in our trade, business, art, or profession, we should seek the most
obscure, retired, out of the way place possible, and say, "God will
provide, and I need not mind in what part of the town I carry on my
calling." There are most assuredly certain things to be considered. The
persons who are likely to buy the articles I sell, or employ me, are to
be considered, and I have not to say, it matters nothing to me whether I
make them come a mile or two to my house, or to the most dirty and
disagreeable part of the town; this would be the extreme in the other
way. But whilst there is a certain consideration to be used with
reference to those who may employ us in our calling, yet if the trust of
the child of God respecting temporal prosperity is in the fact that he
lives in the best situation, the Lord will surely disappoint him. He
will have to pay a very high rent for the best situation, and yet not
succeed, because his trust is in the best situation. He is substituting
it for dependence upon the living God for customers. He is robbing his
soul, not only in not taking the customers as from the hands of the
Lord, but he is also obliging his heavenly Father, in the very love of
his heart, to cause him to be disappointed, because he is not trusting
in him. If the child of God were saying and acting thus: the best
situation would cost me fifty pounds a year more rent than one which is
not really inconvenient for my customers, nor in an improper
neighborhood, and the like; this fifty pounds I dedicate unto the Lord,
to be paid in instalments for his work or his poor saints, whenever the
rent-day comes; such a brother would find himself to be no loser, if
this indeed were done in dependence upon the Lord, and constrained by
the love of Jesus. But if the fifty pounds more is paid for rent, and
yet the living God, in the very love of his heart, should be obliged to
withhold prosperity from his child in his calling, because he sees that
he is laying undue stress upon the situation of the house, then not only
the fifty pounds extra rent per year is lost, but also that which the
Lord is obliged to withhold from his child besides, in order to teach
him the lesson; and thus year after year, by our own fault, we may have
scarcely anything to give for the work of God.

7. The next obstacle to prosperity in our calling which I now would
mention is, That children of God often use such expressions as these
with reference to their calling: "This