Litchfield enquirer., 1858-09-02
RELIGION AND BUSINESS.

RELIGION AND BUSINESS. We have Scripture authority for asserting that it is not impossible to live life of fervent piety amidst tine most expressing pursuits aud engagements of the world. We are to make good this conception of life, that the hardest wrought man of trade, or commerce, or handi- craft, who spends his days midst dCsky lane CT wrangling mart" may yet be the most holy ard spiritually minded. We need not quit the world and abandon it's busy pursuits ill order to live near to God.
 "We need not bid for cloister'd cell,
 Our ncighbor and work farewell,
 The trivial round, the common task, May furnish all we ought to ask
 Room to deny ourselves, road
 To bring us daily nearer God.
 It is true indeed, that, if in no other way could we prepare for an eternal world than by retif- ing from the business cares of this world, so momentous are the interests involved in religion, that no wise man should hesitate to submit to the sacrifice. Life here is but span. Life hereafter is FOR EVER. A lifetime of solitude, hardship, penury, were all too slight a price to pay, if need be, for an eternity of bliss and the result of cur incessant toll and application to the worlds business could they secure for us the highest prizes of earthly ambition, would be purchased at tremendous cost, if they stole away from us the only time in which we could prepare to meet our God, if they left us at last rich, gay. honored, possessed of every thing the world holds dear, but to face an Eter- nifty undone. If, therefore, in no way could you combine business and religion, it would indeed be not fanaticsm, but most sober wisdom and prudence, to let the worlds business come to stand. It would be the duty of the mechanic, the man of business, the statesman, the scholar, men of every secular calliug, without mo- ment's delay, to leave vacant and silent the ia miar scenes of their tolls, to turn life into perpetual Sabbath and betake themselves, one and all, to an existence of ceaselcss prayer and unbroken contemplation, and devout care of the soul.
 But the very impossbilty of such sacrifice proves that no such sacrifice is demanded. He who rulcth the world is, no arbitrary tyrant prescribing impracticable labors. In the material world there are no conflicting laws and DO more Wa may rast -assnfes.' ore laws, one or other of which must needs be dis obeyed. Now one thing is certain, that there is in the moral world law of labor. Secular work, in all cases duty, is, in most cases, necessity. God might have made us indepen- dent of work He might have nourshed us like "the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field" which "tol not, neither do they spin" He might have rained down our daily food, like the mama of old from heaven, or cause nature to yield it in unsolicited profusion to all, and so set us free to life of devotion. But, forasmuch as He has so constituted us that without work we cannot eat, that if men cease for single day to labor the machinery of life would come to a stand, and arrest be laid on science civilization, social progress (on every thing that is conducive to the welfare of man in the present life, we may safely con- cude that religion, which is also good for man, which is the supreme good of man, is lot in- consistent with hard work It must undoubt edly be the design of our gracious God that all this toll for the supply of our physical ne cessities, this incessant occupation amid the things that perish, shall be no obstruction, but rather help to our spiritual life The weight of a clock seems heavy drag on the delicate movements of it's machinery but so far from arresting or impeding those move ments, it is indispensable to their steadness, balance, accuracy. There must be some anal ogous action of what seems the clog and drag weight of worldly work on the finer move ments of mans spiritual being. The planets in the heavens have 9 twofold motion, in their orbits and on their axes the one motion not interfering, but carried on simultaneously, and in perfect harmony with the other. So must it be that mans two-fold activities, round the heavenly and the earthly centre, disturb not nor jar with each other He who diligently discharges the duties of the earthly may not less sedalously (may at the same moment) full fl those of the heavenly sphere at once " "dil- igent in business and fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. d."-Reu John Caird.