Business from a Preacher's Point of View

As you may imagine, I have in my lifetime had a good deal to do with men of business in the matter of soliciting charitable and other subscriptions. The result of my experience is that I have never had any difficulty or trouble with men who have given proportionately and systematically. Let me explain what I mean by this. There are men who set aside a certain proportion of their income annually for charitable purposes. Some give one-tenth, some give as much as one-fifth, and others give in varying proportions. Suppose your income is £200 a year, then on the self-imposed tithe system you would set apart £20 to be given away. Thus you know exactly how much you have to expend in charity. When you have given your £20, there’s an end of it, and you have an honest answer to every applicant for aid. So long as any part of the £20 remains, you can consider new cases as they come up. I do not advise you how much to

set aside, as this must be a matter of spontaneous action on your own part. I do, however, strongly advise you to set apart a definite proportion of your income for Christian purposes, and then you will not be teased and worried by having to consider every time an application is made to you whether or not you can afford to respond to it. When I have gone to my friends who have given proportionately and systematically, I have never had any difficulty, because their Yes or No was simply final, and was based not upon caprice or momentary feeling, but upon the actual money which they had in hand. Where giving is not conducted on this principle, there is no end to vexation and disappointment both on the part of the man applied to and on the part of the applicant. The man does not know how much he has given; does not know how much he has to give; is fretted and worried by unnameable and innumerable fears, and is very likely to give an irritating answer which will cost. himself a good deal of personal reproach when he cools down. A man who does not give definitely, and who does not set down in his account-book exactly what he does give, is apt to think that he is always giving. There is no falsehood larger and deeper than this in all practical life. If you will put down just what you give to charitable purposes, you will be surprised, at the end of the year, how little you have given, yet you may have the feeling that you have been always parting with your money in response to benevolent appeals. I give it as the result of my observation and experience amongst men that those who have made a system or a discipline of giving are the finest, strongest, sweetest-souled men I have ever met. They do not give spasmodically; at the beginning of the year they set aside so much which has to be distributed in the course of the twelve months, and they give it away thankfully and cheerfully. One bouncing Member of Parliament said to a deacon of a church that he (the M.P.) had been called upon nineteen times one day for subscriptions, whereupon the deacon answered, “If you gave them exactly what you have given me, it would not have mattered to you if nineteen hundred had called.” Do not set down in your memorandum-book how many people have called upon you for subscriptions; simply set down the subscriptions you have given those who call. I shall despair of your real and lasting success if you act upon a miserly principle. Think of yourself all the time, think of nobody else, think that you get your money for the purpose of keeping it, and you will gradually become narrower and narrower, sourer and sourer, until you sink into complete misanthropy. On the other hand, make God a partner in your business; set down a certain portion of your profits for distribution to worthy

causes; always make space for the poor, the needy, and the good; and your table shall never be wanting in an abundance of food, and your presses shall burst out with new wine.- You will find a few advisers who will tell you that we have passed out - of the Jewish system of tithes into the Christian system of liberty. The meaning of that suggestion too often is that we have passed into the liberty of giving nothing, and have left the Jewish discipline of subjecting ourselves to religious taxation. If you profess the slightest regard for Jesus Christ, you will never avail yourself of the liberty of doing nothing for Him. When that temptation assails you, understand that the devil is knocking at the door of your heart with both hands, and be careful lest he capture your confidence, and depose every holy principle and impulse.

In thinking of the subject of capital and labour, which will come up again and again in the development of your business life, remember that capital is a larger word than money. ‘Too often money and capital are supposed to be equivalent and interchangeable terms. We have capital set against labour in the sense of money being set against industry. This is a fundamental fallacy, and until we get rid of it we shall have no sound and large economical reasoning. By industry I do not mean mere drudgery; so by capital I do not mean mere money. I regard capital as an inclusive term, representing faculty, mental resource, power of management, skill in handling affairs, business sagacity, and in short every element and aspect of practical genius. A man may have a million at the bank, and yet be a dunce. He may not, as we have already said, so much own his money as his money may own him. Such money is not worth the name of capital, for it is so much mere metal. When you hear men condemning capital, you would suppose from their foolish talk that they are condemning only so much money or metal. When you take the larger definition of capital into your account, you will see that money is in some respects the very least element in it. So with regard to industry; I do not. regard it as mere toil, or a continual stooping of the back to the ground; I mean pleasure in work, the highest acceptance of labour, the adoption of discipline as a means of education, and the service of the world as a religious sacrifice and joy. We must get larger and better definitions if ever we are to get into a happier relation, as between man and man, class and class, in true socialism. It should be your business as a Christian man to advocate that every labourer should have at least sufficient to live upon. In the first instance, it is not your business to consider what use the man makes of his compensation. -You have a conscientious duty to perform, and that is to see that no man is kept down to a starvation point. Having assured yourself that a man has sufficient to keep body and soul well together, it will be for you to consider what educational or Christianising influences you can bring to bear upon him with a view to his making a right use of his earnings. So long as the man has not enough to live upon, it is absurd for you to attempt to advise him how to spend his money. He will not listen to you. Starvation can give no audience to eloquence. But when reason has been satisfied, or justice has been in some measure meted out, then will be the opportunity for wisdom to speak earnestly, and for practice to show how much can be done even with a little. Never join in the foolish clamour of pulling down the rich. Never imagine that poverty is merely a question of circumstances, or of political economy, or of social arrangement. There is a ‘poverty which certainly ought to be removed, vigorously and completely. There is also another kind of poverty which cannot be handled by men: account for it. as you please, the poor we shall always have with us; it will be for us to make them, not objects of patronage, but means by which we show the tenderness and glory of the Gospel of Christ. Do not imagine it is our business to enlarge such poverty by neglecting the poverty which we have it in our power to alleviate. We must deal with poverty as if it lay completely within our power to remove it, and having brought it to a point where our resources are exhausted, it will be for us to perceive that God has set poverty in the midst of civilisation as an instrument of education, and as an agency for developing the tenderest and sweetest faculties and sympathies of the human soul.

In all your money-making and business action never neglect home-life. There are men who always take the warehouse home with them. There are also men who never see their own children except very early in the morning or very late at night, and who, except on Sundays, hardly ever see those children out of bed. The temptation to exclude home-life, or to make the least of it, must be strenuously and obstinately resisted. The home should be the church of the life; the home should be sweet, bright, and cheerful, full of domestic music and gladness. Many a time during the day it will be not only natural but right to anticipate the hour when you will pass within the home-gates and feel the security of your own little castle. At home do not be fretful, peevish, mentally engaged in making bargains; but be sympathetic, interested in little things, ready to help where a man’s help is so much needed. Of course you will be tempted to think that you are bound to be anxious, and there are some persons who, noticing an absence of anxiety, will suppose they recognise indifference to business responsibilities. Some persons are born to be anxious. There are people who could not do other than snarl and worry and chafe, and thus put out the light of their own fireside, and still the music of their own sweet home. That kind of disposition “grows by what it feeds on.” You must resist it at the very beginning. You will meet your anxieties on the following day all the more capably and successfully by taking rest from them during your home hours. When you rest the mind from anxiety, you prepare the mind more thoroughly and successfully to cope with it. Woe betide you when you begin to think little of your home, when you long to leave it, when you are anxious to add external excitement to its quiet pleasures. By that sign know that you are going down in the volume and quality of your best life. Have home occupations and home enjoyments, and make others share them with you, assured that you are not subtracting so much time and energy from business, but are really better qualifying yourself to discharge the duties of life. I strongly advise you to make time at home for reading. Your house will be all the richer for having a little library in it, and even a little library well read is better than a thousand books never opened. There are business men even in London who boast that they never open a book. All the intellectual sustenance and stimulus they enjoy comes from fugitive reading. It has been my happiness to know men who have never neglected the art of book-buying and book-reading. Not only have they glanced at the newspapers, they have set themselves courses of reading which have been most profitable to the cultivation of the mind and the sharpening of faculty even for business purposes. Know the history of your own country. Bring to bear upon that local knowledge information regarding lands far away. Never imagine that you are a mere islander, or a mere citizen, or a mere parishioner. You are a man, and everything that concerns men concerns you. In proportion to your wisdom may often be your want of fluency in clamorous political debate. If you knew less you would say more, and say it more glibly. Never envy those who can rattle off political nonsense by the hour. Store your mind with solid historical and political information, and remember that wisdom is often slow of utterance, and is forbidden to use those vague generalities which are often mistaken for eloquence. I would support the reading business man against the non-reader under all the larger and more trying circumstances of life. I know he will conquer where the other man fails. I know he will have bread to eat that the world knows not of. He may not be so dazzling, so noisy, so obtrusive, but he

has resources large, satisfactory, and lasting, which will serve him when the lamp of the other man goes out for want of oil. Do let me caution you against being a mere shopkeeper, or man*of business, or man of money. Do not be persuaded or tempted to starve your mind. Many a man has a well-fed body who is carrying about with him a starved spirit. Is this right? Is this just? Is this likely to bear satisfactory fruit? On the other hand, there must be a wise balance as between commerce and study. I am bound to say that I have known some business men who are so fond of books as to neglect their business. J am not holding up these men as examples: I would rather indicate them as warnings. I want business to be in its own place, and reading to be in its own place, and I wish to preserve the one from being unduly interfered with by the other. There need be no collision, there need be no unworthy competition; the two processes can be so conducted as to be mutually helpful.

You will find it of infinite advantage as a man of business to be able to keep your own counsel. There is no need for you to tell all you know.

The difficulty will be so to reserve yourself as not to give a false impression to others. To give a false impression wilfully is to tell lies in the most effectual manner. Remember that any servant or assistant who will tell lies for you will one day tell lies to you. You may suppose such a man to be an invaluable agent. You may praise him as one who always considers your interest, who defends you through thick and thin, and who will leave no stone unturned to promote your purposes. All this will be self-deception on your part. The liar is a liar always, and he can easily turn round and direct his energies in any channel which will best serve him for the moment. Cultivate truth, the love of truth, the very honour and glory of truth, whatever may be the momentary issue, either as to gain or loss. It will be important for you to learn something from every man who comes in your way. You should guard yourself against the possibility of a thief coming to take from you all your secrets without leaving something behind. There are men who are ear-wiggers, or button-holers, who will ferret out of you everything you know, and will take care not to give you any equivalent for what you have given them. Such men are brain-suckers. They will come to you for your ideas and your plans; they will ask to go over your premises; they will inquire into your inventions and adaptations, into your machinery and into your general way of doing things; and all this will be done under the pretence of taking deep interest in your welfare. It will be well for you to be on your guard against such people, for they come as spies and intruders, and in reality they care nothing for you or your purposes in life. Always know more than you tell. Even when a man takes away the impression that he has exhausted your resources, be quite sure in your own soul that he has not begun even to touch a true knowledge of them. There are secrets in business which are more valuable than money. No man has a right to come and rifle your till; so no man has a right to come and rifle your brains. On the other hand, there is no need why you should withhold good counsel where you think good will come of its bestowal. It would be selfish and mean on your part to see a man going wrong in business when you have the power of directing him in the right way. I draw a broad line between indiscretion and generosity. Wherever you can suggest a good idea, be sure to take the liberty of doing so, Never suppose that the failures of other men tend to your own enrichment. They may apparently do so, but in reality success is built up by success; that is to say, the more other men are honestly succeeding the more likely will the individual man be to succeed himself.

Do not put off your enjoyment of life. Many men are promising themselves that in the course of ten or twenty years they will settle down and enjoy the fruits of their labour. They are going to be very merry by-and-by. They fully intend to have quietness, a beautiful garden, a nice establishment, and to enter into the cultivation of home-life in reality. All this is deceitful. Your business is to enjoy life day by day as you go through it. A business life without any enjoyments is a life of dreariness, leading to the kind of success which is but another aspect of failure. Have recreations or periodsof real abstention from all commercial thought. Have parties for your children. Attend to physical exercises; cultivate a circle of wise and mutually helpful companionship. Neglect not the joy and the duty of hospitality. You will find men who started life thirty years ago with the idea of making themselves very happy at the close of it now quite unable to enjoy their own accumulations of money. Their money has over-weighted them, has got the better of them, has completely taken out of them the spirit of appreciation and of interest in outside affairs. I need not tell you that you are to interpret the word “enjoyment” in no low and vulgar way. The enjoyment I point to is an enjoyment that has a moral centre, and a moral purpose, and that therefore takes in the enjoyment of other people as a part of its own benevolent design. There is no enjoyment in wine; there is no enjoyment in mere extravagance: true enjoyment is in living within your resources, and knowing that whatever you do you could do twice over if you were so disposed. I cannot too earnestly guard you against being led away by a love of appearances. There are men who, in order to disarm suspicion, increase their establishments, add to the number of their horses and equipages, and make a great dash, as if to show what progress they are making in business. This is not what I mean by enjoyment. At the heart of all such deceitful gladness there is a sting which inflicts intolerable pain. Let all your enjoyment be rational, healthy, open to honest criticism, and it will double itself even in the process of affording you its advantages and blessings.

Now all this is at present advice, and you may regard it merely as such. I beseech you to endeavour to reduce it to practice, and thus transfer it from the region of mere advice to the region of actual experience. ‘he best counsel will be of no use to you unless you reduce it to practice. I do not expect you to be able to go through the whole of this programme at once. By attempting too much you may discourage yourself. Let me suggest therefore that you begin at the first point — namely, the point of proportional and systematic giving — and work earnestly at that until you have realised its best meaning. Or take up any other point that you think you can handle most successfully, and proceed from one point to another until you have covered the whole programme. What I am giving in the form of advice I have tested in the form of experience to some degree. I should feel powerless in your presence as a counsellor if I could not support by experience what I have represented as an argument. Be sure of this, that until you have an honest soul you can- -not conduct an honest business. Until the very fountains of your mind and will, your understanding and emotion, are purified and sanctified, you cannot live that kind of large, benevolent, sweet life which in the sight of God is of infinite price. Again and again I would remind you that what the human soul wants is not reformation but regeneration. Not until you are yourself a new man can all things round about be new with the warmth of spring and the promise of summer.