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suffers all the members suffer with it. It coincides with Christian ethics in the law that business should be prosecuted as a service to others, and not merely to get gain for self.

An inference is, that the only legitimate business for a Christian man is one which by its very prosecution renders service to society. Dramsellers, gamblers, lottery-dealers, counterfeiters, adulterators of food and medicine work every day, and the product of every day's work and of the diligence of the life-time is the multiplication of human woes. Persons engaged in business serviceable to society are entitled to gains accruing from a rise of prices, because this is incidental to a legitimate business and a compensation for incidental losses from a similar cause. But speculators, who by combination force an advance, produce no value, and render no equivalent service for their gains. They only force money from the possession of others into their own. This, therefore, is analogous to gambling, and is not a legitimate business according to the Christian law of service.

(3) A man renders service in the prosecution of his business so far as he is able to improve its methods and results. The farmer who "manures his land with brains " not only increases his own gains, but improves the art of farming, increases the productiveness of the earth, multiplies and cheapens products, and puts an addition to the comforts of life within the reach of a larger number of human beings. Every mechanical invention produces similar results.

The result is, that industry, subduing nature, developing its resources, and using its powers, and multiplying and cheapening its products, is steadily advancing human welfare; the purchasing power of labor, measured not by its money-wages, but by its power to purchase the comforts of life, increases; and, in like manner, the value of raw material, measured by its power to purchase manufactured products, increases. Thus cottagers have now comforts and luxuries which two hundred years ago the wealthiest could not buy.

The industrial movement of modern times is a distinctive

characteristic of Christian civilization. Human thought and energy is directed to the study of nature, the mastery and use of its powers, and the development of its resources for the service of man. Industrial enterprise opens a sphere for the largest knowledge, the highest talent, and the greatest energy. Thus it gives scope in this peaceful service of man to the power which in ancient times found scope only in war and selfish ambition.

(4) Every man serves society in his business so far as he ennobles it by strict integrity and a high sense of honor, by a large benevolence, and all the beauty of a Christian character. What honor, for example, has been given to manufacturing by Lawrence and Williston, to mechanical pursuits by Safford and Washburn, and to mercantile life by Budgett and Thornton. Thus the man of business is to silence the sneer that a mercantile people are necessarily mercenary; that mechanics and meanness are inseparable; that earning a living deadens noble sentiments; that men must live at leisure on the labors of others in order to realize the nobility of life.

(5) Every man's general influence in society, outside of his business, is affected by his character in his business. Light must be embodied in some sun or star or candle or burning coal, or it cannot shine. A man's business is the body of his light. If he is not a Christian in his business, he can shed no light beyond it; there is not even a candle or glowing coal to radiate it.

The second application of the Christian law of service is to the use of the gains of business.

It is unnecessary to dwell on this application; because it is the one usually urged, and urged so exclusively that the churches have fallen into the one-sided opinion that Christian benevolence consists principally in giving money. It is necessary only to say that in the use of his gains a Christian will be governed by the law of service. If he would escape covetousness, he must give habitually, in proportion to his income, and with a willing heart. The same principle

applies to the use of power and influence of every kind acquired in business.

II. Reasons for the Christian Law of Service.

1. The first is that urged by our Saviour himself: "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." I sometimes think these the most touching and eloquent of our Saviour's words. As the brightness of the Father's glory, he discloses the love. of God appearing under human limitations in service and sacrifice. As the ideal man, he reveals in service and sacrifice the image of God perfected in human character.

2. The best instincts and the moral intuitions of the human soul accord with this law.

If any accident happens, and the better impulses of the heart are roused, men run to help the weak and the suffering. The strong man who calls for help is thrust aside with scorn. It is not greatness and strength which establish a claim for service; it is weakness, helplessness, suffering.

The babe comes into the house, and by its very helplessness commands the service of all. It rules the heart by its weakness. See it waking from its day-nap, the coverlid just drawn off, described as only one who was at once a mother and a poet could describe it:

"There he lies upon his back,
The yearling creature; warm and moist with life
To the bottom of his dimples, to the ends
Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face.
Both his cheeks

Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose;
The pretty baby mouth
Shut close, as if for dreaming that it sucked;

The little naked feet drawn up, the

way

Of nestled birdlings. Everything so soft

And tender to the little holdfast hands,
Which, closing on a finger into sleep,

Had kept the mould of it.......

The light upon his eyelids pricked them wide,
And, staring out at us with all their blue

As half perplexed between the angelhood
He had been away to visit in his sleep
And our most mortal presence, gradually
He saw his mother's face, accepting it,

In change for heaven itself, with such a smile

As might have well been learnt there; never moved,
But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy;

So happy (half with her and half with heaven)

He could not have the trouble to be stirred,

But smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said.
As red and still, indeed, as any rose,

That blows in all the silence of its leaves,
Content, in blowing, to fulfil its life."1

Infantile beauty, with power to command willing and loving service. But when the yearling has grown to be a great, strong boy, then, if he demands the service rendered to the babe, he is only laughed at. Thus the unperverted instincts and moral sentiments of human nature assent to the principle that the weak are entitled to the service of the strong. Whoever is growing rich and great with the belief that he is entitled to use his strength to compel the service of others, and to live only to be ministered unto, is in the family of God a sort of overgrown baby, like a stout, selfish boy, who uses the strength of youth to compel from all the family the service due only to the babe.

3. The third reason is found in the second aspect of the law Greatness by Service.

By service a man attains his own highest intrinsic greatness; by service he also attains the greatest weight and influence in society.

It is commonly objected that the argument from Christian love is an appeal to sentimentality, which cannot be expected to have much influence on practical men. This very objection is an expression of the hard and cold realism of the age, which measures value only by its power to satisfy material wants, which reckons success to be the acquisition of wealth by whatever means, and which makes the crowd stare in admiration at the diamonds, the equipage, and all

1 Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh, Book vi.

the gaudy ostentation of swindlers, thieves, and whoremongers, and calls that success in life.

Certainly, enlightened self-interest accords with the Christian law. But I do not appeal to it here. For what is needed is not merely a more enlightened self-interest, but the spirit of Christian love-the spirit which animated the life of Jesus our Lord-a spirit not of the world, but above it. What is needed is a new and Christian ideal of what constitutes success in life, displacing the low ideal of success by getting rich. And this our Saviour sets before us in this thought, greatness by service.

The giver is always the superior of the receiver. He that confers a favor is, so far as that particular is concerned, the superior of him who receives it. He that renders a service is, in that particular, superior to him to whom the service is rendered. The common opinion, that he who serves is the inferior, belongs to the civilization attending the reign of force, when service was rendered on compulsion. Christianity reverses this doctrine. He who needs and receives service is, in that particular, the inferior and the dependent. The condition of modern society is forcing this obvious, but forgotten fact on the attention.

The character expressed and developed in loving service is the highest and noblest type of character. Jesus reveals the divine in the human, and the human in its ideal perfection. That ideal is found in his life of service; he came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. This Man of Sorrows, in "the form of a servant," is the perfect Man, in whom humanity, long smitten with spiritual death, and producing only degenerate beings, at last, touched by the divine, comes forth in absolute perfection. The first tempter promised: "Ye shall be as gods," and the promise was to be realized through self-indulgence and gratification: "She took, and did eat." It has been the mistake of the world, from that day until now, to expect to become as gods by getting and being ministered unto. The gospel gives us the same promise: "Ye shall be partakers of the divine

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