The question, can a man be a Christian and succeed in business, though
old, is still asked every day. There are yet a great many who regard
religion and business as conflicting pursuits, and they attempt a
compromise by the clear-cut division of time into business hours and
church time. Others are answering this question in the negative.
"Look at me," they say. "I have always been pious and honest, and
therefore I have failed to make money or achieve success; religion does
not pay."
If the question means, can a man take out his backbone and succeed in
business, there need be no hesitancy as to the answer. If becoming a
Christian means the elimination of all virility from the character, the
substitution of soft soap and sawder for strength and diligence,
religion cannot be regarded as a help in business. There are too many
people who think that sloth is a sign of spirituality and that you
cannot be a saint unless you have softening of the brain.
But it is simply whether you can keep your whole life, in the market or
out, up to the level of a certain ideal, whether you can be honest,
true, fair-minded, unselfish, merciful, and kind and at the same time
do the work and meet the exigencies of modern commercial and industrial
strife. It is whether you can measure steadily towards heaven's ideal
while mastering earth's daily duties.
The question is either a reproach to religion or to business. It is
assumed by many, with especial conviction by those who know business
only by reputation, that it demands the sacrifice constantly of honour,
truth, mercy, and every other virtue. The man who thinks that he is
pious because he is pulseless, draws a fancy picture of red-blooded men
fighting, intriguing, slaying, like demons new from the pit; and that,
he thinks, is modern business.
Strife is everywhere. If religion means sequestration from temptation
we need to pray to be delivered from it. There is as much danger of a
man's losing his character, selling his soul, in the church as in the
market. The temptation to the merchant to misrepresent his goods for a
larger profit is not greater than that which comes to the minister to
magnify his abilities for an increase in fame.
Things honourable are the same everywhere; they are written deep within
us, and by them church and mart both are judged. Every man knows that
the chief business of life, whether through commerce, toil, study,
recreation, or worship, is to develop the best life, to make of himself
a true, full grown man, who shall render to this world a full man's
service.
Business is a more effective school of character than any other we
have. If some of the standards of that school have been unworthy--and
who shall say they have not?--it is our duty to revise them, to make
them higher; not to abolish the school, not to stay away from it
because it is imperfect, but to make it fit to serve its true purpose.
Business always will be immoral as long as it is an end in itself. The
product is greater than the machine, the making of character greater
than the mechanism by which we make a living. The serious danger comes
when a man begins to lay his soul on the counter, when he reverses the
course in this school of character and makes the end serve the means,
when he sacrifices honour, truth, and the soul that business may
succeed.
Only failure lies that way. No business ever became permanently great
by making its people small. Success here is to be measured by the
soul. No matter what a man may be doing he must keep himself above his
task. The work must serve the worker.
The question is whether we are serving business or it is serving us.
If a man lives for his wage he will sacrifice everything to get it, but
if he works that he may find life, then he will ever refuse to lose the
things of which life is made in the pursuit of success. He knows he
does not have to make money, but he does have to make manhood. That is
the end both of religion and of business.