Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by WM. CROSBY & H. P. NICHOLS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. DISCOURSE I. BUSINESS AND RELIGION. Rom. xii. 11. NOT SLOTHFUL IN BUSINESS, FERVENT IN SPIRIT, SERVING THE LORD. Is there not something extraordinary in this injunction of diligence in business and devotion to religion, in the same breath? Is there not a common and a growing tendency to separate these things; to put religion by itself, and business by itself? But is not this disunion sadly making enemies or rivals of what should be friends; substituting, for the mutual blessings religion and business ought naturally to confer on one another, only mutual injuries? For religion, when divorced from business, becomes a subtle theory, a mystical reverie, or a pompous show: it loses the weight proper to a law of life and a motive to righteousness, and is rarified, as it is raised above the earth, into a thin atmosphere, which few spirits even try to breathe. Business, on the other hand, divorced from religion, becomes a mere selfish and ungodly scramble, every man for his own gain and advantage, heedless over whom he treads, or whom he pushes behind. It becomes falsehood and fraud, low manœuvre and winding intrigue; and 1 |