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any depth. Now, God has not spent all this education on us for the purpose of making us more successful worldlings. He has put us in this school to develop our energy for His cause and Kingdom. There is enough unemployed talent in the churches and the world to-day to reform all empires and all kingdoms and people in three weeks.
(2) Again, God intended business life to be to us a school of knowledge. Merchants do not read many books, or study many lexicons, yet through the force of circumstances they become intelligent on questions of politics, and finance, and geography, and jurisprudence, and ethics. Business is a hard schoolmistress. If her pupils will not learn in any other way, with unmerciful hand she smites them on the head and on the heart with inexor- able loss. Expensive schooling; but it is worth it. Traders in grain must know about foreign harvests. Traders in fruit must know about the prospects of tropical production. Owners of ships come to understand winds, and shoals, and navigation. And so every bale of cotton, and every raisin cask, and every tea box, and every cluster of bananas becomes literature to our business men. Now, what is the use of all this intelligence unless they give it to Christ ? Does God give us these opportunities of brightening the intellect and of increasing our knowledge merely to get larger treasures and greater business ? Can it be that we have been learning about foreign lands and people that dwell under other skies, and yet have no missionary spirit ?
(3) God intended business life to be to us a school of patience. How many little things there are in one day's engagements to disquiet us ! Men will break their engagements. Collecting agents will come back empty-handed. Tricksters in business will play upon what they call the " hard times," when in any times they never pay. Goods are placed on the wrong shelf. Cash books and money drawer are in a quarrel. Goods ordered for a special emergency fail to come, or they are damaged on the way. People who intend no harm go about shopping, unrolling goods they do not mean to buy, and try to break the dozen. Men are obliged to take other people's notes. More counterfeit bills are in the drawer. There are more bad debts. There comes another ridiculous panic. How many have gone down under the pressure, and have become choleric and sour. But other men have found
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in all this a school of patience. They were like rocks, more serviceable for the blasting. There was a time when they had to choke down their wrath. There was a time when they had to bite their lip. There was a time when they thought of a stinging retort they would like to utter. But now they have conquered their impatience. They have kind words for sarcastic flings. They have a polite behaviour for discourteous customers. They have forbearance for unfortunate debtors. How are we going to get that grace of patience? Let us pray to God that through all the exasperation of our everyday life we may hear a voice saying to us, " Let patience have her perfect work."
(4) God also intended business life to be a school of integrity. It may be rare to find a man who can from his heart say, "I never cheated in trade. I never overestimated the value of goods when I was selling them. I never covered up a defect in a fabric. I never played upon the ignorance of a customer, and in all my estate there is not one dishonest farthing ! " But there are some who can say it. They never let their integrity bow or cringe to present advantage. They are as pure and Christian to-day as on the day when they sold their first tierce of rice or their first firkin of butter. There were times when they could have robbed a partner, when they could have absconded with the funds of a bank, when they could have sprung a snap judgment, when they could have borrowed illimitably, when they could have made a false assignment, when they could have ruined a neighbour for the purpose of picking up some of the fragments ; but they never took one step on that pathway.
\ Judaism in its highest and ripest expression was still haunted by the feeling that between the service of the Lord and the practices of business there was some irreconcilable con- tradiction. In that beautiful Book of Ecclesiasticus, where the old faith most nearly approaches the new, we read —
A merchant shall hardly keep himself from wrong-doing,
And a huckster shall not be acquitted of sin.
Many have sinned for a thing indifferent;
And he that seeketh to multiply gain will turn his eye away.
A nail will stick between the joinings of stones ;
And sin will thrust itself between buying and selling.
It is a new note that is struck in the New Testament, where
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business, the buying and selling, the work by which the daily bread is earned, is enjoined as the means of realizing the King- dom of heaven. No New Testament writer would think of saying that the ordinary operations of life are a hindrance to religion. The point of view is entirely changed. The Christian is to go into the world and engage in its duties for the express purpose of bringing all its activities under the dominion of Christ, or, rather, of letting the will of Christ operate freely in the shaping and conduct of the world's affairs.^