p. 477 | WHY THEY WERE POOR by Youth's Companion

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 5, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 30.

WHY THEY WERE POOR.

By Youth's Companion

Two ragged young men, with faces pinched by hunger, stopped the other evening before a stately dwelling in one of our large cities. As the curtains were not drawn, they could catch glimpses of a bright interior, and walls lined with pictures, and prettily dressed children playing. A grave old man, with white hair, alighted from his carriage and entered the house.

One of the men muttered a curse on the "bloated aristocrats." "Why should they live in idleness on the fat of the land, while you and me toil and starve?"

Now this was a hackneyed, popular bit of pathos, which has been effective since time began. The world invariably bestows its sympathy upon the poor man out in the cold and darkness, while it is apt to suspect the rich man, simply because he is rich, of being a selfish tyrant.

The facts in this case were that the owner of the mansion had earned his fortune, dollar by dollar, by steady, hard work. Now that he had earned it, much of his time was given to considering and relieving the wants of his poorer brethren. He was sober, frugal, and temperate. The men outside were lazy mechanics, who had chosen drink and gambling in pool-rooms instead of work. They had their reward in rags and starvation.

The boys who read these lines will soon take their places as citizens of a nation where the antagonism between the poor and the rich is pushed by foolish and vicious men to the point of actual combat. Let them look at the matter as it is, unmoved by false sentiment on either side. A man who lives in a palace is not necessarily a Dives, forgetful of God; nor is the beggar at his gate sure of Heaven merely because he is a beggar. It was not his poverty that carried Lazarus to Abraham's bosom.

In this country there are a great many men like George Peabody, Asa Packer, Stephen Girard, Johns Hopkins, and Isaiah Williamson, who have accumulated great wealth by hard, honorable work, and who have devoted it to the help of humanity. And there are countless poor men who owe their poverty to idleness, dishonesty, or love of liquor.

Learn to be just, boys, to the rich as to the poor, and you will be lacking in charity to neither. If you have inherited wealth, remember how hard it is for those who put their "trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God." If you are poor, remember that you are no more honest, estimable, or devout because you are poor.

The man with five hundred dollars a year may trust in his money and exaggerate its value as truly as the man with millions. If you lie or cheat for a single dollar, it soils your soul the same as if it were all the diamonds of Golconda.—Youth's Companion.