Selected From: The Christian Treasury, (London: John Johnstone, 1847), 541–544.
The Word of God strongly enforces the duty of Christian benevolence, by promises on the one hand, and alarming threatenings on the other. The subject is at all times worthy of our serious consideration, but especially at this inclement season, when we are called upon to open our hearts and hands to one-fifth of our countrymen, upon whom famine—that fearful judgment of God—has fallen with deadly severity.
It is specially our duty to make common cause with them, because for our sins as well as theirs, this plague has been sent. The principle announced by our Saviour applies strictly here. Think not that these Highlanders are sinners above all others. I tell you nay, but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.
There never has been any diversity of opinion in the world amongst those who have professed any religion at all regarding the propriety of giving to the poor. The field before us is clear of adversaries; for no sect has ever risen up maintaining that the destitute should be suffered to perish unpitied, and that it would be well if the human heart were steeled against the imploring cries of distress. And everyone who knows anything of Scripture is aware that of all duties enjoined on Christians, none is spoken of as so necessary as that of giving to the poor, and there is none respecting which rules are given so numerous and express, or motives so many and powerful.
But still everyone must be convinced that amidst all the applause which has been heaped upon benevolence, there is little real benevolence in the world, and often least amongst those whose professions are loudest. Some seem to imagine that because so much was extorted from our fathers in the generations that are past under false and impious assurances, the promises of God should therefore be regarded as untrue, and we, exulting in the perfection of our orthodoxy, should feel warranted to turn away from the great duty of ample and diffusive benevolence, although the fulfilling of the law is the very bond and perfection of the Christian character.
In considering the duty of giving to the poor, it is to be noticed that genuine benevolence is only the fruit of a heart renewed by the Spirit of God. By nature we are “hateful, and hate one another;” and, on the other hand, “hereby we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” Again, true Christians alone delight in the law of the Lord, and are made partakers of the “divine nature.” Now there is no point about which the law of God or the divine nature is more clear than this.
Man was originally made in the image of God, and his soul was in unison with the universe of beauty and harmony by which it was surrounded. A heavenly principle of love and kindness was implanted within him, which, had it continued, would have bound all the children of men together in a bond of sacred brotherhood: earth would have been a counterpart of heaven; there would have been no poverty, no jarring, no discontent; each would have sought to promote the happiness of all; and nought would have been heard but the voice of satisfaction and joy throughout a vast and rejoicing family. When sin entered, this goodly order was disturbed and overthrown; this holy bond was rent asunder; discord and strife entered our world; each man looked upon his brother with suspicion; and selfishness was enthroned upon the ruins of our fallen nature. Such is the simple statement of Scripture. And therefore, instead of now united to promote each other’s happiness, and to diminish the misery which now began to accumulate, it became the wretched and hopeless aim of men, in which they wearied themselves and distracted the world, to make every object minister to their individual advantage, and to multiply around themselves all the ingredients of earthly felicity. Hence the origin of a thousand miseries; hence the ambition which has ever characterized the children of men; and hence, whilst the upper world was calm and serene, with no contending interests to disturb the glorious harmony, this world became a scene of strife, of envy, of jealousy, of dislike, of wars, and rumours of wars.
But when God came out of his place to establish the ancient economy by his servant Moses, it was fitted to prescribe a remedy for this great evil, as well as to point out a way of escape from the ruins of the fall. In the precepts of that economy, the risings of selfishness were sedulously repressed; it went completely counter to the whole current of man’s fallen disposition; and spoke tenderly of the great duty of providing for the poor. God, in fact, taught this duty in many ways to the Jews. From the first, he equally provided for them all—none were suffered to sink into abject wretchedness. They were a large and separate brotherhood, existing in the midst of the other nations of the earth. God brought them equally from under the iron bondage of Pharaoh—the Red Sea stood up as an highway for them all—they were all surrounded with the shield of God’s protection in the wilderness, and equally supplied with manna, and with water from the flinty rock. None were suffered to monopolize the heavenly food, for on the morning of every day, “he that gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack.” And when at last they were ushered into that glorious Canaan, which was cleared of its inhabitants, that they might take possession, when they received a large and fruitful country—vines which they had not planted, and houses which they had not built, and wells which they had not digged”—they were still strictly commanded to provide for the poor; to leave the corners of their fields unreaped, and their grapes ungleaned; and every seventh year the silver trumpets were to proclaim the return of jubilee; and every yoke was to be broken, and all the servants set free; and the whole produce of that large and fruitful country was to be left free to all. “Thou shalt not glean every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am the Lord your God. And when you reap the harvest, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field; thou shalt leave them unto the poor and the stranger: I am the Lord your God. And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen into decay, thou shalt relieve him; yea, though he be a stranger and sojourner. And if thy brother be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond servant. If there be among you a poor man in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand from thy poor brother: but thou shalt open thy hand wide unto him; thou shalt surely give him; and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him; because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all thou puttest thy hand unto. For the poor shall never cease out of the land, therefore, I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thy hand wide unto thy brother, to the poor and needy of the land, lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be a sin unto thee.” These and many other passages prove that selfishness, which, next to ungodliness, is the great sin of our nature, was effectually checked, and the poor amply provided for amongst the Jews by the divine command; and they prove that economy to have been greatly fitted, not only to promote their individual blessedness as a nation, but to set before the eyes of the children of men the true nature of a great evil which had crept into our world, and the means by which it could be mitigated.
But it was reserved for a more glorious dispensation completely to effect this great object—it was reserved for a Teacher more illustrious than Moses to instruct the children of men in the duties which they owed to each other, and thus, as well as by his great atonement, repair the ruins of the fall. His approach was heralded by prophet after prophet, and an universal expectation was excited. The “isles were to wait for his law”—he was to be a prophet “greater than Moses”—nay, the “Wonderful Counseller” of heaven and earth. And he came not merely to die, the just for the unjust, but to publish again the ancient law, which would have secured the happiness of earth, which had always secured the blessedness of heaven. This was one great topic of the heavenly Teacher, “Give to him that asketh of you”—“Call on the poor, and the halt, and the lame;” the poor cannot recompense you, but ye shall be recompensed at the “resurrection of the just;” and hence the explanation of that Scripture paradox: “I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment, even that which ye heard from the beginning, That ye love one another. Again, a new commandment I write unto you; because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.” It was not new, because it was the law of paradise—it was the law of heaven; but it was new indeed, as dug up from the ruins of the fall, and very new in the amazing motives and example by which it was enforced. For Christ himself began by manifesting on the theatre of our world the most amazing instance of benevolence which the universe can ever behold, even by giving himself a sacrifice to save sinners from perdition.
And having made this sacrifice, and devoted his whole life to doing good, he appointed benevolence as one great mark of all his disciples. Every society of men had been known by some mark or emblem. The priests were known by their vestments of linen, the Pharisees by the breadth of their phylacteries; but hereby all men were to know that they were Christ’s disciples, by the love they bore to their brethren. It was his design to link his people together again in a bond of holy brotherhood, as children of immortality, capable of emerging from obscurity, and shining as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever. And he declared that so soon as anyone became a disciple of his indeed, he laid aside forever his proud and fierce disposition, and put on bowels of mercies; became gentle to all men; meek and lowly as the master he served; overflowing with benevolence, like him who sits aloft and scatters his goodness freely and without restraint through all the earth, through all the universe. Nor was this to be merely a transitory feeling, but one permanent and lasting—the result of a new heart; nay, one that should increase throughout the ages of a ceaseless eternity. When their souls parted from their bodies, and crossed the gulf, and arrived in heaven, a deep interest in all the members of the glorious society there assembled was still to characterize them; though sympathy is there uncalled-for, as care and sorrow and weeping are unknown. All ordinances are to vanish, but love is to endure. Faith and hope are to be swallowed up, but love is never to fail. It is to be the fair garment which clothes all the redeemed—part of the very essence and perfection of redeemed humanity; and they who walk not in love to men—blessing all, forgiving all, and doing good to all as they have opportunity, especially to such as are of the household of faith—give plain evidence that as yet they are involved in all the degradation of the fall—that they are none of the disciples of Jesus, nor members of the royal household of God.
Hence, in all the summaries of practical Christianity found in Scripture, this occupies a prominent place as being an essential fruit of the operation of the Spirit of God: “A good man showeth favour and lendeth. He hath dispersed abroad, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever”—“What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God?”—“Is not this the fast which I have chosen, that ye deal out your bread to the hungry?”—“Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to live unspotted from the world”—“But he that hath this world’s goods, and seeing his brother have need, shutteth up is bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”
All the prominent examples of Scripture tend to enforce the same duty. See the striking example of Abraham in Genesis 18:1–8, concerning which the Apostle says, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” See the example of Job (Job 29:11–17): “I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame; I was a father to the poor, and the cause that I knew not I searched out.” The converted Zacchaeus said, “Half of my goods I give to the poor.” The prayers and alms of Cornelius came up for a memorial before God; and so universal is this, that on the day of judgment, Christ is to say to all his people, “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; thirsty, and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye clothed me; sick and in prison, and ye visited me. Inasmuch as ye did it to these my brethren, ye did it to me.”
Indeed, when a Christian thinks what is meant by professing to be a child of him who maketh his sun to rise and his rain to fall even on the evil and unthankful; when he thinks that he is only a steward of all he possesses, and not a lord, and that he must soon part from all his goods and give an account of his stewardship; when he thinks of him who was rich, and yet for our sakes became poor, and who on earth went about continually doing good; when he thinks that amidst all their poverty, the poor are equally possessed with himself of immortal souls, that some of them are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, and that by cherishing a kind and loving spirit, he is promoting his own happiness and the great end of his being; whereas, by hardening his heart, he is hateful to God and abhorred of men, he sees a multitude of arguments all urgently enforcing the duty of giving to the poor.
Such is the doctrine of Scripture respecting the duty of self-sacrificing benevolence. Giving to the poor is not a duty which we may neglect with safety; it is not peculiar to any dispensation, but is enforced by the clearest precepts of both Testaments. Neglect of it is a sin, and stamps us as hypocritical and insincere in our profession of Christianity. He that professes Christianity, and is open-hearted and generous, is so far to be believed. But he that is under the power of covetousness, and grasps eagerly after gain, and adds house to house, and heaps up riches, as if he were to live forever, and suffers the poor to cry in vain, and wretchedness in a thousand forms to remain unrelieved around him—be his outward profession of religion ever so great; let him perform the heartless representations of holiness ever so devoutly; let him glory in being able to solve every question in theology, and in astonishing others by the extent of his knowledge; let him pray with the fervour of one upon whose eyes have burst the glories of the world of spirits, and exhort with the eloquence of an angel, and read the word of God as if he esteemed it more precious than gold, yea, than fine gold; and rebuke the sins of others with all the sternness of an Elijah; and welcome the return of every sacrament as the Jews welcomed the return of the year of jubilee: but still it is all in vain; he wants the grand mark of Christian discipleship—the grand requisite for promoting the blessedness of the redeemed in heaven. He is but a hypocrite and a dissembler; he loves his riches more than God, more than his brethren, more than the glorious rewards of heaven. And, alas! When the veil shall at last be withdrawn from every heart, and the secret histories of all shall be revealed on the day of judgment, how many such will have their wickedness exposed! But we must leave the subject to be prosecuted in another paper.
