Riches Versus Poverty by Mary Martin Morse

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 9, 1903

Riches Versus Poverty

By Mary Martin Morse

MARY MARTIN MORSE

In these days of mad rush and greed for gain and gold, how few believe in Solomon’s doctrine: “Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right.” Prov. 16: 8. The great object seems to be the “revenues,” right or wrong.

How few believe the words of inspiration: “Better is little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith.” Prov. 15: 16. Most persons are willing to run the risk of the “trouble,” if they can but grasp the “treasure.” From the daily press comes abundance of evidence that this statement of the wise man is given no credence; that in the fearful risk to secure earthly “treasure,” trouble, incident upon transgression of just law, has taken the culprit with iron hand.

In how many instances a woman’s vanity and false ambition are responsible for the sad results! If she had believed the Master’s words, “The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment,” the “trouble” might have been avoided. To many the adorning of the body and the gaining of “the meat that perisheth,” are made paramount to the true life.

Real prosperity lies only where the blessing of God can rest. “The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thy hand unto.” Deut. 28: 8. But this is conditional, as are most promises. “If thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments,” etc. Deut. 28: 1. Who values the “five loaves and two fishes” more highly, depending upon the miraculous power of divine increase, than the visible abundance that seems so desirable? Who would prefer the humble home, and nothing

“save a pot of oil” responsive to the infinite power, than the massive mansions of the millionaires with their unlimited appointments?

It is not riches, but “trust in riches,” that God frowns upon. I knew a woman who was surrounded and supplied with plenty, yet who every waking moment suffered untold agonies of imagined poverty, and thus she died.

The complaint of the Socialist to-day is that the few possess the millions, the many live in want. Do not poverty and riches, to a great extent, lie in mental conditions, and within individual control? “The earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea.” Ps. 104: 24, 25. If our minds were rightly trained to see the “riches” in earth and sea and sky, of which the world is “full,” we would enjoy far more, and suffer less. Is not a nature that can appreciate the wonders of the deep in their manifold representations, and the earth filled with bursting bud, springing blade, and bending blossom,—a mind that, while it can not reach, can see and appreciate the infinite love and wisdom that have formed and that uphold all the inhabitants of the stellar spaces,—is not such a nature far richer than the one that fails to see God in all his marvelous manifestations of beauty, and can simply count its millions? A child may be able to count one hundred, and see nothing but the numbers; another may see in each number representing one hundred that which speaks to his consciousness of beauty, blessing, beneficence, until one hundred seems too small by far to enumerate all that his mind suggests.

Then there are the “hidden riches” (Isa. 45: 2, 3) that await the searcher’s eye, but elude the careless passer-by. Men undergo great hardship to mine the yellow metal that stands for the world’s wealth, but how few realize that at their own door lies a mine of beauty priceless in value. “Hidden riches,” indeed! but readily accessible to those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear.

“If riches increase, set not your heart upon them.” In the setting of the heart upon them—not in the riches—lies the danger. The “love of money”—not the money—is the snare to be avoided. Are you quite sure you are willing and ready to assume the responsibility of wealth? Said Peter Cooper in later life, “The happiest days I ever saw were when my wife and I kept house in one room.”

To so educate the mind that one can see wealth in numberless forms—many of them minute—of natural beauty by which we are surrounded,—is not this capacity riches? Alas that so many eyes are holden that they do not see! He who the balances evenly holds, has meted out more equally than the recipients recognize. How foolish would be the one who held the key that unlocked millions, too penurious to use, or permit to be used—a “dog in the manger.” Vastly poorer is he who, possessing the “open sesame” to the coffers of the universe, perishes without partaking. Physical starvation is said to produce great suffering, but heart starvation has never been told in words.