News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-12-24
THETABERNACLEPULPIT
BUSINESS LIFE A SCHOOL FOR GOOD
TO THOSE WHO so WILL 1T.

The Importance and Minute Ramifica-
lions of Trade-How the Dishonesty of
One Man May Destroy Others-How
Business Men May Be Improved.
BROOKLYN, Dec. 20.-Any person
seeking the secret of Dr. Talmages
marvellous popularity with the millions
of sermon hearers and sermon readers
may find clew to it in the sermon he
preached at the Tabernacle this morn
ing. 1t has nothing to do with alb
struse doctrines, but gives clear view
of what may be Termed applied Chris
tianity. His text was Proverbs iii, 6,
In all thy ways acknowledge him and
he shall direct thy paths.
"A promise good enough for many
kinds of life, but not for my kind of
lfe," says some business man; the law
of supply and demand controls the
business world" But have reason to
say that it is a promise to all persons in
any kind of honest business.
There is no war between religion and
business, between ledgers and Bibles,
between churches and counting houses.
On the contrary, religion accelerates
business, sharpens mems wits, sweetens
acerbity OF disposition, fillips the blood
OF phlegmatics and throws more veloc-
ity into the wheels of hard work. 1t
gives better balancing to the judgment,
80 strength to the will, more muscle
to industry and throws into enthusiasm
a more concentrated fire. You cannot
in all the round of the world show me
man whose honest business has been
despoiled by religion.
The industrial classes are divided into
three groups-producers, manufacture
ers, traders. Producers, such as farmers
and miners Manufacturers such as
those who turn corn into food, and
wool and fax into apparel Traders,
such as make profit out of the transfer
and exchange of all that which is pro-
duced and manufactured. A business
man may belong to any one or all of
these classes, and not one is independ-
ent of any other.
When the prince imperial of France
fell on the Zulu battlefield because
the strap fastening the stirrup to the
saddle broke as he chung to it, his
comrades all escaping, but he falling
under the lances of the savages, great
many people blamed the empress for
allowing her son to go forth into that
battlefield, and others blamed the Eng
lish government for accepting the sacri-
flee. and others blamed the Zulus for
their barbarism The one most to
blame was the harness maker who
fashioned that strap of the stirrup out
of shoddy and imperfect material, as it
was found to have been afterward. If
the strap had held, the prince imperial
would probably have been alive today.
But the strap broke. No prince indie
pendent of harness makerl
High, low, wise, ignorant, you in one
occupation, | in another, all bound to-
getller So that there must be one con-
tinuous line Of sympathy with each
others work. But whatever your vo-
cation, if you have multiplicity of en-
gagements, if into your life there come
losses and annoyances and perturba-
tions as well as percentages and divi-
dends, if you are pursued from Monday
morning until Saturday night, and
from January to January by inexora-
BILE obligation and duty, then you are
a business man or you are a business
woman, and my subject is appropriate
to your case.
We are under the impression that the
moil and tug of business life are a prison
into which man is thrust or that it is
an unequal strife where unarmed a man
goes forth to contend. l shall show
you that business life was intended CT
God for grand and glorious education
and discipline, and if shall be helped
to say what | want to say, | shall rub
some of the wrinkles of care out of
your brow and unstrap some of the
burdens from your back. l am not
talking to an abstraction. Though
never having been in business life, l
know all about business men.
In my first parish at Bellville, New
Jersey, ten miles from New York, a
large portion of my audience was made
up of New York merchants. Then |
went to Syracuse, a place of intense
commercial activity, and then | went
TO Philadelphia and lived long among
the merchants of that city, than whom
there are no better men on earth, and
for more than twenty-five years l have
stood in this presence, Sabbath by Sab
bath, preaching to audiences, the ma
jority of whom are business men and
business women. 1t is not an abstrac-
ton to which l speak, but a reality
with which am well acquainted.
THE CULTIVATION OF ENERGY.
In the first place, remark that bust
ness life was intended as a school of en-
ergy God gives us a certain amount
of raw material out of which we are to
hew our character Our faculties are
to be reset, rounded and sharpened up
Our young folks having graduated
from school or college need higher
education, that which the rasping and
collision of everyday life alone can
effect Energy is wrought out only in
fire. After a man has been in bust
ness activity ten, twenty, thirty years,
his energy is not to be measured by
weights or plummets or ladders. There
is no height it cannot scale, and there
is no depth it cannot fathom, and there
is no obstacle it cannot thrash.
Now, my brother, why did God put
you in that school of energy9 Was it
: merely that you might be a yardstick to
measure cloth or a steelyard to weigh
fiouEl Was it merely that you might
be better qualified to chatter and hig-
gle2 No. God placed you in that
school of energy that you might be de-
velOped for Christian work If the I'M
developed talents in the Christian
churches of today were brought out
and thoroughly harnessed, believe the
whole world would be converted to
God in a short time. There are so
many deep streams that are turning no
mill wheels and that are harnessed to
no factory bands. Now, God demands
the best lamb out of every flock He
demands the richest sheaf of every har-
vest. He demands the best men of
avery generation. A cause in which
Newton and Locke and Mansfield toiled
you and can afford to toll in.
Oh for fewer idlers in the cause of
Christ and for more Christian workers,
men who shall take the same energy
that from Monday morning to Satur-
day night they put forth for the achieve