1 Thessalonians 4:9-11 But as touching brotherly love you need not that I write to you: for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another.… I. THE CHIEF DANGERS OF A BUSINESS LIFE. What are they? It is a misfortune in the path of a commercial trader to be kept in perpetual contact with the purely material value of all possible substances. The public sentiment of great business centres is apt to reckon a man's worth by his business profits. It is always tempted to erect an ignoble or defective ideal of success in life. And then there are the vulgar dangers to honesty and truthfulness which indeed beset men in all professions and classes. II. THE SAFEGUARDS OF A BUSINESS LIFE. 1. Cherish to the utmost a thirst for truth and a sympathy with what is ideal, unselfish, grand in conduct. 2. Cultivate a sympathizing contact with men in other than mere business relationships. These are the safeguards of the secondary order. 3. The only primary and sufficient safeguard for any of us is the religion of Jesus Christ. Religion opens the widest, freest outlook for the mind into eternal truth, enlarging a man's range of spiritual sight, and enabling him to judge of all things in both worlds in their true proportion. Religion, moreover, supplies us for that reason with the only true and perfect standard by which to test the value of things, and so corrects the one-sided materialistic standard of business. Lastly, religion transforms business itself from an ignoble to a noble calling, inasmuch as it substitutes for the principle of mere profit the ideal of service. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. |
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