SERVICE TO THE LORD AND SECULAR BUSINESS

^[p. 231] SERVICE TO THE LORD AND SECULAR BUSINESS

As I confidently trust the Lord is leading you to give yourself more to His service, and as I personally rejoice in your being so led, you will understand me when I say I am anxious that you should do nothing which would in any way spoil His leading; and I am sure you will allow me freely to state the dangers which I think I see in your path.

To be fully and efficiently the Lord’s servant, as He has called you, I premise is the point from which there must be no divergence. “If any man serve me let him follow me”; and following there means death to oneself. There must be self-surrender in following the rejected Christ; and there is no serving without following Him. The nature and character of the self-surrender is not stated, but we know it is various. What would be self-surrender to one is not to another, but we must accept that there is no true service without self-surrender, as Paul says of himself, “though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all” (1 Corinthians 9: 19). What a self-surrender it was to him to work day and night with toil and travail! I am not saying that is the self-surrender for you; I cannot tell; but Paul says, Have we not power to forbear manual toil? No; this honoured servant must “follow” while he serves; and he adds, “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection” (1 Corinthians 9: 27). God, we know, does bring down the heart by labour; and I find, though fully occupied in the Lord’s work, that the secular business I am engaged in is very wholesome in testing the extent of my faith in God and the principles of His grace. I am thankful, however, that I am not diverted by secular business from the Lord’s work; but I never refused business until lately. I believe unless one is peculiarly called for evangelistic work, that it is happier, and more effective too, to be able to say, with Paul, “These hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me” (Acts 20: 34). I see the Lord does provide a sufficiency for those whom He employs ^[p. 232] now in the church, generally in a hereditary way; or they are men who have been ministers in systems, or officers in the army; modes of living inconsistent with the gospel of Christ. But I think it is a serious thing to proclaim that I cannot serve Christ if I continue in a calling which I can follow quite consistently with the path of separation to Him. Is not this partaking of the notion in Christendom that a clergyman cannot pursue any secular business? I always feel checked and embarrassed when pressing zeal in service on a brother in business if he thinks I know nothing of the trials of manual toil. Paul can say on this subject, We were ensamples to you to follow us. It seems to me, except when the gift is a very special one, that it is a reproach to the power and grace of Christ to say in act that I could not serve Him while I continued in a lawful business, fulfilling the fundamental law of man on earth, namely — Man shall live by the sweat of his brow. I believe that the work of the Lord may call a man to limit himself to a very scanty subsistence, and what I feel in your case is, that you ought not to make the surrender of your business a sine quâ non to your serving the Lord. You cannot have too much purpose to serve the Lord (may the Lord increase it), or too much devotedness in doing so, but my advice to you is to go on with the service and pursue your business, as quite secondary to the service, limiting it to the lowest scale of subsistence which your family can submit to, and then you will be the more prepared to be freed wholly for His service if you are so led. True servants of the Lord are much needed, and I cannot express myself as fully as I would in seeing the purpose of your heart; but I do fear lest you should take any step which would spoil your testimony and be a hindrance to many souls.