A Lamp to the Path / Or, The Word of God in the Heart, the Home, the Workshop and the Market-Place

by W. K. Tweedie

THE CONSECRATION OF GAIN.

THE
CONSECRATION
OF GAIN. Consecrate all your gains to God—is another maxim enforced by Christianity in the Market-place. The silver and the gold are his. His is the power which enables us to collect them, and they are all to be laid, along with ourselves, upon his altar. The wisest man our world ever saw said, “Honour the Lord with thy substance.”

Now, this suggestion touches one of the topics which stand most in need of enforcement in an age and a community like ours.—It were needless to tarry to tell how the sin of covetousness is eating into the hearts of men, how greedily they run after gain, and make haste to be rich. The wrestler’s arena, or the racer’s circus of old, never was crowded with more eager or more panting competitors than our marts of merchandise now. Nor need we pause to tell again what degrading disclosures are made, from time to time, and that in the highest spheres, regarding the withering effects of this headlong pursuit. In cases not a few, our boasted mercantile honour, and our integrity as a nation of merchants, have been proved, with painful plainness, to be as weak to restrain man’s passion for gold as a thread of gossamer to bind a ravening lion.

THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA.

Such exposures, then, and such scenes, are well fitted to warn us to consecrate all we have to God, both in the getting and the using. If the riches of the world have the image and superscription of Cæsar, the Christian’s should bear the stamp of the King of kings. There is no scriptural anathema against riches—nay, every gift of God is good in itself; but there are countless anathemas against riches acquired by fraud, or spent without seeking the direction or the blessing of God. The Christian in the Market-place is thus taught to use the world as not abusing it, or not to grasp at what may bite like a serpent and sting like an adder. He thus learns to verify what was said of Tyre of old, “Her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord; it shall not be treasured nor laid up.” THE
ALPHA
AND THE
OMEGA. While many never think of God—for one solemn thought of him would dash all their schemes; while self is the centre, the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, of many an adventurer, the Christian will try to gather wealth as his God directs, in channels which his God can bless.

A SCRIPTURAL CONTRAST.

We repeat it; we are permitted to use the world; for there is nothing unnatural, or extreme, or ascetic in the Word of God. We are permitted to use the world; but it is only upon the condition that we do not abuse it; and surely he abuses it who defers to the world more than to God; who adopts the world’s maxims, and discards God’s; who grasps the world’s riches, but is poor toward God; who trembles at the world’s frown, but mocks the majesty, the truth, and the justice of God. A
SCRIPTURAL
CONTRAST. O, never let the Christian fear to be resolutely honest—his God will provide. He should be encouraged by thinking that, amid all our moral distemper, the world is under the control of a king who will make his laws respected. Baffled we may sometimes be in the world’s headlong career; but it is well, it is best, that we should be so. He who sees the end from the beginning, and who brings order out of confusion, is doing all things well. He says: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree: Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.” That is one side of the picture: the other is, “Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace.”

And who has not seen this verified? Men whose hearts the Lord has opened, so that they gave their silver and their gold in thousands, tell us that the more they give, when it is to the Lord, the more are they blessed. That is, “they cast their bread upon the waters, and find it after many days.” “They honour the Lord with their substance, and their barns are filled with plenty.” “They scatter, and yet increase.” “The liberal soul is made rich.” “They lend unto the Lord,” and receive it back with usury.

FINANCIAL CRISES.

FINANCIAL
CRISES. On the other hand, from time to time the Mighty One protests, in his providence, against the headlong and unprincipled pursuit of wealth. What are our financial crises, our commercial crashes, our bankruptcies in stunning succession and surprising amount, what our unemployed labourers, what our beggared merchants, but just a providential corrective to our cupidity? These things occur almost with the precision of system. They can be predicted like an eclipse; their causes are seen and read of all men; and yet, unwarned and untaught, they make haste to be rich, till airy structures and nominal treasures melt away into air, leaving only poverty, perhaps shame and disgrace, as their residuum. The God who has, with a wisdom as unvarying as it is profound, made sin self-corrective, thus vindicates his own laws. Were his Sabbaths observed, our production would be less, and stagnation prevented. Were our merchandise holiness to the Lord, our periodical gluts would be prevented by wiser measures than now prevail. Godliness would thus be great gain. The widow’s cruse and barrel would be a better portion, because blessed by God, than the riches which, ever on the wing, are ever fluttering for their flight.[18]