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SERMON XV.

POVERTY A HOLY STATE.

2 COR. viii. 9.

'Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich."

ST. PAUL is here stirring up the Corinthians to give alms to the poor saints, by the voluntary poverty of our Lord. He tells them of the Macedonians, who, in the spirit of His example, made large offerings out of "their deep poverty;" and says that they "first gave their own selves to the Lord," and, with themselves, all that they had to His service. He then says, " Ye know the grace,” the freeness and largeness of the charity of Christ, who, "though He was rich," in His eternal kingdom, in the bliss of His Father, "yet for your sakes He became poor;" stripped Himself of His heavenly state, laid aside His glory, "made Himself of no reputation;" was made man, hungered,

thirsted; was weary, wandered without a place where to lay His head; suffered all shame, hardship, pain, and death; that through this, His poverty of all things heavenly and earthly, ye, in the remission of sins, the cleansing of the soul, the grace of adoption, and the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, "might be rich."

Some perhaps might have expected that, at the coming of the Son of God into the world, He would have assumed the power and disposal of all things by which the world is maintained and governed; that is to say, that He would have carried on openly, and by a visible disposal, the divine administration of worldly affairs, as He ever does in secret; that His providence would have been manifested in His person. Of course, no one would expect that He should have affected earthly state or greatness: the very thought can hardly be expressed without a sin. It seems almost like the suggestion of Satan when He shewed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. And yet, we might have expected Him to be openly greater than all powers of the earth; to have made them acknowledge Him, and yield, as the winds and the waves did, to the power of His word. But, on the contrary, no man was ever lower in the world than He-more outcast, destitute, weak, and forsaken; none, perhaps, ever hungered oftener, or

thirsted more, or wandered so wearily;

was so

banished, not from kings' palaces, and princes' courts, and the houses of great men, and the company of the soft, high, rich, and noble, but from home and hearth, and from the shelter and charities of life. Surely as the world had never seen before an example of such perfect holiness, so it had never seen such perfect and willing poverty. In the Gospels we read of His passing whole nights on the mountain, and in the fourth watch upon the Once we read that He went "unto Bethany, and lodged there," in the house of a friend, the stranger's home. His life He began and ended as a wanderer, from the stable to the sepulchre. true to the letter were His words, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head." Of His own He had little but His raiment; even His daily food, they that followed Him "ministered to Him of their substance."

sea.

So

Now this absolute destitution of all things needful for our bodily life was, without doubt, a designed feature in His humiliation. When He took upon Him our manhood, He took it with all its capacities of suffering; and He placed Himself, so to speak, in that position in the life of man where all the sorrows which came with sin into 2 St. Luke viii. 3.

1 St. Matt. xxi. 17.

the world were surest to light upon Him. Weariness, toil, cold, hunger, loneliness, and shame, which are the portion of the destitute, He chose as His lot, and tasted in their sharpest forms. And He thereby learned to sympathise with the universal sufferings of humanity. He became a Saviour, not of any class or condition of men, but of all mankind: of man as man in his fallen, suffering, sorrowing humanity. It is this that gives to the poor a peculiar share in the sympathy of Christ. No man ever was so burdened, naked, desolate, but He was more so. His example has consecrated the state of poverty, and converted it into a discipline, and bestowed upon it a special grace. It is this that we will now consider.

1. First of all, the poverty of Christ is intended as an example to all men. To His earliest followers He gave the precept of poverty; He made it binding on them; He made it even the condition of entering His service and His kingdom. "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven;" or, as St. Mark records the same command, "One thing thou lackest go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." Or again, "Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the

heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth." Peter "said unto Him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed Thee; what shall we have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or mother, or sisters, or father, or wife, or children, or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple." And this precept was obeyed to the very letter by His first followers, and by the apostolic Church. They sold their houses and lands, and laid the money at the apostles' feet. No man "called any thing that he possessed his own;"

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they had all things common." Now, this community of goods was a close imitation of our Lord's example-a prolonging of the fellowship which He had with them and they with Him, after His departure. Poverty, toil, and a common life, were the daily bonds of their society with Him; and they

1 St. Matt. xix. 21; St. Mark x. 21; St. Luke xii. 33.
2 St. Matt. xix. 27-29.
3 St. Luke xiv. 33.

4 Acts iv. 32.

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