But side by side with that, we must place a second Counsel, not less needed than the other—Watch with care, lest the engrossments of business should so accumulate as to overlay and crush the godliness of the soul. Amid the pressure of times like ours, this is one of the greatest perils of the market-place: it is destroying its tens of thousands. MAKING
HASTE
TO BE
RICH. Men eagerly plunge into speculation after speculation. They try to extend, to ramify, and engross, till you might suppose they have a home in city after city; nay, in kingdom after kingdom. Not contented with the gains, the competency, or the honest rewards of what they can easily overtake or personally control, many make such haste to be rich, that an empire is too limited for their plans. In their zeal, they embark in scheme after scheme; they wrap themselves round with entanglement after entanglement, till, in some cases, the ends of the earth are not too remote for their desires to reach.
TRUE ENTERPRISE:
Now, far be it from us to place restrictions where the only wise God places none; far be it from us to limit enterprise, as if all should be domestic, or run in the channels of home. It would be hindering, not helping Christianity in the Market-place, to define and circumscribe where its Author has not defined. The very sea—that “highway of the nations” which surrounds our island—would rebuke the attempt. Godliness is not to be confined in monasteries, or even to the domestic circle; for if that were the case, then godliness could not be designed for man as man. It would apply only to a fragment of his nature, instead of diffusing the wisdom of Heaven over it all. TRUE
ENTERPRISE: But if it be that godliness which is the result of grace, and not that which is only a phase of monasticism, there is not a scene, however homely, where it may not preside; nor an enterprise, however grand, which it may not direct. It is only a fragment of religion, or of the truth as it is in Jesus, which would leave the counting-house, or any sphere, without heavenly direction.
—ITS LIMITS.
The exhortation, “Be not slothful in business,” then, opens a wide door for active energy; and we make no attempt to shut it. But still, —ITS
LIMITS. there is only a certain length to which any man can proceed without sinning, amid these engrossments and accumulated cares. Bear witness families neglected—family altars thrown down—early hopes blighted—early religion erazed from the soul—as speculations and engagements increase. We have no right to laden ourselves with a multitude of cares such as shall overlay, or supplant, or endanger the truth of God in the heart. Every moment may be one of high-toned integrity between man and man; every transaction may be presided over by purest equity: in the market-place, a merchant prince might blush to be even suspected of the mean, the fraudulent, or the deceptive. But what if these moments and these transactions, so pure in appearance, be so numerous or so engrossing, as to prevent attention to the high concerns of eternity and the soul? What if my mind and my body be so worn out or worn down by these protracted hours of merchandise, that the things which belong to my eternal peace are neglected, or pushed from their proper place, which is the first? Am I not sinning against my soul and my God, by such exhausting engrossments? O! how many are ruined—ruined not by dishonesties in business, but by over-devotion to it! not by defrauding a neighbour, but by defrauding their own soul alike of all time and all taste for attending to the one thing needful!
THE PERILS OF BUSINESS.
We plead, let it be remembered, for no inactivity, for there are perils in idleness as well as amid the cares of business. If the latter destroy by crushing, the former wastes by rusting. But our urgency converges upon this point—THE
PERILS OF
BUSINESS.men ought not so to plunge into this world’s engrossments—so to be entangled by this world’s cares—so to laden themselves with this world’s clay—as to leave neither liking, nor time, nor strength, for fervour of spirit in serving the Lord—“Inasmuch as ye did it not unto me,” will tarnish the glory of all such doings. Every moment as it passes, in the life of some busy men, may be a moment of high-souled integrity between man and man; and yet there is danger, lest all the moments summed together should be one long act of complicated robbery—a robbery of God, because he was forgotten—a robbery of the soul, because it was neglected for things which often melt as we grasp them—a robbery of those dependent on us for religious guidance and example, because we are strangers at home, or, when we appear there, it is rather as the careworn speculator or the hoarding miser, than as the kindly, genial, sympathizing husband, father, brother, friend.
THE PERILS OF BUSINESS.
We know that it is the golden maxim of some, that religion must give way to business. We have been told by one who could stand unabashed on the Exchange, that “God did not expect us to be too strict in these things;” and swayed by that maxim, if religion do not give way at the bidding of cupidity, its control is boldly disowned. THE
PERILS OF
BUSINESS. Now, we need not add, that the man who has adopted such an opinion has at once dismissed the Word of God from his counsels, and consented to forego the use of reason in the highest of all its spheres—he has laid his soul, a manacled victim, on the altar of Mammon. That man is not seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; that is, he is deliberately setting aside one of the simplest, plainest, and most unequivocal injunctions contained in the Word of the Supreme.—It is well known that, among the ancient heathens, the god of traffic was also the god of fraud. The Romans, moreover, had a goddess of thieves, whom one of their poets thus addresses:—
O fair Laverna, grant me power to cheat,