CHAPTER X. BUSINESS. "In laborer's ballad oft more piety "Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.". ROMANS Xii. 11. BEHOLD a practical prescription devolving primarily upon those who have enjoyed great privileges, and learned precious truths. The doctrines of the gospel must be translated into precepts. We have to learn that the loftiest truths that are revealed from heaven, necessarily, if truly and rightly received, blossom into the fairest practices that can adorn and beautify the earth. We need direction in our worldly life, for our living, acting, toiling in the world; we need to see that religion must inspire, and regulate, and sustain all our conduct in every department of the world. We may not be slothful in our worldly business, but diligent, and yet fervent in spirit; the inner fervor of the heart inspiring the outer labor of the hand, serving our Master who is in heaven, the Lord Christ. There is a general tendency among us all to divorce religion from business; to give religion exclusive jurisdiction in the church or the chapel; and to give business exclusive jurisdiction in the market or on the exchange. Our tendency is to assign religion wholly to our Sundays, and to assign business wholly and exclusively to our weekdays; to regard religion as a department proper enough in its place, and business as a totally distinct and independent department, proper enough in its place. Religion is for our Sunday life; and business, we think, is for our daily life. We would not for the world bring the ledger into the house of prayer; and then, with a strange consistency, we will not for the world bring the Bible into the counting-house. In all this there is a radical mistake; there is a great flaw in such reasoning, and in such apportionment. It assumes, as I have said, that religion is a department distinct in itself; finished and final on its own day, in its own place; but that it has nothing whatever to do with the varied spheres and provinces of social life into which the Christian is called, to discharge the duties and responsibilities of the world. Those that think so, seem universally to feel that a consecrated place is suitable for the one; and that the market and the exchange are only suitable for the other: that religion is the business of priests, or clergymen, or ministers; that business must be the religion of merchants, and tradesmen, and commercial men; in short, that religion is a sort of transcendental, rarefied air, very suitable to breathe on consecrated heights, on Calvary, on Mount Zion, or on Mount Tabor; but that it is too thin an air to be breathed upon the low levels of ordinary life; or to be allowed on any terms, or for any consideration, to penetrate into the places where this world's transactions are carried on. In short, religion, in the estimate of these men, is locked up on the Sunday night in the sanctuary; and all she says and all she taught they think it is their duty devoutly to forget, as soon as they have closed their Bibles, left the church or the chapel, and entered on the more serious, the more grave, and we fear, in many minds, the more important, duties and obligations of the world. Now the consequence of all this is very serious; it is really a fatal error; the practical results of it are extremely mischievous. We come to regard the church as holy, and we do well in that; but we also come to regard the exchange as altogether profane. And whilst we would insist upon the fulfilment of all the precepts of the decalogue in the consecrated place, and on the floor of the church; we do not at all care to drag these precepts, as we say, into the profane parts and provinces of this present world. We think Christianity too delicate, too dainty a thing, too easily ruffled, injured, done violence to, to bring her into everyday life, or to soil her robes by suffering her to appear in the markets of this present world. The result is, the market is left to herself; trade becomes mere gambling, commerce degenerates into something intensely secular, intensely atheistic. You have the holy place, with its holy influences; but you think it is more appropriate that the place you have chalked out as profane-namely, the world should not be troubled by the holy, the sanctifying, and directing influences of the religion of Christ. Hence the Protestant will stoutly contend for an open Bible in the house of God, in the pulpit, and in the pew; but very many of these very Protestants will say to the Bible, when it knocks at the doors of their counting-houses, "Hitherto, but no further." They think the Bible an admirable book open and unclasped in the house of prayer; but it would disturb the counting-house, it would injure the ledger, it would affect our profits at the end of the year; it would not allow us to say, This is good, when it is bad. We will contend as stoutly as Martin Luther for the open Bible in the sanctuary; but we will contend as stoutly against its introduction into the house of business. We want to die with the Bible, we want to cherish the hopes of the Bible; but we want to do business altogether without the Bible, and independent of it, and as if no Bible were actually in existence. You can see almost by my statement of it, how outrageous such sentiments as these are, and how unnatural, unscriptural, and unjust. We not only thus degrade business, but we do double wrong; we dishonor religion itself. We seem to honor it, but really we deeply dishonor it. We lift religion up to a lofty place; we enthrone her upon a lofty summit; and we praise, and magnify, and adorn her; we build cathedrals in her honor, we chant hymns to her praise; we call her great, and good, and noble; but we cannot admit that religion shall come down, and mingle in our homes, our houses, and our markets. We say to religion on the Sunday, "Hosanna in the highest;" but on the weekday, Away with it, away with it, it is not proper it should be here. It is far more honor to Christianity, to this blessed gospel, and to the Lord of the gospel, and doing more homage to it than building cathedrals, and celebrating her praises on Sunday,—to invoke her to leave the lofty place where we have carried her, to come out of the sanctuary where we have tried to shut her up, and to bid her come down, and tread the path of daily and of public life; till cottage hearths become holier than ancient altars, and the humblest peasant's home more sacred than the grandest cathedral. It is not by enthroning religion on Sunday in the sanctuary; but it is by bringing religion into the counting-house, the exchange, and the market, that we really honor her. It is not by studied service, by early matins, by twilight vespers, by chimes of holy bells that summon us three times a day to come to worship, that we do homage to Christ. True, such is thought religion; in Rome it is pronounced so; by the imitators of Rome it is felt that you may spend the evening in the opera if only an hour before you come to vespers; and that in the morning, you may do any thing you like, provided you have come only first to matins: if you attend to religion in consecrated places, in canonical hours, that is being religious; and as for the intervals between, you may follow the lust of the eye, the pride of life, and the love of this present world. Now it seems to me that to be truly religious is not to go to matins, nor to vespers, nor to go to church on Sunday (though this last is right and dutiful); but it is to bring the motives, the hopes, the precepts, the spirit of religion into all our walks and ways in the world, till our whole life becomes religious. True Christianity is not a nun, to be locked up within cloistered walls; but she is a wife, a mother, the nearest and the dearest in all the walks and vocations of this present life. She is not to be your light upon Sundays, but your guide upon weekdays. Piety does not retreat from business, but it seizes business, sanctifies it, and makes it sacred. The gospel of Jesus is not to be a voice crying in the desert, like that of John the Baptist; but if I understand religion, it is to open a shop, it is to freight ships, it is to keep accounts, it is to write up your ledgers, it is to wear an apron till it be as holy as a bishop's sleeve, and to wield a spade as responsibly and devoutly as a monarch sways a sceptre. The true characteristic of religion is to go down into every thing, rise up to the highest, till, like the atmosphere, it embraces all in its beneficent and its beautiful folds. Such is the meaning of being fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; and yet, not being slothful in business. We do not want to make sabbath days worldly; but to make weekdays holy. We want religion, and the Bible requires that true religion shall move with the whole force and splendor of a celestial presence wherever man goes; on the deck, on the battle field, on the exchange, in the market, in the counting-house-everywhere. Religion is not a profession; it is not a subject for a special day; it is not a thing tied |