Scattering to Keep, and Keeping to Scatter
u There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.”- xi. 24.
THE maxim, although in form approaching the paradox, has become familiar by frequent use. If any of us should hear it now for the first time, we would be startled by its boldness; but the proverb, like a well worn coin, has become smooth by long continued handling, and it passes easily from mind to mind, in the intercourse of life. To have undergone so much wear, and yet to be accepted in the market-place for all its original worth, is evidence both that the metal is pure, and that the stamp of royalty is on it. Day by day this proverb of Solomon is offered and accepted on our streets, as a ground, legitimate and authoritative, for giving freely of our means in behalf of objects that are acknowledged good. By Christians, who labour for the good of men, it is boldly applied; and wherever there is an enlightened conscience, and a sound understanding, it is felt to be applicable. As the formal and authoritative expression of a fact which may be observed in the history of Providence, it is a word of great practical value. It is a sharp weapon, always at hand, by which a man may deal a blow against incipient selfishness in himself or his neighbour.
The conception is similar to that of sowing righteousness, which occurred before. In agriculture, to scatter corn is the sure and only way to increase it. It is a species of faith that the cultivator of the soil exercises when he casts good grain into the ground. In point of fact, the exercise is easy, and the mind is not racked by stretching far into the dark future for a pillar of truth to support its trust; still, in its nature, it is faith in the unseen. The direct design is to increase corn, and with that view the man who possesses it scatters what he has. His faith is rewarded by a manifold return: if, in stupid, wilful, short-sighted penuriousness, he had withheld the seed, the hoarding would have tended to poverty.
To distribute portions of our wealth in schemes and acts of wise philanthropy, is like casting into the ground as seed a proportion of the last year’s harvest. It goes out of your sight for the moment, but it will spring in secret, and come back to your own bosom, like manna from heaven.
An unwise man may indeed scatter his corn on barren rocks, or equally barren sands, and though he sow bountifully, he will reap sparingly there. So, in the moral region, the increase is not absolutely in proportion to the profusion of the scattering. When a man lays out large sums on unworthy objects, to feed his own vanity, or gratify his own whim, he neither does nor gets good: the outlay is in its own nature, and necessarily unprofitable. Sound judgment is as necessary in selecting the objects of philanthropy, and determining the proportion of effort that should be bestowed on each, as in deciding where and when the seed should be sown. To give money, for example, indiscriminately to street beggars, who tell a whining tale, and cunningly enact distress, is worse than to sow precious seed on the sand of the seashore. The seed cast on the sand will be lost: money given to the profligate is lost, and more. It is not barren; it multiplies and replenishes the earth with vice. Many fields, both needful and promising, lie open for contribution and effort. In educating the young, in reclaiming the vicious, in supporting the aged poor, in healing the sick, and in making known the gospel to all, we have ample fields to cultivate, and the prospect of large returns to cheer us in the toil.
The law that judicious liberality does not impoverish, and selfish niggardliness does not enrich, may be seen in its effects by any intelligent observer. If one, not content with the homely evidence of experience, should demand how this can be, it would be sufficient answer simply to repeat that it is, and appeal to the history of the city or the generation. But, further, we may answer by another question, How does the material seed grow in the material ground 1 In point of fact, it does grow; and this is the sum of our knowledge regarding it. Only the pride of the rankest ignorance imagines that we know how or why it grows. A step deeper, as was to be expected, are the ways of God in the moral processes, and on those borders where moral causes touch the material to produce sensible effects; but in both regions man must ever be speechless under the challenge, “Canst thou by searching find out GodS”
If we understand the maxim, we should act on it; and if we should act on it more, we would come to understand it better. Both as to our money and ourselves, it is better to wear than to rust. This is an earnest time. Seek a good investment; but lay it out. In the tides and currents of that commercial sea, which now as one connected ocean encircles all the earth, it is observed as a law that when many and great losses are incurred in one region, there is a flow of money into some other channel. Of late, investments in man’s hands for time have not been secure. In that department we have heard many a heavy crash, and been called to pity the mangled victims as they crawled from beneath the ruins. Might we not expect that after these disappointments men would be seen streaming over to the other side, and hastening to invest in God’s hands for eternity 1 This lending to the Lord, when a surplus accrues, affords the best security, and insures the largest return. If the Son of Man should now come, would He find faith in the earth? We think ourselves eminently a practical generation; but we should beware lest we mistake the merely unspiritual for the profitably practical. A carcass will not serve the purposes of a man. Action is useless or worse except in as far as it has true faith to energize and direct it. The material acquisitions of the age will become a heavier heap on the grave of humanity, if the Spirit of God be grieved away. The large and complicated body of our material prosperity will, if its soul goes out, only encumber us with a greater bulk of corruption. Faith is the animating soul of practice. Men cannot get forward even in things temporal unless they believe that God is, and that He is the re warder of them that diligently seek Him.
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