Then some of you have got a shop bell, a little bell which rings as soon as ever any one comes in. Now take care that this is Holiness to the Lord. If people get cheated at other shops, do not let them get cheated at yours, or they still be sure to say, “Ah!” you hear Spurgeon; that is your religion, is it?” They shall be sure to throw the blame on your religion and not on you. If there be a place where they get short-weight, let it never be at yours; if there be a place where there is a want of integrity, or civility, or attention, let it not be yours, but seek so to act that you do not make your religion help your trade, yet you keep your trade always in subservience to your religion, and seek to glorify God in all that you do. Some of you have got a factory bell, that bell rings at certain hours, and I see your men come streaming down the street to work. Now make that bell Holiness to the Lord. When will the time come when all these quarrellings shall be done with between master and man? When shall the day come when both of them shall seek to have perfect peace and harmony? For it is to their mutual interest, let them know. Oh! when shall it be that the workman shall feel that he has all that which is just and equal? And on the other hand when shall the master feel that he has not to deal with men who when given an inch will take an ell, but who are content to deal as fairly with him as he would with them. If I have any of your great cotton lords here, if I have any men who have many servants, let them take care that their religion turns their factory-bell, or else I would not give a farthing for all their religion, let them give what they may towards the maintenance of it. Then some of you have got visiting-bell, for I have seen it marked over, “visitors.” And what are visits among the higher classes? It was my misfortune once to sit in the corner of a drawing-room, and listen to the conversation during a visit. If it had been condensed into the sense or usefulness it contained, it might have been spoken in something like the thousandth part of a second. But there it went on, talk, talk, talk, about nothing at all and when it was done they went away I have no doubt greatly refreshed. Now I think the visits of Christian people should never be of that kind. If you go to see anybody, know what you are going for and have a message to go with, and go with some intention. If God had meant you and me to waste our time in flying visits he would have made us butterflies and not men. He would have made us so that we might sip the nectar from the flowers like bees instead of which he has made men whose time is precious and whose hours cannot be weighed in the scale with diamonds. Let your visits be rather to the sick to give them comfort, to the poor to give them help, to your friends to show yourself friendly, and to the godly to get godly refreshment, than to the frivolous to waste an hour or to the fashionable to maintain a fancied dignity. Let everything, whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do be done to the glory of God. Physician, there is a bell at your door, let that be holiness to the Lord. Let those kind acts of yours to the distressed poor, let those divine acts of stooping down to the poor wayfarer in his suffering, consecrate your practice. Let your bell be Holiness to the Lord. Let each of you, whatever his calling may be, seek to find some special way in which that calling may conduce to the glory of Christ. You are a little star in the Pleiades, do not wish to be the pole-star, if you were taken out of the Pleiades, the constellation would not be what it now is. Keep where you are, but shed your special rays upon the earth; and if you be but a little star, do not the little stars together shed much light, and earth were dark if they all were quenched? I have tried to preach a plain homely sermon, but, perhaps I have not hit the mark, perhaps I have not made you feel what I want you to feel. Why, I would have every dustman’s bell Holiness unto the Lord. Whatever your business is, though you are a scavenger, though you sweep a crossing, though you black shoes—whatever you have to do, let everything be done to the glory of God. And, if any say it cannot be done, do you show them the way, for the best practical proof is the proof of fact. I may preach to-day, and preach twenty days about making the bells upon the horses holiness to the Lord, but if you do not tune your own private conversation, the text will but excite laughter among some, and no practical profit will it be to any. Is there anything wrong at home? go and set it to rights. Is there anything wrong in the shop or in the kitchen? If you have not done what you ought to have done as a Christian man, if you have not acted as you ought to have done in your trade, go and do better. Not that you are to be saved by works, I have been speaking to those who are saved already. Being saved, show by your profession what you believe and would by your acts glorify your Master. Let me pray you to think often of this text—”In that day shall there be on the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord.”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
