it into forms fitted for human use; who transport it by land or water; who make it accessible in the market to those who buy; who invent and construct, or run, the machinery by which man is able to employ the mightiest forces of nature to do his work. This division of labor and perpetual interchange of service are indispensable to provide for man what are significantly called the necessaries of life; they sustain the lives of men, and they are also essential to perpetuate and advance civilization.

They also who do not own and sell the products of their labor but sell their labor itself, working for wages or salary, are rendering service to man. Primarily these render service to their employer; but because their service is indispensable they render also a service to man in the product itself, proportional to what their labor contributed to its production.

In this sense rulers are They do not cease to laws; but they are ser

The government of a nation gives employment to a great number of persons. The business of government is to enact just laws, to adjudicate all cases under them justly, to execute and enforce them impartially and effectively, to maintain the integrity and authority of the government and the order of society, to protect the rights of the people and thus to promote the public good and the general welfare. Government exists for the good of the governed. Here is a line of business of the nature of administering a trust for the good of the people. "Public office is a public trust." Plainly the business of every government official from the highest to the lowest is to do the duties of his office faithfully in the service of the people. properly called servants of the people. rule in fidelity to the constitution and vants as using their high prerogatives, not for personal emolument or aggrandizement, but to confer benefits on the people, — servants in the exalted significance in which Christ declared himself to be a servant, when he came to bring salvation to men. In the legal profession the business is to interpret the law, and thus to assist clients in the legal management of their property and business, and in their cases in court to give them the protection and help to which the law entitles. In the medical profession the business of the doctor is a direct service of his patients, and teaching people to remove or avoid the causes of disease. In every line of legitimate business the persons engaged in it are servants of the people.

There are also lines of business which some may choose as their life-work in which the work aims directly to develop and improve men themselves physically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Such is the business of educators in the school and through the press, of ministers of religion, and of those who devote their lives to the advocacy of some particular reform. Here also we may class the great geniuses who have done great work and sometimes have marked, if they have not created, epochs in human progress. Such are the great discoverers and inventors, the philosophical thinkers, the great statesmen, the great authors and artists, the great Christian theologians and preachers, the leaders of great social, political, and religious reformations.

Thus the survey of business in all lines shows that it consists in supplying human wants; and that every sphere of legitimate business gives scope in its prosecution for the service of man in the exercise of Christian love. There is, however, one necessary qualification of this conclusion. The business of those who devote their lives to direct efforts to promote the intellectual, moral, and spiritual improvement of men is not always the supply of a want which is felt and of a demand which is made by those to whom the service is rendered. It is the supply of a real need, but not always of a consciously felt want. The object of the worker is to awaken the higher powers and susceptibilities of men, to show them the higher possibilities of their being, and thus to make them conscious of their need. It is the beneficent worker himself who by awakening and developing the man, arouses in him the demand for knowledge, or virtue, or union with God.

3. There is a further significance in the service which business may render to man. All business renders a service which reaches beyond the individual directly served, and becomes in a true sense a service to mankind. This is conspicuously exemplified in the service rendered by great and beneficent geniuses. In this the service to particular individuals is scarcely noticed in the wider service of mankind. Great scientific discoveries like those of Copernicus and Newton, great inventions like the mariner's compass, gunpowder, the art of printing, the steam engine, and the electric telegraph, a great reformation like that of Luther and the abolition of slavery by the Christian nations, the discov

ery of America by Columbus, render service which transcends all influence on individuals, and becomes the possession of mankind. The benefit of such epoch-making achievements is indeed ultimately distributed to individuals; otherwise they could not benefit society and promote its progress. And even great works of genius at the outset require a transaction of business, an interchange of services between individuals as direct as any interchange of products or of labor for wages. Milton sold the copyright of "Paradise Lost" for ten pounds; Homer's poetry was probably recited by minstrels for pay; an inventor takes a patent on his invention; pictures which money cannot buy may have been painted originally for a comparatively small sum; Columbus went from country to country seeking funds for the outfit of his voyage. But these relations of such works to individuals are lost from sight in comparison with the service they have rendered to mankind.

It is not, however, the great geniuses alone who thus render service to mankind transcending that rendered directly to an individual in a transaction of business. All kinds of business in the very prosecution of them as business exert this wider influence. Whatever adds directly or indirectly to the general comfort of mankind, increases the power and resources of man, purifies civilization, sweetens and ennobles life, is a service to humanity. As Swift's king of Brobdingnag says, "Whoever makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before is a benefactor of mankind."

This broader service to mankind is rendered in the production and exchange of physical products. The persons whose wants. are ultimately supplied by the product may be the antipodes of the producer. When we take our meals, or clothe ourselves, or furnish our houses, we are indebted for what we use to the service of many persons in many lands. And thus the whole process of production and exchange is a service to mankind. Every one has at his door the products of all the world. And to this service of mankind every workman has contributed who has assisted at any stage in the production of the raw material, the manufacture, transportation, or exchange. And every one who renders personal service to another contributes to the benefit of mankind so far as the person served, by the service thus rendered to him, is able more continuously and effectively to use his own

peculiar powers in his own line of business. Manual laborers, skilled or unskilled, exceedingly over-estimate their service when they claim to be the only real producers of wealth. The capitalist, who provides the raw material, the place, and machinery for preparing it, the ships and railroads which transport the products, and the ability to plan and manage the complicated business, produces far the larger part of the product, and renders the larger part of the service to man. But the real service to mankind of the workmen in the various stages of the production and exchange must be distinctly and fully appreciated. By a similar line of thought it may be shown that in every line of business the service reaches beyond the individuals immediately concerned and becomes a service to mankind.

4. It must be considered also, that the service rendered in business not only reaches beyond the individual to mankind, but also beyond its immediate products, and contributes to the progress and higher good of man. The products of man's work in various lines may be distinguished as perishable and imperishable. The products which supply physical wants are consumed, some immediately, others in the lapse of months or years. In the language of Scripture, "They perish with the using." But whatever is accomplished in the development and improvement of man, in purifying, renovating, and ennobling human life is imperishable. It is often thought that the development and improvement of men and their progress in the spiritual life are effected solely by the efforts of those who are working immediately for these ends. But in fact all legitimate business contributes directly or indirectly to these higher ends. The various lines of business, the products of which are consumed in supplying physical wants, may seem to contribute nothing to the imperishable results effected in the renovation, development, and culture of man and to be therefore of inferior dignity and worth. Yet from another point of view this creation of products for consumption is a service of fundamental importance without which the higher results of human renovation, culture, and progress would be impossible. Man must have the necessaries of life. Without the service which produces what is to be consumed man would cease to exist; there would be no men to be educated and developed and no human society to make progress. And as the savage advances to civilization, his wants

are multiplied because in his progressive development he becomes aware that he is many-sided, he touches his environment at new points, he becomes susceptible of new and higher enjoyments. The civilized man is as much greater and more complicated than the savage as his house with all its complicated apartments, conveniences and elegancies is greater than the savage's wigwam. Without the business which supplies products to be consumed in supplying these multiplied and higher wants, civilized man would relapse into barbarism. And these lines of business are also seen to be essential to man's higher culture in the fact that these physical wants are the primary motives which excited the primitive man to the exercise of skill and power to supply them, and which through the ages have stimulated the inventive genius which has given man control of the resources and powers of nature. In the prosecution of the necessary work of life man has effected his own education and development and the progress of civilization.

Thus the business whose products are consumed in supplying man's physical wants is lifted into a service to humanity and shown to be essentially connected with all direct efforts to promote the improvement of man and the progress of society, and an indispensable condition of their success. The work of men in all lines of legitimate business is necessary to the progress of man; it is impossible to limit the service which promotes it to any one. Men build better than they know. The service they render outreaches its immediate end. Whether men intend it or not, all work in supplying legitimate human wants will have influence immediate or remote on the progress of civilization and the development of man; it all has relation to the life eternal and the kingdom of God, and gives scope in the prosecution of the business for love and service to man in love to God.

And so far as business in any line thus contributes to the production of the imperishable products of human improvement it reaches onward into the future. The attainments of one generation are the vantage-ground where the next may begin. Whatever develops or improves an individual or a generation is transmitted to others. The lighted torch is passed from hand to hand. The circle rippling in the water widens. No grain of sand is lost. No force once exerted is annihilated.