---

Those who are not familiar with the Bible, especially with the Old Testament, might be disposed to smile at the statement, that if we could get the poor-laws of the Bible fairly administered, there would be an end to the miseries and complaints of the poor. God has from the beginning made the poor man's cause His own. His aim has been to stir men up to consideration and sympathy, by identifying the poor with Himself in His account with mankind. "He that hath pity on the poor lendeth to the Lord." That is the principle; the claim of the poor on men is the claim of God. And throughout the Old Testament God announces and enforces His provision for the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7-11; Isaiah 58:6-8; Nehemiah 8:10). The principle runs through the whole Book. Whatever men felt that they owed to God they were to pay to the poor. Would it be possible to place their claim on a surer and firmer foundation? And there is a tenderness in the tone of the Bible about the poor and helpless, which is unmatched, as far as I know, in any ancient literature; and it is one of the most sacred traditions which the elder dispensation handed down to the Christian Church. But there is nothing in the way in which the Bible deals with the question which gives countenance even for a moment to the notion that bread is the great necessity of man. God's cure of disease is always radical; therefore the method is slow, deep, and, on the surface, long invisible. And herein God's method differs essentially from the various panaceas for social wrong and misery which have been promulgated in various ages by the philosophers. Bread is precious to those who use life nobly. But he who should assure bread on a sufficient scale to all men, and make no provision for their spiritual culture, for their concord, brotherly love, energy, industry, and perseverance, would miss the deepest elements of human misery, would, in the end, nourish it fearfully, and would hasten, instead of retarding, the overthrow of society. God, in His method of dealing with the problem, considers the "what then?" He takes things in their true order, the heavenly order, the order of their necessity. He does not flood the world with plenty, and leave man to wrangle and wrestle over the partition of it. He would first cure the radical selfishness and wickedness out of which in the long run all absolute poverty springs. It is a mistake to use the term Christian Socialism, under the idea of commending the Gospel to those who favour Communistic views. The Gospel aims at an ideal which, as a dream, has haunted the imagination of every great world reformer who has ever pored over the dark problems of society, but it aims at it by a path which is all its own. It begins from within, and works outwards; it puts love in the heart, and then sends plenty. All true abundance springs out of love. There was a movement in the early Church which had, no doubt, a communistic aspect, and which some may connect with the essential spirit of Christianity, and regard as the only true form of life in the Christian society (Acts 2:42-47). It seems to have been confined to the Church at Jerusalem, and there it was carried too far and lasted too long. We find from apostolic records that the Church at Jerusalem became rapidly the poorest and the most helpless of all the primitive Churches, and was compelled to throw herself on the charities of the Gentile Christian world (Romans 15:25-27), and this history is very important and instructive. It reveals the inevitable issue of a communistic administration of the temporal affairs of men. The rights of property were most carefully guarded in the early Churches, as we gather from all the apostolic epistles; while brotherly love and the most large and constant charity were enjoined on the most sacred grounds. There is nothing that God reiterates more earnestly than the poor man's claim. There is nothing that God sustains more mightily than the poor man's cause. There is nothing that God avenges more awfully than the poor man's wrong. "Would God that I could see it," many a poor man cries; "but, as far as I see, the masters that profess most are often the hardest; and those who say that they have most to do with God, and from whom we might hope to find what God can do to help us, are too frequently known as grinding the faces of the poor." Well, there is truth in this, alas l no doubt; but be very chary of attaching value to the criticism of employers by the employed; their judgment will be constantly narrow, selfish, and unjust. But ye masters, remember the higher judgment. Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord; ye, who say that ye know My name. Beware how you drag it through the mire of selfish and sensual lives, and put it before all men, and especially before the poor, to an open shame. We may all take the warning home. But ye poor, be just. Do not charge on God the wrongs and evils which He is doing His best by His own patient but radical method to cure. He hates the grinding of the face of the poor more entirely, I believe, than He hates any evil thing that is done under the sun. Be just. See how God is fighting your battle in all ages, and maintaining your cause against the oppressor. There is one method by which God is always maintaining the cause of the poor, which they are very slow to recognize and to honour, and that is against themselves, against their own idleness, improvidence, and lust. Man's folly and sin do not withhold, do not restrain, God's mercy, or we had none of us been here. But while He pities, He educates and purifies. Side by side with the pity there is the hard, stern rule, that "if a man will not work, neither shall he eat." Giving is the cheapest and easiest form of charity. To take poverty by the hand and lift it is harder work, and demands a resolution, the ultimate spring of which is on high. Self-help must be the message of our visitors and almoners. We must have done with the pampering method of the constant dole. Help the industrious and necessitous over a crisis that they may help themselves again. Stir up the energies of the indolent and dependent.

(J. B. Brown, B. A.)

---

---

KJV: I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread.

WEB: I will abundantly bless her provision. I will satisfy her poor with bread.