The Poor

“If a brother or sister be naked, and
destitute of daily food, and one of
you say unto them, Depart in
peace, be ye warmed and filled i
notwithstanding ye give them not
those things which are needful to
the body; what doth it profit f —
ST JAMES ii. 15, 16.

TAHERE are elements in nature which, though not always apparent to the senses, pervade, and, pervading, affect every substance. Heat, for instance. There is warmth even in ice, cold as it feels; heat as well in the icicles that hang from his thatch as in the glowing iron the smith, amid a shower of sparks, hammers on his ringing anvil; fire not only in the sun, in the blazing grate, there where swarthy men tap the furnace, and molten iron rolls forth like liquid gold, but fire also, though asleep, and waiting the touch of steel, in the cold and coal black flint. Never dead, nor even altogether dormant, this all-pervading element is everywhere active; the seeds and eggs which lie buried in the frozen soil owing to it their life, and the great ocean its fluidity — the waves that roar or ripple on its shores, the path it offers to our keels, and the innumerable myriads, from whales to shrimps, that people its depths and shallows.

There are also laws in nature which, though often working in secrecy and silence, are dominant in every place and acting on every substance — the law of gravitation, for instance. We may recognise it only in its more striking displays: in the spheres where planets roll; in the orbit which our earth describes around the sun; in the skies, where the eagle, pierced by feathery arrow or bullet, and leaving for ever its airy fields, drops dead, like a stone, at our feet; or on the mountain, where some rock, leaping from its lofty base, rushes down into the valley with the speed of lightning and the roar of thunder. Still, this law affects as well the mote of the sunbeam as the sun, and alike shapes the tear on an infant’s cheek and the stars in heaven; it is there, running in the sands of an hour-glass; there, sounding in the tinkling of the tiniest rill; and by the same power that bends the tail of a fiery comet and its path back to the sun, it bends the neck of a snowdrop, and thereby preserves from perishing the herald and harbinger of spring.

As it is with such elements and laws in the kingdoms of nature, it is with the presence and influence of religion in a good man’s life. It may not be always apparent, but it should be always present — its influence felt where it is not seen. Often, like those greatest powers of nature, heat and light, and electricity and magnetism, acting silently — sometimes, like the will when moving our lips to form words, or our limbs to produce motion, acting unconsciously — yet always acting; so that in everything we do, in every step we take, in every duty we discharge, though it cannot be said with strict propriety that all our actions are religious, yet none are contrary to religion, and all of them are done religiously. Is not this just the mark at which St Paul teaches us to aim in saying, (< Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God?” Doing so, human life, in its lowliest spheres, from man’s cradle onward to his grave, or rather from his conversion to his death, may be made one long, continuous, noble, religious service; more sublime than any poem John Milton wrote; more instructive than any sermon of the greatest preacher; and more acceptable far to God than any services performed within dead stone walls, amid cathedral pomp, and before ten thousand spectators.

Now, in the whole range of duties there is none which, if not strictly religious, and, in the highest sense of the expression, a religious service, is more nearly allied to religion, and should be more under its presiding and holy influence, than that charity to the poor which is plainly dictated, and indeed powerfully enforced, in the question, “If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit?” Religion imposes this duty on us. In proof of which- —

God presents Himself to us as having a peculiar and tender care of the poor.

It is not the robust but delicate child of the family, around whom a father’s and mother’s affections cluster thickest, and are most closely twined. The boy or girl whom feebleness of body or mind makes- least fit to bear the world’s rough usage, and most dependent on others’ kindness, is like those tendrils that, winding themselves round the tree they spangle with flowers, bind it most closely in their embraces, and bury their pliant arms deepest in its bark. And what a blessed and beautiful arrangement of Providence it is, that they who cost most care, and lie with greatest weight on parents’ arms and hearts, are commonly most loved! Helplessness, appealing to our pity, begets affection. Thus was the heart of the rough sailor touched, when, tossing with other castaways in an open boat on the open sea, he parted with a morsel of food, which, hidden with more care than misers hide their gold, he had reserved for his own last extremity. Around him lay men and women; some dead with glassy eyes; some dying, and these reduced to ghastly skeletons; but none of these moved him to peril his own life for theirs. The object of his noble and not unrewarded generosity — for, as if Heaven had sent it on purpose to reward the act, a sail speedily hove in sight — was a gentle boy that, with his face turned on hers, lay dying in a mother’s arms, and between whose teeth the famishing man put his own last precious morsel. Of this feeling I met also a remarkable illustration in my old country parish. In one of its cottages dwelt a poor idiot child; horrible to all eyes but her parents’; and so helpless, that, though older than sisters just blooming into womanhood, she lay, unable either to walk or speak, a burden on her mother’s lap, almost the whole day long, — a heavy handful to one who had the cares of a family, and was the wife of a hard-working man, — and a most painful contrast to the very roses that flung their bright clusters over the cottage window, as well as to the lark that, pleased with a grassy turf, carolled within its cage. Death, in most instances unwelcome visitor, came at length, — to her and to their relief. Relief! so I thought; and, when the father came with invitation to the funeral, so I said. Though not roughly, but inadvertently spoken, the word jarred on a tender chord; and I was more than ever taught how helplessness begets affection in the very measure and proportion of itself, when he burst into a fit of sorrow, and, speaking of his beautiful boys and blooming girls, said, If it had been God’s will, I would have parted with any of them rather than her.

Now this kindness to the helpless, of which man’s home, both in the humblest and highest walks of life, presents so many lovely instances, and which, you will observe, moves the roughest crowd on the street, without taking time to inquire into its merits, to throw themselves into the quarrel of a woman or weeping child, is a flower of Eden, that clings to the ruins of our nature, — one beautiful feature of God’s image which has to some extent survived the Fall. “The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.” Well named, “Our Father who is in heaven;” he sets Himself forth in his Word as the Patron and Protector of the poor; he recommends them in many ways and by many considerations to our kindness; and teaches us that, if we would be like Himself, we must remember their miseries amid our enjoyments, and fill their empty cups with the overflowings of our own. In proof of this —

Observe the sentiments of His Word toward the poor.

It breathes the most tender regard to them: for example — Whoso reproacheth the poor, reproacheth his Maker; Blessed is he that considereth the poor, the Lord shall deliver him in the time of trouble; He shall judge the poor and needy; He shall stand at the right hand of the poor; The needy shall not alway be forgotten; the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever. How different from the spirit of a sordid age, which, as if there were no worthiness in genius or sense, or bravery, or virtue, or grace, values man by his money; and speaking of what he is worth, takes into account nothing but his wealth! There are some, too many, in whose eyes money, like chanty, covereth a multitude of sins; and who would esteem a piece of gilded fir more highly than odorous and imperishable cedar, or marble that vies with driven snow. But the poverty which incurs their contempt demeans no one in the sight of God. He is no respecter of persons. At His height, all ranks appear on a level; and if there is any advantage, the poor have it, in a better chance, if I may say so, of getting to heaven than the rich. I go, said the dying Rutherford, when summoned in the king’s name to appear before an earthly tribunal, to obey a higher summons; I go to a place where there are few kings. And does not heaven open to the poor a refuge where there are few rich? St James asks — My beloved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom? And what said St Paul? — “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence.” Let honest poverty then lift up its head; next to infants, those unblown buds which the Lord has plucked to open out their beauties on His bosom in heaven, no class is so fully represented in the general assembly of the first-born as the poor. They not only form the largest class on earth, but by much the largest in that kingdom where, before Mary’s Son, and by Mary’s side, they may lift up her hymn, and sing — He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree; He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away.

Observe His enactments on behalf of the poor.

A legal provision for the poor is no modern invention. It is a common notion that regular poor-laws date from the days of Elizabeth of England; but it is a mistake. They are of much older date. A divine institution, they are found in that system of polity which God set up among His ancient people by the hands of His servant Moses. He did not leave His poor to depend altogether on the fits and chances of a precarious charity. One of the many provisions made to supply their wants, was lately brought to our recollection, when travelling through a valley, where embowering vines threw their clusters over the road; and planted on rising terraces, occupied the sunny slopes of mountains that rose to skies of deepest blue — clothed with shaggy forests, and crowned with eternal snows. One of the guides, without consent asked or given, left the path, and, stepping into a vineyard by the wayside, plucked a rich bunch of grapes. The customs of that country may, perhaps, permit a freedom with property which would’ not be tolerated in ours. Standing on the extremest rights of mine and thine, we will send a poor vagrant child to jail for taking a turnip to satisfy his hunger; but in the Holy, might I not add, and Happy Land, where God would have no man starve, the beggar, any hungry Israelite could take such freedoms without let or challenge. His hunger was his need, and God’s law was his right to do so. “When thou goest,” said the Lord, “into thy neighbour’s vineyard, thou mayest eat grapes thy fill; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel;” and so long as a poor man kept within this limit, he had full liberty to satisfy the wants of nature; nor was branded as a thief for doing so.

Another provision kindly and divinely established on behalf of the poor, in these good old

times, was, though in the way of contrast, also

Q recalled to our recollection on passing, one of these autumn days, a harvest-field at home. In a teethed machine, which, raking the stubbleland, gathered up the stalks of grain that the reapers had left, we saw a custom which God forbade on the soil that was trodden by a Redeemer’s feet. He, who reserved the seventh day to Himself, reserved, along with the standing corn that grew in the corners of the fields, the gleanings of the whole harvest for the exclusive use of the poor; and thus all those whom Ruth and Naomi represented — the widows of Israel, the fatherless, and the orphan — had a share of others* plenty, and their own joy in every harvest.

Nor were the corners which the husbandman was forbidden to reap, and the gleanings of harvests and vineyards which the proprietors were forbidden to gather, the only bounty, which the earth poured into the lap of the poor; and to which they had a legal and unchangeable claim. By God’s express appointment, the land was to enjoy a sabbath once every seven years, during which the fields wrere to lie untilled, the olive-trees and vines to grow unpruned. Now, the whole produce of that sabbatical year belonged to the poor; none of it to the proprietor. “Six years,” said the Lord, “thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard and with thy oliveyard.” God’s care of His poor, like a mother’s for her babe, extended even to what might be considered minute and trivial matters. The rich were forbidden to make any charge for money lent to a poor man; and if his necessities obliged him to pledge bed or garment, God took care that he should not suffer for it. Many a poor wretch in our cities is left with his children to shiver through cold winter nights, while their blankets are locked up in the broker’s store. Better care was taken of an unfortunate Israelite, “In any case,” said the Lord, “thou shalt deliver him the pledge when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment.”

Stern and severe as were some aspects of the Mosaic law, it looked kindly upon poverty. That law treated it not as a crime, but as a misfortune deserving the tenderest compassion. And though not required to copy its details, ought we not to preserve their spirit; and in dealing with honest poverty, meet it in the benevolent spirit of the commandment, “If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him, though he be a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with thee?” No man can read these o-d laws, so full of tender care and regard for the poor, without seeing the point and feeling the power of the apostle’s question, “Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” Let us then, as St John says, “not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.”

Observe His judgments for the wrongs of the poor.

Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation; our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire; all our pleasant things are laid waste. So spake Isaiah, looking with prophetic eye on the future, where he saw the grass grow rank on the city’s untrodden streets, and the fox looking out of the temple window, and satyrs dancing in the holy place — the shrine deserted, its lamp extinguished, and the ashes of its altar cold. And what dreadful sins were those which brought down such judgments on a guilty land — moving God to cast away His people as a loathsome thing, and make them a by-word, and a proverb, and a hissing on the earth? — Sabbath-breaking, idolatry, drunkenness, loose-living? — Yes; these, but others also; wrongs inflicted on the poor. Hear how these bold and bearded prophets speak — “The spoil of the poor is in your houses” — as it is, now, in every house where a fortune has been built on their ruins. Again, “Ye grind the faces of the poor,’* — as is done still, when advantage is taken of his necessities to deny the labourer a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Again, “They buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes,” — crimes perpetrated, high treason against God committed, as it were but yesterday, yonder where, under the flag of liberty with its brave motto, All men are born free, the hammer of the auction-room knocked down men and women for so many hundred dollars. These old preachers, asserting the sanctity and liberty of the pulpit, deemed it their right, and used it as a privilege, to proclaim from that place of truth the wrongs of the poor, and the judgment of their oppressors. Inspired of God, they were fearless of man. Hear how they spake to the times: — “Is it,” they asked, speaking in their Master’s name, “such a fast that I have chosen — a day for a man to afflict his soul? to bow down his head as a bulrush; to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and to bring the poor that are cast out into thy house? when thcu seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?” This is not done. Many of our poor go hungry and houseless.

Stretching themselves upon their couches, eating the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall, chanting to the sound of the viol, drinking wine in bowls, anointing themselves with the chief ointments, and not grieved for the affliction of Joseph, — many, realising this voluptuous picture, leave the poor to herd in filthy dens; and out of houses not fit for human beings, not compatible with health, or decency, or virtue, come swarms of ragged, uncared-for, and uneducated children, to turn the tread-mill, and feed the prison. It is not for us to scan the ways of Providence, but the dying echoes of past judgments sound us a solemn, may it be a timely warning. What shall be, says the wise man, is that, which hath already been. The wrongs of the poor have a way of avenging themselves. Neglected poverty may rise some day like the blind, strong man to pull down the prosperity and pillars of the land; and when no Joseph shall appear in providence to avert the impending evil, a worse future may come than was foreshadowed in royal dreams, when, in visions of the night, Pharaoh saw the seven lean kine eat up the seven fat. It is with judgments God arms Himself, when He says, “For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord.5* See how, in this terrible aspect, He arose in that land from whose shores Atlantic waves lately wafted the boom of cannon to our own. Would that after the roar of that fratricidal war, America may hear the voice of rebuke, sounding down from the throne of God! Undoing the heavy burdens, and letting the oppressed go free, out of the broken fetters of emancipated slaves, let her make a lightningconductor to turn away the bolts of a righteous* roused, and angry God! Then, in the beautiful words of the prophet, “shall her light break forth as the morning, and her health spring forth speedily, and the glory of the Lord shall be her rear-ward, and her darkness shall be as the noonday — and she shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not.”

Observe how Jesus showed His care for the poor.

The poor, He said, ye have always with you, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good — repeating in substance God’s much older words, “The poor shall never cease out of the land; therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thy hand wide unto thy brother; to thy poor; and to thy needy in the land.” How beautifully this divine tenderness to the poor comes out welling and warm, in the very terms applied to them; it is not, if a man or woman — but if a brother or sister be naked — thou shalt open thy hand wide unto thy brother.

In dealing with the poor we are not, however, to put all over in the same boat — huddling together the good and bad, virtue and vice, decent age and hoary sin in our plans, as is done in our poorhouses. There is no line of separation between peer and peasant so broad as divides the two classes of the poor. There are God’s poor, whose cause I chiefly plead. These, reduced to want, brought to suffering by no fault of theirs, have the strongest, at any rate the first, claim on our compassion. There are the poor of providence; and a much more numerous class, the poor of improvidence — the devil’s poor, who, reaping as they have sowed, and drinking as they have brewed, are suffering under these righteous laws: “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand;” “If any will not work, neither should he eat;” “He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man.” None are in some respects, I admit, greater objects of compassion than these. It is pitiable to see the wrecks of comfort, and decency, and humanity, that go drifting about our streets. How foul and forbidding with the rags that vice has hung on their back, and the wolfish look that want has given their faces! Yet many of them were once bright and sunny children; dandled on a father’s knee; and sung to sleep by kind mothers, who, putting their little innocent hands together, taught their infant lips to pray* We are not to loathe them; nor will, if we remember that they cannot be so black or so bad in our eyes as we were in God’s when He gave up His dear Son to save us. Yet how profoundly are they to be pitied! They have got to the dregs of their cup; and how bitter they are! They dare not look back on the past, with its recollections of early innocence, a virtuous home, and the venerable image of a mother or father, whose gray hairs they brought in sorrow to the grave; nor dare they look forward on the future; and unless religion come to their help, what will they or can they do, but “drink to forget their poverty, and remember their misery no more?” What else are you to expect of impiety under sufferings greater than wrung from God’s servant the cry, “Oh, that my mother had been my grave; wherefore came I from the womb, that my days should be consumed with shame?” Theirs is not the poverty that has wealth in heaven, and, touched by lights from another and better world, is a cloud that wears silver edges; nor is theirs the cup which faith sweetens witri the promise of all things working together for good. Without God or hope, they are the poorest of the poor; and claim in a sense our deepest and holiest compassions.

Still, our compassion must never take the shape of a bounty on idleness and vice. Such philanthropy is mischievous; and finds not the semblance of encouragement in our Lord’s example. He went about doing good; and chiefly in the walks of the poor. But how? He restored health to sickness, vigour to the withered arm, sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, reason to the insane; and, doing so, taught us the wise charity that helps a poor man to help himself. He did not maintain the poor in idleness, but sent them back with renovated powers to their different fields of labour. It is as instructive as it is remarkable, that on only two occasions did our Lord create food; and money only on one — leaving the law of God not only to its righteous but beneficent course,” in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’* Not even in the days when He scattered miracles around Him in divine profusion, did He anything to counteract the lesson of those wondrous years when His neighbours heard the carpenter early at His bench; and honest labour sharpened His appetite and sweetened His simple fare; and at every week’s end, a pattern of filial duty and model to our youths, He poured His earnings into a mother s lap.

While our Lord, employing His miraculous powers to help the poor to help themselves, showed them the wisest and truest kindness, He forgot not, even in His narrow and straitened circumstances, the claims of a helpless poverty. It is evident that the bag which Judas carried served a double purpose; the poor had their share of its scanty store. The patriarch says, I did not eat my morsel alone. No more did Jesus — with this difference, that Job was rich, but Jesus was poor Yet what He had, He gave. Ay, His generosity but dimly shadowed forth by the widow who “of her want did cast in all she had, even all her living;” He gave not His living but His life for a greater poverty than stands in ragged beggar at our door; He made Himself poor that He might make us rich; He poured out His soul unto death — dying, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God