subject of popular harangue, that there ought to come an equalization of the ranks of society, and that the diversity of condition which characterizes our species is a direct violation of what are proudly termed the rights of man. We allow it to be most easy to work up a stirring declamation, carrying along with it the plaudits of the multitude, whensoever the doctrine is propounded, that one man possesses the same natural claims as another to the riches which Providence hath scattered over the earth. The doctrine is a specious doctrine, but we hold it to be undeniably an unscriptural doctrine. We hold it to be clear to every fair student of the word of inspiration, that God hath irrevocably determined that the fabric of human society shall consist of successive stages or platforms; and that it falls never within the scope of his dispensations, that earthly allotments should be in any sense uniform. We are to have the poor always with us, and that too because the Creator hath so willed it, rather than because the crea ture hath introduced anomalies into the system. And therefore do we likewise hold, that every attempt at equalization is tantamount to direct rebellion against the appointments of heaven-it is neither more nor less than an effort to set aside the declared purposes of Jehovah; and never do we believe it can be aimed at in any land, unless infidelity go first, that stanch standard-bearer of anarchy, and leap upon our altars in order that it may batter at our thrones. The principle which seems now introducing itself into the politics of Europe, and which is idolized as the Nebuchadnezzar image of the day-the principle that all power should emanate from the people may be hailed and cheered by the great body of mankind; but it is an unsound principle, for it is palpably an unscriptural principle, the scriptural doctrine being that Christ is the Head of all rule and all authority, and that from the Head power is conveyed to his vicegerents upon earth: and I leave you to judge (and I speak thus out of reverence to the Bible, and not out of deference to the magistracy before whom I stand) what accordance there can be between this doctrine and that which has been set up as the Dagon of the age, seeing that the one

makes power descend from above, whilst the other represents it as springing from beneath.

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We thus argue, that seeing it to be the appointment of heaven that we should have the poor always with us," the duty of submission may be learnt from the continuance of poverty, and that God hath so mysteriously interwoven the motives to obedience with the causes of dissatisfaction, that a man must first brave the wrath by scorning the will of his Maker, before he can adventure on the tearing down the institutions of society.

But there are other, and those more obvious ends, which this continuance of poverty hath subserved. Let me premise, that although there is a broad line of demarcation, separating the higher from the lower classes of society, the points of similarity are vastly more numerous than the points of distinction. We are told in the Book of Proverbs, that the rich and poor meet together, the Lord is the Maker of them all." Where is it, I pray you, that they thus meet? Descended from one common ancestor, the rich and poor meet before God on the wide level of total apostacy. This may be a hard doctrine, but nevertheless I would not that the ear should turn away from its truth. Intellect doth sever between man and man, and so doth learning, and outward honor, and earthly fortune, and there may appear no intimate link of association connecting the possessors of lofty genius with the mass of dull and common-place spirits, or binding together the great and the small, the caressed and the despised, the applauded and the scorned; but never yet have the dreams of revolutionary enthusiasm assigned so perfect a level to the face of human society, as that upon which its several members do actually meet, even the level of original sin,-the level of a total incapacity to ward off condemnation. Aliens from God, and outcasts from the light of his favor, there is no distinction between us as to the moral position which we naturally occupy; but the rich man and the poor man share alike, the one not more and the other not less, in the ruin which hath rolled as a deluge over our earth.

Yea, and if they stand by nature on

evidence to yourselves of the divinity of salvation? We tell you that it is an evidence so decisive and incontrovertible, that if a man be now puffed up by secular advantages, and if he fancy himself capable of turning those advantages into a machinery for saving the soul, he may be said to have closed his eyes to the fact, that "the poor we have always with us"-always-so that whatever be the height to which civilization attains, whatever the spread of knowledge, whatever the standard of morality, poverty shall always continue as a display of the riches of grace, and as a standing memorial that not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts," shall the work of salvation be accomplished.

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But I hasten to trace out certain other results which the continuance of poverty has produced. There needs only a cursory glance in order to our discerning, that the fact of the poor being always amongst us, has given free scope for the growth and exercise of christian graces. I might take the catalogue of excellences which Scripture proposes as the objects of our aspirations, and show you how each is cradled, so to speak, in the unevenness and diversity of human estate. If I turn, for example, to faith, it will be conceded on all hands, that the unequal distribution of the good things of this life is calculated to occasion perplexity to the pious, and that there is a difficulty of no slight dimensions, in reconciling the varieties of mortal allotments with the rigid equity of God's moral government. We can master the difficulty by no other process, save that of referring to the season when all the concerns of the universe shall be wound up, and when, by a most august developement, the Judge, who sits on the great white throne, shall unravel the secrecies of every dispensation. But it is the province of faith, and that too of faith when in keenest exercise, thus to meet the discrepancies of the present by a bold appeal to the decisions of the future. And if it should come to pass that there were no discrepancies, which would be comparatively effected if the poor ceased from amongst us; then who perceives not

sensibly circumscribed? The problem with which it is now most arduous to grapple, and by the grappling with which faith is upheld in its vigor-the problem, wherefore does a merciful Creator leave in wretched destitution so many of his creatures-this would be necessarily taken out of our investigation-we should be girt about with the appearance of equable dealings in this life, and should seldom therefore be thrown for explanations on the mysteries of the next. And I know not what consequence can be more evident, than that a huge field would thus be closed against the exercises of faith, a field which is formed in its length and in its breadth out of verification of our text, that "the poor we have always with us."

But yet further. If there were to be no longer any poor, then it is evident that each one amongst us would be in possession of a kind of moral certainty that he should never become poor. Poverty would be removed from the number of possible human conditions, and there would be an end at once to those incessant and tremendous fluctuations which oftentimes dash the prosperous on the rocks and the quicksands. But now mark how, with the departure of the risk of adversity, would depart also the meekness of our dependance on the Almighty. We might instantly remove one petition from our prayers, "give us this day our daily bread." If we were secure against poverty, which we should be if poverty had ceased from the earth, there would be something of mockery in soliciting supplies, whose continuance was matter of certainty; and thus, by placing man out of the reach of destitution, you would go far to annihilate all those motives to simple reliance which are furnished by the vacillations of human condition; you would destroy that liveliness which is now the result of momentary exercise and we once more contend, that for the delicacy of its minute, just as well as for the magnificence of its more extended, operations, faith is mainly indebted to the fact, that "the poor we have always with us."

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I go on to observe, of how much beauty we should strip the Gospel, if we stripped the world of poverty. It

is one of the prime and distinguishing features of the character of Deity, as revealed to us in Scripture, that the poor man, just as well as the rich man, is the object of his watchfulness: that, with an attention undistracted by the multiplicity of complex concernments, he bows himself down to the cry of the meanest outcast; so that there is not a smile upon a poor man's cheek, and there is not a tear in a poor man's eye, which passes any more unheeded by our God, than if the individual were a monarch on his throne, and thousands crouched in vassalage before him. We allow that when thought has busied itself in traversing the circuits of creation, shooting rapidly from one to another of those sparkling systems which crowd immensity, and striving to scrutinize the ponderous mechanism of a universe, each department of which is full of the harmonies of glorious order, we allow that, after so sublime a research, it is difficult to bring down the mind to the belief, that the affairs of an individual, and seemingly insignificant race, are watched over with as careful a solicitude as if that race were the sole tenant of infinite space, and this our globe as much covered by the wing of the Omnipotent, as if it had no associates in wheeling round his throne. Yet when even this belief is attained, the contemplation has not risen to one half of its augustness. We must break up the race piecemeal, we must take man by man, and woman by woman, and child by child-we must observe that to no two individuals are there assigned circumstances in every respect similar; but that each is a kind of world by himself, with his own allotments, his own trials, his own mercies: and then only do we reach the climax of what is beautiful and strange, when we parcel out our species into its separate units, and decide that not one of these units is overlooked by the Almighty; but that just as it is the same hand which paints the enamel of a flower and guides the rolling of a plant, so it is the same guardianship which regulates the rise and fall of empires, and leads the most unknown individual, when he goeth forth to seek his daily bread. Now who perceives not that, by removing the poor altogether from amongst us, we should greatly obscure

this amazing exhibition? The spectacle which is most calculated to arrest us, and to fill the vision with touching delineations of Deity, is that of earthly destitution gilded by the sunshine of celestial consolation,-the spectacle of a child of want and misfortune, laden with all those ills which were bequeathed to man by a rebellious ancestry, and nevertheless sustained by so elastic and unearthly a vigor, that he can walk cheerily through the midst of trouble, and maintain a deep and rich tranquillity, whilst the hurricane is beating furiously upon him. But, comparatively, there could be no such spectacle if there came an end to the appointment, that the poor we have always with us. Take away poverty, and a veil is thrown over the perfections of the Godhead; for we could not know our Maker in the fulness of his compassions, if we knew him not as a helper in the extremities of mortal desertion. It is given as one of the attestations of the Messias-ship of Jesus, that "unto the poor the Gospel was preached ;" and we conclude from this, as well as from the features of the Gospel in itself, that there is a peculiar adaptation in the messages of the Bible to the circumstances of those who have but little of this world's goods. And what need is there of argument to prove, that never does this Gospel put on an aspect of greater loveliness, than when it addresses itself to the outcast and the destitute? One might almost have thought that it had been framed for the express purpose of ministering to the happiness of the poor. Unto the men, indeed, of every station it delivers precepts which may regulate their duties, and promises which may nerve them to their discharge; but then it is that the Gospel appears under its most radiant form, when it enters the hovel of the peasant, and lights up that hovel with gladness, and fans the cheek of the sick man with angels' wings, and causes the crust of bread and the cruse of water to be received as a banquet of luxury, and brings into the wretched chamber such a retinue of ministering spirits, that he whom his fellow-men have loathed and abandoned, rises into the dignity of a being whom the Almighty delighted to honor. Oh, verily, the brilliant triumph of the Gospel of

Jesus of Nazareth is won from the career of a man who professes godliness in poverty. The world despises him, but he is lifted above the world, and sits in heavenly places with Christ: he has none of the treasures of the earth, but the pearl of great price he hath made his own: hunger and thirst he may be compelled to endure, but there is hidden manna of which he eats, and there are living streams of which he drinks: he is worn down by perpetual toil, and yet he hath already entered into rest," persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed." Make poverty as hideous as it can ever be made by the concentration of a hundred woes, let it be a torn, and degraded, and scorned, and reviled estate, still can he be poor of whom it is said, that "all things are his, the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come,-all are his, for he is Christ's, and Christ is God's ?" We call this the brilliant triumph of the Gospel of Christ; a triumph from the study of which may be gathered the finest lessons of christianity; a triumph over all with which it is hardest for religion to grapple. And if it be a stupendous characteristic of the Gospel, that it adapts itself to every possible emergency, that it provides largely for all the exigencies of human beings and if it be moreover true, that certain graces are peculiarly exercised by poverty, which would be comparatively uncalled for amid the comforts of affluence, then we may fairly make it matter of thanksgiving to God, that "the poor we have always with us,' seeing that if they had ceased from amongst us, half the glories of revelation must have been shut up in darkness, and the magnificence of the power of the Gospel would never have been measured, and the loveliness of the influences of the Gospel never been estimated.

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were not always amongst us." It cannot be called an overcharged picture, if I declare that the removal of poverty would go far towards debasing and uncivilizing christendom; and that a sudden and uniform distribution of wealth would throw us centuries back in the march of moral improvement. The great beauty of that state of things which our text depicts is, that men are dependent one upon the other, and that occasions perpetually present themselves which call into exercise the charities of life. We need only remind you of the native selfishness of the human heart, a selfishness which is never completely eradicated, but which, after years of patient resistance, will creep in and deform the most disinterested generosity. And we ask you whether, so far at least as our arithmetic is capable of computing,-this selfishness would not have reigned well nigh unmolested, had the world been quite cleared of spectacles of destitution, and if each man had been left without call to assist his brethren, seeing that his brethren were in possession of advantages setting them free from all need of assistance! According to the present constitution, men are necessarily brought into collision with distress; and the effect of the contact is to soften down those asperities which deform the natural character, and to plane away that ruggedness which marks the surface of the untrodden rock. But if there had been no physical wretchedness with which such collision could take place, then it appears to me evident that selfishness would have been left to grow up into a giant stature, and that the granite of the soul, which, though hard, may be chiselled, would have turned into adamant, and defied all impressions.

Let the poor be no longer amongst us, and you dry up, so far as we can judge, the scanty fountains of sympa thy which still bubble in the desert. By removing exciting causes of compassion, you would virtually sweep away all kindliness from the earth; and by making the children of men independent on each other, you would

and his own pursuits, and send him out to be alone in a multitude, and thus reduce the creatures of the same species