The Busy Man

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 10, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 18.

A THOUGHTFUL business man will recognize his PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to a higher power. That power may be his family name, posterity, or the great public; better than all if it be the great personal God. One of America's greatest minds, Daniel Webster, said that the greatest, most awful thought which ever came to him was MAN'S PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD.

The principle of personal responsibility is recognized by every true business man in his recognition of the ordinary elements of trade, of buy and sell, of loan and pledge, of debtor and creditor, of employer and employed. If the business man hires men or women to do his work, he holds them personally responsible to do his work, to earn their wage; and he demands that they and he shall each hold himself responsible to do his duty.

The OBSERVING merchant will clearly perceive that the one who renders him the best service, the man upon whom he can depend, is the one who above all others recognizes his responsibility to God, and this not as a part of a superstitious creed, or a religion of inheritance, but of an inborn, vital, God-given principle which permeates everything below it.

In the light of true business principles the thoughtful, candid, honest business man will sooner or later come to recognize as his highest motive-molding power, his personal responsibility to God.

Why?

To God he owes his existence, his health, his mind, his powers of execution, mentally and physically. All the blessings which come by environment, home, friends, country, community, all come from the Giver of all. The light of the sun, the glory of the nightly heavens, the rain, the dew, the air we breathe, all the great common blessings we enjoy, which we could not dispense with, are all gifts from Him, from His creative power.

But more: When man had forfeited them all to his lust, his sin, and death fell upon the race as the legitimate fruitage of man's sowing, God bought back, by a price which staggered the universe in its stupendous infinity, man's lost estate, patrimony, and inheritance; and He did it through Jesus Christ, “that He might be just, and the justifier of him that believes.”

Therefore by creative power and love, by redemptive love and deed, you, my business brother, owe all you have to God, even the “power to get wealth” (Deut. 8:18); all come from Him. “He is thy life, and the length of thy days;” it is therefore a fundamental business principle to recognize as primary our obligation to God.

The recognition of that fundamental fact will make a GODLY business man.