POVERTY.
"God sends us poverty or wealth,
Whichever He thinks best;
The best for earthly warfare here--
The best for heavenly rest.
If God has sent you wealth, it is
Not yours, but only lent.
If He has sent you poverty,
Then learn to be content."
R.D.
One of the questions, which men have wasted many weary hours in trying to answer, is the question of the uneven division of wealth in the world. Great men and clever men have tried, and all alike have failed; nay, some have gone further, and have declared that since an unseen Being has divided wealth so unevenly, it is for them to redistribute it. And these, too, have failed. And I suppose as long as the world lasts we shall never have an answer to the question--How is it that one man in this world is so rich that he really does not know what to do with his money: he buys horses and carriages, and stocks his house with lovely and costly treasures, and with wrought silver and gold? And how is it, on the other hand, that a man, living perhaps at the rich man's very gates, a man as religious, as honest, as straightforward as he, how is it that he must needs rise early and go late to rest to gain his daily bread? How is it that sometimes even with all his daily toil he feels an anxiety quite unknown to the other, as to where the next meal is to come from? Can you answer that question? I think not! And, reader, you are not alone in your ignorance; for I have never heard of anybody yet who could give any cause for this uneven division of wealth.
No, of all God's gifts to men, none are so unevenly distributed; and none cause so much bitterness between men, as His gift of riches. The great thing then to remember is, first, that both poverty and wealth come from Almighty God. If we have riches, God has given them, not to use them selfishly for our own purposes, but in order to benefit other people. While, if we are poor in this world's goods, we may be rich in heavenly treasure, and still look upon our poverty as the gift of God. "But," you may say, "it is all very well for you, with everything you can want, to talk to us about poverty being a blessed state, and a gift of God, but you can't know anything of the troubles of poverty." Now, there may be and there are certain troubles which a poor man necessarily feels, and which a rich man does not, and these of course I don't pretend to know. There may be moments in your life, in which you feel that God has forgotten you, that starvation must be very near! But do remember that God never forgets His people. He never fails to help and govern those He has brought up in His steadfast fear and love. The same kind providence watches the poor man's humble cottage and the royal throne. The same God will mark what is done amiss in both cases, and will most surely punish it.
Our Lord and His Apostles were poor working men. He had made all men, and had only to speak the word, and the kings of the earth would gladly have flocked in eager to be His disciples; but no, He passes over all these, and He goes down to the seashore, and He finds some plain fishermen mending their nets, He bids them follow Him; and, just as if it was the most natural thing in the world, they get up, and leave behind them their few earthly possessions (probably little else than fishing-tackle), and they follow Him without delay. They know well that they are going after a poor man, but they never think of the poverty. They know that theirs will be no bed of down, when the toils of day are over, for He whom they follow has "not where to lay His head[#]." They know that the man they are following has no earthly home, and that when they leave their father and the ship, they leave all that they have and all they will ever have on earth. I wonder, reader, if you have ever thought of these Apostles of Jesus leaving all to follow Him, and of their reason for doing so. And what was the reason--was it hope of worldly honour? I think not; if so they would very soon have been bitterly deceived. Or was it, think you, to have their names and history written down in the Bible, that all men might read of their self-denial? I hardly think that likely, for when they started to follow Jesus, they knew but little of Him, and nothing at all of a Bible, in which their names should appear. No, what these Apostles had is what we want so much, rich and poor alike. God's great gift of faith. Faith to believe God, as Abraham believed Him. Faith to take Christ at His word, as the Apostles did. Faith here, which shall guide us through this world of sin, and land us, whether rich or poor, on the eternal shore beyond it. To us, then, poverty or wealth alike would come as God's gifts, and we should thankfully accept them as such, and we should no longer complain of our hard lot and our little grievances, but should think more of Christ, and less of ourselves--more of His riches, and less of our poverty.
[#] S. Matt. viii. 20.
OUT OF WORK.
"Be it good or ill,
Be it what you will,
It must help me on my road,
My rugged way to Heaven, please God."
C. Rossetti.
As this book is written specially for working men, it could hardly be complete without a few words on the above heading.
Now I am not going to enter into the question of why it is that so many people are constantly out of work. In some cases, it may be the fault of the master: in some cases, that of the men. There may be, again, hard times in which it is difficult to get work, and for some perhaps quite impossible. But what I want to do is to offer a few kindly words of advice to such as may be out of work. And, first of all, if you have ever been so, you must have felt, and I hope have felt keenly, the blessing of practising habits of saving. We all know what is meant by putting aside something against a rainy day; and those of us to whom the rainy day of wanting work has come, have probably had cause to regret a good deal of wasted money, spent in the public house, before that evil day came. We have felt that if we had kept the money we had wasted in this way, it would have greatly helped in keeping the wolf away from the door.