II. RELIGION COMES DOWN INTO BUSINESS. Because it is higher than business, it claims to take it up into its grasp and glorify it, breathing its own noble spirit into all business relations. Some men do not hesitate to say that religion and business occupy separate spheres. Ward Beecher says, "How hateful is that religion which says, 'Business is business, and politics are politics, and religion is religion'! Religion is using everything for God. But many men dedicate business to the devil, and shove religion into the cracks and crevices of time, and make it the hypocritical outcrawling of their leisure and laziness."
1. Religion comes into business as a new force, nourishing diligence. William Jay used to say that Christian tradesmen ought to be the best tradesmen, and Christian servants should be the best servants, and he would sometimes quaintly add, "There's many a good woman who is not a good washer woman.'
2. Religion comes as a Divine help in bearing disappointment and loss. Many by the troubles of business life are made reckless and bard. It is a great tiring that religion, in a world where "man is born to trouble," should help us to suffer well.
3. Religion comes into business to elevate our standards of honesty and uprightness. We need not affirm that integrity is only connected with religion; but we may fully admit that the high standards are maintained by religion, and that it stands foremost among the forces that preserve business morality.
4. And religion comes into business as a spirit attempering business relations. It makes men more gentle, considerate, and gracious towards others; and elevates the tone of masterhood and servanthood, establishing mutual helpfulness as the ruling feature in all relationships.
III. RELIGION MUST NOT BE LOST IN BUSINESS. This it may be in two ways.
1. By excess of ambition and exertion preventing due attention to religious duties and personal culture (see 2 Timothy 2:4).
2. By the wealth getting spirit spoiling the Christian spirit. Illustrate by our Lord's saying, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven!"—R.T.
1 Corinthians 7:29-40
An argument from the shortness of the time.
It is impossible to understand a large number of the apostolic allusions unless we recognize the early Church conception that the Christian dispensation would be very brief, and in all probability closed and completed in the first century, by the expected reappearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. This idea certainly prevailed among the disciples. To some extent at least it was shared by the apostles; but it is evident that they found it necessary to check a tendency to extravagance and fanaticism, and in some quarters the sentiment was allowed to nourish an antinomian spirit, which seriously imperilled the Christian morality. The notion of our Lord's second coming in some kind of earthly manifestation could only have been entertained by those who failed to understand that the words which he spake were "spirit and life," and were to be spiritually understood. "The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life." Yet there is a proper sense in which the Christian should be impressed with the "shortness of the time." Life at the longest is but brief. Life, in comparison with eternity, is but as a passing breath to the long day. To the Christian, life is so full of solemn claims and responsibilities that it seems impossible to fulfil them all in the narrow limits of an uncertain earthly career. The apostle argues here that a sense of the "shortness of time" should influence—
I. OUR HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. Having this particular influence on them, that it prevents our being wholly absorbed in them, and helps us to the right use of them. St. Paul's principle is that we should "use this world as not abusing it." Here Christianity stands between the worldly spirit and the narrow religious spirit. The worldly spirit says, "Time is short; take your fill; live while you can." The narrow religious spirit says, "All the pleasure here is a snare, and dangerous; keep out of it altogether." In opposition to this narrow spirit, Christianity says, "Use the world;" and in opposition to the worldly spirit, "Do not abuse it. All things are yours. Take them and use them; but never let them interfere with the higher life which you are called on to lead. 'A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth'" (F. W. Robertson). Illustrate, in relation to wives, the early notions of the value of celibacy, and show that the married state can be preserved without interfering with the soul's culture, and that; indeed, the married state is found, for most men, singularly helpful to the religious life.
II. OUR HUMAN JOYS AND SORROWS. Explain what an amelioration of both is found in the fact that they are strictly limited. Joys soon fade. Affliction is but for a moment. For both the "time is short," and we need not, therefore, be unduly affected by either. We may gratefully accept the pleasure and patiently bear the trouble; for "we soon fly away" to be at rest.
III. OUR EARTHLY TOILS. St. Paul argues, from the shortness of the time, that "those who buy" should be "as though they possessed not." Resisting the tendency to fix thought and heart on what we can gain, and realizing that we can take nothing of it away with us. Moderation and sobriety may well mark our very acquisitions. The energy that wins success needs to be kept within reasonable bounds. Though not in precisely the sense in which St. Paul used the term, still for us also the "time is short," and we may therefore wisely sit loosely from all earthly things, and remember that where our treasure is there will our heart be also, and that, as Christians, our treasure is in heaven.—R.T.
1 Corinthians 7:31
The passing world.
"For the fashion of this world passeth away." The figure used by the apostle is that of a shifting scene in a theatre. We may better realize the figure by applying it to a moving panorama. On, on it goes, ever new scenes coming into view, moving across, and then passing forever away. Such life appears to us when we can seem to step aside and look at it. Sometimes it has been likened to the river, which bears the vessel on from the harbour among the hills, down past ever varying scenes, and out into the great ocean. Poetic souls are touched with a fine melancholy as they see the "stately ships pass on," and feel how each resembles a human life. Time is short; the voyage is brief, and the ocean is so vast, so unexplored, so unknown. "The word 'fashion' has not here the popular meaning which has been generally assigned to it. It does not refer to those customs and conventionalities which vary in different nations and different ages,—all these pass away; but the word refers here to all that is external upon earth; all that has form and shape and scenery; all that is visible in contradistinction to that which is invisible." Work cut and illustrate two things.
I. IT IS ONLY THE FASHION OF THE WORLD THAT PASSES AWAY. This we should feel if we could rightly understand what the "fashion of the world" is. Clearly distinguish between the "essence" and the "accident" of a thing. It may he quite true that the "essence" escapes us; it is beyond our present vision. But we can realize it in thought. We know that within appearances are undying realities, and that appearances may change and pass, but the reality is eternal. Phenomena are but the utterance of eternal things, so that under our present sense limitations we may know something of them. This is best apprehended by reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, who was "God manifest" in our sense spheres. The mere fashion of him, as the Fellow man, with whom we might have sense relations, may pass away—it did pass away—but such passing in no way touched the reality of his abiding presence with us. So we seem every day to be losing things, but we only lose the fashion of them, the outward show. Whatever they have really been to us, for good or for bad, they are still, and they shall be forever. We ourselves must presently pass away; but it is only the fashion that passes; we remain. With reverence it may even be said of us, that "our years are throughout all generations." Then we can loose from our grasp the merely "seen and temporal," if we have for our possession the "unseen and eternal."
II. IT IS THE REALITY OF THE WORLD THAT IS ABIDING. If we can only find out what that reality is. And surely it is this—the character of the beings that pass under its thousandfold influences. There is nothing else that is abiding, The physical world is ever changing and passing away. We talk of the everlasting mountains, while they are crumbling and being washed down into the plains. "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever," and he alone. The reality of the world is just that unseen spiritual sphere in which Christ's soul and the Christian soul lives. You may call it earth or call it heaven, according to the fashion in which it is apprehended. So the apostle urges his practical point—Do not even try to satisfy your souls in the merely sensuous spheres that so surely pass away. Break all these bonds of the sensual, if you are now bound with them. Keep away from these bonds of the sensual, it in any form they are likely to entangle you. Live in the Spirit. "Walk in the Spirit; and you will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh."—R.T.
1 Corinthians
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