So great, so all but insuperable, has this difficulty ever appeared to men, that it is but few who set themselves honestly and resolutely to the effort to overcome it. The great majority, by various shifts or expedients, evade the hard task of being good and holy, at once in the church and in the world.
In ancient times, for instance, it was, as we all know, the not uncommon expedient among devout persons—men deeply impressed with the thought of an eternal world, and the necessity of preparing for it, but distracted by the effort to attend to the duties of religion amid the business and temptations of secular life—to fly the world altogether, and, abandoning society and all social claims, to betake themselves to some hermit solitude, some quiet and cloistered retreat, where, as they fondly deemed, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” their work would become worship, and life be uninterruptedly devoted to the cultivation of religion in the soul. In our own day the more common device, where religion and the world conflict, is not that of the superstitious recluse, but one even much less safe and venial. Keen for this world, yet not willing to lose all hold on the next—eager for the advantages of time, yet not prepared to abandon all religion and stand by the consequences, there is a very numerous class who attempt to compromise the matter—to treat religion and the world like two creditors whose claims can not both be liquidated—by compounding with each for a share—though in this case a most disproportionate share—of their time and thought. “Everything in its own place!” is the tacit reflection of such men. “Prayers, sermons, holy reading”—they will scarcely venture to add, “God”—“are for Sundays; but week-days are for the sober business, the real, practical affairs of life. Enough if we give the Sunday to our religious duties; we can not always be praying and reading the Bible.”
Now, you will observe that the idea of religion which is set forth in the text, as elsewhere in Scripture, is quite different from any of these notions. The text speaks as if the most diligent attention to our worldly business were not by any means incompatible with spirituality of mind and serious devotion to the service of God. It seems to imply that religion is not so much a duty, as a something that has to do with all duties—not a tax to be paid periodically and got rid of at other times, but a ceaseless, all-pervading, inexhaustible tribute to him, who is not only the object of religious worship, but the end of our very life and being. It suggests to us the idea that piety is not for Sundays only, but for all days; that spirituality of mind is not appropriate to one set of actions and an impertinence and intrusion with reference to others, but like the act of breathing, like the circulation of the blood, like the silent growth of the stature, a process that may be going on simultaneously with all our actions—when we are busiest as when we are idlest; in the church, in the world, in solitude, in society; in our grief and in our gladness; in our toil and in our rest; sleeping, waking; by day, by night—amid all the engagements and exigences of life. For you perceive that in one breath—as duties not only not incompatible, but necessarily and inseparably blended with each other—the text exhorts us to be at once “not slothful in business,” and “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” I shall now attempt to prove and illustrate the idea thus suggested to us—the compatibility of religion with the business of common life.
We have, then, Scripture authority for asserting that it is not impossible to live a life of fervent piety amid the most engrossing pursuits and engagements of the world. We are to make good this conception of life—that the hardest-wrought man of trade, or commerce, or handicraft, who spends his days “‘mid dusky lane or wrangling marl,” may yet be the most holy and spiritually-minded. We need not quit the world and abandon its busy pursuits in order to live near to God—
“We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbor and our work farewell:
The trivial round, the common task,
May furnish all we ought to ask—
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us, daily, nearer God.”