Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1290
“In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence and His children shall ha ve a place of refuge.” Proverbs 14:26.
IN the Book of Proverbs you meet with sentences of brief wisdom, which, to all appearances, belong entirely to this world and pertain to the economy of the life that now is. I do not know whether it is true, but it was said that years ago our friends in Scotland had a little book widely circulated and read by all their children which consisted of the Proverbs of Solomon. They say that it was the means of making the Scots, as a generation, more canny, shrewd and wiser in business than any other people. If it is so, I should suggest that such a book be scattered throughout England as well and, indeed, anywhere and everywhere!
The book might have been written, at least some parts of it, by Franklin or Poor Richard, for it contains aphorisms and maxims of worldly wisdom, compact but profound, sometimes poetic, but always practical. Has it never surprised you that there should be such sentences as these in the Book of Inspiration—secular proverbs, for so they are—secular proverbs intermixed with spiritual proverbs—the secular and the spiritual all put together without any division or classification? You might have expected to find one chapter dedicated to worldly business and another chapter devoted to golden rules concerning the spiritual life!
But it is not so. They occur without any apparent order, or, at any rate, without any order of marked division between the secular and the spiritual—and I am very glad of it. The more I read the Book of Proverbs, the more thankful I am that there is no such division, because the hard and fast line by which men of the world and, I fear, some Christians, have divided the secular from the spiritual, is fraught with innumerable injuries. Religion, my dear Friends, is not a thing for Churches and Chapels alone. It is equally meant for countinghouses and workshops, for kitchens and drawing rooms.
The true Christian is not only to be seen in the singing of hymns and the offering of prayers, but he is to be distinguished by the honesty integrity, the courage and the faithfulness of his ordinary character. In the streets and in the marketplaces, or wherever else the Providence of God may call him, he witnesses the good confession. It is easy to secularize religion in a wrong sense. There are many, I doubt not, that desecrate the pulpit to worldly ends. How can it be otherwise, if “livings” are to be bought and sold? I cannot doubt that the sacred desk has been a place simply for earning money, or for gathering fame—and that sacred oratory has been as mean in the sight of God as the common language of the streets.
I do not doubt that many people have put religion as a show-card into their business and have tried to make money by it. Like Mr. By-Ends, they thought that if, by being religious, they could get a good smile—if, by being religious they could be introduced into respectable society—if, by being religious they would bring some excellent religious customers to their shop and if, indeed, by being religious they could get themselves to be esteemed, it would be a very proper thing to do! Now, this is making religion into irreligion! This is turning Christianity into selfishness! This is the Judas spirit of putting Christ up for pieces of silver and making as good a bargain as you can out of Him—and this will lead to damnation and nothing short of it—in the case of anybody who deliberately attempts it.
Woe to that man! He is a son of perdition. Better for him he had never been born! Instead of profaning the spiritual, the right thing is to spiritualize the secular till the purity of your motives and the sanctity of your conscience in ordinary pursuits shall cause the division to vanish. Why, there should be about an ordinary meal, enough religion to make it resemble a sacrament! We should wear our garments and wear them out in the service of the Lord until they acquired as much sanctity as the very vestments of a consecrated priesthood!
There should be a devout spirit in everything we do. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks unto God and the Father by Him.” No, it is not a less holy thing to be the Christian merchant than to be the Christian minister. It is not a less holy thing to be the mother of mercy to your own children than to be the sister of mercy to the sick children of other people in the hospital ward. It is not a less sacred thing to be the married wife than it is to be the virgin consecrated to Christ.
Wherever you are, if you discharge the duties of your calling as in the sight of God, you can, by prayer and thanksgiving, saturate your lives with godliness and make every action drip with sanctity, till, like Ashur of old, it shall be said of you that you have dipped your foot in oil. So shall you leave the mark of Grace wherever your footstep is put. Let us endeavor to be so minded and refrain from sorting out our actions, saying to ourselves, “In this thing I am to be a Christian—in the other thing I am to be a businessman.” “Business is business,” says somebody. Yes, I know it is, and it has no business to be such business as it very often is.