Listen to the bells again. Horses are used for journeying. We must all journey sometimes, and when we do, the bells upon the horses and the shrill scream of the steam-engine should still be—”Holiness unto the Lord.” The missionary is crossing the sea; perhaps at this very hour while we are sitting quietly here, his boat is leaping the billows and springing from mountain-wave to mountain-wave. I believe that every motion of the paddles is holiness to the Lord, because the ship is carrying forth God’s appointed messenger to proclaim the gospel among the heathen. There are Christian men on board who are not giving forth to preach, but to emigrate and settle down now if they intend in emigrating to establish a Church of Christ where they are to live and to preach the gospel where they may be called to go, every motion of the vessel is Holiness unto the Lord. Perhaps she carries merchants who go abroad to trade and return again, but if they are about to trade as Christians, and then consecrate their substance unto God, that vessel, though when she leaves a black trail across the sky in her cloud of smoke, is as accepted as the smoke of sacrifice—is Holiness unto the Lord. Where there is a true heart, the horse that bears it is a consecrated one. Let our goings out be in the Lord’s night. We are lights: if the light is moved, it should be to illuminate other places. We are salt: if the salt be scattered, it should be that the conserving influence should be felt the more widely. Do not go from home unless you feel that you can take your Master with you; and when you are from home, ever seek to be doing something for your Master, that when you are gone, you may leave a fragrance behind you. How much good might some do who are called to travel continually! There are some few in this Church, for instance, who travel as commercial gentlemen; I know one or two of them who scarcely ever go into a town without preaching the Word there, and I know others of them who, in the commercial room where they meet with some who despise the religion of Christ, speak boldly for the truth as it is in Jesus, and are as useful in their daily journeyings as any Christian men could be who filled up a place in the Sabbath-school, or officiated as deacons in the Church at home. Let your journeyings, then, always be with the ringing of these bells, “Holiness until the Lord!”
But horses of old were also used for merchandise, and when the pack-horses went in long strings, the fore-horses always had bells that the others might be guided in the darkness. I think there is an allusion to that in the text, for such may have been the custom of the Eastern caravans, as indeed it was, and the text means, then, that merchandise and our common trade should be Holiness unto the Lord. O sirs! when you take down your shutters in the morning, let it be with a prayer that your business of the day may be as much a sacrifice to God as the business which I may have to transact as the pastor of the Church, and when you stand behind the counter ask of God, that in your dealings, though they be common to the eyes of men, there may be an inward spirituality which God shall discover, that thus there may be Holiness to the Lord. Sometimes when some of you have been stored up by a sermon, you have come to me and said, “Mr. Spurgeon, could I go to China? Could I become a missionary? Could I become a minister?” In very many cases the brethren who offer are exceedingly unfit for any service of the kind, for they have very little gift of expression, very little natural genius, and no adaptation for such a work, and I have constantly and frequently to say, “My dear brother, be consecrated to Christ in your daily calling; do not seek to take a spiritual office, but spiritualise your common office.” Why, the cobbler can consecrate his lapstone while many a minister has desecrated his pulpit. The ploughman can put his hand to the plough in as holy a manner as ever did minister to the sacramental bread. In dealing with your ribbons and your groceries, in handling your bricks and your jackplanes, you can be as truly priests to God as were those who slew the bullocks and burned them with the holy fire in the days of yore. This old fact needs to be brought out again. We do not so much want great preachers as good upright traders, it is not so much deacons and elders we long for as it is to have men who are deacons for Christ in common life, and are really elders of the Church in their ordinary conversation. Sirs, Christ did not come into the world to take all fishermen from their nets though he did take some, nor to call all publicans from the receipt of custom though he did call one, he did not come to make every Martha into a Mary though he did bless a Martha and a Mary too. He would have you be housewives still, be sisters of mercy in your own habitations. He would have you be traders, buyers, and sellers, workers and toilers still, for the end of Christianity is not to make preachers, but to make holy men, the preacher is but the tool; he may be sometimes but the scaffold of the house; but ye are God’s husbandry; ye are God’s building; ye, in your common acts and your common deeds, are they who are to serve God. That wicked fiction of the Church of Rome, that her cathedrals are holy, has made us think that our houses are not holy. Why, my friends, our houses are as holy, or ought to be, as ever church or chapel. Some seem to think that there is some peculiar sanctity about aisles and oak seats, stone pillars and gothic arches. Holiness cannot belong to stones, holiness has to do with nothing except the acts and thoughts of intelligent subjects, and if holiness can by metaphor belong to places or substances, it must be through the Christian holy minds that are in contact with them. I will not have it that yonder parish church or that this place is one who more holy than that room where you live if you there offer prayer and praise. Oh! brethren, you must not think that the table, and the font, and the baptistry are holy; no, no, if there be holiness in them so may there be in your own table, in your own labors, and in your own tools which you handle, at least, there will be as much in one as in the other if with a holy mind you serve God in both. Not confined holiness—that is superstition; universal holiness—that is Christianity, not the bowls upon the altar holy—that is Judaism, but the bells upon the horses holy—that is true living godliness and vital Christianity. See to it, then, Christian friends, in your common daily doings, that the bells upon the horses are Holiness unto the Lord.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
