 
 wearied with the daily care of it, and has con- 
 nected it so vitally with the sum of human happi- 
 ness, which is the counterpart of His own. 
 
 You men and women who are harnessed to the 
 car of daily toil, whatever form that toil may take, 
 may be at rest in the thought that you are employ- 
 ed in God's great workshop, and though you may 
 not be permitted to see the relation of your labor 
 to the final result, it has a relation intimate and 
 constant. Each man has his assigned task. The 
 work in your hands, however small and insignificant 
 it may be, is in the Master's eye an important part 
 of the whole. You do your work and get your daily 
 wage, and you may have the sweet consciousness 
 that in performing that daily task you are as truly 
 doing the Lord's work — if you are doing it wisely 
 and well— as if you were one of the swift spirits 
 who are His unseen messengers, or the perfected 
 saints who serve Him night and day in His heaven- 
 ly temple. 
 
 Jesus has forever exalted all toil by the thirty 
 years He spent in the carpenter's home ; those mys- 
 terious years in which, engaged in manual labor, 
 He hid Himself among the common people that in 
 the weariness and care and dull routine of daily 
 
BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 79 
 
 toil, He might know our life as it is the lot of the 
 vast multitude of men and women, and that He 
 might be known to us all as one like ourselves. 
 And when the hour came for the public service, 
 with its startling miracles and burning discourses ; 
 when the hands were freed from their daily tasks, 
 and the form stood erect with the consciousness of 
 its divine message, and the face glowed with the 
 light of another world, He would not escape the 
 common burden, but is to be seen through those 
 surcharged years of the public ministry ever solicit- 
 ous for the temporal welfare of the little company 
 gathered about Him. He is thoughtful of their 
 daily maintenance. He provides for their needed 
 rest, He secures for them a house of entertainment, 
 He washes their travel-soiled feet. He never asks 
 to be relieved from these humble ministries in 
 order that He may devote Himself to a more 
 absorbing task. He is Himself the picture of the 
 ideal life of His truest servants ; finding opportu- 
 nity for the largest service amid the humblest du- 
 ties ; exalting the call of God in ministering to the 
 needs of the lowly and the weak. Let us not be be- 
 trayed into neglecting the tasks of daily life, how- 
 ever wearied the frame, or however jaded the mind. 
 You are as truly serving God in the counting-house 
 and in the factory, in the home and in the shop, 
 as you could serve Him in the pulpit or on the 
 mission-field. "The earth is the Lord's and the 
 
80 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. ^ 
 
 fulness thereof,"— and the work of the world, and 
 the increase of its fulness may be a direct tribute 
 to the praise of its Maker. 
 
 But not of this service are we speaking to-day. 
 Our theme is a call upon business men for a sj>ecifi- 
 cally Christian service, as properly demanded of 
 every one. This alone satisfies the meaning of the 
 text. The "much fruit," which the Saviour an- 
 nounced as the characteristic of His disciples, is 
 evidently something for which all are to strive as a 
 definite and honored privilege ; a tribute to their 
 Lord and a reward and joy to themselves. 
 
 This must be so, because this was the chief aim 
 of the Saviour's own work. He came to do the 
 Father's will by a certain distinct and positive 
 service which should proclaim His Father, and 
 bring in His reign in the earth. For this He fitted 
 Himself. The duties of home, the daily tasks, the 
 hours of study and of thought, the years in 
 Nazareth, valuable as they were in ripeuing Eis 
 own growing character, and powerful as a testimony 
 to the world about Him, are to be understood only 
 as so much preparation for the more definite service 
 to which He was consecrated. The purpose which 
 controlled His life was to give Himself with that 
 activity and definite purpose to doing the Father's 
 will which could only be satisfied when each day 
 should show some new opportunity entered, some 
 new testimony borne, some new task achieved which 
 
BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 81 
 
 should count at once and positively upon the prog- 
 ress of the kingdom. For this He was born, and 
 to this He gave Himself. All else was incidental. 
 If, then, we are to be His disciples nothing short 
 of this will answer the requirement. 
 
 The Christian business man, if he is to be true to 
 his Master, must have a purpose not unlike the 
 Master's for specific service. Indirect or casual re- 
 sults will not suffice. "We can only be like Christ 
 when the ruling motive of Christ occupies the same 
 place in our hearts as in His, and when we find our- 
 selves in unrest, unless we are able to do something 
 which shall contribute definitely to the cause of 
 God. We want to show that we are entirely His, 
 and that we are His at all times ; that we carry His 
 love in our hearts, and the thought of His cause in 
 our minds always, and are ever eager for opportu- 
 nity to serve Him. 
 
 Wholly apart from the need of our work, or of 
 its relation to the progress of the kingdom of God 
 on the earth, is the question of our personal relation 
 to Christ. Except His spirit be in us we are not 
 His, and this was the characteristic of His spirit 
 that He was animated with the purpose of service. 
 We cannot be truly His, or in the language of the 
 text, cannot " abide in Him," unless we are filled 
 with the same desire to bear much fruit ; that is, 
 to do those things which shall result in a direct 
 benefit to the cause of God. 
 
82 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 
 
 But, furthermore, the account which the Saviour 
 gives of the relation of His kingdom to the world 
 requires of all this specific service. A war is wag- 
 ing between the kingdoms of this world and the 
 kingdom of Christ. In warfare all contribute. All 
 do not go to the battle ; but all are to the measure 
 of their ability engaged in winning the victory, and 
 every citizen, however remote from the field of 
 strife, or however absorbed in his daily toil, is fully 
 conscious of the issues that are at stake, and eager 
 to do his part to determine the result. "When a 
 war involves a whole nation, and is for victory or 
 death, every one does his part and does it eagerly, 
 and with purpose. 
 
 Christ is at war with the powers of this world. 
 It is a war for the souls of men. It involves all 
 who are born. It goes on through the centuries. 
 Multitudes for whom Christ died are perishing. 
 Multitudes very dear to Him are in hourly peril. 
 Every Christian is summoned to service as a soldier, 
 and, as a soldier, is warned to be armed and ready 
 and resolute. No laggard service will answer. The 
 enemy is everywhere. The line of battle now ad- 
 vances, and now falls back. Brilliant victories are 
 won, and bright hopes vanish. The call is always 
 for better service, braver, more devoted, more in- 
 tense. Only so is the final triumph to be secured. 
 It would surely seem that only they who heed 
 the call, and give heart and hand to the cause, 
 
BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 83 
 
 <jan truly count themselves as enlisted with the 
 Lord. 
 
 Furthermore, the conditions of personal growth seem 
 to require active Christian service. The alternative 
 of the text is, as St. Augustine sharply put it, " Aid 
 vitis aut ignis," either the vine or the fire. We 
 must bear fruit, or be cast into the fire and be 
 burnt. If we do not serve Christ, we cannot grow 
 with Christ, and if we do not grow with Christ, we 
 are worthless to Christ. 
 
 This proves itself in many ways. A Christian life 
 without definite Christian service is sure to be a 
 iselfish life, and a selfish life becomes quickly an un- 
 christian life. Moreover, the cares of the world 
 increase with advancing years. Business becomes 
 more absorbing, whether or not it becomes larger. 
 The business man who has no definite Christian 
 work, or accepts no Christian trust, finds himself 
 more and more absorbed in the routine and details 
 of business and of the world. His heart becomes 
 iilled with these things, and religion is crowded out. 
 Christian service, therefore, becomes a necessity in 
 order that there may be a free Christian growth. 
 Only so are we kept close to those Interests of the 
 Lord's cause which by our care for them enlarge our 
 understanding and soften our heart and keep fresh 
 our interest in our fellows. The world of business 
 is charged with self-interest. It dominates us, it 
 hardens us, it sets us in antagonism with others, 
 
84 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 
 
 and in spite of ourselves it tends to blight and de- 
 stroy all that is best in the soul. 
 
 All business men need then all the help they can 
 get to protect themselves against these influences. 
 
 I will not soon forget an appeal that I heard be- 
 fore a company of 400 business men a few months 
 ago, by a business man then advanced in life and soon 
 to die ; as upon the spur of the moment, in response 
 to an invitation to speak, he appealed as with the 
 face and tongue of a prophet to those younger 
 men, for their own sake, and their families' sake, 
 and for the sake of all that was best in their lives, 
 that every one of them should have some definite 
 Christian service to which he could give his heart 
 and thought. He referred to his own experience. 
 He had begun life a stranger in a strange city; and 
 young man as he was, had been put in charge of a 
 large force of mechanics. The alternative was 
 forced upon him at once to seek his own comfort 
 and interest, or devote himself to the spiritual care 
 of others. He made his choice, and for upwards of 
 fifty years of most active business, burdened with 
 imperfect health and pressed incessantly by a mul- 
 titude of commercial cares, he had never ceased to 
 have in hand some definite Christian work — a church 
 for his men, or a mission Sunday-school, or a great 
 Bible-class, or a ministry among the poor, to which 
 he not only devoted a part of the Sabbath, but 
 which was on his mind and heart during the week.. 
 
BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 85 
 
 And now, at the close of life, honored by all, with 
 great institutions grown up as the result of his 
 labors, to live long after he is gone, with multi- 
 tudes who loved his face and honored his name, he 
 pleaded with those younger men, for the sake of 
 Christ, themselves, and their families to follow his 
 example. It ought not to be a strange tale to any 
 of you, for New York has never been without 
 similar testimony, and the most honored names in 
 this city in the past have been those who have lived 
 just such lives. 
 
 And now, I beg you to observe that the ordinary 
 excuses that business men offer are not valid. 
 Many say they are too busy for more than they are 
 doing. In one sense that is doubtless true; but 
 whether a man is too busy or not depends upon 
 his strength, and his strength depends in no small 
 degree upon his spiritual life. If you business men 
 could only understand how much better you are 
 prepared for the work of the week by a Sabbath 
 which has been somewhat engrossing, compelling 
 the mind to turn aside from business thoughts by 
 the eagerness of its new interest on that day, more 
 of you would be engaged in specific Christian 
 service. The business man who idles away the 
 Sabbath because he needs rest finds himself on 
 Monday morning in a very different condition from 
 what be would have been had he come to the Sab- 
 bath anticipating a new draft upon his heart and 
 
CO BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 
 
 eager to receive the refreshment that is found in 
 the devotion of the mind to a new and satisfying 
 toH. 
 
 There is often no condition so perilous to the 
 over-tired mind as an effort for idle vacuity. The 
 wheels of the brain will not stop running. The 
 thoughts of the week will not down at one's bid- 
 ding. With hands idle and body resting the jaded 
 mind is defeated by its own weakness. It wears 
 itself out with the recurring questions of the week 
 which in the idleness of Sunday it has not the op- 
 portunity of settling. A man who is working in 
 his office to the full measure of his power during 
 the week, more than any other, needs the refresh- 
 ment of an entire change when he turns away from 
 it, and for most men this change can only be se- 
 cured by a change of occupation as exacting as 
 some consecrated Christian service. If Christian 
 men took this view of the case, the work of our 
 philanthropies, and especially of our churches, 
 would not be done so carelessly, and with so little 
 thought, as in so many instances it is now. 
 
 Some say they have no gift for Christian service; 
 and some, no opportunity; and some think them- 
 selves not fitted; and some say that no one can do 
 everything, and that we hire the minister for that 
 work. To one and all the answer of the Saviour 
 comes, " I am the vine, ye are the branches." Every 
 one has his gift. Every one may have his oppor- 
 
BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 87 
 
 tunity and fitness. Every one may bear fruit that 
 shall be " much," as related to the total, and to his 
 opportunities, if he will. 
 
 Now, the Lord calls us all to set aside these ex- 
 cuses, and to be willing to do what we can, and to 
 do it with purpose and force. Because such ser- 
 vice is the bond of union with Himself, because it 
 is what is meant by membership in His kingdom, 
 because it is the condition of personal growth, and 
 finally because it is the only means by which 
 the church of God is to fulfill its task in the 
 world. 
 
 The glory of the cause of Christ is that in all 
 the centuries it has found multitudes of men who, 
 while engaged in their daily avocations, have yet 
 found abundant opportunity for Christian service. 
 The pattern was set by the apostles themselves, 
 who could be fishermen or tentmakers and still 
 perform their divinely appointed tasks. In no 
 century has it received more splendid service from 
 business men than in that which is now closing. 
 The Christian business man of the 19th century is 
 almost a new type in civilization, and he cer- 
 tainly has achieved a new glory for the church of 
 Christ. 
 
 What a long row of brilliant names our churches 
 now possess, of men, who through long business 
 lives, with hands filled with the world's work, have 
 yet found heart and time for doing the Lord's 
 
88 
 
 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 
 
 work in a large and careful way; men who have 
 given themselves to the founding and guiding of 
 great Christian institutions, whose names are built 
 into the life of our strongest and noblest churches, 
 and who are living anew in the men and women 
 whom they have personaUy led to Christ. 
 
 Facing the door of this church is the statue of 
 such an one, who through many years of uninter- 
 rupted business life was known in this community 
 as a man whose heart and mind were always filled 
 with care for the religious interests of the com- 
 munity about him, and all the individuals whom he 
 could personally reach. I may, indeed, speak of 
 him with a deep sense of personal gratitude, for 
 when Mr. William E. Dodge was a young busi- 
 ness man, working to the fuU measure of his 
 power, he found time not only to conduct a large 
 Bible-class every Sabbath, but personally to labor 
 with the members of that class until he led them 
 one by one to Christ. It was the result of such 
 personal visitation, time for which was snatched 
 on his way to and from his business, that led my 
 own mother to Christ, and, so I may say, deter- 
 mined my Christian life, We may well thank God 
 for the abundant labors of the overworked business 
 men in this city. There is no city in the land in 
 which so much or such painstaking Christian labor 
 is accomplished both by men and women. There 
 is none in which the standard of Christian service 
 
BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 89 
 
 is higher, or in which the pattern of the Christian 
 business man's life is purer. We only need to 
 exalt that pattern for all and to encourage all to 
 recognize that the Lord has placed no man in a 
 position in which he may not do his best service, 
 and win his worthy reward. It is simply a ques- 
 tion of willingness and of purpose. We all need 
 to recognize our daily privileges, and to shape our 
 life with reference to them. 
 
 This church, with its splendid history, its noble 
 men, and its boundless opportunities, may indeed 
 do anything for the cause of Christ, and for the 
 city of New York, if you business men but realize 
 your opportunities. As you plan to give thought 
 to the Lord's cause as a specific duty; as you are 
 not content until you have found some place of 
 definite personal service, something to which you 
 •can give your heart and your best thought — not 
 something which can be done in idle hours, or when 
 something else does not call you, — so the church 
 prospers and so the Lord sends blessing. When 
 "the work of the church is done as business is done 
 —with time and care, with wise planning, and 
 large-minded intelligence and vigorous grasp, — then 
 the religion of Christ is respected in the com- 
 munity, and the kingdom of Christ goes forward. 
 Then Christ abides in His church, for His people 
 are striving to abide in Him. They are making 
 His cause and His service uppermost in their hearts. 
 
90 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 
 
 Then the " Joy of the Lord is your strength," and 
 bearing much fruit, as the Saviour has promised, 
 you are His disciples indeed. I give thanks to God 
 daily that so many of you business men, old and 
 young, are doing this. 
 
THE DEMAND FOE PROGRESS 
 
" Reaching forth unto those things which are be- 
 fore, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high 
 calling of God in Christ Jesus."— Phil. iii. 13-14 
 
 (92) 
 
THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 
 
 nnHEEE is something in every heart that responds 
 -*- eagerly to the summons of this text. We feel 
 the uplift of an appeal for progress. Coupled 
 with the sense of dependence, which the philoso- 
 phers tell us, is fundamental in man's thinking, is 
 the desire of attainment. Ovu* minds are so con- 
 stituted as to strain always for a wider horizon, 
 for new and larger possibilities. "With the vanish- 
 ing of this desire hope dies, and with the death of 
 hope life ceases to be life. It becomes mere exist- 
 ence; and man, made in the image of God, sinks 
 back into the life of the animal. 
 
 These two facts, the sense of dependence and the 
 longing for progress, must be set side by side as 
 the starting-points of all thought, and as the ulti- 
 mate source of all our action. Here is to be found 
 the explanation of the pleasure we have in the life 
 of the young. 
 
 A service like that of Children's Day starts our 
 blood and sets our nerves to tingling. We delight 
 to gather the children about us. We respond to 
 their excitement. The springs of our life seem 
 filled again as we look into their young faces and 
 hear their bright voices. The explanation lies not 
 
 (93) 
 
94 THE DEMAND FOK PROGRESS. 
 
 in the surface facts. It is not in the pleasure of 
 their eager joys and fresh enthusiasm. It is in the 
 depths of our own hearts, as the longing of our 
 souls is stimulated, and the desire of progress and 
 attainment, growing dull with the advancing years, 
 is kindled anew. The thought of the possibilities 
 of their- young lives gives filip to our old hearts, 
 and stirs into quickened action our jaded pulses. 
 We, too, are young again. We have not reached 
 our goal. We have not done all that we yet may 
 do. The horizon still lifts for us. There is some- 
 thing to which we yet may attain. We are glad of 
 the children, for they make us glad for ourselves. 
 After all, the years between us and them are short, 
 and life is long. We have not grown too old to 
 live. We are not out of the race. We have not 
 ceased to be human, sons, indeed, of God. 
 
 Starting with this fact I am sure of your interest 
 when I ask you to consider what, then, is this prog- 
 ress for which we all long? What form must it 
 take that it may satisfy us ? Certainly it does not 
 lie in progress in material things. Increase in 
 wealth, in luxury, in refinement; in the arts of life 
 and in dominion over nature, whether it be an in- 
 crease of things in our own hands or an increase 
 in the world about us, is no measure of true 
 progress. 
 
 We can manipulate matter after a fashion of 
 which our fathers did not dream. The progress of 
 
THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 95 
 
 the century, of which all are so proud, is mainly in 
 the way in which the forces of earth and air and 
 sea present themselves like so many well -trained 
 horses — obedient to man's hand — for all the service 
 of daily life. We have made great advances in our 
 skill in handling these forces, and consequently in 
 the amount of service which they are every day 
 rendering. 
 
 Our factories are full of machines of precision, 
 •each doing the work of many hands, producing 
 the manufactured article at a fraction of its former 
 cost, and giving employment to an army of laborers 
 who are better paid and better fed than their pred- 
 ecessors were, and who receive a far larger share 
 of the products of their labor. The telegraph, the 
 electric light, the swift steamships, the railway, are 
 but so many forms of the stretching forth of man's 
 hand in masterful control over the forces of the 
 eaith. Everywhere science has become the cheer- 
 ful handmaid of labor. Iron is now converted into 
 steel without "puddling." Coal is resolved into 
 gas for economic combustion. Electricity is weighed 
 and measured for delivery as if it were cord-wood. 
 The man of science to-day feels himself in duty 
 bound to go from his laboratory to the factory and 
 market with each new discovery he makes, in order 
 that life may be in some way enriched and amelio- 
 rated by it. 
 
 But all this lies quite outside of ourselves. The 
 
96 THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 
 
 man who yesterday lived in a hovel may to-day live 
 in a mansion. His candle has given place to an 
 incandescent light; his tableware has changed to 
 hammered silver; his crockery to Koyal Worcester. 
 His chromos are replaced by paintings from Paris. 
 His brown-stone and his bronze may be the wonder 
 of all passers. What measure is there in these 
 things of true progress in the man himself ? We 
 are compelled to ask, is he by so much the more 
 honest and truthful? Has he more faith or love? 
 Is he humble? Is he pure in heart? Has he 
 grown more unselfish ? Are his sympathies larger 
 and tenderer ? Is his grasp upon God more real ? 
 Is he more of a man than before ? Of this we have 
 no suggestion. Yet surely these are what men are 
 to live for. These shall endure when all the rest 
 shall vanish. Indeed, what we are tempted to call 
 our progress may be simply a record of a debt 
 toward which we have paid little or nothing. 
 What part had we in the costly devotion to truth 
 and to God which brought our forefathers to these 
 shores, and laid the foundations on which are built 
 so much of what we are proudest? What part had 
 we in the mighty throes in which our national in- 
 stitutions were begotten, or what sacrifice does it 
 cost us to maintain them? 
 
 We are proud of the civilization of our age. 
 How does it come to be ours, except as an inherit- 
 ance to which we were born, and concerning which 
 
THE DEMAND FOR PROGRES*S. 97 
 
 we shall do well if we pass it on to our children un- 
 marred. We pay, we say, for what we enjoy, for 
 the house we live in, the clothes we wear, the food 
 we eat, the hooks we read, the transportation we 
 get on the cars, but what does our payment repre- 
 sent of the cost in productive thought and self- 
 sacrifice and painful labor which each article that 
 adds to our comfort represents ? 
 
 What have we that we have not received, to the 
 extent that it brings to us the result of a vast out- 
 lay to which we have contributed nothing? Prog- 
 ress there is, it is true, on all sides; how little of it 
 we have any right to claim, as due to what we have 
 done, and how much of it is limited to things in 
 which we are in no sense a part. Progress in ma- 
 terial things is well-nigh universal; but progress in 
 moral attainment is most rare. 
 
 The " reaching forth to those things which are be- 
 fore," the "pressing toward the mark for the prize," 
 which the apostle had in mind, in the text, which 
 answers to the fundamental thought of progress in 
 every heart, must be personal. It must be in our- 
 selves rather than in our surroundings. 
 
 You see in the park a beautiful team. The 
 horses' coats shine like silk. Their form is perfect; 
 their metal is high, their speed like the wind. In 
 blood and training they are the finest product 
 of years of care. Suppose the man who owns 
 them, whose every wish they obey, is less honest 
 
98 THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 
 
 than his horses. Suppose that as you look at them, 
 man aud beast, you feel that should the angel of 
 the Lord stand in the way, as with Balaam, the 
 beast is better fitted to discern him than his owner. 
 What progress is there here to be proud of ? 
 
 A beautiful yacht fixes the attention of all, as 
 gathering the forces of the air in her wide spread- 
 ing canvas she makes them do her bidding, or 
 close-hauled she lays her course into the very eye 
 of the wind. Suppose the men who sail her mind 
 the helm that should govern their lives less surely 
 than their boat does, and evince an all too fatal 
 tendency to fall off before every strong wind of 
 temptation. 
 
 Suppose a city is crowned with beauty and pros- 
 perity. Great buildings are there ; models of 
 strength and appropriateness. See how carefully 
 their foundations are carried down to the rock. 
 What if their owners are laying the foundations of 
 their souls on the sand, and building themselves 
 with wood, hay, and stubble ? Here are splendid 
 residences; what if the occupants are less admirable 
 than their homes ? What if rancor and strife and 
 selfishness and vanity and impurity should be found 
 dwelling amid the luxury and outward refinement ? 
 Here are successful stores, and busy, well-organized 
 factories ; what if the merchant is dishonest, or the 
 manufacturer, in his eager selfishness, is indifferent 
 to the welfare of the human beings in his employ, 
 
THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. \)V 
 
 •or careless of the moral character of the community 
 in which he lives ? Would we have much of which 
 to boast ? 
 
 There comes to every man a day when these 
 things by which we measure ourselves turn to noth- 
 ingness. "VVe find ourselves suddenly shaken free 
 from them all. We are called to bid farewell to 
 this world, and the eyes strain after glimpses of the 
 life beyond. The merchant in that hour will scarce- 
 ly give thought enough to his business to direct the 
 disposition of it. The manufacturer cares nothing 
 for his mill, though perhaps up to that day or week 
 he has lived in and for it. Stranger still, the man 
 ctf science, who perhaps has won fame in his studies, 
 cares no more for them. The whole realm of 
 thought in which he has lived vanishes from him. 
 He asks no more for his books, and is indifferent 
 to new discoveries. Even the father loses solicitude 
 for his family, and the husband for his wife. The 
 bour has come in which each must give an account, 
 not of his goods, or of his learning, or of his house- 
 hold, but of himself. He must go out alone, sepa- 
 rated from the dross of this life by a dissolution to 
 which no electrolysis can compare. The question 
 then is, has there been progress here ? Have I been 
 pressing forward, or have I only been improving 
 the things which I must leave, which were not my- 
 self? Have I made some measure of attainment 
 in the line which alone shall satisfy ? Is the prize 
 
100 THE DEMAND FOK PROGRESS. 
 
 of my high calling of God within my reach ? Or 
 have I been laboring upon the slag of the furnace 
 from which the glowing metal is now to be forever 
 poured off ? 
 
 But, furthermore, it is manifest that this personal 
 progress must be in a particular direction. We are 
 to " press toward the mark for the prize of the high 
 calling of God in Christ Jesus." Progress, to be 
 true, must bring us into a growing likeness to the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Every man has a calling, or is supposed to have. 
 One is a teacher, another a physician, another a 
 lawyer. One sells dry-goods, another groceries, 
 another boots and shoes. One is a machinist, 
 another a builder, another a banker. The first 
 business of life is to learn to employ one's self. 
 We but flounder until we have settled upon what 
 we shall do, and are busy doing it. 
 
 Men are in the main known by their occupations. 
 The work makes and marks the man. The differ- 
 ence, for example, between a doctor and a butcher, 
 or a judge and a broker, is not in the costume ! It 
 embraces the entire man, and even controls his 
 thoughts. Men are expected to follow their calling 
 and to be moulded by it. 
 
 Now, we have, each of us, another calling aside 
 from that of our mere occupation, a calling just as 
 real, and far more authoritative. It is this in which 
 Paul declared himself as pressing forward, and to- 
 
THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 101 
 
 which he summons us, " The high calling of God 
 in Christ Jesus." "We are called to make a business 
 of becoming like Jesus Christ. We are not born so. 
 We do not by nature grow so. We shall not wake 
 up some fine morning and find ourselves become so. 
 It is not a call that clamors after us in the voices of 
 the street. Hunger and thirst, and nakedness, and 
 the need of a home to dwell in, and the favor of 
 our fellow-men are not its ministers We shall suf- 
 fer no immediate want or obloquy if we do not re- 
 gard it. Hard times may not divert us from it, 
 and returning prosperity will not re-establish us in 
 it. No one stands ready to reproach us with idle- 
 ness or shame in regard to it. But it is a call none 
 the less. Shame overwhelming, and want a thou- 
 sandfold greater than of food or raiment, awaits 
 the man who neglects it. A call to become like 
 Jesus Christ ! 
 
 How can I pursue this calling if I do not know 
 what likeness to Christ is ? Does it mean to be rich 
 and refined ; to be well-dressed and to have an ex- 
 quisite taste ? Is it to have a large knowledge of 
 the world and of men, or to be shrewd at a bargain, 
 and wise in investments ? Is it to be well-read in 
 books, or successful in one's profession, or, as a 
 young man, to be a great ball-player, or an oars- 
 man, or a bicyclist, or a regimental officer ; or is it 
 to add something to whatever we may be in these 
 directions ; something over and above and quite 
 
102 THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 
 
 apart from them ? Is it to be the friend of God ? 
 To have the experience of forgiven sins, to be a 
 striver after righteousness, seeking those things 
 ■which are above, " where Christ sitteth at the right 
 hand of God " ? " Setting the affections on things 
 above, not on things on the earth " ? Resisting the 
 devil and his works, and earnestly contending to 
 become pure in heart, gentle, patient, honest, good, 
 a lover of one's fellow-men ? This is our calling of 
 God. How can we enter it except we know that 
 we have such a call, and feel the shame of offering 
 any other as a substitute ? Here is progress, for it 
 is the growth of our very self ; growth in what shall 
 endure when all else shall vanish. 
 
 As we turn again to the text we find that it is 
 charged with energy. It is couched in phrases of 
 contest. " Reaching forth unto those things which 
 are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of 
 the high calling of God." This progress which 
 shall satisfy can be attained only by effort. Energy 
 is demanded. Persistency and patience are indis- 
 pensable. Therefore, it is the voice of God appeal- 
 ing to all that is best in each of us. 
 
 In a measure this is true of all callings. You 
 business men are fond of saying that business is 
 not done as it was thirty years ago. You no longer 
 write your letters and go home content to wait in 
 peace until the slow answer comes from the ends of 
 the earth. You buy and sell by telegraph, and the 
 
THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 103 
 
 merciless telephone pursues you to your bed-cham- 
 ber. Your whole strength has to be concentrated 
 upon rapid and incessant action. Go to the factory; 
 the workmen are everywhere sitting at machines 
 where a moment's inattention will ruin the product. 
 You say, nowadays, that only he is successful who 
 puts his soul into his work and does it with all his 
 might ; and you turn back from your high calling 
 of God because it requires attention and purpose, 
 and possibly self-sacrifice and self-denial ! " I write 
 unto you, young men, because ye are strong," said the 
 aged apostle. You are successful in business or in 
 study, will you not meet the conditions of this ser- 
 vice ? Will you not strive to succeed here ? Many 
 of you have begun the Christian life. Your face shone 
 with purpose ; your voice was heard in the prayer- 
 meeting. You had taken yourself in hand and were 
 willing to do hard things for God, if only you might 
 know Christ and grow in grace. 
 
 Or if not already a Christian you were eager to 
 be. It was in your mind day and night. You knew 
 you had a calling of God and were seeking to know 
 how you might press forward and attain its prize. 
 And you have grown cold. You are making prog- 
 ress in your business or in your profession your ex- 
 cuse. You have not time for religion. You hope 
 that by and by it will turn out all right. Just read 
 this chapter before us and see what hope there is 
 that things will turn out to suit us, if we do not 
 
104 THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 
 
 turn them. " I count all things but loss for the ex- 
 cellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, 
 for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and 
 do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. 
 That I may know Him and the power of His resur- 
 rection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being 
 made conformable unto His death; if by any means 
 I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not 
 as though I had already attained, either were already 
 perfect, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend 
 that for which also I am apprehended of Christ 
 Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have appre- 
 hended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those 
 things which are behind, and reaching forth unto 
 those things which are before, I press toward the 
 mark for the prize of the high calling of God in 
 Christ Jesus." What loving earnestness in His 
 appjeal. "Brethren, be followers together of me." 
 " So run that ye may obtain." 
 
 How little we grasp the meaning of this appeal 
 of God to us. " Oh, I am not yet apprehended, I 
 suppose," said a gentleman to me the other day, as 
 we were talking of personal religion. He had evi- 
 dently found in this appeal the manifest suggestion 
 of a higher plane of life than that upon which he 
 was living, and to justify himself to his own heart 
 for not being what God would have him to be, was 
 growing accustomed to think of himself as not yet 
 called of God, not yet really grasped by the Divine 
 
THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 105 
 
 love. The Saviour had not laid down His life for 
 him. Think of it. ■ 
 
 " If that I may apprehend that for which also I am 
 apprehended" was the apostle's glad testimony. 
 Every one of us is loved after the same fashion. 
 Every one of us has the same high calling, Every 
 one of us has the possibility of this progress of 
 the soul. Every one of us is to be a true man in 
 Christ Jesus, not if God wills, for God does will 
 it for us all, but if we will, as He summons us all 
 to shake off our lethargy, to arouse our will to 
 do what He would have us to do, to be what He 
 has made it possible for each of us to become. 
 
 And what, then, is the reward? How full these 
 words are of it. It is "the excellency of the 
 knowledge of God." It is the " righteousness 
 which is of God by faith." It is the " power of His 
 resurrection," attained by us. It is at last to be 
 made perfect, as " He is perfect." It is to appre- 
 hend as we are " apprehended of Christ Jesus." It 
 is to win the " prize of the high calling of God." 
 It is to attain the goal for which every soul in its 
 God-implanted longings for progress will surely cry. 
 
 No wonder that in our Lord's account of the last 
 day the redeemed are astonished by their recep- 
 tion, and ask in amazement what they have done to 
 deserve so much. " Lord, when saw we Thee an- 
 lungered and fed Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee 
 drink? When saw we Thee a stranger and took 
 
106 
 
 THE DEMAND FOK PKOGKESS. 
 
 Thee in, or naked and clothed Thee ? or when saw 
 we Thee sick or in prison and came unto Thee ? " 
 Then comes the wonderful answer, « Whenever you 
 did one least thing in conscious self-denial, when- 
 ever you put forth the least effort of good, when- 
 ever you heard the voice of your high calling of 
 God, and obeyed, whenever you reached after 
 the things which are eternal, whenever you pressed 
 toward the mark for the prize which is in Jesus 
 Christ, ye did it unto me ; enter into your reward. 
 
 Is it not, then, worth the while, beloved, to be 
 true men ? If a little effort will bring such a bless- 
 ing, what will not a lifelong purpose obtain ? To 
 win Christ and to be found in Him; not having our 
 own righteousness, but the righteousness which is 
 through faith in Jesus Christ. To have that true 
 consciousness of the forgiveness of sins, of the 
 possession of a new heart, of a grasp upon the 
 eternal truth, of the power to overcome temptation; 
 to have trust and calmness and strength. To be 
 men and women growing daily in the things of God, 
 and in victory over the world and the flesh, walk- 
 ing through life with your hand firmly held in the 
 hand of the Saviour. This is the prize that God 
 has set within the reach of all of you. What an 
 infinite loss if any man come short of it! 
 
THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 
 
"And every man went unto his own house. 
 John vii. 53. 
 
 (108) 
 
THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 
 
 T7"OU will find in the folio of almost any artist 
 ■*- some highly treasured sketches by the great 
 masters. They are often little more than a few 
 strokes : a hint of a head, or a figure, or a group, 
 even a hand, or a limb, fixing the conception that 
 was passing through the brain of the artist, but 
 revealing to him who can interpret, both the mas- 
 ter's thought and the master's method. In the 
 rough pen sketch of two reclining figures, for ex- 
 ample, you can see Michael Angelo's masterpiece, 
 the tomb of the Medici, as it first sprung into his 
 mind; as in those fragmentary crayoned groups 
 you catch the forms that were to reappear in 
 Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican. There is the fin- 
 ished work, here is the original sketch which de- 
 dermined its development, and in which its motif, 
 its governing idea, and the relation to it of the 
 several parts, are most clearly to be read. 
 
 The New Testament is a folio of such sketches 
 of the Christian Church. They are from the hand 
 of the Master himself, and of disciples under His 
 immediate instruction. The Christian turns to 
 them with an ever new pleasure, and is sure always 
 to hit upon some new truth. It is only a line, a 
 
 (109) 
 
110 THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 
 
 passing incident, a thought caught and fixed for 
 future reference, but it is discovered to be the 
 germ of some great truth by and by to be un- 
 folded, or the disclosure of some principle which 
 is to underlie and govern the growth of the Chris- 
 tian community or the Christian character. Often 
 it is a mere hint, but it throws open a window 
 through which we can look upon God's wide ways 
 of dealing with men, and gain for our varied need 
 sweet consolation or refreshing strength. 
 
 Such a window is this brief text. It occurs in 
 the midst of much weighty matter. The Saviour 
 is discoursing of the great things of His person 
 and work. The days are hastening to the end of 
 His ministry and to the crucifixion. The discourses 
 as recorded b}' John are long and move upon the 
 highest plane. They deal with the Father from 
 whom He has come, with the truth which He is, 
 and with the souls of men, made for everlasting 
 life, going down to eternal death. Suddenly, among 
 other passing incidents treasured in the narrative, 
 we come upon this. As the chapter closes* we read 
 " And every man went unto his own house." 
 
 At once we see ourselves doing the same thing. 
 Men have been doing it from that day to this. 
 From all kinds of meetings, and all kinds of expe- 
 riences, with hearts heavy or light, with thoughts 
 wise or foolish, with hopes and fears, with anxieties 
 and cares, with joys and sorrows, we turn every 
 
THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. Ill 
 
 man to his own house, there to put ourselves under 
 conditions of life new and different. 
 
 It cannot but be that this experience so universal, 
 so constantly recurring, is of God's planning, and 
 plays a large part in our character and life. 
 
 Life in one's own house ! It embraces more than 
 half our hours, much more, if we reckon childhood 
 and age. It will not be strange if we find it very 
 full of meaning. Let us approach it, as we all in 
 fact do every day, from without. See what going 
 to his own house means to every man ; first of all, 
 in what he puts behind him. 
 
 He leaves his place of business. He leaves all 
 •conventions and club3, places where men gather 
 for enjoyment or stimulus. He leaves all commit- 
 tees, or little groups in which men combine for 
 multiplied activity. These three, the place of busi- 
 ness, the convention or club, and the committee or 
 board, represent the three great departments of 
 active life. In the ome we bend our energies to 
 getting on in the world, measuring ourselves with 
 other men and seeking to master for our own ben- 
 efit the great forces which determine success in 
 life. In the second we obey the instinct which 
 leads men to find pleasure and something of profit- 
 able excitement in assemblies of their kind, an in- 
 stinct which expresses itself as truly in the loafing 
 group of boys on the corner, or in the discussive 
 chat around the stove in the village grocery, as in. 
 
112 THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 
 
 the great political or religious convention. In the 
 third we plan and jDlot to accomplish with the aid 
 of others what we cannot hope to accomplish alone. 
 These, the business, the convention, and the com- 
 mittee, make up our active life. They absorb, 
 whether or not they satisf}' us They give us our 
 chance. They are our opportunity and our tools. 
 In them and with them we show what we cau do, if 
 indeed they do not make us the men we are. 
 
 A great deal is waiting to be said about this side 
 of life. It represents the present joy of living, the 
 joy of strong men summoned to put forth their 
 strengtb, to think, to plan, to persist, to struggle, 
 to overcome, to progress, in God's great plan of 
 peopling the earth and subduing it, preparing the 
 way for the oncoming of His final kingdom and 
 the full revelation of Himself. It is a life worth 
 living. Away the thought that measures happiness 
 by exemption from necessity of labor, or depre- 
 cates the daily tasks that each morning summon 
 the army of workers to lay strong hands to the 
 wheels of daily life ! But the single jx>int before us 
 is that as we turn our faces to our homes we leave 
 all this behind That simple act, then, of going 
 each to his own house, must be full of meaning. 
 You mount the steps, you unlatch the door. As 
 you close it behind you, you shut the world out, and 
 shut yourself in to a different scene. 
 
 Let us then in the second place see what that is. 
 
THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 113 
 
 It is the world of the home ; that little world so 
 small in its area, so large in its meaning. It is the 
 place of those unending personal duties and those 
 incessant personal services which go to make up so 
 large a part of the life of those we most love, and 
 therefore so large a part of our own life. It is the 
 place of the tenderest affections ; and the place 
 where those affections are put to their true and 
 constant test. There anxiety and care are never 
 distant, and there sorrow touches depths and attains 
 a dignity elsewhere unknown. There are the joys 
 beside which all others are poor, and there are the 
 burdens in comparison with which all others are 
 light, and the problems and tasks to which all oth- 
 ers are easy. Your hand is stretched out in proud 
 mastery in your business; it falls powerless, and 
 your head droops as you turn homeward and face 
 the governing of your wayward son. You are brave 
 before loss in your business; an arrow is in your 
 heart as you open the door upon a sick wife or a 
 suffering child. There is no escaping it. As we 
 turn every man to his own house, we all recognize 
 that we enter upon conditions entirely different 
 from those that surround us elsewhere. 
 
 Even the man without a family, whose house is a 
 single room, recognizes it. He closes his door 
 upon himself. The world is outside. He must 
 now deal with realities. He sits down to look into 
 his own heart. He unclothes not his body only, 
 
Ill THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 
 
 but his soul. His thoughts, his purposes, his mo- 
 tives, all that he has done, come up for review. He 
 faces facts. There is no place for disguise. He 
 seems to be doing little. They are idle moments 
 in his room compared with the strenuous hours of 
 the busy day, but morning by morning as he goes 
 forth to his work he is made or unmade by what 
 has transpired within those four walls. 
 
 We are now prepared to see as a third consider- 
 ation how large a place this daily retirement to 
 his home occupies in God's plan for every man's 
 life. 
 
 We often wonder that in our physical life sleep 
 fills so large a place ; we see no necessity for it. 
 We often try to do without it. But it reasserts it- 
 self, a strange, stubborn fact. Seven, eight hours 
 of every twenty-four we must devote to a use the 
 purpose of which is not clear, but which, neverthe- 
 less, in some mysterious way is wrought into the 
 deepest necessities of our physical nature. 
 
 In a far higher sense the same is true of the time 
 we must give to the home. We do not always real- 
 lize it. We magnify the claims of what we call our 
 " business." We plume ourselves upon our devo- 
 tion to business at the expense of our home. We 
 think time taken from the home no robbery, but 
 gain. We lay aside sense of responsibility, we un- 
 gird ourselves when we are at home ; however 
 watchful, however jealous we may be of ever}' hour 
 
THE HOME AOT) THE BUSINESS. 115 
 
 at the office or the store. We think little of the 
 joys of home ; at best they are but pleasures. "We 
 shirk the duties of home. There is no money in 
 them. They have small relation to the greater af- 
 fairs of our business. We even grow impatient of 
 home. At least some men do. They frequent the 
 club ; they return to the office ; they must needs 
 go and " meet a man," anything to get out of the 
 house and escape the irksome life which seems to 
 them so petty in comparison with their larger and 
 more important cares. 
 
 But all this is foolish. God has set the solitary 
 in families, and God's plans reach far. The family 
 is something more than a social necessity. The 
 home of a man is something more than the nest of 
 a bird or the lair of the animal. God has made it 
 a chief instrument in the fashioning of character. 
 Its hours are sacred, its joys are pure, its duties are 
 dominant, because in the plan of God they fill so 
 large a place in making us, often in spite of our- 
 selves, the men God would have us to be. The day 
 comes when we are grateful for the innocent sleep 
 *' that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, sore la- 
 bor's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's sec- 
 ond course, chief nourisher inlife'sfeast," — though in 
 our young and foolish days we so despised it. After 
 the same fashion, perhaps when home has ceased 
 to be, when other feet cross the familiar threshold, 
 and once loved voices are forever silent, we awake 
 
116 THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 
 
 to see what we have lost, we have thwarted God and 
 impoverished ourself 
 
 This brings us to the closing thought, namely, 
 that if we are wise, we will accept God's plan and 
 try to make the hours in our own house play a large 
 part in our preparation for both Christian growth 
 and Christian service. 
 
 These hours hold us to the truth, that no mat- 
 ter how large our business or how many are 
 affected by it, no matter how the world may 
 measure us, we each stand alone before God. We 
 each have our own soul ; our own character to 
 make ; our own spiritual growth to secure ; our 
 own temptations to resist ; our own account to 
 render. Home keeps this before us. The old 
 maxim, " No man is a hero to Lis valet," is the 
 familiar announcement of it Your wife, your 
 children, your servants, know what you are. They 
 are a kind of outside conscience to help you to be a 
 better man. Eun away from them, try to escape 
 their testimony and their scrutiny, and by just so 
 much you are the weaker and the worse. Live in 
 your home and be not of it, hold it aloof, tyrannize 
 over it, make it a mere place of physical conven- 
 ience or bodily comfort, you degrade it and harden 
 and debase yourself. 
 
 On the other hand, you who as Christian men long 
 have enjoyed the blessing of a true home, what has it 
 not been to you in all that goes to make up character ? 
 
THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 117 
 
 He within 
 
 Took measure of his soul and knew its strength, 
 And by that silent knowledge day by day 
 Was calmed, ennobled, comforted, sustained." 
 
 There is the high ideal ; there is the large attain- 
 ment of the man who has gratefully accepted the 
 God-given opportunity, and in the hallowed retire- 
 ment and sweet joys of a cherished home has grown 
 into the stature of a strong and noble manhood. 
 
 But with the emphasis it lays upon personal 
 growth and personal duty, the home also enforces 
 a wise restriction of individual responsibility. The 
 outer world calls us constantly to more or less pub- 
 lic duties. "Wrongs are to be righted, evils are to 
 be reformed, the Church and the State are to be 
 served. All this is well. It is a small life and a 
 narrow one that does not take in the needs of oth- 
 ers and feel some kindling response to the wants of 
 the world. Still, we need to be reminded that the 
 responsibility of men, the highest of men, is re- 
 stricted within comparatively narrow limits 
 
 Following Christ one's self is a duty always more 
 pressing than that of trying to make others follow. 
 It is vastly easier to fall off into a fussy, bustling, 
 outside, reformatory kind of Christian service, than 
 it is to keep one's self in hand and correct evils nearer 
 home. Therefore this turning every man to his 
 own house, which comes to us with such recurrent 
 daily routine, is God's way of bringing us back to 
 
118 THE HOME A2fD THE BrSESTESS. 
 
 ourselves, and, while releasing us in a measure from 
 the pressure of the world, setting "before us the 
 smaller duties in which we can none the less really 
 and far more surely serve the Lord. The man who 
 may not lead the church, may lead his household in 
 spiritual life. He who strives in vain to reform the 
 State may be more successful with bis own family ; 
 at least he has a task there which will keep bim 
 close to God. While the woman who is disheart- 
 ened because of the slow advancement of the Tem- 
 perance cause in the strifes and snares of politics, or 
 mourns over the sluggish interest of her sex in the 
 cause of woman's suffrage, is cheered and rehabil- 
 itated when turning to her home she finds her care 
 and love the inspiration and the guide of its best 
 efforts, herself the object of its best affections, the 
 true centre of its life. 
 
 We want large blessings upon our church. We 
 long to see the town revived and reformed. We 
 want souls saved, and the horrid forces of death 
 and hell swallowing so many young lives in our 
 streets arrested. We want more time and strength 
 for the Lord's work. The Sabbath is all too short, 
 the week too crowded. We are hurried along, like 
 men bound to the wheel of life with no time fcr 
 anything, neither for the Lord's work nor our own 
 growth. We look to the right hand and to the left 
 for help. We would like to go to a convention. 
 We wish some great meetings, some public services. 
 
THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 119 
 
 might take us up and for a time lift us out of the 
 pressure of daily affairs. 
 
 While we talk, the hour comes for going every 
 man to his own house. 
 
 Ah, here it is, dear friends, the God-given sum- 
 mons to each one to face the real duty, to ask your- 
 self searching questions, to find out what kind of a 
 man you are, what you are doing, how you are 
 living, and whither you are going. Well for you if 
 you can say with Joshua, " As for me and my house 
 we will serve the Lord " Well for you if going to 
 your home means a heart at peace and strength re- 
 newed by closer fellowship with God. 
 
THE SURE PROMISE. 
 
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
 unto you." — Matthew vi. 33. 
 
 (122) 
 
THE SURE PROMISE. 
 
 rpmS is a peremptory text. It commands us to 
 ^ do this thing first because there is a special 
 promise in store for those who obey. Just now a 
 great many things are pressing upon us all in life, 
 demanding our earnest attention. Times are hard; 
 many are out of work. Many who have work are 
 uncertain as to what will be the condition of things 
 to-morrow. Many who are in charge of large busi- 
 nesses are anxious as to what a day will bring forth, 
 and if ever a man found justification in listening 
 to the voices of the street and the demands of 
 business and secular affairs it is now. And yet 
 over against them all sounds the text, as it has been 
 sounding through all these centuries, "Seek ye 
 first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, 5 
 and these things that demand our attention in daily 
 life, will take care of themselves," as we would put 
 it. All these will be provided for. 
 
 But what does this mean ? Is it given to us as a 
 maxim of business? Are we to find here a specific 
 prescription which, if we follow, shall cause us to 
 prosper? There are so many exceptions to this. 
 We recognize no visible connection between great 
 riches and great piety. Is it not a low view of the 
 
 (123) 
 
12-i THE SURE PROMISE. 
 
 Bible that would set it thus alongside of "Poor 
 Richard's Almanac"? Who can believe that the 
 Bible was given us for this purpose? This text 
 must mean something more than that " Honesty is 
 the best policy." 
 
 Surely there is a larger truth ; and it is to this 
 larger truth that God bids us give heed. It is the 
 voice of that deeper principle that is sounding for 
 us to-day. The world is God's world. He made 
 it, and He rules it, in all its various parts and in its 
 totality. It is God's world, and it never for a 
 moment escapes out of His control or eludes His 
 knowledge. His title to it is never for one instant 
 imperilled. The fact is we do not always believe 
 this. "We fall into thinking that to-day it is the 
 devil's world ; it was God's world once, but 
 in some way the devil has gained possession 
 of it, and by and by, in some distant future, 
 God will take possession of it again. But 
 now God is far off, interested in His own plans, 
 busy with His own thoughts, waiting patiently for 
 some fulness of time when He will begin to con- 
 cern Himself with this world and its interests. 
 
 Instinctively we begin to divide people into two 
 classes : those whom God loves and those whom 
 He hates. However this habit originated it con- 
 tinues, and the gulf between these two classes 
 deepens year by year — those whom God loves and 
 those whom He hates. Along this line of thought, 
 
THE SUKE PROMISE. 125 
 
 more or less distinct to our minds, it is impossible 
 to interpret the text. It has no interpretation. It 
 means nothing. When the kingdom of this world 
 and the kingdom of God are regarded in any such 
 sense, how is it possible to interpret success in 
 one by success in the other ? There is no common 
 measure which will apply to them both. But we 
 know that this line of thought is untrue, and in our 
 better moments we realize that the world is God's 
 world in all its endless variety of interests. The 
 power of steam and the power of electricity are 
 just as truly the powers of God as is the power of 
 the heart's best affections. The laws of business 
 and the laws of nature are just as truly laws of 
 God as are the laws laid down in His Holy Word. 
 God is in one just as truly as in the other. All 
 life originates in God; all power is given to Him 
 in Heaven and in earth. 
 
 You remember how Elijah, burdened with the 
 anxious fears of life, as men are to-day, withdrew 
 into the wilderness and wished he were dead, 
 and God desired to teach him a fundamental truth. 
 Elijah said, "I, only I, am left of all the Lord's 
 people." And God told him to go forth and stand 
 upon the mountain-top. "And, behold, the Lord 
 passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the 
 mountains." What did Elijah say? "The wind 
 obeys God. He controls the storm that it did not 
 harm me." Then followed the earthquake. Trem- 
 
126 THE SURE PROMISE. 
 
 bling he beheld the earth shake and vast fissures 
 open on either side. But he only said, " The earth 
 is the Lord's. All its mighty forces are under His 
 control." Then followed the fire; and the awe- 
 struck prophet said, " The fire is God's messenger; 
 this and all other forces are in the hands of my 
 God." Then came the still, small voice. The 
 proj)het went out strengthened for the service of 
 the Lord, whose he was and whom he could trust. 
 
 Now, dear friends, that is exactly the method by 
 which God leads us all into the truth. All forces 
 in the heavens above and the earth beneath are in 
 God's hands to be used as He wills: for admoni- 
 tion, for guidance, for comfort, for warning, for 
 strength. But all men are not in the same relation- 
 ship to God. "Was not the prodigal as truly the 
 father's son, when he was in a far country, as 
 when he was at home ? Was not Jesus Christ as 
 truly the Son of God when He was on earth pro- 
 claiming the message of salvation, as when He was 
 in the bosom of the Father? It was necessary 
 that He should come with this message of salvation, 
 because through the long centuries Satan had 
 blinded the eyes of the people and hardened their 
 hearts, and far and wide was persuading men that 
 God did not care for them. 
 
 The truth is that the Lord Jesus Christ died, not 
 to save sinners from the hands of an angry God, 
 but He came and died to save sinners from their 
 
THE SURE PROMISE. 127 
 
 sins, from themselves, from their unbelief, from 
 their hardness of heart. It is true that God often 
 has to treat men as though they were His enemies. 
 He often appears to be severe and austere toward 
 them. But that austerity takes on the form that it 
 does because of the reality of His love for them. 
 The fact is that the whole universe is tuned in eter- 
 nal harmony to this truth. It was made to declare 
 God everywhere and always; the unseen things of 
 God being made manifest in the things that are 
 seen; but because of evil the world has partly lost 
 this original expression of the divine love and of the 
 divine thought, and as man advances in his knowl- 
 edge we have everywhere the story of God's pres- 
 ence and of God's love. The geologist takes us to 
 read with him the translation of it in the record of 
 the rocks. If there is one form of science which 
 to-day seems more advanced than another it is the 
 science of astronomy. And what has it to tell ? — 
 the story of God's love in that vast world beyond 
 the natural gaze. 
 
 Because God is everywhere, and the Father of us 
 all, and all life is in His hand, it follows that the 
 reward of Christian service is sure. In this way 
 we interpret the Sermon on the Mount. How do 
 we know the truth of such passages as these? — 
 " Blessed are the pure, and the meek, and the mer- 
 ciful." Because God reigns. Why should the salt 
 " retain its savor," and the light " shine " ? Because 
 
128 THE SURE PROMISE. 
 
 they are the work of God, and He has ordained 
 that saving power shall come from salt, and shining 
 shall come from light. Jesus says, " Pray for your 
 enemies." Why? "That ye may be the children 
 of your Father which is in Heaven." " When you 
 pray be not like the Pharisee, who loves to stand on 
 the street corners and make long prayers that he 
 may be seen of men; but when you pray enter 
 your closet and pray in secret." Why? Because 
 your Father which seeth in secret shall reward 
 you openly. " Ye cannot serve God and mammon " 
 Why ? Because you will either love the one and hate 
 the other, or else you will hold to the one and de- 
 spise the other. " Take no thought, saying, what 
 shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or where- 
 withal shall we be clothed." Why? Because your 
 Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these 
 things. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness." Why ? If you will serve your 
 heavenly Father all things are yours, because all 
 things are His. 
 
 Thus the whole of the moral law unfolds itself 
 from this central truth, and we at once begin to 
 consider the position which we occupy in the 
 universe. What is it? We are like a young 
 prince in the royal gardens. He walks amid aU its 
 beauties. Music and fruit and flowers abound on 
 every hand. He may be inexperienced and igno- 
 rant. He may not be permitted to pick the fruit 
 
THE SUKE PK0MI8E. 129 
 
 or the flowers. He receives no wages, for he is not 
 a servant. He is the son of the king. All these 
 things are his to enjoy, his to dwell among ; to he 
 his possession when the day shall come in which 
 his father shall see that he is ready to receive them. 
 
 Heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, in the 
 world which is His ! This is the large meaning of 
 the text. " Seek first the kingdom of God"; make 
 sure your relations to Him, "and ah things are 
 yours." Shall I then have more than I have now ? 
 If I am poor, shall I be rich ? If I am ill, shall I 
 be made well ? If I am despised and rejected of 
 men, shall I be honored ? Yes ! just so far as your 
 Heavenly Father sees shall be best for you. Your 
 life is in His hands. All things are His to give or 
 to withhold according to His divine wisdom. Seek 
 first Him, and the relations that connect themselves 
 with Him, and all things are yours. 
 
 Now, a few thoughts in conclusion. You see 
 how manifest then is the duty that we should, every 
 one of us, be a child of God. How many men are 
 like the prodigal ; boasting of their father's wealth 
 and living on husks. How many men have ob- 
 tained from God their wealth and all they have in 
 life, and then have wandered away from Him, abus- 
 ing His love, despising His service, and trampling 
 under foot His kingdom ; some even claiming that 
 there is no God, and that if there is, He has no 
 title to anything they possess. " I have earned this 
 
130 THE SURE PROMISE. 
 
 money. I, through long years of toil and self-sac- 
 rifice, have laid up this property. Shall I not do 
 with it what I will ? " Shall such a one* feel that 
 the Father is his ? Shall he expect that, when losses 
 come, and health fails, and age advances, and that 
 solitude which in time utterly isolates the self-lov- 
 ing man, he shall find peace and rest in the Father's 
 love ? 
 
 Sickness is the servant of Go J, not of the devil. 
 Property does not belong to Satan, it belongs to 
 God. Death is no black demon, ending life to blast 
 all our hopes. It is God's messenger. Am I then 
 anxious and pressed hard with care ? Am I suffer- 
 ing pain and sorrow ? Am I called to stand by the 
 grave of those I love ? My Father in heaven knows. 
 All power is in His hands ; all life is in His keep- 
 ing. No care is too minute for Him. No labor 
 wearies Him. If He is mine, I can trust Him ; and 
 I can lean on His love. 
 
 Then you see also how this ennobles and exalts 
 our daily Life. At once all distinctions between 
 things religious and things secular vanish. If I 
 pray I serve God, and so I do when I labor. As 
 truly when I go to my office, or store, or workshop, 
 as when I go to church. On the street, as at the 
 altar, I am in my Father's house and am trying to 
 live as His child. How utterly impossible it is to 
 make a distinction between things secular and 
 
 He 
 
THE SURE PROMISE. 131 
 
 was doing His Father's will as surely in the thirty 
 years in which He dwelt in Nazareth, as in the 
 three years in which He worked miracles and 
 taught the disciples. So from the beginning to 
 the end ; from His childhood in Nazareth to the 
 cross in Jerusalem He was doing his Father's will ; 
 so that at the close of His life He was able to say, 
 ■" Father, I have glorified Thy name on earth ; I 
 have finished the work which Thou gavest me to 
 do; and now I come to Thee." 
 
 Here is the great truth for us. The temptation 
 is to exalt rituals, and to think that, when 
 in company with our brethren on certain set day3 
 we attend the sanctuary, we worship Him, and that 
 at all other times our lives are secular. We put 
 Christ far off in some heavenly realm to which, 
 perhaps, we hope to attain by and by, forgetting 
 that He sent us to be His witnesses in the world, 
 and that He has come into this world to abide and 
 ihat here we are to do His will and to realize His 
 love. How hard it is for us to learn that we can 
 serve Him in disappointment, and in loss, and in 
 pain, and in failure. How much there is in life that 
 requires patience, and humility, and meekness, and 
 walking softly, and waiting upon God ; until we 
 come to know that not only the stars in their 
 courses serve Him, but that we serve Him as well 
 in all our daily life ; in the sweeping, and cleaning, 
 .and mending, and the care of little children, and 
 
132 THE SURE PROMISE. 
 
 work at the store or at the carpenter's bench ; that 
 the tools we use are His ; that we are His, and that 
 in the place He has put us we are trying to live 
 restfully and faithfully for Hiin. Ah ! dear friends, 
 here is the fundamental truth, " Seek ye first the 
 kingdom of God." Do not rest until deep in your 
 heart you have become possessed of this truth, that 
 God is your Father and Jesus Christ your elder 
 brother. Settle that, and when you have settled it, 
 go forth to your daily tasks, feeling the overshadow- 
 ing wing of the Father and the blessedness of the 
 divine love filling your life. "All these things'' 
 shall then be added unto you, for " your Father 
 knoweth that ye have need of these things." 
 
CHEIST AND THE POOR. 
 
" Ye have the poor with you always, and whenso- 
 ever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have 
 not always." — Mark xiv. 7. 
 
 (134) 
 
CHRIST AND THE POOR. 
 
 rYN His way to Jerusalem for the last time, our 
 ^ Lord had stopped at Bethany, There, where 
 
 Ho had often been, and doubtless bad many friends, 
 for it was the borne of Lazarus, whom lie bad 
 raised from the dead, a dinner was given Him at 
 
 the house- of Simon the Leper. We do Dot Know 
 
 who tbis Simon was, but there is every probability 
 that lie, was one of the many who, during the past 
 three years, bad been healed by our Lord. Ho was 
 not a leper now, or ho could not have given a din- 
 ner ; for lepers were outcasts. But he bad been, 
 and the feast was an expression of bis gratitude, 
 
 Naturally Lazarus was among those present to 
 do honor to Jesus; and Martha, his sister, served. 
 
 As the dinner was in progress, a woman, who John 
 
 says was Mary, the ofber sister of Lazarus, came 
 
 into the room, bearing a small jar of very precious 
 perfume, and, breaking off tbe neel<, pound tbo 
 contents upon flu; bead at:d person of tbe Master, 
 as He reelined at tbe fable, and wiped Hi:: feet 
 
 (upon which It ran) with her hair. The disciples, 
 following the murmuring suggestion of Judas, pro- 
 tested against the waste of the ointment. " Ct might 
 have been sold for three hundred pence." "Yes, 
 
 (185) 
 
136 CHRIST AJSTD THE POOR. 
 
 more," says Mark, "and given to the poor." But 
 Jesus quickly silences thein with the reply, " Let her 
 alone. Why trouble ye her ? She hath wrought a 
 good work upon me, for ye have the poor with 
 you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them 
 good, but me ye have not always." 
 
 This answer arrests our attention. It is very dif- 
 ferent from what we might have expected. Jesus 
 knew that the murmuring arose with Judas, and 
 we look to see Hiin vindicate Mary against her ac- 
 cusers, but what a strange ground He takes. "Why 
 does He not put them to shame by exposing Judas? 
 or, if the time has not come for that, surely He will 
 say something about hypocritical regard for the 
 poor. Any waste that expresses love is better than 
 the wisest charity that covers deceit. 
 
 But this is not His answer. He exalts above 
 charity of every kind the service which Mary has 
 done to Him. " Let her alone, she hath wrought a 
 good work on me." 
 
 Bear in mind that our Lord takes this position at 
 the close of a ministry which had been pre-eminent- 
 ly a ministry to the poor. Shortly before He had 
 declared that service done to the poor, at least in 
 some cases, is to be regarded as done unto Himself. 
 " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least 
 of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
 He had always lived among the poor. He had 
 time and again declared His sympathy to be with. 
 
CHRIST AND THE POOR. 137 
 
 them and against the rich. Had He not said, " How 
 hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven " ? Had He not said, " Blessed 
 are ye poor," making the poor in purse a type of 
 the poor in spirit ? 
 
 "Was not the very first announcement of His min- 
 istry, as He stood in the synagogue at Nazareth, 
 the application to Himself of the words of the 
 prophet, " The spirit of the Lord is upon me be- 
 cause He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel 
 to the poor " ? And did He not make this the sign 
 of His coming, that " To the poor the Gospel is 
 preached " ? But in the closing hours of His min- 
 istry, when His words are weightiest, He seems to 
 set care for the poor in contrast with devotion to 
 Himself. They certainly are not to be regarded 
 a,s identical ; and there may be conflict between 
 them. 
 
 It would seem that to-day the words gain a 
 special importance and challenge us to a peculiar 
 thoughtfulness. Charity is always beautiful. It is 
 everywhere recognized as the great harmonizing 
 force in this world of strife, selfishness, and greed. 
 It is beneficent alike to the giver and the receiver. 
 It has always been a chief function of the Christian 
 church. The exclamation of the heathen at the out- 
 set, " Behold, how these Christians love one anoth- 
 er," was drawn forth by the abundant charities of 
 the Christians, administered without regard to all 
 
138 CHRIST AND THE POOK. 
 
 who were sick or in need. The church has not 
 been slow to discern that its hold upon the world 
 must largely depend upon the keenness of its inter- 
 est in the condition of the poor and needy, and its 
 success in ministering to them. Indeed, so far has 
 this practice been carried, that the church at times 
 has not been without blame for an abundance of 
 alms which has spread pauperism, and even pro- 
 moted crime. 
 
 Every reform movement in the church has em- 
 phasized and extended the work of charity. John 
 Wesley gave to it no small share of his thought, 
 and organized it into his ecclesiastical system ; and 
 modern movements as extreme and narrow as that 
 of the ritualistic party in the Church of England, 
 has made of it a powerful lever to forward its 
 cause. In societies for the care of all classes and 
 conditions of men the churches to-day are leading 
 the world. Whatever may be said by thoughtless 
 accusers, the work of charity in this sad world is 
 not only inspired by love in Christian hearts, but is 
 largely in Christian hands. The church has nothing 
 to accuse itself of in falling behind in its practices 
 the teachings and spirit of its Master. 
 
 But, when all this has been said, the text remains, 
 with its suggestive utterance. It challenges our 
 most serious thought. It calls on us to recognize 
 that, after all, in charity we are only dealing with 
 the surface of things. We are discovering in these 
 

 CHRIST AND THE POOR. 139 
 
 days how difficult it is truly to help even a single 
 individual who may be in need — to help in such a 
 way as to secure self-respect, manliness, and a per- 
 manent bettering of his condition. And this even 
 with the individual, to say nothing of the class. 
 
 We are learning with new depth of conviction 
 that each time of widespread need and each case of 
 individual want is only an episode in a vast move- 
 ment, a bubble, a drop from out the stream of life. 
 We are made more and more aware of this as we 
 look into the current that flows out of the past. 
 We are part of the inheritance which we all share. 
 We are heir to what has been called "the wreckage 
 of the past"; the follies and evils of those who 
 have gone before, the odds and ends that have sur- 
 vived from extinct philosophies and civilizations, 
 and the schemes of all kinds that have come 
 down to us with their powerful results, and have 
 united in making for us the life which we are living 
 and of which we are a part 
 
 The poor are but one product of this mighty con- 
 geries of forces. They in no way differ in this re- 
 spect from all else that we recognize as going to 
 make up the life which we are living. As we are 
 not permitted to choose the time or the place of 
 our birth, so we cannot materially change the con- 
 ditions under which we find ourselves. We long to 
 change them. We are beset with theories to show 
 how the desired change may be accomplished ; 
 
140 CHRIST AND THE POOR. 
 
 theories of government, of society, of finance, of 
 commerce, even of civilization itself. And theories 
 of religion are not lacking, which, if adopted and 
 applied, it is claimed, would quickly alter the whole 
 structure of society. But the world is an old world. 
 It has tried many experiments and seen many 
 changes. It has modified itself greatly, chiefly as 
 the result of influences which have been little un- 
 derstood, and in obedience to laws as eternal as 
 itself. And the patent fact to-day is that, straggle 
 as he may, no man can escape from the power 
 of these world-forces under which he finds himself 
 living. He may swim a little to the right or the 
 left in the stream. He may rise above the surface, 
 or sink deeper into the depths, but when it comes 
 to altering the current of the stream, the united 
 labors of men, at best, seem to be able to deflect it 
 but a little from one side to the other, never to 
 arrest its course. This is prescribed for us by a 
 power far above, and is determined by methods and 
 purposes that were set long before we were in ex- 
 istence, and will continue long after we are gone. 
 
 " We have our day and cease to be," and there 
 remains that in the stream of life which is not only 
 more important than ourselves, but which, as related 
 to the future, is so unfathomable, so enduring, so 
 utterly beyond us, that we have small competence 
 even to pass judgment upon it. 
 
 What, then, is God's message to us ? It is that 
 
CHEIST AND THE POOR. 141 
 
 in the midst of it all we fix our eyes upon the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and establish our hearts in the faith 
 that centres in Him. We absorb ourselves in works 
 of benevolence, our hearts are stirred and blessed 
 by the care of the poor and the needy, but we must 
 not fail to see that all we can do in these directions 
 is as nothing compared with the power of Jesus 
 Himself, as the one re-creating and renewing force 
 by which the world is to be saved. The world was 
 worn out when He came into it. Its civilization 
 and its science, its learning and its experience had 
 all failed to suggest any method by which the de- 
 structive forces in its own heart could be arrested. 
 
 The world was dying from the rottenness of its. 
 own sins, and despair was fast settling down over 
 it all. Mommsen closes his history of Rome with 
 these words, " We have seen the end of the Roman 
 republic. We have seen it brought to ruin in pol- 
 itics and morals, religion and literature, not through 
 outward violence, but through inward decay. There 
 was in the world, as Csesar found it, much of the 
 noble heritage of the past centuries and an infinite 
 abundance of pomp and glory, but little spirit, still 
 less taste, and least of all delight in life. It was in- 
 deed an old world, and even the gifted patriotism 
 of Csesar could not make it young again." It is 
 older now, and apart from Jesus Christ its ruin and 
 its despair would be deeper to-day than when He 
 came. He brought new life. Christian civilization 
 
112 CHRIST AND THE POOR. 
 
 with all its amelioration of man's condition and all 
 the hope for the future that is in it, came from Him 
 
 The kingdom of heaven which He brought then 
 was as the leaven to be hid in the meal, or the good 
 seed to be planted in the field. It was a life new 
 and distinct from the world into which it was intro- 
 duced. "Without it there would continue to be the 
 darkness of death, but wherever it was introduced 
 it brought light ; and the light^has been contending 
 with the darkness ever since. The world accepts 
 civilization as we see it to-day as if it had always 
 existed, and here and there turns away from the 
 religion of Jesus Christ, falling back upon the pow- 
 ers of civilization itself, as if there were life in it 
 apart from Christ, but the essential fact is, that the 
 only force which has the power to renew is that 
 which is embodied in Jesus. 
 
 The extent and the efficacy of this force can be 
 witnessed any day in the lives of the men who have 
 been changed by it. The drunkard, the prodigal, 
 the outcast who but now were not only without 
 God, but utterly without hope in the world, and 
 for whom the world had no place, are to be seen 
 new men and women. Not only new as related 
 to the hope of heaven, and the favor of God, 
 but new and different men as fathers and husbands 
 and friends and citizens, clothed and in then- right 
 mind, working strenuously for the good, where be- 
 fore they were hopelessly surrendered to evil. 
 
CHRIST AND THE POOR. 143 
 
 The thought which the Saviour was pressing upon 
 His disciples in the solemn hour when His death 
 was near is, that however the heart may be stirred 
 by the woes of our fellows, however the hands may 
 busy themselves with the clothing of the naked and 
 the feeding of the hungry, these labors have power 
 in changing the conditions of life only when they 
 «arry with them the life that comes with Jesus 
 Christ, and are wrought in recognition of Him and 
 in dependence upon Him for the gift of that new 
 life, without which death and despair still reign. 
 *' Without me ye can do nothing," is still the abid- 
 ing truth. 
 
 But, furthermore, we must not fail to see that 
 Jesus Christ is to renew the world, and eventually 
 to save it, by the change which He works in indi- 
 viduals, and not by the reverse process of changing 
 society first. 
 
 This is one of the most patent facts in both the 
 teaching and ministry of our Lord. He came 
 to a nation trampled beneath the heel of its con- 
 queror. He came to a people whose were the ora- 
 cles of God, at that time under the dominion of 
 heathenism, which was fast corrupting its youth and 
 undermining the sanctions of its religious faith. 
 
 He lived under a government represented by the 
 atrocities and the vileness of the Herods, by the 
 cruelty of Pilate, by the ruthlessness of the Eoman 
 tax-gatherer, and the oppression of the Eoman sol- 
 
144 CHKIST AND THE POOR. 
 
 dier ; He saw about Him a society in which 
 the profligate and shameful vices of the Orient 
 united with the coarser prodigalities of the "West, 
 and in which money and rank and the lust of pow- 
 er and the greed of gain produced such results that 
 the great cities with all their luxury and elegance 
 had come to be described as " cesspools " and 
 "sewers"; and yet, finding Himself in these sur- 
 roundings, He seemed to be entirely indifferent 
 both to the form of government and the construc- 
 tion of society, and, we may almost say, to the rela- 
 tion of class to class. He pays tribute to Csesar, 
 and exhorts His followers to do likewise. He says 
 not a word against human slavery, or against any 
 form of vice as being the vice of society, or as the 
 outcome of the social conditions under which men 
 were living. He does not even discuss the x>osition 
 of -woman, the crowning shame of heathenism in all 
 ages, and always related to the first step in every 
 upward movement of men. 
 
 That this was His real attitude is confirmed by 
 the conduct of His disciples and followers. Every- 
 where they taught subjection to those who were in 
 authority, and the duty of prayer even for the 
 heathen king. They exhorted the converted slave 
 to return to his master ; and in no single instance 
 are they found trying to overthrow the existing so- 
 ciety, or to create a new world by first bringing 
 about the destruction of the old. 
 
CHRIST AND THE POOR. 145 
 
 Anarchy and Nationalism are both equally aloof 
 from the range of their thoughts. They want 
 neither destruction of the government, nor help 
 from it. Even after the government of Rome had 
 come under their influence and the emperor on his 
 throne proclaimed himself a Christian, the work of 
 the Gospel was done as before, not by changing 
 the form of the government, or the institutions 
 which it had established, but by filling them with a 
 new spirit. Indeed, one of the most remarkable 
 facts in connection with the Justinian code — the 
 summary of Roman law made in the sixth century 
 — is the testimony it gives to the slight influence 
 which Christianity had upon the administration of 
 the empire. Instead of altering the law it contented 
 itself with an indirect influence upon it. The im- 
 press of its spirit is to be traced everywhere, but 
 there is little or no evidence of purpose on the part 
 of the Christians to reconstruct, organically, either 
 society or the government. 
 
 Undertaking the conquest of Rome, Christianity 
 began with the mind and the heart of the individ- 
 ual. It contented itself with introducing there new 
 truth, evidencing itself in a new purity of life, and 
 a new relation of the individual man to his brother; 
 and it was this force, the introduction of Jesus into 
 the heart of the believer, upon which Christianity 
 relied for its final triumph in the world. 
 
 Indeed, so uniform is the testimony to this truth, 
 
146 CHRIST AND THE POOE. 
 
 and so indisputable is it, that it is entirely conceiv- 
 able that, if Christianity had adopted a different 
 course and had begun at once to grapple with the 
 thousand questions of social life and of government, 
 slavery, the ballot, woman's rights, the laws of prop- 
 erty and so on, it would have been crushed; where- 
 as, as it was, though swept by many floods, burned 
 by many fires, and bearing testimony to the violence 
 of many a storm, it has produced and is producing 
 the fruits of progress and of reform which we to- 
 pay are enjoying. The method of Christ, then, is 
 to renew the world by changing the heart of the 
 individual man ; and, when life has begun in his 
 soul, by the force of that growing life to change, 
 first his personal habits, and then through him the 
 life and habits of his neighbor, and so, finally, the 
 community as a whole. The new heavens and the 
 new earth which are to mark the final triumph of 
 the Lord are to begin in the character and life of 
 the believer. 
 
 But the great truth of the text is that there is a 
 limit to the time in which this work can be done. 
 " The poor ye have with you always, but me ye have 
 not always." Both for our civilization and for our- 
 selves the Saviour's warning is that a day may come 
 when it will be too late to lay hold of and profit by 
 the fife which He brings. 
 
 The state may go on too long uninfluenced by 
 His people, and by the recognition of the duties 
 
CHEIST AND THE POOR. 147 
 
 ■which He declares, the duty of man to man, and the 
 duty of the state to reveal and hasten the oncoming 
 of the kingdom of God in the earth ; in which case 
 the state itself will be disciplined or overthrown. 
 Witness, for example, France in the last century, or 
 the United States itself as a slaveholding commu- 
 nity. The possibility of ridding ourselves from negro 
 slavery by the inherent force of Christian truth, and 
 Christian brotherhood, working out from man to 
 man, and so gradually creating a society which of 
 itself would cast aside the fetters of the slave which 
 were its peril and its shame, passed away, and in 
 its stead God laid us under the necessity of freeing 
 ourselves from the incubus by that terrible war 
 which cost us so much in the best life of the nation, 
 and under the evils of which we are yet suffering. 
 
 Still more is this true of the individual. " Me ye 
 have not always." You may have wealth and j)leas- 
 ure and business. Head and hands may be full of 
 problems of politics and of society, and of the 
 needs of your fellow-men. You may be giving your- 
 self with all your might to the reconstruction of 
 the universe, or the remodeling of the government, 
 or the casting out of Tammany, waiting, meanwhile, 
 for leisure to find Christ for your personal Saviour, 
 or to cultivate His love in your heart. The warn- 
 ing of the text is that that hour may be too long 
 deferred. 
 
 There are times of decision with us all, crises of 
 
148 CHRIST AND THE POOR. 
 
 character. He who would do good to his fellows 
 can only be sure that what he strives for will result 
 when he has himself found the life of Christ for his 
 own soul, and is so sedulously cultivating that life 
 and growing in the power of it that he can be 
 assured that he is carrying Jesus Christ with him 
 wherever he goes, and into whatever he does. The 
 more your hearts are given to these acts of philan- 
 thropy, the more your souls are stirred with the 
 needs of your fellow-men, or the needs of this great 
 city or this land that we all love, the deeper should 
 you feel your need of constant communion with 
 Christ, and all the fullness of His life possessing 
 your own hearts. No matter how much of effort 
 or of care and time it may take to win this posses- 
 sion, these are days in which the Lord is pleading 
 with you for Himself. He to-day is passing b}\ 
 He sits with you in your home. He is a guest at 
 your table. He goes with you to your place of 
 business. He responds to the beating of your heart, 
 with its wide sympathies for your feDows. He 
 says again and again in your ear, " This ought ye to 
 have done, and not leave the other undone. The 
 poor ye have with you always, but me ye have not 
 always." 
 
 First, give yourself to me. First make sure of 
 my place in your heart and in your life ; then set 
 yourself to your task. When you can hear me say, 
 " Lo, I am with you all the days," then no matter 
 
CHRIST AND THE POOR. 149 
 
 bow great the evil, or how perplexing the problems 
 of the hour, " You shall say to this mountain, Be 
 thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea ; and 
 it shall obey you." For then the life of God is in 
 you, and the power of God is working through you 
 to bless the world. In a word, no man can effect- 
 ually help his brother, until he has found abiding 
 help for himself in Jesus Christ. 
 


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