There are four classes of poor people. First, those who are utterly destitute, and seem to have no desire to improve their circumstances—lazy, shiftless, almost stupid, concerning their own interests. Second, those poor who fret and chafe against it, bitterly complaining against God and their fellows, who hate the rich, and make fuel for anarchists. Third, those poor who, while seeking to better their condition, are resigned to God’s will and do not covet the wealth of others, but endeavor to make their poverty a means of grace to their souls. And fourth, those who are poor from choice, who have been lifted into such an understanding of divine things that they see things in the cloudless light of eternity and God, and are so flooded with God himself that earthly riches are a positive hindrance to them, and they are triumphantly poor.

They are the exceeding few who do as Christ told the rich man—give away all they have and spend their life for God and souls, preferring to live by faith.

What an infinite difference there is between the views of Jesus and men as to the importance attached to wealth. There are very few persons on earth even among Christians, yes, even among the sanctified ones, very few who get so far weaned from all things on earth, from the fashions, and laws, and ideas, of human beings, and so far out into the ocean of God’s mind as to see things in the pure light of a heavenly mind. Everything in this world is exactly opposite in the mind of Jesus to what it is in the mind of men. Most Christians will admit that there is a disagreement between the mind of Christ and the mind of mankind; but it is rare to find one that can discern that the mind of Christ and the mind of man is exactly the opposite in everything in the world. And this applies to poverty as well as to all other things.

In the four classes mentioned above, Jesus from an eternal choice, selected poverty for his earthly estate, not merely to put himself in sympathy with all the poor ones of earth that he might win them to himself, but also he saw how utterly perverted the whole human mind was concerning the importance of wealth, and because earthly riches would have been a very clog to him, and a shackle to the free play of that boundless, triumphant life, that overflowing ocean of spotless love, which instinctively preferred to pour itself through channels of self-sacrifice, and riches would have cramped the victoriousness of his love for mankind. There are in each generation a few rich persons who give themselves up entirely to God, and who manage their property with an eye single to God’s glory, and who love to give to the work of God, and who enter into a deep and blessed life in the Holy Ghost. Such persons are very dear to God, and will receive a great reward, for it requires an extraordinary operation of grace for rich people to be deeply spiritual. Such persons have a great many hindrances to a divine life, which poor persons do not have. Riches bring all earthly comforts, fine homes, soft clothing, beautiful furniture, elegant pictures, rich food, horses, carriages, servants, travel to the mountains or the sea, the flattery of other people, the obsequiousness of hangers on, honors, and all these things form such a thick padding around the poor soul, that it is well nigh impossible for the arrows of eternal truth to reach the heart. Also riches blunt the spiritual sensibilities, deaden the conscience, choke up the channels of love, make people self-conceited, and overbearing, and critical, with a severe and domineering spirit, and thus Jesus is hedged out from the mind.

On the other hand, poverty, by denuding the soul of outward ease and luxuries, and, as it were, taking the roof off and exposing it to the outdoor life of God, gives ample scope for prayer. By making the body a beggar to a certain extent, it makes the soul a real beggar at the throne of God, and, under the touch of grace, leads the soul to pray for supplies for all needs, both inward and outward.

Poverty also allows of ample scope for faith—not only faith for salvation, but faith on other lines, for providing ways and means: faith for healing of disease, for the opening of providential doors—faith in the smallest details of life. The rich can exercise faith only for their spiritual needs; but the poor have two hemispheres for their faith to travel over, including both the spiritual and the temporal life. Hence the Holy Ghost tells us that God hath chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith; proving that they have a far wider range for trusting their heavenly Father than could possibly be the case if they were rich.

Then, again, poverty, when under the operations of grace, opens up the fountains of sympathy and benevolence to others. Thousands of instances have occurred where little boot-blacks and pauper children and very poor people have manifested a sympathy and liberality for those of their class, in surrendering their little morsel of food or comfort to the needs of others. Nearly all the great benevolences on earth are carried on by the poor. Very few rich people are liberal—hardly one in a thousand really gives anything worth called giving. So rare is this that a liberal rich person is the wonder of the city or neighborhood. Poverty not only opens up great fountains of prayer and a vast scope for faith, but it serves to arouse the mind—it leads to deep thinking, to searching into the warp and woof of God’s providence, a deep study of the dealings of the Lord. It sharpens the gift of invention, it inspires wisdom in the use of scanty means to accomplish the best results, it puts more forethought into the spending of a dollar than would be exercised with a full pocket. All this is adding wealth to the mind. Whoever heard of rich people being great geniuses or inventors or missionaries or reformers or founders of states or churches or vast revival movements? Through all the ages the poverty of the body has been the riches of the mind.

We must remember that poverty in and of itself does not work out these results, for penury under the reign of sin has a whole class of curses attending it, just as riches under sin has many curses attending it; but that taking both riches and poverty and pitting them under Gospel light and the working of the Holy Ghost, poverty furnishes a field for a golden harvest of results which riches will never yield.

Not the least of the blessings of poverty is the facility it gives for weaning the soul from earth and leading it to place its thoughts and affections on things in heaven. The roots of the heart, having no territory in this world in which to fasten, can more readily be planted in the soil of the heavenly world, where they can spread and grow to an unlimited extent, and from which they will never be uprooted.

Yet there is something for the soul in the Christ-life far beyond all these thoughts. It is an altitude which a few saintly souls reach, both among the rich and the poor, where all earthly wealth is voluntarily abjured, where the soul has such light and unity with the eternal Son of God, that, like him, it has a sweet passion for poverty. It sweetly despises riches, and looks upon all the fine things of earth with a silent contempt, not because they are contemptible in themselves but because they are so far infinitely below the splendor of a divine life that they are looked upon as a nuisance and a meddlesome hindrance to the immensity of a heavenly life.

To form some idea of what I mean, imagine a beautiful angel, radiant with heavenly splendor and enraptured with the uncreated beauties of the blessed Trinity, putting on broad-cloth or decking himself with earthly ornaments, and encompassed with velvet furniture and hired servants! The very mud in the street were just as appropriate to him as these things. How utterly absurd and repulsive would it be for us to imagine our blessed Jesus riding though Palestine in a fine carriage, with kid gloves and fine clothes, and living in a stone house, with elegant furnishings, and feasting on big dinners. The very association of these things with him would be loathsome and degrading, and just as incongruous as adding tallow candles to the sun or putting white paint on a diamond. Riches would only have hemmed him in from the human race, and made him a private citizen, instead of being the universal man of all ages and all nations. The excessive wealth of the infinite life and love which was in him makes all earthly riches as common as the dirt.

 Now apply this line of thought to those who are the most like Christ, the old prophets, and the apostles, and we get a glimpse of a state of life where we are not only resigned to being poor but endeavor to bear it patiently, but we see that lofty condition of soul in God where we can be perfectly triumphant over all poverty or wealth, where we are sweetly and sublimely indifferent to the pinchings of penury, and gladly make it a channel for the outpouring of a life of prayer and love and good works, having no anxiety for ourselves, spending our strength in looking out for the interest of Jesus and leaving all our earthly wants to his care, taxing our heart only to know how we can love him more and do more for him.

This is the feeling John Fletcher had when the king offered to reward him for some little service of his pen and he replied, “All the reward I want is more grace.”

And the great Daniel said to the King of Babylon, “Let your rewards be for others.”

 This is victory over the world and all the things in it. Such souls possess the whole of God, and they own all material riches in the same way that Christ owns them. “He is rich who owns God, but he is richest of all who owns nothing but God.”