The Oberlin Evangelist

November 6, 1839

Lecture XX.

HOW TO PREVENT OUR OCCUPATIONS FROM INJURING OUR SOULS

By the Rev. Charles G. Finney

Modernized by Cliff Collins

“Not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” (Romans 12:11)

In discussing this subject, I plan to show:

I. That idleness is inconsistent with religion.

II. Everyone must pursue some kind of lawful employment.

III. Everyone must be diligent in his or her calling, whatever it is.

IV. How to prevent occupations, either secular or spiritual, from becoming a snare to the soul.

I. Idleness is inconsistent with religion.

1. Idleness is totally inconsistent with love for God. Whoever loves God with all his heart, will certainly want to do the will of God, and will no more be idle than God will be idle.

2. Idleness is totally inconsistent with love for others. The love of our race will certainly lead us to do things to promote their happiness.

3. Idleness can only result from selfishness. A man must love his own ease more than anything else to be idle in a world like this.

4. Idleness is sponging off the community we live in. Anyone, who fails to contribute as much to the happiness and good things of the world as he consumes, does not earn his bread. Anyone, who consumes the world’s supply without contributing his share, is a loafer. If he does not have a job that promotes the well being of others, he is subtracting continually from the common stock of blessings, and sponging from God’s universe.

5. Idleness is injustice. This follows from what I have just said. A man has no more right to live by sponging than to live by stealing. In fact, it involves the same principle.

6. Idleness is total and downright disobedience to God. God forbids idleness as much as He forbids theft or murder, and a man or a woman can no more be religious without pursuing a job that glorifies God and benefits the world, than a habitual drunkard can be religious.

II. Everyone must pursue some kind of lawful employment.

This is a simple conclusion from the above statements.

But what is a lawful occupation? This is an all-important question. Let me answer.

1. To be lawful, an occupation must not damage our own best interests, or the best interests of humanity.

2. Speculation is not a lawful occupation. Most people who speculate hoard up goods or land when the price is low so they can sell those goods for more than what they are worth when the demand increases. To embark in uncertain speculations involves in it the principle of gambling, which involves the spirit of gambling. It is a game of chance, where one party must gain and another must lose, and where selfishness stalks around to grab every man’s wealth without blushing.

3. To be lawful, an occupation must not be selfish. All selfishness is sin. And every occupation, no matter how lawful it may be all by itself, becomes unlawful when one pursues that occupation selfishly.

4. To be lawful there must not be too much or too little of it. A business, lawful by itself, may become unlawful when too much is undertaken or too little is performed, so that on one hand a man is totally stressed out, or on the other hand he is idle; but,

5. To be lawful, your job or business must be useful. It must be an occupation that naturally benefits others.

6. To be lawful, your job or business must be suited to your abilities. You cannot lawfully employ yourself in something that you are not fit to do. By this I don’t mean that you must be perfectly qualified to conduct any business before you can lawfully engage in it, but that you should be as well or better suited for that particular occupation than anybody else.

7. To be lawful, God must call you to your occupation, or your career. You must wholeheartedly belong to the Lord, and consult His will in all things. Never engage in any occupation to please yourself or promote your own separate or private interest. Therefore, you are required to submit yourself to the Lord’s direction in all things, and only select an occupation for life, or for any length of time, under the direction of God.

Most people agree that God should call ministers into the work of the ministry. But, all men should be equally devoted to God, and all occupations should be equally pursued for the glory of God. Every faculty that you have should be devoted to the Lord every day, and every moment. All men are equally required to consult God’s will in selecting and pursuing their occupations. No one can give himself up to a job God has not called him or her to do, or to which he does not really believe God has called him, without abandoning the service of God. Now, all of you would say that if a minister entered the ministry to please himself, he would lose his soul. This is equally true of every other occupation.

8. You must engage in the occupation you can be most useful doing. This is lawful employment. It is not enough that you make yourself useful to some degree; you must engage in that occupation in which you can (all things considered) do the most good. A man might be useful as a peddler but if he can be more useful in some other occupation, he is required to prefer it.

9. If you, honestly and reasonably, pursue your occupation for the glory of God, you are engaged in a lawful employment. Every kind and degree of business that cannot, with an enlightened conscience, be solemnly engaged in and transacted for the glory of God, carries its own condemnation right on its surface.

10. No business is lawful that is not engaged in and pursued with the supreme desire to know and glorify God in it.

11. No business is proper that is inconsistent with the highest degree of spirituality. Only that occupation that is consistent with complete holiness of heart and life is a lawful employment. Anything that is wrong for Jesus Christ or an apostle to engage in is wrong for anybody else to engage in.

III. Everyone must be diligent in his or her calling.

1. Our passage today implies that we must be diligent in our calling. Our scripture is commonly quoted as if it reads, “Be diligent in business”. It does not read this way; although it’s real meaning plainly implies this.

2. The law of God also implies that we must be diligent in our calling.

3. The needs of the world require it. There is plenty for every person to do. And no one has any right to be idle in or postpone his calling.

4. Every degree of slothfulness hurts you in many ways.

5. It also hurts those immediately connected with you. They have a right to expect the diligent use of your powers in promoting their common interests.

6. Every degree of slothfulness in you hurts the world and the universe as a whole, since there is less real good in the universe for every moment’s idleness that you indulge in.

7. It is a bad example for you to be idle for a day or an hour or to be negligent or slothful in your occupation. Bad example tends to produce a universal idleness that would ruin the universe.

8. You are required to do all the good you can in every way, for both the bodies and souls of men, and this obligation is entirely inconsistent with any degree of slothfulness.

IV. How to prevent occupations, either secular or spiritual, from becoming a snare to the soul.

People everywhere complain that their occupations lead them away from God. People complain about their stress, and having so much business on their hands that it secularizes their spirit, blunts the edge of their devotional feeling, and, more or less, slowly but certainly draws their hearts away from God. And those who are engaged in intellectual and even spiritual occupations, such as science and religion teachers, are likely to fall into an intellectual and hardened frame of mind, and wander far from God. People seem to think that we are naturally unable to attend to the various duties and callings incidental to our relationship in this world without secularizing our spirit, and annihilating a devotional state of mind. Now to suppose there is any need for this result is to accuse God foolishly. God has never placed us here, and surrounded us with these needs, to be a snare and a curse to us. Every occupation that is strictly lawful, instead of being a snare, is indispensable to the highest development of our powers, and to the growth and consummation of our piety. The difficulty lies in the abuse of something eminently wise and good. We can’t doubt that the facts agree with people’s complaints. People’s occupations ensnare them. But why?

Many seem to think that the only way to maintain a spiritual frame of mind is by totally abandoning those occupations that seem to be necessary for men to engage in, in this world. It was this conceit that led to establishing nunneries and monasteries, and all those fanatical and detestable seclusions from society that have abounded among the Papists. The truth is that the right discharge of our duties to God and man, as things are, is indispensable to holiness. And willfully secluding our selves from human society and removing our selves from those occupations that will benefit others are very inconsistent with the principles and spirit of the Christian religion. Neither Christ nor the apostles did that. They were notably active, zealous, and useful in promoting the glory of God and the good of others, in every possible way. Therefore, it is necessary and highly desirable in religion, to understand the secret of making our jobs, whatever they are, the means of increasing instead of destroying our spirituality. There is a lot I could say on this subject. I can now only say the following things, and I may resume this subject at some future time, if God permits.

1. If you don’t want your occupation to be a snare to your soul, see to it, that it is lawful. That is, see to it that it is not a harmful occupation. See to it that you are not engaged in anything that has the natural tendency to injure yourself or your fellow man.

2. See to it that you do not introduce some unlawful ingredient into a business that is lawful, and therefore corrupt the whole, and turn it into a curse to you and to those around you. Let’s use, for example, a man who is an innkeeper. To keep a house of public entertainment is, by itself, lawful and useful. But if a person, to increase his profits or to please everybody, decides to sell hard liquor, this is absolutely unlawful and an abomination in the sight of God; and it introduces an element into his business that corrupts the whole and renders his business a curse to humanity. Perhaps, a merchant does the same thing. In order to increase his profits or to please his customers, he sells tobacco, and other fashionable but harmful narcotics. And, although he deals in many useful and important things, he does not hesitate to buy and sell almost anything that he can make a profit selling. Now if he allows into his business any ingredient that damages the interests of mankind, his business becomes an unlawful business. It demonstrates that he is not and cannot be pursuing his employment from right motives. And it is impossible that he should pursue a business of this kind in a way that will be acceptable to God. In other words, his business, all by itself, forces him to abandon his faith in God. God has said, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all”. (James 2:10) Now the principle involved here is, that while a person allows any form of sin, no matter what it is, to be habitual in his occupation, his occupation is making all obedience, for the time being, completely impossible. He is exercising a spirit that is disobedient to the law and sets aside the authority of God.

3. Be sure that you don’t do anything selfishly. If you allow selfishness in any form to come in and to have a place in your occupation, you have already departed from God; and your job, whether spiritual, intellectual, or whatever it may be, has become an abomination to God.

4. See that your job is strictly and properly a lawful one. If it is not, in the most proper sense, a lawful occupation, it will, if persevered in, certainly ruin your soul. To be lawful, your job must be useful and suited to your abilities. God must call you to your occupation. Your occupation must be useful. You must be able to truly, and honestly, and solemnly dedicate your occupation to God, and perform your job for Him. If you do these things, you will be consistent with the highest degree of spirituality, with perfect holiness of heart and life, and such as Christ and the Apostles would engage in under the same circumstances.

5. See that your eye is single, that you have but one great primary motive, which is to glorify God and serve your generation.

6. Consult God every step of the way. Do everything with prayer. Let every day and every hour bear witness that you are doing everything for God, and consult Him at every step of your progress. No doubt, you would feel shocked if you knew that a minister went around preparing for the pulpit without praying to God. When he goes around to visit his people without praying for divine direction, and when he returns from such visits if he doesn’t spread the whole matter and what he had done before the Lord; in short if he doesn’t take God’s counsel in every area of his employment, you would feel shocked. And should he become very hardened and reprobate in his work, and should his occupation become the snare and ruin of his soul, you would not be surprised, because this would be the result you would expect under the circumstances. And I fear that this is what happens with multitudes of ministers. Now since everything is God’s; since everybody belongs to Him, and every occupation is to be pursued as much for His glory as the occupation, it follows that every person must have his eyes focused on God. He must consult God at every step, and make his job a subject of daily prayer. If he does not do this, he will abandon his faith in God.

7. Be sure to do everything in a spirit of complete consecration to God. In everything, always maintain a spirit of complete consecration, the kind of consecration that you know and feel that you should maintain on the Sabbath day. It is impossible that people will ever pursue their occupation without ensnaring their souls, until they understand that their everyday business is to be as sacredly devoted to God, and performed in a spirit that is just as completely consecrated to His service as the holy exercises of the Sabbath. You must not only understand this in theory, but you must reduce this to practice. You must distinguish the Sabbath from other days only in what you are doing. You must stop thinking that Sunday is God’s day, and that weekdays are yours. Stop thinking that you can serve God one day, and serve yourself the other six days! Sunday has its specific and appropriate duties. So do the other six days. But everyday, every hour, and every occupation and thought, should be wholly consecrated to God. And until you have gotten into the habit of going to your farms, your shops, or to your job, as going to an occupation that belongs completely to God, and performing your duties in a spirit of devotion as true as the duties of your closet or of the sanctuary, your occupation will be an everlasting snare, and the final ruin of your souls.

8. In short, do nothing, be nothing, buy nothing, sell nothing, possess nothing, do not marry nor decline marriage, do not study nor refrain from study, unless you do them in a spirit of complete devotion to God. Consecrate your sleep, your rest, your exercise, and your all to God. Learn to do this. Practice this, or your occupation, whatever it may be, will be the snare and ruin of your soul.

9. I must mention one more thing, without which everything else will be a waste of time. Listen to what I say. You must abide in Christ. “Without me”, says Christ, “you can do nothing”. (John 15:4) Only as you abide in Him by faith, and He in you, will you do any of the things that I have mentioned in a right spirit. He is your life. He is the bread and water of life. Faith in Him is the great and universal condition of all true virtue and obedience to God.

REMARKS.

1. God does not call you to engage in any occupation in kind or amount, that is inconsistent with complete holiness of heart and life. Therefore, whenever you find that your job really prevents you from walking wholly with God, something is certainly wrong. Your occupation is either unlawful by itself, or if it is lawful, you have not been called to it. Perhaps you have taken too much upon you, or too little, or your motives have become wrong. There is ultimately some fault in you. Seriously pause, as if you are on the very brink of eternity, seek after, and remove the obstacles out of the way. If it is a right hand or a right eye, give it up right away, since you love the ways and dread the wrath of God.

2. God never calls you to any business and withholds the necessary grace to do your job properly. If you seek grace, as it should be and constantly will be as long your motives are right, God will not withhold it.

3. If God calls you to a business and you become selfish in it, it is no longer acceptable to Him, and pursuing it with a selfish heart is an abomination to Him. I fear it is common for young men who think that God called them to the gospel ministry, and during their preparation, they become cold, ambitious, and anything but holy. And yet, they persevere because they are afraid to turn back and abandon their course. They are aware that they have strayed from God, but believing that God called them into the work of the ministry, they feel as if they must go forward, partly afraid to lose their reputation with their friends and peers, and partly because they fear the displeasure of God. They know that their hearts are not right with Him. Therefore, they go through their elected classes, hoping that when they begin to study theology, their studies will be of such a character that it will make them holy. But, because of the state of their heart when they begin to study theology, their hearts harden more rapidly than before. Realizing this is happening to them does not deter them from going forward. They think that now they must alter their opinion on various points of doctrine, and that when they have settled all these things, and entered into the active duties of the ministry, then they will be aroused to a better state of feeling. But the hardening process continues. So that by the time they have completed their education, their hearts are like millstone. They are all head and no heart, all intellect and no emotion. In this state, they begin their active duty in the ministry, and woe to the Church that employs one of them. They might as well place a skeleton in their pulpit, because he is only a shadow of a minister, and not the substance. He has the bones but not the marrow, life, and spirit of the Gospel.

4. No man has a right to undertake so much business, for any amount of money, that it interferes with his hours of devotion. In situations where persons labor by the day, or month, or year, they should allow, in the prices they receive, for sufficient time and opportunity for devotional exercises. They have no right to exact or receive such wages that they are forced to give up all their time to labor nor should their employers expect them to encroach on those hours appointed to secret communion with God for any reason whatsoever.

5. There is great danger of a diligence in business, which is inconsistent with fervency of spirit in serving the Lord.

6. From my own observation, I believe that requiring too much study from young men who are preparing for the ministry is a great error. There is such a great cry for a learned ministry, so much stress is laid on a thorough education, and so much competition exists among Colleges and Seminaries, that presents a great temptation to Instructors to push the intellectual pursuits of young men to the utmost, and even beyond the utmost limit of endurance.

Now while I am in favor of a thorough education, I do not and cannot agree with the facts, as they exist before me, that the great difference in the usefulness of ministers depends on their being learned men as we understand that term today. Human science, all by itself, never made a useful minister. Wherever human science is pushed beyond its proper limit, and made to encroach on the hours and spirit of devotion; wherever the spirit of human science, instead of the Spirit of God, comes to be that fountain from which a man drinks, he may become a great man in man’s eyes, but he will never be a good minister. Until there is a great change on this subject, until the great effort of teachers is to make their pupils pious as well as learned, and they are more anxious, and take more pains to produce piety than scholarship, our Seminaries can never turn out efficient ministers. To require diligence in study, without requiring fervency of spirit is an abomination. To concern ourselves more that our students have their lessons than that they walk with God is an abomination. That they commune with Cicero, Horace, and Demosthenes, rather than with God is an abomination. For us to satisfy ourselves every day in relation to their intellectual progress, and pay little or no attention to the state of their hearts, is a complete abomination. Teachers who do this, no matter what other qualifications they may have, are unfit to have the care of young men.

7. When you find yourselves proceeding in any occupation without prayer for direction, support, and guidance, you may rest assured that you are selfish, and no matter how diligent you may be, you may know that you are not fervent in spirit serving the Lord.

8. The speculations of the last few years have so secularized the Church that it has annihilated her power with God. She has actually, been engaged in gambling under the pretense of making money for God. In doing this, multitudes of leading Church members have involved themselves and the cause of Christ in great embarrassment and disgrace. And it seems as if they are deranged in their spasmodic efforts to enrich themselves.

9. No amount of money can save or even benefit the world in the hands of a secular Church. If professing Christians made all the money they wanted to make, and if they possessed a universe of gold, it would do nothing towards converting the world, as long as the very spirit and life of the Church is secular, earthly, sensual, and devilish.

10. No lazy person can enjoy communion with God for the plain reason that his laziness is perpetual disobedience to God.

11. The Apostle has commanded that they who will not work (i.e. who are idle) shall not eat. (2 Thess 3:10) If people are able to pursue, and can find an occupation that they can benefit mankind, and are idle; it is not charitable to feed them.

12. If idle persons eat, they cannot digest their food. It is an unalterable law of God, that men shall perform some kind of labor. This is essential to the well being of their body and mind. Idleness is just as inconsistent with health as it is with good morals. So that if men will be idle, they must suffer the penalty of both physical and moral law.

13. You can see from this subject the great importance of training children to be industrious, and saturating their minds with the spirit of continually doing something that is useful.

14. Everyone can do something to glorify God, and in some way benefit mankind. He can labor with his hands, his head, or his heart. He can work, or teach, or pray, or do something to contribute his share to the common stock of good in the universe. It is the language of a sluggard to complain that he can do no good. The truth is that if you have a spirit to do good, you will certainly be trying to do good.

15. If we do what we can, no matter how little, it is just as acceptable to God, as if we could do a thousand times as much. “For if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have.” (2 Corinthians 8:12) Christ said of the poor widow who cast in her two mites, that she has cast in more than the rich, who, of their abundance, cast in much. (Mark 12:43) It is good to have a heart that wants to do a lot more than you are able to do. Christ gives you credit for what you really want to do, and not what you are really able to do. It is according to the largeness of your heart, and not according to the weakness of your hands that God will reward you.

16. Not one occupation that is essential to the highest good of mankind has any natural and necessary tendency to alienate our heart from God. By this, I don’t mean that the perverted state of a selfish heart will not take the opportunity to depart from God in these occupations. But I do mean that the real tendency of all these occupations, to a mind not given up to selfishness, is to increase and perpetuate the deepest communion with God.

17. There is no excuse for a secular spirit. Whenever your spirit is secular, your heart is selfish.

18. If God calls you to any occupation, and you become selfish in it, it becomes an abomination to God, and you are bound to abandon it instantly or you must renounce your selfishness, and diligently pursue your occupation for God. By this, I don’t mean that you would do right to abandon the occupation that God has called you to, but if you will not repent, and be “fervent in spirit serving the Lord”, you are as far as possible from pleasing Him in pursuing your business selfishly. If God is not with you in any occupation, whether it is study, the ministry, merchandise, farming or anything else; if God does not go with you in it you are certainly out of the way. You must reform. You must turn instantly and wholly to the Lord, and don’t go one step forward until you have evidence of God’s acceptance.

19. Finally, let me ask you solemnly, beloved, are you in some occupation where you are trying, honestly and fervently to glorify God? What is your occupation? How do you pursue it? What is your purpose? What spirit are you in? What are the results of your occupation? Do you find yourself walking with God? Does the peace of God rule in your heart? Or is there some ingredient in your business that reduces the quality of your occupation? Are you dealing in some article of death? Are you poisoning your fellowmen for the glory of God? Do you speculate in real estate or goods? Are you pursuing some scandalous traffic for some selfish purpose?

Oh that the Lord may search you, and pour the gaze of His eye through and through your inmost soul. And if your hands are clean, may the blessing of the Lord, that makes rich and adds no sorrow, be multiplied to you a thousand fold. But if you are out of the way, may He lay his reclaiming, sanctifying hand upon you, and not allow you to rest until everything you have and are, are wholly devoted to the Lord.