Your ShelfYour Projects

The Helpless Poor

50%

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 14, 1863

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 22, No. 7.

Read the full edition

The Helpless Poor.

God helps those who help themselves—so says the adage; and it ought, clearly, to be so. What would be the mortal use of assisting anybody who would only want still more help after you had performed your service for him? It is not the highest kindness we can do for a man, to take his burden on our own backs; nor was strength given us to do so, either; one can no better help his brother than by putting him in a way to help himself; if he finds that his work will be done for him, out of some misguided sympathy, then is his prime motive and stimulus for work gone at the start; he will not labor, it is not in human nature, if he finds that there is after all no need of it but that he can get along just about as well without.—Sel.