SERMON XVIII.

POVERTY AND RICHES.

2 CORINTHIANS VIII. 9.

For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.

of

Now you

Will any

Will any

It can scarcely be needful, my brethren, that I should bid you give your best and fullest attention to these words. Most of you, it is probable, are attentive enough already. For we are only too quick in pricking up our ears, the moment we catch the slightest sound that seems to hold out a promise of making us rich. St Paul in the text tells you, that our Lord Jesus Christ became poor, to the end that through His poverty ye might be rich. would all like to become rich. Is it not so? tell me that you have no such wish? you of you make answer that you don't want to be richer than you are? that you are quite rich enough already? If there be indeed any amongst you who can make this answer, in all simplicity and sincerity, happy are they. They must be truly rich and they must have gained their riches in the only way in which true riches can be gained, through the grace and the poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ. But even if there are any such persons amongst you, they must be very few. The main part of you, my brethren, must be like the main part of the world, desiring, striving, toiling to become rich.

:

Your days are worn out

with labour, your nights are fretted with restless cares, in order that you may become rich,-that is to say, comparatively, richer than you are now. For rich is a word, which, in its worldly sense, has no meaning, except comparatively. That which is riches to one man, would be called poverty by others. Many of you, if you had a hundred pounds, would think yourselves as rich as a king. Some of you, if you had only a hundred pounds, would fancy yourselves reduced to beggary. He too that is richest amongst us, would be accounted poor by many who live beyond the bounds of our parish, in other parts of the land, and who gather in their golden harvest from thousands on thousands of acres. Nay, would not he himself, if you were to ask him, call himself poor? Does not he shew by the pains he takes to grow rich, that he does not think himself rich as yet? He may tell you that he is not rich enough. But that is only another way of saying the same thing for he who has not enough, can never be rich. Enough, the proverb tells us, is as good as a feast in fact Enough is the only feast; and Enough is the only riches.

But have any of you this riches? have any of you enough? No: you would all be glad to have a little more to eke out what you have already, so that it may be sufficient to satisfy your various wants, without the need of so much trouble and management. You who are poor, and who have to work for your bread, would you not be glad to get rid of this poverty, of this necessity, which presses so hard upon you? And you who live by the labour of others, while they live by the wages they receive from you, do not you wish that you could employ more labourers, that you could rent more acres, that you could grow larger crops, that in one way or other your moneybags would

swell out to twice their present fulness? Would you not all count it a godsend, as the phrase runs, if anybody were to shew you a way of doubling your present income? Call to mind the words of the text in those words you are told how you may become rich. Be your share in the riches of this world small or great, St Paul tells you in what way you may all become rich and that way is truly a Godsend. Whereas the ways by which men are wont to drive at their aim, especially if they are short cuts, might far more fitly in many cases be termed devilsends.

From what has been said, you may see what strange things those are, which we call poverty and riches. Poverty is a thing that we all have: or, I ought rather to say, it Its yoke is upon us; and a main part of our lives is spent in vain struggles to escape from it Riches on the other hand is a thing that we all want and seek.

has us.

the toil of our hands we seek it

brows we seek it: with the wear

With

with the sweat of our

and tear of our hearts

and minds we seek it: we give up our ease to seek it: we peril our health to seek it: we quit our homes and wander over the wide earth to seek it: and yet, in spite of all we can do, we can scarcely ever manage to lay hold on it. Surely this is a strong reason for suspecting that we must have got upon a wrong sent, and that it is not to be found where we are wont to look for it.

Nor is it merely by private persons standing singly, that riches is pursued thus constantly and unweariedly, as though to gain it were the main end for which they came into the world. It has ever been one of the chief objects for which bodies and societies of men unite, and which they seek in and by their union. One of the great purposes for which laws are made, is to secure what men have,

and to protect and help them in getting more: while on the other hand much thought and goodwill are employed in devising means to check poverty, and to relieve it. But nowhere is it seen more palpably how feeble and helpless man is, when he follows his own ends, trusting in his earthly wisdom. When a nation forgets what ought to be its highest interest and aim, and gives itself up to the pursuit of riches, and cares about nothing so much as how to improve its agriculture, its trade, its commerce, and deems this of greater importance than to provide for the moral and spiritual wellbeing of its people, the sure end of such conduct is, that the very measures which were adopted with the sole view of heaping up riches, will spread poverty far and wide, like a plague, through the land.

This is a truth which the blindest may see in the state of England, such as it has been for years past. For year after year, for generation after generation, we have deemed that there is one thing needful; and that one thing is money. We have gone on greedily piling up money, no matter at what cost: whatever it might cost, we thought we had made an excellent bargain. We cast out our nets into every quarter of the world; and wherever they caught money or money's worth, we dragged it into our treasury; until in the pride of our hearts we began to fancy that there was no end of our riches. Nay, though we never attained to that only sure mark of being rich, the having enough,—though on the contrary, however fast our riches might increase, it was swallowed up straightway by our debts, which left deep, hollow pits, where we had been heaping up our piles of gold,—yet we boasted that we were the richest nation ever seen upon earth; we

boasted that there was no end of our riches: and lo, what is the end of it? That the whole country is overrun with a population of paupers,-a thing the like of which has never been seen in the rudest or poorest nations. Our silver and gold have crumbled away before our eyes and what do we see in their stead? Hunger, and distress, and discontent, and all that long train of evils which poverty brings upon a people. The poor man's earnings will no longer support him. That spirit, which used to make the husbandman take an honest pride in maintaining his family by his own labour, has been crusht and stifled. That spirit, which led our fathers to shrink from the very thought of begging, which made them desire to say, like St Paul, that they had never been chargeable or burthensome to any man, that spirit has almost past away from the land. In truth the very measures which were devised for the relief of the poor,-because they were devised solely for relieving their outward, bodily wants, without regard to the inner man, and the wants of the heart and soul and mind,-have rendered them poorer than ever,-poorer even in body, and still more in spirit,-poorer in spirit, not before God, before whom it behoves every spirit to be poor, but poorer in spirit before man, in whose presence it behoves us to lift up our heads as neighbours and brethren.

The measures, I say, which we adopted, trusting in our worldly wisdom, with the purpose of making the poor rich, and the rich richer, - these very measures, because we adopted them from a trust in our own worldly wisdom, have ended in making the rich poor, and the poor poorer. Nay,—what at first may strike us as still sadder,-even charity itself, in that meagre, imperfect shape, in which it is commonly found, with little thought of any higher duty