The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1895-07-31

side by side, and you will find that
they sell less than $4,000 worth of
goods. All these men in ordinary
business life want divine help. You
see how the wrinkles are printing on
the countenance the story of worri-
ment and care. You cannot tell how
old business man is by looking at
him. Gray hairs at 80 \ man at As
with the stoop Of nonogenarian. No
time to attend to improved dentistry,
the grinders cease because they are
few. Actually dying of old age at 10
or 80, when they ought to be at the
meridian. Many of these business
men have bodies Ikea neglected clock
to which you come, and you wind it
up, and it begins to buzz and roar, and
then the hands start around very rap
idly, and then the clock strikes 5 or 10
or 40. and strikes without any sense,
and then suddenly stops. SO is the
body of that wornout business man.
It is neglected clock, and though by
some summer recreation it may be
wound up still the machinery is all
out of gear. The hands turn around
with velocity that excitcs the aston
ishment of the world.
Men cannot understand the wonder
ful activity, and there is roar, and a
buzz, and rattle about these disord-
cred lives, and they strike 10 when
they ought to strike 5, and they strike
- when they ought to strike 6, and
they strike 40 when they ought to
strike nothing, and suddenly they
stop. Postmortem examination re-
veals the fact that all the springs and
pivots and weights and balance
wheels of health are completely de-
ranged. The human clock has simply
run down. And at the time when the
steady hand ought to be pointing to
the industrious hours on clear and
sunlit dial, the whole. machinery of
body, mind and earthly capacity stops
forever. The cemeteries have thous-
ands of business men who died of old
age at 30, 35, 40, As.
Now, what is wanted is grace
divine grace for ordinary business
men, who are harnessed from morn
till night and all the days of their life
-harnessed in business. Not grace to
lose 100000, but grace to lose $40.
Not grace to supervise $50 employees
in factory, but grace to supervise the
bookkeeper and two salesmen and the
small boy that sweeps out the store.
Grace to invest not the $4,000 of net
profit, but the $500 Of clear gain.
Grace not to endure the loss of a
whole shipload of spices from the In
dies, but grace to endure the loss of a
paper of collars from the leakage of a
displaced single on a poor roof.
Grace not to endure the tardiness of
the American congress in passing q
necessary law, but grace to endure the
tardiness of an errand boy stopping to
play marbles when he ought to deliver
the goods. Such grace as thousands
of business men have today-keeping
them tranquil whether goods sell or
do not sell, whether customers pay or
do not pay, whether tariff is up Or tariff
is down, whether the crops are luxuri-
ant or dead failure e-calm in all cir
cumstances and amid all vicissitudes.
That is the kind of grace we want.
Millions of men want it, and they
may have it for the asking.
Some hero or heroine comes to town,
and as the procession passes through
the street the business men come out
and stand on tiptoe on their store steps
and looks at some one who in arctic
cline, or in ocean storm, or in day OF
battle, or in hospital agonies, did the
brave thing, not realizing that they,
the enthusiastic spectators, have gone
through trials in business life that are
Just as great before God. There are
men who have gone through freezing
arctics and burning torrids and awful
Marengos Of experiences without NOV,
ing five miles from their doorsteps.
Now, what ordinary business men
need is to realize that they have the
frtvIrdei,ip ~r Cl.ot Oh 100 " 'L- l~Sl~1
after the religious interests of Matthew,
the custom house clerk, and helped
Lydia of Thyatira to sell the dry goods,
and who opened bakery and tish
market in the wilderness Of Asia Minor
to feed the 1000 who had come out on
a religious picnic, and who counts the
hairs Of your head with as much par,
ticularity as though they were the
plumes of a coronation, and who took
the trouble tostoop down with his fin
ger writing on the ground, although
the first shuttle of feet obliterated the
divine caligraphy, and who knows
Just how many locusts. there were in
the Egyptian plauge and knew just
how many ravens were necessary to
supply Elijah's pantry by the brook
Cherith, and who, as floral comman-
der leads forth all the regiments OF
primroses, foNgloves, datfodils, hyac-
inths and lilies which pitch their tents
of beauty and kindle their campfires
of color all around the hemisphere;
that that Christ and that God knows
the most minute affairs of your busi-
ness life, and however inconsiderable,
understanding all the affairs of that
woman who keeps thread and needle
store as well as all the affairs Of q
Rothschild and Stewart
Then there are all the ordinary far
mers. We talk about agricultural life,
and we Immediately shoot off to talk
about Cincinnatus, the patrician, who
went from the plow to high position,
and after he got through the dictator,
ship in 81 days went back again to the
plow. What encouragement is that
to ordinary farmers? The vast MAORI
ty of them, none of them, will be pat
rlcians. Perhaps none of them will
be senators. If any of them have
dictatorships, it will be over 40 or 50
or 100 acres of the old homestead.
What those men want is grace to keep
their patience while plowing with
balky oxen, and to keep cheerful amid
the drought that destroys the corn
crop, and that enables them to restore
the garden the day after the neigh
bor's cattle have broken in and tram
pled out the strawberry bed and gone