The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1892-01-01
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Relations Of the Business Man
to Christianity.
business Life n school of Useful Knowl-
edge, Energy, Integrity and PatIence,
and Does Not AntagOnize
Religion.

the following sermon, especially to bus
iness men, in the Brooklyn tabernacle
taking for his text:
in all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall
direct thy paths.-Proverbs fiji, O.
"a promise good enough for many
kinds of life, but not for my kind OF
life" says some business men; 1.-THE
law of supply and demand controls the
business of the world" But I have
reason to say that it is promise to all
persons in any kind of honest bust.
ness.
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, sweet
ems acerbity of disposition, fllips the
blood of phlegmatics and throws more
velocity into the wheels of hard work.
1t gives better balancing to the judg-
ment, more strength to the will, more
muscle to industry, and throws into
enthusiasm a more consecrated fire.
You can not in all the round of the
world show me n man whose honest
business has been despoiled by re-
hgion.
The industrial classes are divided into
three groops; producers, manufacture
ers, traders. Producers. such as farm
ers and miners. Manufacturers, such
as those who turn corn into food, and
wool and flax into apparel Traders,
such as make profit utof the transfer
and exchange % all that which is pro-
duced and manufactured. business
man may belong to any one or all OF
these classes, and not one is independ-
ent of any other. When the prince i'm
perial of France fell on the Zulu battle
field 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 Ct the
savages, "a great many people
blamed the empress for allowing her
son to go forth into that battlefield,
and others blamed the English gov
eminent for accepting the sacri-
fee, 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. II
the strap had held, the prince imperial
would probably have been alive to-day.
But the strap broke. No prince indie
pendent of a harness-maler! High, low.
wise, ignorant, you in one occupation,
in another, all bound together. So
that there must be one continuous line
of sympathy with each others work.
But whatever your vocation, If you
have a multiplicity of engagements, if
into your life there come losses and
Rnnoyances and perturbations, as well
as percentages and dividends, if you
are pursued from Monday morning I'M
til Saturday night, and from January
to January by memorable obligation
and duty, then you are business man,
or you are a business woman, and my
subject is appropriate to your case.
We are under the impression that the
MOL and tug of business are a prison
into which n 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 intend
ed of God for grand and glorious edu-
cation 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. / am not
talking TO an abstraction. Though
never having been in business life, /
know all about business men. In my
fist parish at Belleville, N. J., ten
miles from New York, large portion
of my audience was made up of New
York merchants. Then / went to SYRIA
cuse. place of intense commercial ac-
tivity, and then / went to Philadel-
phia, and lived long among the mer-
chants of that city, than whom there
are no better men on earth, and for
more than twenty-five years / have
stood i'm this presence, Sabbath by Sab
bath, preaching to audiences, the ma
jority of whom are business men and
business womens 1t is not an abstrac-
ton TO which / speak, but a reality
with which ] am well acquainted.
In the first place, remarh that bust
ness life was intended as school of
energy. God gives usa certain amount
of raw material ont of which we are to
hew our character Our faculties are
to be reset, rounded and sharpeued up
Our young folks having graduated from
school or college, need higher educa-
ton, that which the rasping and COLI
sion of everyday life alone can effect
Energy is wrought out only in fire.
After a man has been in business ac-
tivity ten, twenty, thirty years his en-
ergy is not to be measured by weights
or plummets, or ladders There is no
height it cannot scale, and there is no
depth it can not fathom, and there is
no obstacle it can not thrash
Now, my brother, why did God put
you in that school of energy? Was it
merely that you might be yardstick
to measure cloth, or a steelyard to
weigh flour? Was it merely that you
might be better qualified to chatter
and higgle9 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 to-day were brought out
and thoroughly harnessed believe the
whole world would be converted to God
in 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 de-
nands the richest sheaf of every har-
vest He demands the best man OF
every 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