Proverbs 22

Proverbs 22:29

BEHIND THE COUNTER Proverbs 22:29OUR subject this evening is “Behind the counter”, and what I shall say is intended primarily for merchant clerks, but will prove none the less profitable I trust to those who are followers of other pursuits. It is fitting that this great company of people, whose vocations call them into kindred service, and develop in them some unity of purpose and spirit, should be spoken to from this pulpit concerning their calling.When we remember that most of the merchant clerks of America, and for that matter all the world, are young men and women, before whom life opens full of promise, and for whom there are good things in store, provided the perils that wreck so many are avoided and escaped by them. We know the seriousness of these.Our text seems to have business men in mind, and it is none the less true, if so read as to include the women of commerce also; and while what we shall say tonight may seem to be peculiarly applicable to young men, we shall not wholly forget that women are coming more and more into the work of commercial life.I want to speak to you this evening of three things: your employment, your perils, and your privileges.YOUR is the question of first concern.Before the most of you can be engaged in business, you must be yourselves engaged.“Wanted a situation as saleswoman, salesman, bookkeeper or clerk,” is the commonest “Ad” of the daily paper. Every city is full of young men and women seeking such positions. Some of them will never be employed, and a large proportion of those that find positions will ‘fail to keep them.There must be reasons for these failures and in presenting this evening some of the qualities essential to success in the commercial world, it is to be hoped that some will see these occasions of failure in time to reform, and finish well a course badly begun.To be a clerk or salesman demands affability.Geniality is a rare and commanding genius, and is much in demand in this world, and nowhere more than behind the counters. The stores of a city are popular in some proportion to their employment of genteel and affable clerks. There is not a woman in the city whose buying is not determined, in some measure, by her interest in some attractive salesman, or saleswoman.Emerson wrote, “Give a boy address, and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes wherever he goes; he has not the trouble of earning or owning them. They solicit him to enter and possess.”Lord Chesterfield, who was himself the best illustration of what he said, declared, “It is by manner only that you can please and consequently rise.All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador, but your address, your air, your manner, if good, may.”Two gentlemen were talking together when one asked, “Why did our friend never succeed in business?

He had sufficient capital, a thorough knowledge of his business, and exceptional shrewdness.”“But he was not pleasant”, was the friend’s reply.It is perfectly wonderful what an affable manner can accomplish in this world.The story is told that a beautiful young woman, turning the corner of a crooked street in London, was run into by a ragged beggar-boy, and the blow almost knocked him down. Recovering herself, she turned around and said smilingly, “I beg your pardon, my little fellow; I am very sorry that I ran against you.”The boy dragged off his ragged cap and making a low bow answered, “You have my pardon, miss, and welcome; and the next time you run agin me, you can run me clean down and I won’t say a word.”If she had been a commercial clerk, a year or two would have put her at the head of the department, for business men know the value of affability.But to smiling, you must add energy. “Seest thou a man diligent in his business?

He shall stand before kings?’What commercial marts absolutely demand is industry. Sir Fowler Buston said, “The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men, the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy—invincible determination; a purpose once fixed and then death or victory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this world, and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged creature a man without it.”“Why do they fail?” is the unanswered question of a multitude of indolent folks, but everybody else knows why others of equal mental talents remain poor. Some people do not see, and yet it is not difficult to discern the reason.Sixty years ago, Philadelphia was full of young fellows who were looking for an easy job with a high salary. Many of them have already filled paupers’ graves. Sixty years ago Philadelphia had one man in it who was willing to walk four miles every day, and work in a bookstore for $1.25 a week, and a little later in a clothing store for $1.50 a week, and that boy put such energy into his efforts that no employer could keep him in the lowly place, and he went up and up, and when he died he was the outstanding commercial man of Philadelphia.

I speak of John Wanamaker.If there is anything that makes one tired, that tries one’s patience and fills one with something akin to disgust, it is this crowd of proud youngsters who are going about the world with very few attainments, seeking exalted and honorable positions, despising as unworthy of them the only ones they could possibly fill.I have worked for fifty cents a day and one meal, and I would return to it to-morrow, if I could do no better; and it is difficult to keep one’s respect for those who combine inability and pomposity.People are constantly coming to my study and saying, “We want a position”, and are constantly asking for a position for which they are in no sense fitted, and refusing those that they might fill.Every week homes are in need of many young women to do housework, but notwithstanding the cries of distress that are poured into my ears by people who are competent in their own esteem, we do not know where to turn to fill one of these domestic service places.“What is the secret of success in business?” a gentleman asked of Cornelius Vanderbilt.“Secret?” replied the Commodore. “Secret? There is no secret about it.

All you have to do is to tend to your business and go ahead.”Some years ago, a proud student at Andover bought some wood and going to Professor Stewart, he asked where he could get a man to saw it. Instantly the Professor replied, “Well, I am out of a job of that kind, and I’ll saw it myself, if you will pay me for it”.A man that can “saw wood” is the man that can hold professorships, preach the Gospel, run a department store and fill the presidency of the United States; and the men that cannot “saw wood” will go begging at back doors.“Seest thou a man diligent in business? He shall stand before kings”. And then your employment requires honesty.No dishonest methods have any promise of permanent success in the commercial marts.Young bloods may gamble on wheat and get thirty millions in a month, and end that month with the odds against them, and their fortune gone; while a humble poor lad, employing honest methods, plodding on and on for many years, amasses millions, and competent judges may be compelled to say, “There is not a smirched dollar in it all.”There are people who will tell you that you will never succeed in the commercial marts by honest methods, but be assured of this, that you will never keep or enjoy what you make by dishonest methods.Some years ago a business man telegraphed a friend, asking what a certain man was worth. The reply message read, “His note is worth a million dollars; but his word is not worth a cent”. In a few months his note was as worthless as his word. “Better is a little with righteousness, than great revenues without right”.Smiles has said truly, that “money earned by cheating and over-reaching may for a time dazzle the eyes of the unthinking, but the bubbles blown by unscrupulous roses, when full blown, usually glitter only to burst. The Sadlier, Dean Paul, Redpath, Wiggins, and Cairus, for the most part, come to a sad end, even in this world, and though the successful swindlers of others may not be found out and the gains of their roguery may remain with them, it will be as a curse and not as a blessing.In your employment be affable, be energetic, and be honest.I can find a good place for a thousand such young men and women to-morrow, without going out of Minneapolis.YOUR PERILS It is perfectly understood that young men and women who crowd these great civic centers seeking employment are put in peril by the very places they long to fill.Our subject, “Behind the Counter”, might seem to suggest a narrow space of safety, but, alas, for the fact that those who are behind the counters of our great commercial institutions are not safe from temptation, even in the times of employment, and they are the subjects of many a snare when they step from the store to the street.In the mere act of merchandizing there is the peril of money. The disposition to either get from employer, or from customer what is not your own— that eternal tendency to dishonesty.The scriptures say that “the love of money is the root of oil evil” and we may be sure of this, that whenever we put into our pockets a solitary penny that has been unjustly taken from another, we have voluntarily vaccinated ourselves with leprosy. No matter how great our need may seem, no matter how strong a persuasion may be put upon us by debt or promise, no matter what were the ends we think we would accomplish if only more money was in our hands, we should never be deceived into getting it in godless ways. What the world needs today is a company of clerks having in them the spirit of Adam Clark, who, as a boy of fourteen years of age, was engaged in a dry-goods store, and was told by the merchant to stretch the cloth as he measured it. Young Clark refused, and in consequence was discharged, but the world heard from him as the wonderful commentator.Remember that when you cannot make a living in merchandise by honest methods, God has a higher calling for you, where you can have a competency, and the riches that are imperishable, namely, —a clean conscience with a beautiful character and an honored name.Then there are perils from associations. Every young man and woman in Minneapolis engaged in business comes into contact almost daily with the clean and the unclean, the holy and the unholy.

God said to prophets, “They shall teach My people the difference between the holy and the profane, and came them to discern between the unclean and the clean”.It does not take the closest observer to see who are the suitable associates of a department store, or even of the place of smaller dimensions. If you will only wait a few weeks before choosing your chums, you can tell who is moral, who is upright, who is honorable, and you can discern his opposites with equal ease; and, remember this, that “evil communications corrupt good manners”.Goethe was right, “Tell me with whom thou dost company, and I will tell thee who thou art”.

If that lear-eyed man is your admiration; if that loud-mouthed girl is your attraction, you are yourself condemned and doom is not far distant. If you take to the man whose shirt-front is immaculate and diamond-studded, whilst you know that underneath beats a heart of evil purpose, or to that other one who has forgotten his father’s counsel, despised his mother’s instruction, and talks slightingly of the sisters of other men, if not of his own; or of that other who treats with contempt the holy church and the sacred Scriptures, your future is settled and you will finish it as he will finish it, in the blackness of darkness. Satan accomplishes most of his destructive work through sinful associates.And there are perils from injurious customs.Like Grant, you may conquer many foes and yet be sent to your grave by an unconquered cigar.Like Tom Marshall, you may excite much admiration for intellect and ability and yet be drowned in drink.The very fact that Minneapolis supports as many blind-pigs as disgrace her streets is a sure prophecy that hundreds and thousands of young men are to be destroyed in them, and if you lay your finger to one cup, the chances are all against your survival, and in favor of your doom.The gambling custom is not only godless, but deadly. Its unhappy subjects keep the wail of sorrow forever on the lips of sister, wife, mother and friend. The harlot’s house is the way that leadeth unto death, and to go there once is to have the brand of the beast; is to make such surrender as no man can survive; is to put the spade in the ground for your own grave; is to begin the inscription that shall be written into your own doom; and that grave will be the grave of the leper and that inscription, “here lies the suicide of lust”.Thain Davidson tells of having visited the Grotto del Can, near Naples, a natural cavern which is partly charged with a highly poisonous atmosphere. The carbonic acid gas, however, being heavier than the common air, rests upon the ground, and reaches up to a height of four feet.

So long as one stands upright, he is uninjured, but when he stoops, or lies down, it begins its fatal work. Remember, young man, that behind the counter there are such caves.

So long as you are unbending in your mastery of appetites, so long as you stand upright, so long as you are erect in your moral integrity, that long you are safe; but the moment you stoop to drink, or to gambling, or to lust, stupefication begins and a bloated body and a blighted soul will be the end.You know your perils. God has in a thousand ways shown them to you by every sentence of sacred writ, and every consecrated tongue, and every hallowed influence is warning you against them.If you perish, he will be compelled to write over the place of your grave what King David said, “died Abner as the fool dieth”.YOUR Thank God it is not all peril. There are privileges unspeakable and full of glory.You can choose your companions. What a privilege! This world has in it a whole company of good folks, and you can make them your friends. You can work in a firm, if you will, where the heads of departments are Christian men, clean every whit.Somebody says, “But we can’t”. My reply is, “If you can’t, it is your own fault”.

If you are affable, energetic and honest, you will not be subject to the caprice of commerce, but can demand whatever place you want and receive the appointment.A young man, small of stature, was standing before the manager of a factory in Manchester saying, “I saw your ‘Ad’ in the paper and have applied for this position.”“You are too young,” replied the manager.“They used to object to me on that score four or five years ago, but I did not expect that now.” “Well”, said the manager, “how often do you get drunk in the week?”“I never have tasted a drop in my life.”“What salary do you want?”“Three hundred pounds a year.”“Three hundred pounds a year?” replied the manager “Why I have had I don’t know how many for this place this morning, and all their askings together will not come up to what you want.”“No matter,” said Robert Owen, “I will not take less, I am making three hundred pounds a year now and you can take me or let me alone.”The man looked at him a moment and said, “Your engagement will begin to-day.”Be what you ought to be. Be what business demands, and you can determine what position you will accept and not be asking what one you can get.I have a friend in Chicago who gave up three places in less than as many months because the business was dishonestly conducted, and yet he did not go without employment, and finally landed in a good position with the noblest possible associates.And this is true of the family where you are to live.

It is not needful for you to be in a cheap lodging-house where criminals congregate. There are Christian women in every city who are veritable mothers indeed to the young men that room and board in the homes over which they preside, and if you don’t seek such out, whose is the fault?I have been away from my father’s house since I was nineteen. Until I was 29, I put in most of my time in boarding houses. For part of that time I was compelled to seek places where board and lodging could be had at no great expense, but I never found it necessary to spend one night, to eat one meal under a disreputable roof, and in the company of abandoned people.There are lodging houses in Minneapolis that are the anti-rooms to hell, and there are lodging houses in Minneapolis that breathe a holy atmosphere and tend toward Heaven, whose matrons are veritable mothers and would be to you young men and women the guardian angels that you need, if only you sought them out.Henry Ward Beecher said, “One of the most touching incidents that ever came under my notice occurred here in Brooklyn during the war. I was called to see a young man who was sick. He had been in the army and was sent north to a hospital, but had been taken into one of our respectable families.

He died in their house and was buried from it, and when I asked, ‘How came you to be interested in him?’ The woman replied, ‘Well, we found him in a hospital’. ‘But what led you to bring him into your house?’ ‘Well’, said the mother, ‘our only boy went to the war. In Missouri he was wounded and some Christian family in St.

Louis took him home with them and cared for him, and he died in their house, and when I went into the hospital, this young man looked like my boy, and I remembered what they did for my boy. I brought him into my house and have taken care of him.”When I think of the perils that associate themselves with many a boarding house, I thank God for the privilege that young men and women have, when away from home in a great city like this, of selecting a boarding-house of the better kind where there is a woman who has a mother’s heart in her, and who will see in every young life her own child, and will watch it with care, shield it in the time of temptation, nurse in the hours of sickness and weep with a mother’s heart, if death shall come, thereby making her home his home, and also the avenue of Heaven.And, there is the privilege of Christian society. The churches of Jesus Christ offer to you young men and women, from behind the counters, the very society you need. If anybody has said to you, that it is a slow-pokey society, let me give their statement the lie.Minneapolis knows no nobler circle, no happier one than the young people of this church, and it knows very few in whose company you could be more safe.I expect sometimes that young men and women, strangers in the city, seek the Lord’s house on the Sabbath Day and depart sadder than when they came. Nobody has spoken to you. You have been a stranger in the midst of strangers.

You have missed the old home. You have sought in vain for familiar faces, and even the music and the sermon were not such as you used to hear, and when you have gone out, you have said, “Nobody spoke to me and I shall not go there again”, but be slow to come to such a conclusion.

It is better to wait in silence in God’s house, a stranger among strangers, than to run with sinners into their excesses.Again, maybe the man or woman who sat beside you was a stranger also, and needed as much that you speak to them, as that they speak to you, and the fault may not have been wholly that of others. If you came a second time, the very seat into’ which you might be shown would accomplish an introduction, and in one hour might make for you many, and the most wholesome friends.I do not excuse the churches for that want of friendliness that too often characterizes them, but I do know that their friendship is valuable, that an acquaintance with the young people there and the older people is what you need, what will be for your temporary and eternal good, and the effort to make it is not to be given up lightly; I also know that in this church, and I trust it is so in hundreds of churches, our people long to extend their hands and open their hearts and their homes, and if possible the very Heaven of their Saviour to those who sit with us through a single service.There are scores of men and women on the toboggan slide of Satan, driving downward with dreadful pace, destined to perish without God and without hope, who are today sinning and suffering because when they came into Minneapolis they left their church letters in the country, or village, or town church, at home, and tried very little, if at all, to make such associations, tramped about from church to church for a while and then quit the house of God altogether, and every day makes more sure their doom.I know the church has her faults. I know that she does not properly represent her Christ. I know that hypocrites hold membership in her, and even her good people are far from perfect, but I also know that she is God’s haven to the tempest-tossed and offers a refuge into which men may run.And then, best of all, we have the privilege of Christ’s salvation. “Seest thou a man who is diligent in business? He shall stand before kings”. But the unspeakable privilege is to stand before the King of kings.You are not safe behind the counter, if Christ is not yours.

You are not safe in the streets without His everlasting salvation. You are not safe in the home, unless He is in your heart.

You are not safe in society, unless His Spirit directs your steps.Oh, you who make merchandize the subject of so much concern, will you not give some attention to my master, and your Master, and see to it that your own souls are not put into some evil bargain. You, who are seeking a fortune, do you not know that eternal failure is the lot of all them that finish life without Christ.A ship passenger pointed toward a wreck that lay on some rocks near to which a vessel was plying, and asked the Captain, “What caused that?”“Trying to run without a pilot,” was his instant reply.And I want to say to you tonight that if you will be successful in business, take Christ as Pilot. If you would escape the perils of store and street, lodging-house and companionship, accept Christ as Saviour. If you would know the sweets of holy living and the triumphs of holy dying, accept Christ as Lord. If you would sail the sea of life in perfect security, ending at last in that haven of rest of which the sainted sing, accept Christ as Skipper, and if you would be sure of this privilege which passes all others, act now and say, “Lord I come.”A ship-master said, “It was my lot to fall in with the ill-fated steamer ‘Central America’ on the night of her accident. The darkness was fast falling and the sea was rolling high, and I cried to Captain Herndon, inquiring if he needed help.

He answered, ‘I am in a sinking condition.’ ‘Then send your passengers on board our vessel directly.’ ‘No,’ answered he, ‘we will keep our passengers aboard, but will you lie by us until morning?’ ‘Yes, I will try, but you had better not risk it. Send your passengers on board now.’ ‘Lay by me until morning’, replied Herndon.

I tried; but the night was wild and the rolling of the sea was heavy. I could not keep my position. A short time sufficed to separate us and an hour and a half later, Herndon’s vessel, with all of its living freight, had gone down.”You young men and women know that you are not safe. Like Captain Herndon, you purpose also to make good your escape from the danger that besets you, but like him you are saying, “Later!”God’s answer is “NOW!”. “Behold now is the time accepted: behold today is the day of salvation!” “NOW!”