Self-Made Poverty by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 25.

Self-Made Poverty.

By Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I WOULD not say hard words against poverty; wherever it comes it is bitter to all; but you will mark, as you notice carefully, that, while a few are poor because of unavoidable circumstances, a very large mass of the poverty of London is the sheer and clear result of profuseness, want of forethought, idleness, and, worst of all, drunkenness. Ah, that drunkenness! that is the master evil. If drink could be got rid of, we might be sure of conquering the devil himself. The drunkenness created by the infernal liquor dens which plague-spot the whole of this huge city is appalling. No, I did not speak in haste or let slip a hasty word; many of the drink-houses are nothing less than infernal; in some respects they are worse, for hell has its uses as a divine protest against sin, but as for the gin palace, there is nothing to be said in its favor.

The vices of the age cause three-fourths of the poverty. If we could look at the homes to-night, the wretched homes where women will tremble at the sound of their husband’s foot as he comes home, where little children will crouch down with fear, upon their little heap of straw, because the human brute who calls himself “a man” will come reeling home from the place where he has been indulging his appetites—if you could look at such a sight and remember it will be seen ten thousand times over to-night, I think you will say, “God help us by all means to save some.” Let the great ax be laid at the root of this deadly upas tree, and to work constantly with it till the huge trunk of the poison tree begins to rock to and fro, and we get it down, and London be saved from the wretchedness and misery which now drips from every bough.—C. H. Spurgeon.