Luke 12:15

Luke 12:15

Business its Dangers and Safeguards.

I. There can be no doubt at all that the average business man's temptation must chiefly lie in this direction: to exaggerate the relative value of the thing he deals with that is money; and in consequence, to under-estimate whatever cannot be appraised by that conventional standard of the market. To be safe, therefore, the young man embarking on a commercial life is bound to keep this risk of his calling before his eyes. He must refuse to fall down and worship any plutocracy, keeping his reverence for the good rather than for the opulent or successful; in a word, he must save himself from coming to think or act as if a man's life consisted in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

II. The safeguards. There are secondary safeguards, such as the pursuit of literature and the cultivation of a sympathising contact with men and women in other than mere business relationships. But the only primary and sufficient safeguard for any one of us is the religion of Jesus Christ. (1) Religion opens the widest, freest outlook for the mind into the eternal truth, enlarging a man's range of spiritual sight, and enabling him to judge of all things in both worlds in their due proportion. (2) It 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. (3) It transforms business itself from an ignoble to a noble calling, because it substitutes for the principle of mere profit the ideal of service.

J. Oswald Dykes, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 209.

References: Luke 12:15. J. W. Gleadall, Church Sermons,vol. i., p. 331; Burrows, Church of England Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 237; J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxix., p. 235.Luke 12:15. Homiletic Magazine,vol. vii., p. 17. Luke 12:16. Homilist,new series, vol. i., p. 620. Luke 12:16. Ibid.,vol. vi., p. 84; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 234.Luke 12:16. H. W. Beecher, Sermons,1870, p. 631; Ibid., Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 218; Ibid.,vol. xxi., p. 156; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 316; Ibid.,vol. iii., p. 306; R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parablesp., 337; R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 180.