Religion in Business

I hold it to be one of the sure signs of a real spiritual condition, healthy before God, that we care zealously and solicitously for the welfare of other people. Agnosticism can be selfish. True religion cannot be self-considering. It begins in God, and returns to God, and must be of the quality of God Himself. You may be able to point me to business men who do not seem to care much for those who are in their employment. Then I answer, I do not care much for the religion which they profess. I do not mean that you should establish some namby-pamby relation between yourself and those who are in your employment. I do not believe in the coddling system of business: I believe in healthy discipline; I even go further, and believe in stern demands that the work shall be done with both hands, and done resolutely and lovingly; but I also hold that when Je “pf oa it is so done there will be more than a mechanical contract between the employer and the employed. Nor do I limit this care for others to the employer. That is a policy which might be easily accepted by those who are employed. Those who are in employment have also to care for others. It should not be their business to consider how little they can do and how much they can get. We must not expect religion to operate on one side only. If the employer is to be a great-hearted and generous man, we must expect the employed to be equally great-hearted and generous in their own way and according to the measure of their opportunity. The real worker never says, How little can I do? but always, How much? When that disposition is discovered on the part of the worker it will almost certainly awaken a corresponding disposition on the part of the

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True religion brings all life under government. “Religion” is etymologically a binding-back, or a responsibility. Religion, therefore, tells upon every department of the life of the man who honestly professes and pursues it. It is an obligation which he must answer. It is a law which he must obey. He never goes into mere licence; he never trifles with any duty or vocation. Religion has to do with the body as well as with the soul. There is hardly a greater mistake than to suppose that Christianity is spiritual in the sense of neglecting all that is secular or material. J have never hesitated to teach that Christianity is the true secularism. Christianity goes up to secularism, and then goes infinitely beyond it. Christianity would not lose a crumb.

I hold that Jesus Christ Himself is the greatest Economist, though the most generous of all givers and rulers. The Gospel of Christ is: Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you. They may not be added in the sense of being thrown towards you or piled up in your absence, but they shall come to you as to those who have a real claim to them; there will be such inspiration in the direction of work that labour will almost instantly realise its best results. It would seem as if the footsteps of the reaper came immediately upon the footsteps of the sower. Nothing is to be neglected. The truly religious man does everything as if everything depended upon himself, and then leaves everything as if everything depended upon God.

True religion settles the right standard of success. This is a most important consideration for you in the beginning of your life. Success is often interpreted in one way only. Given a large balance at the bank, given premises that are continually extending their walls, given a daily increasing list of clients, and the man who is the centre or object of all these expansions and advantages may be tempted to think himself successful. So he is, within a very narrow range. There are other circumstances in which Poverty itself is wealth. There is a failure that is the truest success. I do not care whether you have a large balance at the bank, but I do care whether you have a large balance in heaven. I want to know what your character is. If you can show me at the end of the year that you could have had thousands more if you had followed suspicious practices I shall congratulate you on the absence of ill-gotten money. Tell me at the end of the year how many people you have made happy: tell me how many temptations you have resisted: tell me how many holy vows you have registered and fulfilled: and I shall then know whether to call you a successful man or not. Besides, what does all this merely statistical success amount to? I knew a man whose personalty was sworn at more than two millions and a half, and I declare to you that I have known many a man in the receipt of weekly wages who has had a more thorough and rational enjoyment of life. There is a point beyond which mere financial success becomes monotonous. Money ceases to be money after a certain point. There are certain ‘things which it can do, and having done them there it comes to an abrupt and disappointing end. We must never forget that there is a capacity which can be satiated. We have not an infinite capacity, and therefore we can be sated quite early in financial and material success. You have ten thousand acres: how much better would you be if you had ten thousand more? You have fifty thousand a year: do you suppose you would be one whit happier if you had a hundred and fifty thousand a year? Let the experience of others tell you. Read the first and second chapters of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and see what was done by the king, and what it all came to. It is altogether different in the mental and spiritual region. Along that line we seem to be welcome to infinite possessions. It is along that line that we realise our kinship with God. The more we have the more we are able to have. The nobler we become in mind, the richer are we towards man as well as towards God. Keep all you have within your own reservoir, and the pool, how large so ever it may be, will become green and foetid and noisome. Let the outlet be as large as the inlet, and the water itself will remain pure and fresh, a blessing to yourself and a blessing to others. When you make up your books at the end of the year, do not consider that an auditor can do this work for you. He can deal with the arithmetical side of your affairs, which I own to be a most important side, and a side which if neglected will bring upon you very unhappy results. Have a spiritual account which you alone can audit. How much have you given to others? How much have you grown in grace? What is your temper now compared with what it was twelve months ago? Are you larger in charity? Are you kindler in criticism? Are you more sympathetic with the infirm and the disabled? If you can answer these questions properly you will be able to make up your accounts on the largest possible scale, and to tell exactly how you stand, not only in the courts of earth, but in the courts of heaven.

Do not suppose that I contemplate any ostentatious obtrusion of religion in business. Let hypocrisy do this. There are men who make a point of taking their customers into private rooms and speaking to them concerning the world to come, Sometimes this can be done with great and happy ‘effect. On the other hand it can be so done as to mar the very effect which it seeks to accomplish. No hard and fast rule can be laid down upon such matters. What you can do is to show an eloquent example. You can so live that other men looking on you will say, His word is his bond: he will be as good as his word: whatever he has promised he will fulfil: you will not find him behind his time or behind his promise. When you work out such resolutions as these you may be perfectly sure that your religion is beginning to tell. If you are fussy, impatient, vain, conceited; if you are despotic, overdriving, inconsiderate; you may, as John Wesley says, be as orthodox as the devil, and as wicked.

CENSORIOUS CRITICS. It

See to it that you have orthodoxy of conduct. I do not mean that you are to see to it that other men shall speak well of you. You are not to be judged by man. Your concern is to be judged by God, and having obtained the judgment of God you may in some instances absolutely defy the judgment of men. The holiest men have been spoken against by censorious critics. You will find as you advance in life that it is impossible to satisfy some men. Do what you will for them, they will still complain of your conduct. My counsel to you is not to heed such men. You were not born to satisfy them. You must have your own conception of duty, that conception being formed in the presence and fear of God, and that conception you must carry out night and day in all the relations of life, and never consult merely human judgment for the sake of satisfying human expectation. Remember that there is an atmosphere of piety as well as an open and written confession of it. You can so live that when you enter into any company your presence will be acknowledged to be an inspiration, You can so live that bad men will be uncomfortable in your presence. I always take this to be a fine sign of pure and dominant character. If the gambler welcomes you; if the tippler is glad to see you; if profane-speaking men hail you as good-fellow-wellmet; then I know that whatever you may be on

Sunday your very religion is irreligious, and your churchgoing is but an aggravation of your iniquity. I shall rejoice to know that all gamblers hate you, that all tippling men avoid your presence and fear your coming. I shall then know that I am face to face with a strong, healthy, elevating character. I thus advise you to be truly religious. To see God everywhere. ‘To know that you must give an account to Him for all you think and say and do, Then at the end you will have peace, joy, and the prospect of an incalculable and everlasting reward.