Another consideration which I shall adduce in support of the assertion
that it is not impossible to blend religion with the business of common
life, is this: that religion consists _not so much in doing spiritual
or sacred acts, as in doing secular acts from a sacred or spiritual
motive_.
There is a very common tendency in our minds to classify actions
according to their outward form, rather than according to the spirit
or motive which pervades them. Literature is sometimes arbitrarily
divided into “sacred” and “profane” literature, history into “sacred”
and “profane” history—in which classification the term “profane” is
applied, not to what is bad or unholy, but to every thing that is
not technically sacred or religious—to all literature that does not
treat of religious doctrines and duties, and to all history save
Church history. And we are very apt to apply the same principle to
actions. Thus, in many pious minds there is a tendency to regard all
the actions of common life as so much—an unfortunate necessity—lost to
religion. Prayer, the reading of the Bible and devotional books, public
worship—and buying, selling, digging, sowing, bartering, money-making,
are separated into two distinct, and almost hostile, categories. The
religious heart and sympathies are thrown entirely into the former, and
the latter are barely tolerated as a bondage incident to our fallen
state, but almost of necessity tending to turn aside the heart from God.
But what God hath cleansed, why should we call common or unclean? The
tendency in question, though founded on right feeling, is surely a
mistaken one. For it is to be remembered that moral qualities reside
not in actions, but in the agent who performs them, and that it is the
spirit or motive from which we do any work that constitutes it base
or noble, worldly or spiritual, secular or sacred. The actions of an
automaton may be outwardly the same as those of a moral agent, but
who attributes to them goodness or badness? A musical instrument may
discuss sacred melodies better than the holiest lips can sing them,
but who thinks of commending it for its piety? It is the same with
actions as with places. Just as no spot or scene on earth is in itself
more or less holy than another; but the presence of a holy heart may
hallow—of a base one, desecrate—any place where it dwells; so with
actions. Many actions, materially great and noble, may yet, because of
the spirit that prompts and pervades them, be really ignoble and mean;
and, on the other hand, many actions, externally mean and lowly, may,
because of the state of his heart who does them, be truly exalted and
honorable. It is possible to fill the highest station on earth, and
go through the actions pertaining to it in a spirit that degrades all
its dignities, and renders all its high and courtly doings essentially
vulgar and mean. And it is no mere sentimentality to say, that there
may dwell in a lowly mechanic’s or household servant’s breast a spirit
that dignifies the coarsest toils and “renders drudgery divine.” Herod
of old was a slave, though he sat upon a throne; but who will say that
the work of the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth was not noble and kingly
work indeed?
And as the mind constitutes high or low, so secular or spiritual. A
life spent amid holy things may be intensely secular; a life, the
most of which is passed in the thick and throng of the world, may be
holy and divine. A minister, for instance, preaching, praying, ever
speaking holy words and performing sacred acts, may all the while be
doing actions no more holy than those of a printer who prints Bibles,
or of the bookseller who sells them; for, in both cases alike, the
whole affair may be nothing more than a trade. Nay, the comparison
tells worse than the former, for the secular trade is innocent and
commendable, but the trade which traffics and tampers with holy things
is, beneath all its mock solemnity, “earthly, sensual, devilish.” So,
to adduce one other example, the public worship of God is holy work:
no man can be living a holy life who neglects it. But the public
worship of God may be—and with multitudes who frequent our churches
is—degraded into work most worldly, most unholy, most distasteful to
the great Object of our homage. He “to whom all hearts be open, all
desires known,” discerns how many of you have come hither to-day from
the earnest desire to hold communion with the Father of spirits, to
open your hearts to him, to unburden yourselves in his loving presence,
of the cares and crosses that have been pressing hard upon you through
the past week, and by common prayer and praise, and the hearing of his
holy Word, to gain fresh incentive and energy for the prosecution of
his work in the world; and how many, on the other hand, from no better
motive, perhaps, than curiosity or old habit, or regard to decency and
respectability, or the mere desire to get rid of yourselves and pass
a vacant hour that would hang heavy on your hands. And who can doubt
that, where such motives as these prevail, to the piercing, unerring
inspection of him whom outwardly we seem to reverence, not the market
place, the exchange, the counting-room, is a place more intensely
secular—not the most reckless and riotous festivity, a scene of more
unhallowed levity, than is presented by the house of prayer?
But, on the other hand, carry holy principles with you into the world,
and the world will become hallowed by their presence. A Christlike
spirit will Christianize everything it touches. A meek heart, in
which the altar-fire of love to God is burning, will lay hold of the
commonest, rudest things of life, and transmute them, like coarse fuel
at the touch of fire, into a pure and holy flame. Religion in the
soul will make all the work and toil of life—its gains and losses,
friendships, rivalries, competitions, its manifold incidents and
events—the means of religious advancement. Marble or coarse clay, it
matters not much which of these the artist works, the touch of genius
transforms the coarser material into beauty, and lends to the finer a
value it never had before. Lofty or lowly, rude or refined as life’s
work to us may be, it will become to a holy mind only the material for
an infinitely nobler than all the creations of genius—the image of God
in the soul. To spiritualize what is material, to Christianize what is
secular—this is the noble achievement of Christian principle. If you
are a sincere Christian it will be your great desire, by God’s grace,
to make every gift, talent, occupation of life, every word you speak,
every action you do, subservient to Christian motive.
As a last illustration of the possibility of blending religion with
the business of common life, let me call your attention to what may be
described as _the mind’s power of acting on latent principles_.
In order to live a religious life in the world, every action must be
governed by religious motives. But in making this assertion, it is
not, by any means, implied that in all the familiar actions of our
daily life religion must form a _direct_ and _conscious_ object of
thought. To be always thinking of God, and Christ, and eternity, amid
our worldly work; and however busy, eager, interested we may be in
the special business before us, to have religious ideas, doctrines,
beliefs, present to the mind—this is simply impossible. The mind can no
more consciously think of heaven and earth at the same moment than the
body can _be in_ heaven and earth at the same moment. Moreover, there
are few kinds of work in the world that, to be well done, must not be
done heartily; many that require, in order to excellence, the whole
condensed force and energy of the highest mind.
But though it be true that we can not, in our worldly work, be
always consciously thinking of religion, yet it is also true that,
unconsciously, insensibly, we may be acting under its ever-present
control. As there are laws and powers in the natural world, of which,
without thinking of them, we are ever availing ourselves—as I do not
think of gravitation when, by its aid, I lift my arm, or of atmospheric
laws when, by means of them, I breathe, so in the routine of daily
work, though comparatively seldom do I think of them, I may yet be
constantly swayed by the motives, sustained by the principles, living,
breathing, acting in the invisible atmosphere of true religion. There
are undercurrents in the ocean which act independently of the movements
of the waters on the surface; far down too in its hidden depths there
is a region where, even though the storm be raging on the upper waves,
perpetual calmness and stillness reign. So there may be an undercurrent
beneath the surface movements of your life—there may dwell in the
secret depths of your being the abiding peace of God, the repose of a
holy mind, even though, all the while, the restless stir and commotion
of worldly business may mark your outer history.
And, in order to see this, it is to be remembered, that many of the
thoughts and motives that most powerfully impel and govern us in the
common actions of life, are _latent_ thoughts and motives. Have you not
often experienced that curious law—a law, perhaps, contrived by God,
with an express view to this its highest application—by which a secret
thought or feeling may lie brooding in your mind, quite apart from the
particular work in which you happen to be employed? Have you never, for
instance, while reading aloud, carried along with you in your reading
the secret impression of the presence of the listener—an impression
that kept pace with all the mind’s activity in the special work of
reading; nay, have you not sometimes felt the mind, while prosecuting
without interruption the work of reading, yet at the same time carrying
on some other train of reflection apart altogether from that suggested
by the book? Here is obviously a particular “business” in which you
were “diligent,” yet another and different thought to which the
“spirit” turned.
If the thought of an earthly auditory—of human minds and hearts that
shall respond to his thoughts and words—can intertwine itself with all
the activities of a man’s mind, and flash back inspiration on his soul,
at least as potent and as penetrating may the thought be, of him, the
great Lord of heaven and earth, who not only sees and knows us now, but
before whose awful presence, in the last great congregation, we shall
stand forth to recount and answer for our every thought and deed.
Or, to take but one other example, have we not all felt that the
thought of anticipated happiness may blend itself with the work of our
busiest hours? The laborer’s evening release from toil—the schoolboy’s
coming holiday, or the hard-wrought business-man’s approaching season
of relaxation—the expected return of a long-absent and much loved
friend—is not the thought of these, or similar joyous events, one which
often intermingles with, without interrupting, our common work? When a
father goes forth to his “labor till the evening,” perhaps often, very
often, in the thick of his toils, the thought of home may start up to
cheer him. The smile that is to welcome him, as he crosses his lowly
threshold when the work of the day is over, the glad faces, and merry
voices, and sweet caresses of little ones, as they shall gather round
him in the quiet evening hours—the thought of all this may dwell, a
latent joy, a hidden motive, deep down in his heart of hearts, come
rushing in a sweet solace at every pause of exertion, and act like a
secret oil to smooth the wheels of labor. And so, in the other cases I
have named, even when our outward activities are the most strenuous,
even when every energy of mind and body is full strung for work, the
anticipation of coming happiness may never be absent from our minds.
The heart has a secret treasury, where our hopes and joys are often
garnered—too precious to be parted with even for a moment.
And why may not the highest of all hopes and joys possess the same
all-pervading influence? Have we, if our religion be real, no
anticipation of happiness in the glorious future? Is there no “rest
that remaineth for the people of God,” no home and loving heart
awaiting us when the toils of our hurried day of life are ended? What
is earthly rest or relaxation, what that release from toil after which
we so often sigh, but the faint shadow of the saint’s everlasting
rest—the repose of eternal purity—the calm of a spirit in which, not
the tension of labor only, but the strain of the moral strife with sin,
has ceased—the rest of the soul in God! What visions of earthly bliss
can ever—if our Christian faith be not a form—compare with “the glory
soon to be revealed;” what joy of earthly reunion with the rapture of
the hour when the heavens shall yield our absent Lord to our embrace,
to be parted from us no more forever! And if all this be not a dream
and a fancy, but most sober truth, what is there to except this joyful
hope from that law to which, in all other deep joys, our minds are
subject? Why may we not, in this case too, think often, amid our
worldly work, of the home to which we are going, of the true and loving
heart that beats for us, and of the sweet and joyous welcome that
awaits us there? And, even when we make them not, of set purpose, the
subject of our thoughts, is there not enough of grandeur in the objects
of a believer’s hope to pervade his spirit at all times with a calm and
reverential joy? Do not think all this strange, fanatical, impossible.
If it do seem so, it can only be because your heart is in the earthly
hopes, but not in the higher and holier hopes—because love to Christ
is still to you but a name—because you can give more ardor of thought
to the anticipation of a coming holiday than to the hope of heaven and
glory everlasting. No, my friends! the strange thing is, not that amid
the world’s work we should be able to think of our home, but that we
should ever be able to forget it; and the stranger, sadder still, that
while the little day of life is passing—morning, noontide, evening—each
stage more rapid than the last, while to many the shadows are already
fast lengthening, and the declining sun warns them that “the night
is at hand, wherein no man can work,” there should be those among us
whose whole thoughts are absorbed in the business of the world, and
to whom the reflection never occurs that soon they must go out into
eternity—without a friend—without a home!
[_June 17._]
RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE.