538. Shams in Religion

Shams in Religion

Jas_2:20 : ’93Faith without works is dead.’94

The Roman Catholic Church has been charged with putting too much stress upon good works and not enough upon faith. I charge Protestantism with not putting enough stress upon goods works as connected with salvation. Good works will never save a man, but if a man have not good works he has no real faith and no genuine religion. There are those who depend upon the fact that they are all right inside, while their conduct is wrong outside. Their religion, for the most part, is made up of talk’97vigorous talk, fluent talk, boastful talk, perpetual talk. They will entertain you by the hour in telling you how good they are. They come up to such a higher life that they have no patience with ordinary Christians in the plain discharge of their duty. As near as I can tell, this ocean craft is mostly sail and very little tonnage. Fore-topmast stay sail, foretopmast studding sail, maintopsail, mizzen-topsail’97everything from flying jib to mizzen spanker, but making no useful voyage. Now, the world has got tired of this, and it wants a religion that will work into all the circumstances of life. We do not want a new religion, but the old religion applied in all possible directions.

Yonder is a river with steep and rocky banks, and it roars like a young Niagara as it rolls on over its rough bed. It does nothing but talk about itself all the way from its source in the mountain to the place where it flows into the sea. The banks are so steep the cattle cannot come down to drink. It does not run one fertilizing rill into the adjoining field. It has not one grist mill or factory on either side. It sulks in wet weather with chilling fogs. No one cares when that river is born among the rocks, and no one cares when it dies into the sea. But yonder is another river, and it mosses its banks with the warm tides and it rocks with floral lullaby the water-lilies asleep on its bosom. It invites herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and coveys of birds to come there and drink. It has three grist mills on one side and six cotton factories on the other. It is the wealth of two hundred miles of luxuriant farms. The birds of heaven chanted when it was born in the mountains, and the ocean-shipping will press in from the sea to hail it as it comes down to the Atlantic coast. The one river is a man who lives for himself. The other river is a man who lives for others.

Do you know how the site of the ancient city of Jerusalem was chosen? There were two brothers who had adjoining farms. The one brother had a large family, the other had no family. The brother with the large family said: ’93There is my brother with no family; he must be lonely with no one to help him in his work and I will try to cheer him up and I will take some of the sheaves from my field in the night-time and set them over on his farm and say nothing about it.’94 The other brother said: ’93My brother has a large family and it is very difficult for him to support them and I will help him along and I will take some of the sheaves from my farm in the night-time and set them over on his farm and say nothing about it.’94 So the work of transference went on night after night, and night after night; but every morning things seemed to be just as they were, for though sheaves had been subtracted from each farm, sheaves had also been added, and the brothers were perplexed and could not understand. But one night the brothers happened to meet while making this generous transference, and the spot where they met was so sacred that it was chosen as the site of the city of Jerusalem. If that tradition should prove unfounded, it will nevertheless stand as a beautiful allegory setting forth the idea that wherever a kindly and generous and loving act is performed, that is the spot fit for some temple of commemoration.

I have often spoken to you about faith, but now I speak to you about works, for ’93faith without works is dead.’94 I think you will agree with me in the statement that the great want of this world is more practical religion. We want practical religion to go into all merchandise. It will supervise the labeling of goods. It will not allow a man to say that a thing was made in one factory when it was made in another. It will not allow the merchant to say that a watch was manufactured in Geneva, Switzerland, when it was manufactured in Massachusetts. It will not allow the merchant to say that wine came from Madeira when it came from California. Practical religion will walk along by the store shelves, and tear off all the tags that make misrepresentation. It will not allow the merchant to say that is pure coffee, when dandelion root and chicory and other ingredients go into it. It will not allow him to say that is pure sugar, when there are in it sand and ground glass.

When practical religion gets its full swing in the world, it will go down the street, and it will come to that shoe store and rip off the fictitious soles of many a fine-looking pair of shoes and show that it is pasteboard sandwiched between the sound leather. And this practical religion will go right into a grocery store and it will pull out the plugs of all the adulterated syrups and it will dump into the ash-barrel, in front of the store, the cassia bark that is sold for cinnamon and the brickdust that is sold for cayenne pepper; and it will shake out the Prussian blue from the tea leaves and it will sift from the flour plaster of Paris and bonedust and soapstone, and it will by chemical analysis separate the one quart of Ridgewood water from the few honest drops of cow’92s milk and it will throw out the live animalcules from the brown sugar. There has been so much adulteration of articles of food that it is an amazement to me that there is a healthy man or woman in America. Heaven only knows what they put into the spices and into the sugars and into the butter and into the apothecary drug. But chemical analysis and the microscope have made wonderful revelations. The State Board of Health in, Massachusetts analyzed a great amount of what was called pure coffee, and found in it not one particle of coffee. In England, there is a law that forbids the putting of alum in bread. The public authorities examined fifty-one packages of bread, and found them all guilty. The honest physician, writing a prescription, does not know but that it may bring death instead of health to his patient, because there may be one of the drugs weakened by a cheaper article, and another drug may be in full force, and so the prescription may have just the opposite effect intended. Oil of wormwood warranted pure from Boston was found to have forty-one per cent. of resin and alcohol and chloroform. Scammony is one of the most valuable medical drugs. It is very rare, very precious. It is the sap or the gum of a tree or a bush in Syria. The root of the tree is exposed, an incision is made into the root and then shells are placed at this incision to catch the sap or the gum as it exudes. It is very precious, this scammony. But the peasant mixes it with a cheaper material; then it is taken to Aleppo, and the merchant there mixes it with a cheaper material; then it comes on to the wholesale druggist in London or New York, and he mixes it with a cheaper material; then it comes to the retail druggist, and he mixes it with a cheaper material, and by the time the poor sick man gets it into his bottle, it is ashes and chalk and sand, and some of what has been called pure scammony after analysis has been found to be no scammony at all.

Now, practical religion will yet rectify all this. It will go to those hypocritical professors of religion who got a ’93corner’94 in corn and wheat in Chicago and New York, sending prices up and up until they were beyond the reach of the poor, keeping these breadstuffs in their own hands, or controlling them until the prices going up and up and up, they were, after a while, ready to sell, and they sold out, making themselves millionaires in one or two years’97trying to fix the matter up with the Lord by building a church or a university or a hospital’97deluding themselves with the idea that the Lord would be so pleased with the gift he would forget the swindle. Now, as such a man may not have any liturgy in which to say his prayers, I will compose for him one which he practically is making: ’93O Lord, we, by getting a ’91corner’92 in breadstuffs, swindled the people of the United States out of ten million dollars, and made suffering all up and down the land, and we would like to compromise this matter with thee. Thou knowest it was a scaly job, but then it was smart. Now, here we compromise it. Take one per cent. of the profits, and with that one per cent. you can build an asylum for these poor miserable ragamuffins of the street, and I will take a yacht and go to Europe: forever and ever. Amen!’94

Ah! my friends, if a man hath gotten his estate wrongfully and he build a line of hospitals and universities from here to Alaska, he cannot atone for it. After a while, this man who has been getting a ’93corner’94 in wheat, dies, and then Satan gets a ’93corner’94 in him. He goes into a great, long Black Friday. There is a ’93break’94 in the market. According to Wall Street parlance, he wiped others out, and now he is himself wiped out. No collaterals on which to make a spiritual loan. Eternal defalcation.

But this practical religion will not only rectify all merchandise; it will also rectify all mechanism, and all toil. A time will come when a man will work as faithfully by the job as he does by the day. You say when a thing is slightingly done, ’93Oh, that was done by the job.’94 You can tell by the swiftness or slowness with which a hackman drives whether he is hired by the hour or by the excursion. If he is hired by the hour he drives very slowly, so as to make as many hours as possible; if by the excursion, he whips up the horses so as to get around and get another customer. All styles of work have to be inspected. Ships inspected, horses inspected, machinery inspected. Boss to watch the journeyman. Capitalist coming down unexpectedly watch the boss. Conductor of a city car sounding the punch-bell to prove his honesty as a passenger hands to him a clipped nickel. All things must be watched and inspected. Imperfections in the wood covered with putty. Garments warranted to last until you put them on the third time. Shoddy in all kinds of clothing. Chromos. Pinchbeck. Diamonds for a dollar and a half. Bookbindery that holds on until you read the third chapter. Spavined horses, by skilful dose of jockies, for several days made to look spry. Wagon tires poorly put on. Horses poorly shod. Plastering that cracks without any provocation and falls off. Plumbing that needs to be plumbed. Imperfect car-wheel that halts the whole train with a hot box. So little practical religion in the mechanism of the world. I tell you the law of man will never rectify these things. It will be the all-pervading influence of the practical religion of Jesus Christ that will make the change for the better. This practical religion will also go into agriculture, which is proverbially honest, but needs to be rectified, and it will keep the farmer from sending to the New York market veal that is too young to kill; and when the farmer farms on shares, it will keep the man who does the work from making his half three-fourths, and it will keep the farmer from building his post and rail-fence on his neighbor’92s premises, and it will make him shelter his cattle in the winter storm, and it will keep the old elder from working on Sunday afternoon in the new ground where nobody sees him. And this practical religion will hover over the house and over the barn and over the field and over the orchard.

Yes, this practical religion of which I speak will come into the learned professions. The lawyer will feel his responsibility in defending innocence and arraigning evil and expounding the law, and it will keep him from charging for briefs he never wrote and for pleas he never made and for percentages he never earned and from robbing widow and orphan because they are defenseless. Yes, this practical religion will come into the physician’92s life, and he will feel his responsibility as the conservator of the public health, a profession honored by the fact that Christ himself was a physician. And it will make him honest, and when he does not understand a case he will say so, not trying to cover up lack of diagnosis with ponderous technicalities, or send the patient to a reckless drug store because the apothecary happens to pay a percentage on the prescriptions sent. And this practical religion will come to the school-teacher, making her feel her responsibility in preparing our youth for usefulness and for happiness and for honor, and will keep her from giving a sly box to a dull head, chastising him for what he cannot help, and sending discouragement through the after-years of a lifetime. This practical religion will also come to the newspaper men, and it will help them in the gathering of the news and it will help them in setting forth the best interests of society and it will keep them from putting the sins of the world in larger type than its virtues and its mistakes than its achievements and it will keep them from misrepresenting interviews with public men and from starting suspicions that never can be allayed and will make them stanch friends of the oppressed instead of the oppressor.

This practical religion will come and put its hand on what is called good society, elevated society, successful society, so that people will have their expenditures within their income, and they will exchange the hypocritical ’93not at home’94 for the honest explanation ’93too tired,’94 or ’93too busy to see you,’94 and will keep innocent reception from becoming intoxicated conviviality and it will by frank manners and Christian sentiment drive out that creature with sharp-toed shoe and tightly bandaged limb, and elbows drawn back and idiotic talk and infinitesimal cane and sickening swagger, born in America, but a poor copy of a foppish Englishman, the nux vomica of modern society, commonly called the ’93Dude’94!

Yea, there is great opportunity for missionary work among what are called the successful classes of society. It is no rare thing now to see a fashionable woman intoxicated in the street or the rail-car or the restaurant. The number of fine ladies who drink too much is increasing. Perhaps you may find her at the reception in most exalted company, but she has made too many visits to the wine-room, and now her eye is glassy, and after a while her cheek is unnaturally flushed, and then she falls into fits of excruciating laughter about nothing, and then she offers sickening flatteries, telling some homely man how well he looks and then she is helped into her carriage and by the time the carriage gets to her home it takes the husband and the coachman to get her up the stairs. The report is, she was taken suddenly ill at a german. Ah! no. She took too much champagne and mixed liquors and got drunk’97that was all.

Yea, this practical religion will have to come in and fix up the marriage relations in America. There are members of churches who have too many wives and too many husbands. Society needs to be expurgated and washed and fumigated and Christianized. We have missionary societies to reform the Five Points in New York and Bedford Street, Philadelphia, and Shoreditch, London, and the Brooklyn docks; but there is need of an organization to reform much that is going on in Beacon Street and Madison Square and Rittenhouse Square and West End and Brooklyn Heights and Brooklyn Hill. The trouble is that people have an idea they can do all their religion on Sunday with hymn-book and prayer-book and liturgy and some of them sit in church rolling up their eyes as though they were ready for translation, when their Sabbath is bounded on all sides by an inconsistent life and while you are expecting to come out from under their arms the wings of an angel, there come out from their forehead the horns of a beast.

There has got to be a new departure in religion. I do not say a new religion. Oh, no; but the old religion brought to new appliances. In our time we have had the daguerreotype and the ambrotype and the photograph; but it is the same old sun, and these arts are only new appliances of the old sunlight. So this glorious Gospel is just what we want to photograph the image of God on one soul, and daguerreotype it on another soul. Not a new Gospel, but the old Gospel put to new work. In our time we have had the telegraphic invention and the telephonic invention and the electric light invention; but they are all the children of old electricity, an element that the philosophers have a long while known much about. So this electric Gospel needs to flash its light on the eyes and ears and souls of men, and become a telephonic medium to make the deaf hear; a telegraphic medium to dart invitation and warning to all nations; an electric light to illumine the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Not a new Gospel, but the old Gospel doing a new work.

Now, you say, ’93That is a very beautiful theory, but is it possible to take one’92s religion into all the vocations and business of life?’94 Yes, and I wil give you some specimens. Medical doctors who took their religion into everyday life: Dr. John Abercrombie, of Aberdeen, the greatest Scottish physician of his day, his book on Diseases of the Brain and Spinal Cord, no more wonderful than his book on The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings, and often kneeling at the bedside of his patients to commend them to God in prayer. Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, immortal as an author, dying under the benediction of the sick of Edinburgh; myself remembering him as he sat in his study in Edinburgh talking to me about Christ, and his hope of heaven. And a score of Christian family physicians in our own land, just as good as they were.

Lawyers who carried their religion into their profession: Lord Cairns, the Queen’92s adviser for many years, the highest legal authority in Great Britain, yet every summer in his vacation preaching as an evangelist among the poor of his country. John McLean, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and president of the American Sunday-school Union, feeling more satisfaction in the latter office than in the former. And scores of Christian lawyers as eminent in the Church of God as they are eminent at the bar.

Merchants who took their religion into everyday life: Arthur Tappan, derided in his day because he established that system by which we come to find out the commercial standing of business, men; starting that entire system, derided for it then, himself, as I knew him well, in moral character Ai. Monday mornings inviting to a room in the top of his storehouse the clerks of his establishment, asking them about their worldly interests and their spiritual interests, then giving out a hymn, leading in prayer, giving them a few words of good advice, asking them what church they attended on the Sabbath, what the text was, whether they had any especial troubles of their own. Arthur Tappan. I never heard his eulogy pronounced. I pronounce it now. And other merchants just as good’97William E. Dodge in the iron business, Moses H. Grinnell in the shipping business, Peter Cooper in the glue business. Scores of men just as good as they were.

Farmers who take their religion into their occupation’97why, this minute their horses and wagons stand around all the meeting-houses in America. They began this day by a prayer to God, and when they get home at noon, after they have put their horses up, will offer a prayer to God at the table, seeking a blessing, and this summer there will be in their fields not one dishonest head of rye, not one dishonest ear of corn, not one dishonest apple. Worshiping God today away up among the Berkshire Hills or away down amid the lagoons of Florida or away out amid the mines of Colorado or along the banks of the Passaic and the Raritan, where I knew them better because I went to school with them.

Mechanics who took their religion into their occupations: James Brindley, the famous millwright; Nathaniel Bowditch, the famous ship chandler; Elihu Burritt, the famous blacksmith, and hundreds and thousands of strong arms which have made the hammer and the saw and the adze and the drill and the ax sound in the grand march of our national industries.

Give your heart to God and then fill your life with good works. Consecrate to him your store, your shop, your banking-house, your factory, and your home. They say no one will hear it. God will hear it; that is enough. You hardly know of any one else than Wellington as connected with the victory at Waterloo; but he did not do the hard fighting. The hard fighting was done by the Somerset cavalry and the Ryland regiments and Kempt’92s infantry and the Scotch Grays and the Life Guards. Who cares, if only the day was won!

In the latter part of last century, a girl in England became a kitchen-maid in a farmhouse. She had many styles of work and much hard work. Time rolled on, and she married the son of a weaver of Halifax. They were industrious, and saved money enough after a while to build them a home. On the morning of the day when they were to enter that home, the young wife arose at four o’92clock, entered the front dooryard, knelt down, consecrated the place to God, and there made this solemn vow: ’93O Lord, if thou wilt bless me in this place, the poor shall have a share of it.’94 Time rolled on and a fortune rolled in. Children grew up around them, and they all became affluent, one a member of Parliament, in a public place declared that his success came from that prayer of his mother in the dooryard. All of them were affluent. Four thousand hands in their factories. They built dwelling-houses for laborers at cheap rents, and where the tenants were invalid and could not pay, they had the houses for nothing. One of these sons came to this country, admired our parks, went back, bought land, opened a great public park, and made it a present to the city of Halifax, England. They endowed an orphanage; they endowed two almshouses. All England has heard of the generosity and the good works of the Crossleys. Moral: Consecrate to God your small means and your humble surroundings, and you will have larger means and grander surroundings. ’93Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.’94 ’93Have faith in God by all means, but remember that faith without works is dead.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage