The kingdom will never come until His will is done. Half-tones of heaven will not keep people warm in winter; it is half tons of coal they need. The world will believe in any church that tries to do good. But the church does not believe in itself yet; half the people are strenuously endeavouring to fool themselves into what they call spiritual warmth. What they need is plain Christian perspiration. No man really credits his own religion until he converts it into reality.
But the man who prides himself on his heterodoxy is often equally guilty here. He ridicules the old type of piety and thinks to improve on it with new sets of phrases. All these critics have is new arrangements of words. Even the man who rejects all religion satisfies himself with the cant phrase of irreligion.
We need most of all to treat religion as sensibly as we do business, to leave the science to those interested while we give ourselves to the practice of its art, the doing of its deeds, the living its life.
THE BUSINESS OF RELIGION
Any religion that will not stand the strain of modern business may have been good for some other age; but it is valueless in this one. The test of your piety is not peace in the pews of the church, but power and direction in the stress of the market, its adaptability to your activities as well as your meditations.
The problem of the reconciliation of business and religion is not nearly so complex as we would believe. The people who are saying it is impossible to be upright and get on in the world mean that it is impossible to be honest and to gain all the questionable advantages on which they have set their hearts. When a man says that religion and business will not work in harmony he either has a wrong brand of piety or a false conception of business.
Religion is built for business. The only creed that is worth a moment's thought is a working creed, that is, one that gets into action. Religion is not the mere acceptance of a speculative philosophy of this and other worlds. It consists in principles, ideals, and motives which dominate conduct. It is more concerned with the kind of a world you are making here than with the conceptions you may have of a world beyond.
Religion is more than an institution; it is a course of life. It has to do with the church only in so far as the church serves its purposes. It is more concerned with what a man pays his employees than with what he puts into the plate at the collection. The man who can put all his piety into the prayer-meeting and the services of the church never has enough seriously to embarrass him under any circumstances.
If for your religion you have adopted principles of high living; if you have set the worth of the soul above all other things; if you have determined to frame your life according to the golden rule of the great Teacher, and, with Him as hero and ideal, are seeking to do good to others and make this world a better place for us all, with less of sin and sorrow and more of joy and love, you will make your business as well as your praying the servant of these ends.
But if you have said that you wish to do these things, that you wish to live the pure and beneficent life while in your heart your sole desire is to get riches, to gain fame, to secure power, then there is bound to be conflict between the religion you profess and the business that possesses you.