“Blessed Is He that Considereth the Poor.”
A RUDDY-FACED, fair-haired young man, presented himself at the Mission House the other day, requesting the names of five poor families upon whom help would be well bestowed. He declined leaving his name, saying that he was a tradesman and a poor man, obliged to work hard all day, and often nearly all night, but he had promised the Lord when he became a Christian, that he would give to him one-tenth. of all he earned, and was now about to make the first offering. Five names were soon selected from the long list on our visitor’s book. Being furnished with envelopes, he placed ten dollars in each, and set out on his mission of love. “I would rather go myself,” said he; “it may do me good, and I may wish to give further help.” We can follow him in thought to homes of struggling poverty. The first, perhaps, the one where a suffering father, through a long and painful illness, reaped the reward of iniquity, and at last, though he died a Christian it is hoped, left a widow and forlorn family an inheritance of crime only in frail bodies and dwarfed and warped minds. Another widow, who, though once surrounded with comforts, is now with the utmost effort able only to keep the wolf from the door. Another and another and another who repeat the same tale of poverty, privation, and woe, borne in silence and obscurity—to whom such a visitation as this is like an oasis in the desert, and spreads verdure forward and backward through the dreary years. God bless this young man. Such as he will be the future George Peabodys and Howards of our country. A generation of such would banish the foul stains of crime from our city, and give the righteousness that exalteth a nation.—Advocate and Guardian.