1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



557 



"Dear friends, I have been asked to talk 

 to you on the subject of rehgion and busi- 

 ness. Well, if I were going to talk to any 

 of you on business I should want to get up 

 close to you. If it were important business 

 I should want to sit down by your side. If 

 I were also going to talk to you about spirit- 

 ual matters, the worth of your own soul, I 

 should most assuredly want you close beside 

 me. But the fact is, you are away off at 

 the further corners of a large church, and I 

 am pretty close to another corner. I am not 

 a minister of the gospel, and I am not an 

 orator; but I have prayed that I might be 

 able to do you some good; but I am sure I 

 can not do it unless you come up close to 

 me and occupy these vacant front seats." 



The honest truth seemed to have touched 

 the spot. The audience rose almost en 

 masse; and when they placed themselves 

 close around me I saw by their smiling faces 

 that I had won their attention and their sym- 

 pathies. Then after I thanked them I said: 



"One thing that greatly relieves my em- 

 barrassment in speaking to this body of min- 

 isters and other intelligent people is the 

 presence right back of me of my old friend- 

 one who has been a good friend ever since my 

 boyhood— the Rev. Chauncey N. Pond; and 

 I want Bro. Pond to help me make my talk." 



Bro. Pond responded quite promptly, "All 

 right, Bro. Root. Tell me what you want me 

 to do and I will do it with great pleasure." 



"Well, Bro. Pond, I want you to get that 

 blessed old Bible out from under the table, 

 and then I want to have you hunt up the 

 26th verse of the 20th chapter of Matthew." 

 I knew Bro. Pond could find it readily, for 

 he had stayed at our house the night before, 

 and we talked about it at the breakfast- 

 table. I asked him to make a pencil-mark 

 at each side of that 26th verse so my eye 

 could catch it quickly, when I got at the 

 point of my story where I wanted to use it. 

 1 will not give the rest of my talk here; in 

 fact, I gave you a large part of it on page 

 510 of our last issue. The point I made was 

 that the farmer, the grocer, and the con- 

 sumer were not the only ones in that trans- 

 action, wanting the best of the profit or all 

 of it, if they could get it; but in the great 

 affairs of our State and nation, the trusts, 

 and everybody else for that matter, seem 

 to want the ' ' whole earth. ' ' They want the 

 best places and the best positions. But 

 Jesus said, in summing up this very thing, 

 in speaking to his disciples, "But it shall not 

 be so among you. " His followers were to do 

 things differently. They were to live with 

 different aims and objects in life. They 

 were to love their neighbors as themselves. 



Then I continued about as follows : 



"If the farmer who raises the potatoes, 

 the grocer who sells them, the man (or wo- 

 man) who orders potatoes from the grocery, 

 are all followers of the Lord Jesus Christ 

 they should do business differently. When 

 the middleman found that the farmer had a 

 hundred or more bushels in his cellar that 

 he could not sell, he should have said to him 

 something Hke this: 'Look here, John. I 



do not want to see you lose those potatoes, 

 and I will do my very best to help you out. 

 Even though the potatoes I have in my cel- 

 lar did cost me 28 or 30 cents I will sell them 

 at less than cost if necessary.' Then this 

 Christian grocer (yes, there are such in the 

 world) should tell the man who drives his 

 delivery-wagon to explain to all his custom- 

 ers that he was going to try to help the 

 farmers sell their potatoes, and that if they 

 would buy a bushel at a time, and let him 

 deliver them at his convenience, he would 

 make a very low price, say 20 or 25 cents. 

 Then the man or woman who bought these 

 potatoes, and ivho belongs to the Lord Jesus 

 Christ, should turn in and help something 

 after this fashion: 'It is really too bad, 

 Mary, that these farmers are going to lose 

 their potatoes, and will have to throw them 

 away. Can't you use more of them in mak- 

 ing bread than you have been doing? and 

 we will all try to use more potatoes in the 

 family than we have been in the habit of 

 doing, just to help get rid of the surplus. 

 If we all go at it in the right way we can, 

 without doubt, prevent our good friends the 

 farmers from suffering such a very heavy 

 loss.' Now, friends, if everybody did busi- 

 ness in that way— millionaires and railroad 

 corporations, beef trusts, and all the way 

 from the bottom up -what a beautiful world 

 we should have! Would it not be almost a 

 heaven here on earth ? Think of the ex- 

 penses in the way of litigation that would 

 be saved just to make men fair and honest. 

 Why, it fairly stretches one's imagination 

 when he tries to contemplate a neighbor- 

 hood or a community where there was no- 

 body who wanted all the profit, no matter 

 whether his neighbor suffered loss or not." 

 I do not know whether my little story has 

 taught you any lessons, dear friends, but it 

 has taught me one. When I contemplated 

 for just a few minutes absenting myself 

 from that evening session, Satan frightened 

 me by pushing on with the chance he thought 

 he had before him. Why, I was even tempt- 

 ed to say mentally something like this : 

 "Well, I do not like conferences very well, 

 any way. They never have their rooms 

 ventilated so one can feel well, and they do 

 not amount to very much after all. It is a 

 great deal of trouble to drop business and 

 every thing else, and get away at such a 

 busy season of the year." Yes, when Satan 

 went to such lengths as that sentence, it 

 frightened me. After that experience I en- 

 joyed the conference from beginning to end, 

 and it was a deep spiritual joy, something 

 that abides and satisfies the sotd. The 

 enjoyment that I obtained by running an 

 automobile to get out of the summer shower 

 was all right and honest; but when we let 

 things of this kind tempt us to neglect seri- 

 ous and sacred duties, we are making a bad 

 use of God's gifts. I not only enjoyed the 

 conference from beginning to end, but I 

 enjoyed giving a report of it to our home 

 church; and I enjoyed particularly exhort- 

 ing my listeners to make an extra effort to 

 be on hand at our semi-annual conferences. 



