•[f A business man, not being well, came to his doctor. The doctor told him he had a bad heart. He said, " At any time you may die suddenly, or you may live for years." The man was at first greatly shocked, and said, " Shall I give up business ? " The doctor said, " No, you will die the sooner probably for that. Go on, but don't hurry and don't worry." This man went to his place of business and called together the heads of the depart- ments and told them what the doctor had said to him. " Now," he said, " I shall come to business, but I can't be everywhere, and I want you to understand that this business is to be conducted with the understanding and the expectation that Jesus Christ may come to the master at any minute, and when He comes I don't want Him to find anything in this firm we would not like Him to see."
II.
What are the Hindeances ?
They are partly theoretical and partly practical. They arise partly from the laws of trade involving competition and opening the door to selfishness, and partly from the actual prevalence of evil ways and the difficulty of making a stand against them.
1. Selfishness. — A business man is peculiarly liable to a special form of selfishness. It is not the selfishness of ease or self- indulgence; it is the selfishness of gain, of profit, of personal advantage. Profit, of course, is the very essence of success in business. It is the measure of success, and there could not long continue to be business without it. But with the eager business man the making of profit is apt to become an absorbing passion for its own sake. His ordinary relations with men are apt to be more or less controlled by it. He is in danger of carrying it into
1 R. F. Horton. ROMANS — 17
258 BUSINESS
his social life, of valuing men and politics and principles accord- ing to the advantage that may accrue to him from his connexion with them. Such a man soon begins to wish to make his associa- tion pay, and his friendships, and his politics, and everything that he is and has and does. And if he is successful, a certain selfish pride establishes itself in his heart. We all know this ignoble type of character. And then, dogging the heels of this selfish pride, comes avarice — that amazing and monstrous passion of the soul which loves money for its own sake, which grows on what it feeds on, which can never be appeased, which never has enough,
^ One day a keen business man in one of the chief cities of the world said to another, " I can take a certain bit of business away from you." It was a profitable series of transactions, which the man addressed had been carefully nursing and building up for years. In the throat-cut competition so familiar in business the other man could bring powerful influences to bear that would result in this business matter being transferred with all its profits to his own concern. The threatened man realized the power of his business rival, and, desiring to make the best of the situation, proposed that they should divide the business equally between them. And so it was arranged. The second man still conducts the business matters involved, and at the regular periods of settle- ment hands one-half of the profits over to his rival. The other man does nothing, and receives one-half of the other man's profits accruing from this particular bit of business. It looks amazingly like the old highway "stand and deliver" sort of robbery, but conducted in a modern and much more gentlemanly fashion. The law that governs both is the same, the law of force. The Master's follower is to be controlled in all his life by his Master's law of love. The law of love treats the other man as you would want him to treat you.^
^ The Diamond Match Company, of which the President is Mr. Edward Stettinius, has just won golden opinions in the United States by its heroic action. What it has done is this : It has given up its patent for making matches with a non-dangerous material — " sesquisulfid " — so that its competitors may use it instead of the deadly white phosphorous. "My great anxiety," said its President, " is to see American labour protected from the ravages of a wholly unnecessary and loathsome disease.^
* S. D. Gordon, The Crowded Inn, 41. 2 Pv:blic Opinion (lOtli March 1911), 236.
ROMANS XII. II (AV) 259
2. Worldliness. — Let us thankfully confess that mere selfish avarice is not so rife as it once was. Our modern life is so full of demands on the profit of business that there are not so many miserly men as there once were. But there is another danger, which was never so prevalent as it is now. This may be called the worldliness of business. Men are simply absorbed and en- grossed and satisfied with their business pursuits and business interests, and so neglect and forget their religious and eternal interests. If this world were the only world and this life the only life, then it might be wise and worthy in man to devote himself without reserve to the things that belong only to this world and this life. But man is more than a denizen of this world. He is more than an animal to eat and drink and be clothed. He is more than a calculating machine to puzzle over life's problems. He is more than a mercenary recruit drafted into the world's great army to fight its battles of progress. His own spirit bears witness to its immortal dignity and destiny. His heart, which cannot be satisfied here ; his reason, which soars above the things of time and sense; his conscience, which bids him look for an eternal retribution on wrong-doing — his whole nature pleads trumpet-tongued against the shame and indignity of mere worldli- ness. And yet with strange inconsistency multitudes of business men make light of the wants of their immortal souls, and go their ways engrossed by utter worldliness.