Wesley Corpus

3. Yet again: in what spirit do you go through your business In the spirit of the world, or the Spirit of Christ I am afraid thousands of those who are called good Christians do not understand the question. If you act in the Spirit of Christ you carry the end you at first proposed through all your work from first to last. You do everything in the spirit of sacrifice, giving up your will to the will of God; and continually aiming, not at ease, pleasure, or riches; not at anything "this short enduring world can give;" but merely at the glory of God. Now can anyone deny that this is the most excellent way of pursuing worldly business IV. 1. But these tenements of clay which we bear about us require constant reparation, or they will sink into the earth from which they were taken, even sooner than nature requires. Daily food is necessary to prevent this, to repair the constant decays of nature. It was common in the heathen world when they were about to use this, to take meat or even drink, libare pateram Jovi; "to pour out a little to the honour of their god;" although the gods of the Heathens were but devils, as the Apostle justly observes. "It seems," says a late writer, "there was once some such custom as this in our own country. For we still frequently see a gentleman before he sits down to dinner in his own house, holding his hat before his face, and perhaps seeming to say something; though he generally does it in such a manner that no one can tell what he says." Now what if instead of this, every head of a family, before he sat down to eat and drink, either morning, noon, or night, (for the reason of the thing is the same at every hour of the day,) was seriously to ask a blessing from God on what he was about to take yea, and afterward, seriously to return thanks to the Giver of all his blessings Would not this be "a more excellent way" than to use that dull farce which is worse than nothing; being, in reality, no other than mockery both of God and man