The Power of Holiness is to be Shown in the Christian’s WORLDLY EMPLOYMENTS 2/2

       

Fourth.  When the Christian is content with the portion, little or much, that God upon his endeavours allots to him; not content because he cannot have it otherwise.  Necessity was the heathen’s schoolmaster to teach content­ment; but faith must be the Chris­tian’s, whereby he acqui­esces in the dispositions of God’s providence with a sweet complacency as the will of God concerning him.  Here is godliness in triumph—when the Christian can carve contentment out of God's providence, whatever the dish is that is set before him.  If he ‘gathers little,’ he lacks not, but is satisfied with his short meal.  If he ‘gathers much,’ he hath ‘nothing over’—I mean not more than his grace can well digest and turn to good nourishment; ‘nothing over’ that turns to bad humours of pride and wantonness.  This was the pitch Paul attained unto, Php. 4:12.  He knew how ‘to abound and to suffer need.’  Take contentment from godliness, and you take one of the best jewels away she wears in her bosom.  ‘Godliness with contentment is great gain;’ not godliness with an estate, but ‘godliness with contentment,’ I Tim. 6:6.

           Fifth.  When the Christian’s particular calling doth not encroach upon his general.  Truly this re­quires a strong guard.  The world is of an encroaching nature, hard it is to converse with it, and not come into bondage to it.  As Hagar, when Abraham showed her some respect more than ordinary, began to con­test with, yea, crow over, her mistress, so will our worldly employments jostle with our heavenly, if we keep not a strict hand over them.  Now the power of holiness appears here in two things.

1. When the Christian suffers not his worldly business to eat upon his time for communion with God,but keeps it inviolable from the sacrilegious hands of the world.  The Christian may observe, that, if he will listen to it, he shall never think of setting about any religious duty, but some excuse or other, to put off, will present itself to his thoughts.  ‘This thing must be just now done; that friend spoken with, or that customer waited for;’ so that, as the wise man saith, ‘He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap,’ Ecc. 11:4. In the same way he that will regard what his own sloth, worldly interest, and fleshly part suggest, shall never pray, meditate, or hold communion with God in any other religious duty.  O it is sad! when the master must ask the man leave when to eat, and when not—when the Christian must take his orders from the world, when to wait on God and when not, where­as religion should give law to that.  Then holiness is in its power—as Samson in his strength—when it can snap asunder these excuses, that would keep him from his God, as easily as he did his cords of flax —when the Christian can make his way into the pres­ence of God, through the throng of worldly encum­brances.  ‘Behold,’ saith David, ‘I have prepared for the house of the Lord an hundred thousand talents of gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver,’ &c, I Chr. 22:14.  He had ways enough to have disposed of his treasures, if he would have been discouraged from the work; he might have had a fair apology from the wars he was all his reign involved in—which were continually draining his exchequer—to have spared this cost.  But as Rome showed her puissance in sending succours to Spain when Hannibal was at her gates; so David would show his zeal for God and his house, by laying aside such vast sums for the building of a temple in the midst of the troubles and expenses of his kingdom.  He is the Christian, indeed, that lays aside a good portion of time daily, in the midst of all his worldly occasions, for communion with God. Whoever he compounds with and pays short, he dares not make bold with God, to serve him by halves.  He shall have his time devoted to him, though others are put off with the less; like the devout man, who, when the time for his devotions came, what company soever he was with, would take his leave of them with this fair excuse, that he had a friend that stayed to speak with him (he meant his God).
2. When his worldly employments do not turn the edge of his affections, and leave a bluntness upon his spirit as to holding communion with God.  Here is holiness in the power.  As the husband, when he hath been abroad all day in this company and that, yet none of these makes him love his wife and chil­dren the less.  When he comes home at night, he brings his affections to them as entire as when he went out, yea, he is glad he got from all others to them again.  This is a sweet frame of spirit indeed.  But alas! how hard to keep it.  Canst thou say, O Christian! after thou hast passed a day amidst thy worldly profits, and been entertained with the delight and pleasures which thy full estate affords thee, that thou bringest thy whole heart to thy God with thee, when at night thou returnest into his presence to wait on him?  Thou canst say more than many can that have some good in them.  Oh it is hard to converse with the world all day, and shake it off at night, so as to be free to enjoy privacy with God.  The world does by the Christian as the little child by the mother; if it cannot keep the mother from going out, then it will cry after her to go with her.  If the world cannot keep us from going to religious duties, then it will cry to be taken along with us, and much ado to part it and the affections.

The Power of Holiness is to be Shown in the Christian’s WORLDLY EMPLOYMENTS 1/2

     

      Third Instance.  The Christian must express the power of holiness in his particular calling and worldly employments—that wherein he is conversant. Holiness must be written upon those, as well as on his religious duties.  He that observes the law of building, is as exact in making a kitchen, as in making a parlour; so, by the law of Christianity, we must be as exact in our worldly business, as in duties of worship —‘Be ye holy in all manner of conversation,’ I Peter 1:15.  We must not leave our religion, as some do their Bibles, at church.  As in man, the highest faculty —which is reason—guides his lowest actions, even those which are common to beasts, such as eating, drinking, and sleeping (man doth, that is, should, if he will deserve his own name, exercise these acts as reason directs—should show himself in them a rational creature); so in a Christian, grace, that is the highest principle, is to steer and guide him in those actions that are common to man as man.  The Chris­tian is not to buy and sell, as a mere man, but as a Christian man.  Religion is not like that statesman’s gown, which, when he went to recreate himself, he would throw off, and say, ‘There lie, lord treasurer, a while.’  No, wherever the Christian is, whatever he is adorning, he must keep his religion on—I mean, do it holily.  He must not do that in which he cannot show himself a Christian.  Now the power of holiness puts itself forth in our particular callings these ways. But take them conjunctively, and ‘the beauty of holi­ness’ will appear in the symmetry of all the parts together.

           First.  When the Christian is diligent in his par­ticular calling.  When God calls us to be Christians, he calls us indeed out of the world as to our affec­tions, but not out of the world as to employment.  It is true, when Elisha was called, he left his plough, and the apostles their nets, but not as they were called to be saints, but because they were called to office in the church.  Some, however, in our days, could find in their hearts to send the officers of the church to the plough again; but upon how little reason let them­selves judge, who find one trade, if it be well followed, and managed with a full stock, enough to find them work all the week.  Surely then the minister that has to do with, yea, provide for, more souls than they bodies, may find his head and heart as full of work in his calling, from one end of the year, as any of them all.  But I am speaking to the private Christian.  Thou canst not be holy, if thou beest not diligent in a particular calling.  The law of man counts him a vagrant that hath not a particular abiding place; and the word of God counts him a disorderly person that hath not a particular calling, wherein to move and act for God's glory and the good of others.  ‘We hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all,’ II Thes. 3:11.  God would have his people profitable, like the sheep which doth the very ground good it feeds on.  Every one should be better for a Christian.  When Onesimus was converted, he became ‘profitable’ to Paul and Philemon also; to Paul as a Christian, to Philemon as a servant, Phil 11. Grace made him of a runaway, a diligent servant.  An idle professor is a scandalous professor.  An idle man does none good, and himself most hurt.

           Second.  When he is not only diligent, but for conscience’s sake.  There are many who are free enough of their pains, in their particular callings; they need no spur.  But what sets them on work?  It is conscience, because God commands it?  Oh no! then they would be diligent in their general calling also. They would pray as hard as they work.  They then would knock off, as well as fall on, at God’s command.  If conscience were the key that opened their shop on the week-day, it would shut it on the Lord's day.  When we see a man, like the hawk, fly after the world’s prey, and will not come to God’s lure, but—though conscience in God’s name bids ‘Come off, and wait on thy God in this duty in thy family, that in thy closet’—still goes on his worldly chase: he shows plain enough whose errand he goes on—not that of conscience, but that of his own lusts. But if thou wilt walk in the power of holiness, thou must be diligent in thy calling on a religious account.  That which makes thee ‘fervent in prayer,’ must make thee ‘not slothful in business.’  Thou must say, ‘This is the place God hath set me in.  I am but his servant in my own shop, and here I must serve him as I would have my prentice or child serve me; yea, much more, for they are not mine so much as I am his.’

           Third.  When he expects the success of his la­bour from God, and accordingly, if he speeds, gives his humble thanks to God.  Indeed, they go together; he that doeth not the one, will not the other.  The worldling that goes not through his closet by prayer into his shop in the morning when he enters upon his business, no wonder if he returns not at night by his closet, in thankfulness to God.  He began without God; it were strange if he should end in him.  The spider that spins her web out of her own bowels, dwells in it when she hath done, Job 8:14; and men that carry on their enterprises by their own wit and care, entitle themselves to what they think they have done.  They will sooner sacrifice—as they to their ‘net’ and ‘drag,’ Hab. 1:15—to their own wisdom and industry than to God.  Such a wretch I have lately heard of in our days, who, being by a neighbour ex­cited to thank God for a rich crop of corn he had standing on his ground, atheistically replied, ‘Thank God! nay, rather thank my dung-cart’—the speech of a dung-hill spirit, more filthy than the muck in his cart.  But if thou wilt be a Christian, thou must ac­knowledge God ‘in all thy ways,’ not ‘leaning to thy own understanding;’ and this will direct thee to him, when success crowns thy labours, to crown God with the praise.  Jacob laboured as diligently, and took as much pains for the estate he had at last, as another, yet laying the foundation of all in prayer, and ex­pecting the blessing from heaven, Gen. 28:20; he as­cribes all that fair estate he at last was possessed of, to the mercy and truth of God, whom he had, in his poor state—when with his pil­grim staff he was travel­ling to Padan-aram—engaged by a solemn vow to provide for him, Gen 32:10.