The Bossier banner., 1892-02-25
RELIGION AND BUSINESS.
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage Talks to
Business Men.
Religion and Commerce Are Not Antago-
nistic-The Better the Business Nan
the Better the Christian
If He is Honest.

The following discourse directed
more particularly TO business men was
delivered by Rev. r. Dewitt Talmage
in the Brooklyn tabernacle from the
text:
In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall
direct thy paths.-Proverbs Ill.,,
"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 l have
reason to say that it is promise to all
persons in any kind of honest busi-
ness.
There is no war between religion and
business, between lsdgers and Bibles,
between churches and counting houses.
On the contrary. religion nccelerates
business, sharpens mems wits, sweet
ems acerbity of disposition. fillips the
blood of phlegmatics and throws more
velocity into the wheels of hard work.
Itgives better balancing to the judg-
ment, more strength to the will, more
muscle to industry, and throws into
enthusiasm more consecrated fire.
You can not in all the round of the
world show me a man whose honest
business has been despoiled by re-
1igion.
The industrial classes are divided into
three groops; producers, manufactur-
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 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 i'm
perial of France fell on the Zulu battle
field because the strap fastening the
stirrup to the saddle broke as he clung
to it, his comrades all escaping, but he
falling under the lances Ct the
savages. great many people
blamed the empress for allowing her
son to go forth into that battle field
and others blamed the English gov
crnment 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 to-day.
But the strap broke No prince indie
pendent of harness-maker! 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, il
into your life there come losses and
A annoyances and perturbations, as well
as percentages and dividends if vou
are pursued from Monday morning un.
= til Saturday night, and from January
to January by inexorable obligation
and duty, then you are a business man
or you are business woman, and my
subject Is appropriate to your case.
We are under the impression that tn,
rnoil and tug of business are a prison
into which man is thrust. or that i
is an unequal strife where, unarmed. ;
man goes forth to contend. | shal
show you that business life was intend
ed of God for grand and glorious edu
cation and discipline, and if l shall b,
helped to say what / want to say,
q shall rub some of the wrinkles of car,
out OF your brow, and unstrap some O
the burdens from your back am no
talking to an abstraction. Though
never having been in business life,
know all about business men. In m,
first parish at Believille. N. J., tel
miles from New York, large portion
of my audience was made up of New
York merchants Then went to Syra
cuse. place of intense commercial ac
tivity, and then / went to Philade]
phia, and lived long among the mel
chants of that city, than whom ther
are no better men on earth, and fo
more than twenty-five years | hav
stood in this presence, Sabbath by Sat
bath, preaching to audiences, the ma
jority of whom are business men an
business women. 1t is not an abstrac
zion to which / speak, but a realit
with which am well acquainted.
In the first place, I remark that bus
hess life was intended as a school q
energy God gives usa certain amour
of raw material out of which we are +
hew our character. Our faculties ar
20 be reset, rounded and sharpened ur
pur young folks having graduated fror
chool or college need higher educa
Jon, that which the rasping and coll
ion of every day life alone can effect
Energy is wrought out only in a fire
fter man has been in business az
fvity ten, twenty, thirty years his er
rgy is not to be measured by weight
4 plummets or ladders. There is n
eight 1t can not scale, and there is n
epth it can not fathom, and there
D obstacle it can not thrash
Now, my brother, why did God pu
pu in that school of energy? Was
erely that you might be a yardstic
measure cloth, or a steelyard {
eigh for-2 Was it merely that yo
light be bStter qualified to chaffe
ID higgle? No. God placed you in tina
hool of energy that you might be dt
Hoped for Christian work. If the III