Love of the World
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their ears that they may not hear His voice showing them their duty
to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Some who profess to be
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children of God seem anxious to invest their means in the world lest it
shall return to the Giver in gifts and offerings. They forget their divine
mission, and if they continue to follow the dictates of their selfish
hearts, and expend precious time and means to gratify their pride, God
will send reverses, and they will feel pinching want because of their
ingratitude. He will entrust His talents to more faithful stewards, who
will acknowledge His claims upon them.
Wealth is a power with which to do good or to do evil. If it is
rightly used it becomes a source of continual gratitude, because the
gifts of God are appreciated and the Giver acknowledged by using
them as God intended they should be used. Those who rob God by
withholding from His cause and from the suffering poor will meet
His retributive justice. Our heavenly Father, who has given us in trust
every good gift, pities our ignorance, our frailty, and our hopeless
condition. In order to save us from death, He freely gave His beloved
Son. He claims from us all that we claim as our own. A neglect of His
suffering poor is a neglect of Christ, for He tells us that the poor are
His representatives on earth. Pity and benevolence shown to them are
accepted of Christ as if shown to Him.
When the Lord’s poor are neglected and forgotten or greeted with
cold looks and cruel words, let the guilty one bear in mind that he is
neglecting Christ in the person of His saints. Our Saviour identifies
His interest with that of suffering humanity. As the heart of the parent
yearns with pitying tenderness over the suffering one of her little flock,
so the heart of our Redeemer sympathizes with the poorest and lowliest
of His earthly children. He has placed them among us to awaken in
our hearts that love which He feels toward the suffering and oppressed,
and He will let His judgments fall upon anyone who wrongs, slights,
or abuses them.
Let us consider that Jesus took all the woes and griefs, the poverty
and suffering, of man into His own heart and made them a part of
His own experience. Although He was the Prince of life, He did not
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take His position with the great and honorable, but with the lowly, the
oppressed, and the suffering. He was the despised Nazarene. He had
not where to lay His head. He became poor for our sakes, that we
through His poverty might be made rich. He is now the King of glory,