Seek Them Out | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 2, 1879

"Seek Them Out."

OUR village is a quiet country place, full of pleasant homes, pretty stores, and a fair share of the common business of the day, surrounded by high reaching ranges of mountains, grassy slopes, and everything wearing a comfortable, prosperous aspect, no display of wealth or elegance in particular, but every one looking as if well fed, well clothed, well warmed, and well housed. We see no pinching want, no outstretched hand begging for bread, no overworked, uncared-for-looking children, so that it has almost become a proverb with us that this is a place that has no poor, and I have heard it repeated over and over again that we have no persons upon whom to bestow the church alms, if collections are taken for that purpose. A strange state of things indeed! Our Saviour himself has said, "The poor ye have always with you." Can it be that we live in a community where there are no poor?

And one day I said to a friend, in all comfortable confidence, "We are saved a great deal of annoyance and expense in living in so prosperous a village, where all can get work who need it. We have no street beggars to annoy us, and the town fund is sufficient for the helpless and the infirm. I fear we may get to be careless and selfish, and lose the satisfaction of being benevolent."

"Have you ever looked about you, or tried to seek out the poor in our midst?" answered my friend; "you are mistaken in thinking that they are not to be found. I assure you that though there are comparatively few who really are in absolute want, still there are a great many who require daily help, and whom you could relieve with very little trouble, I believe, if you have the will to do so."

"Tell me where to find them, where to begin," I replied, "and I will do what I can; only tell me where to go. Of course it will be up the new road where all the shanties are."

"There is much need of help up there, I know," was the answer, "but the case I refer to is very near you; you can see the house from your window; a family who are sorely in need of help. And you can find many others in the same sad state if you will seek them out."

So saying but little more, my friend pointed to me a small building down a street just opposite my window, and told me if I wanted to help poor sufferers to seek them there.

So in due time I went out to find these poor people. I crossed the street, passing one or two large buildings, came to a little tumble-down house which had been once used for an office to a coal yard. I knocked at the door, and hearing a faint call, "Come in," I entered the squalid room, so very near my own home, and yet of which I had never dreamed. A low, comfortless apartment, rough, uncarpeted floor, which might have been a little more decent if it could only see a scrubbing brush and water; a cracked stove in which a little green wood hissed and steamed; one or two shabby chairs, a shabbier bedstead and rough looking bed; but saddest of all, on a low made lounge against the partition, sitting up with his head resting against the wall, and his limbs half covered by a tattered blanket, sat a man sadly worn and emaciated, evidently in the last stages of consumption. He could scarcely answer my inquiries for the troublesome cough which was wearing him out. Beside him stood a little girl about eight years of age, who was holding a saucer full of very uninviting looking tea to her father's lips, his hand so tremulous he could not hold it. "That will make you feel better, father," she said, as she smoothed the hard pillow against which his head rested. "See; here is Mrs. P. who lives where those flowers grew last summer."

I found the poor man too weak to talk, and from the little girl I elicited the sad story.

"When father was well he worked in the stone quarry, but he got a hard cold in the spring and has been laid up since, has not done a whole day's work. Mother has to work, and goes every day to the house on the hill. Half she earns goes for the house rent, and when she gets any pay she buys things for us, and neighbors send in victuals. Brother goes to school, and when mother can make me look decent I am going half the time, and Jimmy half the time, because one has to take care of father all day."

I then told the sick man I would send him in a bowl of hot gruel for his supper, and told the little girl to come over by-and-by and I would give her something to make her comfortable, and I returned to my warm, quiet home. I found cast-off dresses and shoes and stockings for the child, and a thick shawl to wrap about her thin shoulders. I prepared some good gruel for the father, and more substantial food for the rest of the family, and sent Bridget over with the child to clean up the cheerless room, and make things look half-way decent.

So I found plenty of work to do right at my own door, without having to go far to seek for it. There were poverty, and sickness, and hunger, and cold, of which I had no knowledge. Was not the fault my own, that I had not tried to seek out and save such objects of compassion?

The neighbors told me the man would have done well enough if he only had let liquor alone, and that his wife was a hard woman and drank more than he did; but that was nothing to prevent me from doing what I could to help them. God knows it was little enough, but it was done in His name who came to seek and save sinners.

I visited this poor man every day, cheering him by kindly words and deeds, read to him from God's blessed Bible, prayed with him that the Saviour might forgive him and make him his own at last. I encouraged the woman to be more thrifty and careful, and made the children as happy as they could be in such a dreary home. At last the poor man was released from bodily suffering. Quietly and prayerfully he breathed his last, and he now sleeps his last, long sleep in a grave on the hill-side. The mother with her children went to join some relatives in Pennsylvania, and once in a while I hear that they are doing well.

And now I continue to follow my friend's advice, and "seek out" those who are in need of help; and, be assured, they are never wanting. Many are wretched through their own want of thrift, and through intemperance; but they must be encouraged to do better, and to set their feet in the right path. I shall never again say, "There are no poor among us;" I shall say, "Seek them out, you will have no trouble in finding them," always remembering the Saviour's almost prophetic words, "Ye have the poor always with you."—Advocate and Guardian.