1 Samuel 2:7

The Lord maketh poor.

The rich and the poor

Everything created is taught by God a lesson of dependence; the earth upon which we tread is subject to continual wants; the sea requires replenishing from its tributary streams. Man is a volume of wants, as is recorded in every page of his history.

I. Let us consider the real wants of the poor and of the rich. For the most cogent reasons, the truths of the Gospel are of unspeakable advantage to the poor man; his mind is as a great field wanting cultivation. The rich man has a certain advantage on this point; by education and literary opportunities, as well as by’ intercourse with men of information and well-regulated minds, he has the void supplied, and is generally preserved from the ready and fearful consequences to which the ignorant are a prey. But the rich man has this fearful counterpoise upon him:--The more his hand is filled, the more he is likely to forget the Giver of all gifts. The promoters of Socinian, Deistical, end even of Atheistical doctrines, are ever found among the merely intellectual and educated, rather than among the poor. The rich man too often is encircled by a glittering fence refusing entrance to all that have not the key to his heart, or who are not auxiliary to his enjoyments. The rich man does, indeed, want the Gospel: he needs a restraint upon his enjoyments. But if the rich man is thus a pauper in many things, how great a pauper is the poor man! Speaking in a sense, the poor man’s mind requires to be occupied with subjects of thought; reasonings connected with morality must be encouraged there, or else, under temptations from lust, he will forget to reason like Joseph (Genesis 39:9). When once he has found it easier to gain a shilling by fraud or mendicancy, than by industry and toil, farewell, a long farewell, to honest and painstaking exertion! The poor man needs to feel his true position; the general opinion with regard to the relative condition of the poor man is, in many respects, wrong. The poor man generally feels as if he were hardly dealt with, especially if he cannot trace his privations to any indiscretion of his own. He feels as if the rich man only was happy. He feels as if his condition were altogether disreputable--that he may be utterly and legitimately selfish, and that there is no sympathy demandable save from rich and poor. Assuredly, whatever would correct such mistakes, would teach man his true position--giving him independence amid poverty, peace under privation, and contentment under adversity--such is true philosophy, worthy of being purchased at any price: Man, in poverty and neglect, wants resources. The uncultivated mind is often restless, and the tendency of the heart is, to explore the mysteries of sensual gratification, which, once tasted, are often resistless evermore. He flies to low excitements. Were a mind taught to seek luxury within itself, to be happy from some self-possessed and ever-flowing fountain, what a blessing would be conferred! Resources of a merely intellectual kind fall short of the mark. Higher and holier teachings must be introduced.

II. The adaptation of the Gospel to the poor. The greatest mistake, as concerns this life, into which any man may fall, is that of not knowing or of overlooking his true and indispensable friends. How true is this of the “poor man and the Gospel!” for, strange to say, there is no want which the Gospel will not either supply, mitigate, or convert into a blessing. A change of a most remarkable kind, and one which requires no little delicacy of delineation, is that which the reception of Gospel knowledge bestows upon the poor man, in unfolding to him the actual position in which he stands with regard to the rich man. He is not his superior, nor his equal, and yet there is a sense in which he is not his inferior. He sees the rich man occupying his proper station before God and man: he sees him in rank or office, and envies him not; he blesses God for every link in the chain, from the monarch on the throne to the beggar at the crossroad. He is not so curious to know in what exact part of the chain he, as a link, may be assigned a place: he knows it is a subordinate place, but he also trusts it is a useful one, and he knows that in the eye of his heavenly Father it is not an obscure or despised one. Vast and varied are the resources which are opened out to the poor in his “searching of the Scriptures.”

III. Lastly, let us consider the poor man’s peculiar blessings. He that must go daily to the fountain, cannot forget that such a fountain exists; and if it be a fountain of purity and pleasantness, it becomes all the dearer, as life extends. And he whose wants send him hourly to the Giver of living waters, is less likely to forget his benefactor. It is not matter of surprise, if the poor be called “rich in faith,” seeing that they must live by faith. It is to him a blessing to be thus main-rained in a spirit of continual liveliness and dependency. The bruised reed is ever a tender one, end the object of heavenly regard end compassion; so he is not left for a moment to himself. If the poor man is often tried and tempted, yet, his temptations are all of a character of urgency, to drive him to God; whereas, his neighbour, possessed of wealth, is often assailed by temptations, where influence is powerful, to lead him farther and farther from God. Amidst all these things, the heart is wound around the Gospel. Take this away, and whet is life? (Thomas Drew.)