THE Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: He bringeth low, and lifteth up.--I. Samuel, ii. 7.
Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me;
Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.--Proverbs, XXX. 8, 9.
Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.--Luke, vi. 20. In a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy, and their deep poverty, abounded unto the riches of their liberality.--II. Corinthians, viii. 2.
IF well thou view'st us with no squinted eye,
No partial judgment, thou wilt quickly rate
Thy wealth no richer than my poverty;
My want no poorer than thy rich estate.
Our ends and births alike, in this as I,
Poor thou wert born, and poor again shalt die.
My little fills my little-wishing mind,
Thou having more than much, yet seekest more; Who seeks, still wishes what he seeks to find; Who wishes, wants; and whoso wants, is poor: Then this must follow of necessity,
Poor are thy riches, rich my poverty.
Though still thou gett'st, yet is thy want not spent,
But as thy wealth, so great thy wealthy itch;
But with my little I have great content-
Content hath all, and who hath all is rich;
Then this in reason thou must needs confess,
If I have little, yet that thou hast less.
Whatever man possesses, God has lent,
And to his audit liable is ever,
To reckon how, and where, and when he spent.
Then thus thou bragg'st thou art a great receiver.
Little my debt, when little is my store,
The more thou hast, thy debt still grows the more.
But seeing God himself descended down,
T'enrich the poor by His deep poverty,
His meat, his house, his grave were not his own,
Yet all is His from all eternity;
Let me be like my Head, whom I adore,
Be thou great, wealthy, I still base and poor.
Phineas Fletcher.
I would be great, but that the sun doth still
Level his rays against the rising hill:
I would be high, but see the proudest oak,
Most subject to the rending thunder-stroke:
I would be rich, but see men, too unkind,
Dig in the bowels of the richest mine:
I would be wise, but that I often see
The fox suspected, whilst the ass goes free:
I would be fair, but see the fair and proud,
Like the bright sun, oft setting in a cloud :
I would be poor, but know the humble grass
Still trampled on by each unworthy ass:
Rich hated: wise suspected: scorn'd if poor:
Great fear'd: fair tempted: high still envied more:
I have wish'd all; but now I wish for neither;
Great, high, rich, wise, nor fair; poor I'll be rather.
Sir Henry Wotton.
No soil like poverty for growth divine,
As leanest land supplies the richest mine.
Earth gives too little, giving only bread,
To nourish pride, or turn the weakest head.
Cowper.
Around each pure, domestic shrine,
Bright flowers of Eden bloom and twine;
Our hearths are altars all:
The prayers of hungry souls and poor,
Like armed angels at the door,
Our unseen foes appal.
And what is want? 'Tis virtue's test:
What weakness? An escape from pride:
That life on earth may be the best
In which, by woe, the soul is tried:
For He whose word is ever sure,
Hath said that "Blessed are the Poor."
If poverty-a bitter medicine--cure
The soul's distempers, blessed are the poor;
Yea, if ye be Christ's poor, thrice blessed men are ye.
POWER belongeth unto God.-Psalm lxii. 11.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.-Romans, xiii. 1, 2.
Upholding all things by the word of His power.-Hebrews, i. 3.
O, ALL-PREPARING Providence divine!
In thy large book, what secrets are enrolled, What sundry helps doth Thy great power assign, To prop the course which Thou intend'st to hold! What mortal sense is able to define
Thy mysteries, Thy councils manifold! It is Thy wisdom strangely that extends Obscure proceedings to apparent ends.
Unseen, that rules the illimitable world,
That guides its motions from the brightest star
To the least dust of this sin-tainted mould.
While man, who madly deems himself the Lord
Of all, is nought but weakness and dependence.
This sacred truth, by sure experience taught,
They must have learn'd when wand'ring all alone,
Each bird, each insect, flitting through the sky,
Was more sufficient for itself than thou.-Thomson.
For the strong spirit will at times awake,
Piercing the mists that wrap her clay abode;
And, born of thee, she may not always take
Earth's accents for the oracles of God;
And ev'n in this-O dust, whose mask is power!
Reed, that wouldst be a scourge thy little hour!
Spark, whereon yet the mighty hath not trod,
And therefore thou destroyest,-where were flown
Our hope, if man were left to man's decrees alone.
Mrs. Hemans.
O put away thy pride,
Or be ashamed of power,
That cannot turn aside
The breeze that waves a flower.
I've thought, at gentle and ungentle hour,
Of many an act and giant shape of power;
Of the old kings with high exacting looks
Sceptered and globed; of eagles on their rocks
With straining feet, and that fierce mouth and drear,
Answering the strain with downward drag austere;
Of the rich-headed lion, whose huge frown,
All his great nature, gathering, seems to crown;
Then of cathedral with its priestly height,
Seen from below at superstitious night;
Of ghastly castle, that eternally
Holds its blind visage out to the lone sea;
And of all sunless subterranean deeps
The creature makes; who listens while he sleeps;
Avarice; and then of those old earthly cones,
That stride, they say, over heroic bones;
And those stone heaps Egyptian, whose small doors
Look like low dens, under precipitous shores;
And him, great Memnon, that long sitting by,
In seeming idleness, with stony eye,
Sang at the morning's touch, like poetry;
And then of all the fierce and bitter fruit
Of the proud planting of a tyrannous foot,
Of bruised rights, and flourishing bad men,
And virtue wasting heavenwards from a den;
Brute force, and fury; and the devilish drouth
Of the fool cannon's ever-gaping mouth;
And the bride-widowing sword; and the harsh bray
The sneering trumpet sends across the fray;
And all which lights the people-thinning star
That selfishness invokes-the horsed war,
Panting along with many a bloody mane.
All-knowing, all-directing God!
In whom we move and live,
Our thoughts, and works, and empty days,
And careless wrongs forgive;
But most in need the cruel heart
That breeds the conscious wrong,
And cares not for the consequence
To helpless old and young.
Some wilful deeds are perfect crimes,
And some less wicked are,
Because 'twas meant that good should spring
Beneath the baleful star.
Yet of all sinful beings most
In need of mercy those,
Who having power much good to do,
All goodness would oppose,
And turn heaven's bounteous gifts to gall,
And nature's smiles to blows.
'Tis not in mockery of man that earth
Is strewed with splendid fragments, temple, tower; That realms, where glory sprang full-arm'd to birth, Are desolate, the snake and tiger's bower;
They lie the monuments of misused
power, Not freaks of fate, but warnings against crime: And ancient Babylon might, at this hour, Had she been guiltless, stand as in her prime, Nay, stand in growing pomp, till God had finished
Croly.
But, God be thanked! they are moments only when
Man, subdued by nature's mightiest powers,
Thinks even his purer self the sport of waves.
In such like moments 'tis the Godhead shows us
The distance 'twixt itself and us,-chastises
Man's vain audacity to equal it,
And casts him back to nothingness and woe.
In such like moments, even the wisest sinks
Unto the dust: he, too, is formed of dust;
But soon again he rises purified
By Fate's worst blast, and thus the Eternal's will
Declares and proves its own omnipotence.
From the German of Herder.
With God a thousand years are as one day;
He in one day can sum a thousand years;
All acts with Him are equal; for no more
It costs Omnipotence to build a world,
And set a sun amidst the firmament,
Than mould a dewdrop, and light up a gem.
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