|
even though it be a corner grocery up-town.'
You say, ``You cannot make five thousand dollars
in a store now.'' Oh, my friends, if you will
just take only four blocks around you, and find
out what the people want and what you ought
to supply and set them down with your pencil
and figure up the profits you would make if you
did supply them, you would very soon see it.
There is wealth right within the sound of your
voice.
Some one says: ``You don't know anything
about business. A preacher never knows a thing
about business.'' Well, then, I will have to prove
that I am an expert. I don't like to do this, but
I have to do it because my testimony will not be
taken if I am not an expert. My father kept a
country store, and if there is any place under the
stars where a man gets all sorts of experience in
every kind of mercantile transactions, it is in the
country store. I am not proud of my experience,
but sometimes when my father was away he would
leave me in charge of the store, though fortunately
for him that was not very often. But this did
occur many times, friends: A man would come
in the store, and say to me, ``Do you keep jack
knives?'' ``No, we don't keep jack-knives,'' and
I went off whistling a tune. What did I care
about that man, anyhow? Then another farmer
would come in and say, ``Do you keep jack
knives?'' ``No, we don't keep jack-knives.''
Then I went away and whistled another tune.
Then a third man came right in the same door and
said, ``Do you keep jack-knives?'' ``No. Why
is every one around here asking for jack-knives?
Do you suppose we are keeping this store to supply
the whole neighborhood with jack-knives?''
Do you carry on your store like that in Philadelphia?
The difficulty was I had not then learned
that the foundation of godliness and the foundation
principle of success in business are both the
same precisely. The man who says, ``I cannot
carry my religion into business'' advertises himself
either as being an imbecile in business, or on the
road to bankruptcy, or a thief, one of the three,
sure. He will fail within a very few years. He
certainly will if he doesn't carry his religion into
business. If I had been carrying on my father's
store on a Christian plan, godly plan, I would
have had a jack-knife for the third man when
he called for it. Then I would have actually done
him a kindness, and I would have received a
reward myself, which it would have been my
duty to take.
There are some over-pious Christian people who
think if you take any profit on anything you sell
that you are an unrighteous man. On the contrary,
you would be a criminal to sell goods for
less than they cost. You have no right to do
that. You cannot trust a man with your money
who cannot take care of his own. You cannot
trust a man in your family that is not true to his
own wife. You cannot trust a man in the world
that does not begin with his own heart, his own
character, and his own life. It would have been
my duty to have furnished a jack-knife to the
third man, or the second, and to have sold it to
him and actually profited myself. I have no more
right to sell goods without making a profit on
them than I have to overcharge him dishonestly
beyond what they are worth. But I should so
sell each bill of goods that the person to whom
I sell shall make as much as I make.
To live and let live is the principle of the
gospel, and the principle of every-day common
sense. Oh, young man, hear me; live as you go
along. Do not wait until you have reached my
years before you begin to enjoy anything of this
life. If I had the millions back, or fifty cents of
it, which I have tried to earn in these years, it
would not do me anything like the good that it
does me now in this almost sacred presence to-
night. Oh, yes, I am paid over and over a hundredfold
to-night for dividing as I have tried to
|
|