CHRISTIANITY AND POVERTY. T HE Church Meeting on Monday, to consider
the best way of providing more comfortably for the last years of the aged poor, or rather, of those among them who are not only aged, but worthy of all respect, might have been confronted with two very different classes of Christ's sayings on the sub- ject, had the object of the meeting been to discuss the
speculative rather than the practical issue involved in the proposal. On the one hand, our Lord repeatedly speaks of giving to the poor as if it had a double object, —one, to make the poor happier, the other to disembarrass the rich of a snare and a temptation which diverted them
from counsels of perfection. He speaks of poverty as itself a blessed state in a considerable number of instances, and he speaks of riches as one of the greatest possible temptations and dangers. "Sell all that thou bast and give to the poor, and come follow me ; " Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things ; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented ;" "Blessed be ye poor, for your's is the Kingdom of God ; " "How hardly shall they who have riches enter into the Kingdom of God ; " "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God." No wonder that what the religious orders call "holy poverty" has obtained so high a repute in the Church. There can be no doubt at all that our Lord meant to treat the love of wealth as one of the very greatest stumbling-blocks in the spiritual life, nor that he really directed many of his fol- lowers to divest themselves entirely of their encum- brances, in order that they might the better live a spiritual life. On the other hand, there are a number of parables in which the careful putting of trust property out to interest is enjoined; and the "wicked and slothful servant" who laid up his lord's money in a napkin is treated as deserving to be cast into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The talent is to be taken from him and given to him who had ten talents, and when it is objected that he is rich already, the statement is treated as the very ground why he should be richer; "for to every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance ; and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." Only in these cases, it is to be noted that it is trust property, not absolute property which is spoken of ; it is something committed to the care of another, not his own wealth, which is treated as sacred and as requiring to be put out to usury. Doubtless, our Lord re- garded poverty itself, no less than property, as a trust which he intended to be used with this sedulous care. Indeed, any opportunity of improving that which was committed to a man's care,—whether it were poverty (i.e., humility) of spirit, or the kind of poverty that involves humiliation of the flesh,— was to be put out to interest that its lord when he came might receive his own with usury. There seems a certain superficial in- consistency between this praise of poverty, this dread of wealth, on the one hand, and this strict demand for the sedulous in- crease of any kind of wealth committed to a man's care.
But it is only superficial. The man who trusted in riches was the man who could by no means enter into the Kingdom of God,—the man, namely, who having assured himself that he had much goods laid up for many years, thought that if only he pulled down his barns and built greater in which he could bestow his goods, he might safely say to his soul, " Soul ! eat, drink, and be merry." On the other hand, the man who was ready at any moment to deliver up his trust with all that he had gained by the use of it to its true owner, was in no danger of being diverted from the true life even by the mag- nitude of his cares.
Nevertheless, it is not altogether easy to grasp what the attitude of mind should be which Christ intended to inculcate as regards giving to the poor. It certainly was not the wish to make them even moderately rich, and to put all the snares and temptations of riches in the way of those whose state of poverty he had treated as in itself a divine blessing. It is quite impossible to conceive Christ as ap- proving of any re-arrangement of society intended to equalise the lots of all, and to wipe out both poverty and wealth alike. He taught that it was "more blessed to give than to receive ;" but if equality could be reached, there would be little real giving and little cordial re- ceiving, and that at least was not the ideal state which Christ contemplated. On the contrary, nothing can be more certain than that what he sought to foster was a state of mutual dependence among men,—a state in which all could give and all could receive ; in which all had some sort of wealth, with which they were bound to part, and all had some sort of poverty which would entitle them to receive. St. Paul speaks of himself as "poor, yet making many rich ;" as "having nothing, yet possessing all things ;" and there is no doubt at all in his case that part of his secret of so using poverty as to make many rich, was his generous willingness to accept even pecuniary help from those who were willing and eager to give it. That is a way in which the true poor, those who are " poor in spirit," as well as poor in possessions, can always make many rich, and are, indeed, bound to do so. As we understand the words of Christ, he not only believed that we should have the poor " always " with us, but that it was for the good of poor and rich alike that we should have them always with us. He did not contemplate what is now called "levelling upwards," —except, indeed, in moral qualities,—as at all the social ideal. He thought the poor had not less to give, perhaps even more to give, if they could but receive in a right spirit, than the rich themselves. They provided the opportunity for those acts of true neighbourliness which dignified the good Samaritan and made him happy, and in accepting them gratefully they conferred at least. as much as they received. But the object of these acts of benevolence was certainly never intended to be that rich and poor should alike cease to exist, but rather that they should be bound to- gether by far closer ties than any which had yet been conceived. It is worth noting, perhaps, that we have no single instance in Christ's life in which it is recorded of him that he gave anything but new health, or new sight, or new life, or new pardon to the poor. Even in his parables there is but one mention of a gift of pecuniary help, and that was to another on trust for the wounded man. Christ encouraged giving to the poor during his own lifetime, more, it would seem, as a mode of divesting the rich of special snares, than as a remedy for the evils from which the poor suffered,—evils which he more or less regarded as their special privilege, so long as their spirit was not embittered by the want of sym- pathy and neglect with which they were treated. There can be no doubt that he aimed at removing the hopelessness, the sense of desolation, the grief, the infirmities, the deficiency in the springs of life, from which the poor suffer, much more than their mere poverty. He tells the disciples of John to go back and report to their master how the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised up, and "to the poor the Gospel is preached," showing that to his mind they needed a fresh spring of life much more than mere physical assistance. If we, in our poorer day, can give a fresh spring of life only by giving old-age pensions to the respectable poor, no doubt that is our duty, and a very much better way of help than not giving them anything at all. But, certainly, old-age pensions will be of far more use by virtue of the new confidence they may establish between those who give and those who receive, than they will by the mere change they effect in their outward lot. No doubt this is the essential value of all such schemes. The lot of the poor is not only hard to bear, but to all but the very best natures amongst them, hardening as well as bard, where it is not alleviated by sympathy between class and class. And a lot which hardens is far worse than a hard lot. St. James puts it pithily enough when he speaks of the Christian faith as teaching "the brother of low degree" to rejoice "in that he is exalted and the rich in that he is made low,"—in other words, each class is to rejoice that it is placed in a position to enter more heartily into sympathy with the other class. As we understand the Christian teaching, it is not poverty, but the chasm which separates the poor from the rich, which is to be annihilated ; and that cannot be annihilated without a hearty desire on the part of the rich to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, and a sincere desire on the part of the poor to accept gratefully, but without either humiliation or any undue or unmanly effusiveness, the efforts of those richer than them- selves to sweeten their lot. As Dr. Westoott said in his Durham Charge, we should not seek "to dispense with strenuous and even painful effort, but to provide that labour in every form should be made the discipline of noble character." That seems to us the true distinction between the socialistic and the Christian attitude towards poverty. It is not the extinc- tion of poverty,—which is probably as worthy a condition now as in any other age of the world,—that is desired, but the ex- tinguishing of that brand upon it which makes the poor feel their condition fall of bitterness, and the rich feel it as one of disgrace. Education in the moral sense of the word,—not mere secular education,—will go a good way in extinguish- ing this brand ; but only Christianity can effectually erase it and bring the poor to regard their poverty without shame, and the rich to regard it with a certain reverence: Whatever old-age pensions for the respectable poor may contribute towards this result,—and they may contribute much,—we should appreciate as one of the greatest services to our generation. But we can easily conceive a state of feeling between the richer and the poorer classes which would be just as bad after old-age pensions had been established as before, and also a state of feeling between them which might be almost an ideal one, though no such old-age pensions should exist. The true attitude towards poverty is that which would aim rather at helping the poorer classes to respect themselves, and the rich to respect them, than to aim at equalising lots. Yet the greater object could not be effected without the wish and endeavour to remove everything like indignity and dir. grace from the position of the honourable and self-respecting poor ; and that is an object which well distributed old-age pensions might effectually promote.
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