Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling.
If once a man has come empty-handed to the mercy of God in Christ ; if day by day he stretches out these same empty hands to the Giver of life ; if his heart has tasted of the fulness awaiting him beyond the voices of the market and the pledges of the world — then beauty and truth and love and all the spiritual reality of life are his, and the basal plea for the priceless is for ever wakened and answered in his soul.^
^ The state of perfect love, expressing itself in perfect Tightness of thought and deed, may be unattainable on earth, but nothing lower than the search for this ideal can satisfy the yearn- ings of a soul such as was Florence Nightingale's. She had the Hunger for Righteousness. " The crown of righteousness ! " she wrote to Miss Nicholson (May 1846). " That word always strikes me more than anything in the Bible. Strange that not happiness, not rest, not forgiveness, not glory, should have been the thought of that glorious man's mind, when at the eve of the last and greatest of his labours; all desires so swallowed up in the one great craving after righteousness that, at the end of all his struggles, it was mightier within him than ever, mightier even than the desire of peace. How can people tell one to dwell within a good conscience, when the chief of all the apostles so panted after righteousness that he considered it the last best gift, unattainable on earth, to be bestowed in Heaven ? " *
' P. C. Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church, 59.
' Sir Edward Cook, T]ie Life 0/ Florenu Nightingale, i. 51.
The Golden Mean.
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Literature.
Dewey (0.), Works, 272.
Horton (R. F.), The Book of Proverbs (Expositor's Bible), 395.
Knight (G. H.), Abiding Help for Changing Days, 19.
Rix (H.), Sermons, Addresses, and Essays, 135.
Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 318.
Voysey (C), Sermons, xiii. (1890), Nos. 8 and 9.
Warschaner (J.), The Way of Understanding, 62,
Waylen (H.), Mountain Pathways, 55.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxix. 101 (J. J. Ingram) ; Ix. 397 (E. H.
Eland) ; Ixii. 34 (J. M. E. Ross). Preacher's Magazine, viii. 377 (R. Brewin).
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The Golden Mean.
Give me neither poverty nor riches ;
Feed me with the food that is needful for me.— Prov. xxx. 8.
This is the prayer of Agur, the son of Jakeh. Of Agur himself we know nothing, except that he seems to have been the author, or editor, of the short collection of pithy sayings contained in this chapter, including this prayer. We do not know the circum- stances out of which the prayer was spoken. We do not know whether his request was granted to him. But we shall all agree that it is one of the sanest and most prudent prayers ever put on record. The prayer reveals the man, and we may judge from it that Agur was a somewhat shy, diffident, cautious man, the kind of man who would rather have the middle of a safe highway than the risky excitements of peak and precipice.
^ Supposing that our private prayers, like the Private Devo- tions of Launcelot Andrewes, could be given to the world after we are dead and gone, what sort of appearance should we present to posterity ? It is well that the prayers of most of us are heard only by God, who is very merciful, who is very silent and keeps our secrets well, who is too wise to grant all the requests of His ignorant and foolish children.^
The Extremes of Fortune.
*'Give me neither poverty nor riches."
1. The one extreme from which he shrinks is wealth. We are confronted at the outset by much misunderstanding as to what is wealth, and what is poverty. Vast numbers of poor people con- sider other people rich because they live in larger houses and
» J. M. E. Ross.
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346 THE GOLDEN MEAN
spend more money and live more luxuriously than themselves. Now it is strictly true that a great many persons who are thus reputed to be rich are in reality poor; they are really unable without great care to make both ends meet. The expenses to which by their position they are inevitably exposed are either only barely covered by their incomes, or they have to make up large deficiencies by annual draughts on their capital. On the other hand, many among the so-called rich make a great mistake in exaggerating the wants and miseries of the so-called poor. They often pity people who live on a lower pecuniary level than their own, but who are yet able without any pinching or privation to live very comfortably and to pay their way and even to put by annually a moderate share of their earnings. Such as these are not poor at all, even though they are not rich. The envy of poor men towards the rich and the pity of rich men towards the poor are alike often grossly misplaced, and if they did but know the secrets of each other's lives the envy and the pity would be reversed, the poor would pity the rich and the rich would envy the poor.
(1) Wealth is not an evil in itself. — There is no reproach in wishing, by one's own honourable exertions, to rise from the ranks of ill-paid or slenderly-paid labour, to make and keep a comfortable home for those nearest to one, to have no need for material anxieties, to have a margin for books, for music, for travel, to be able to contribute to religious causes and help to support this or that movement one has at heart. To be able to do these things is a very creditable ambition; to take that ambition away would be to cut at the very root of civilized society. The duty of industry, on which the writers of Proverbs so strongly insist, is reinforced by the reflection, " He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand : but the hand of the diligent maketh rich." The reader is admonished to lay by for the inevitable rainy day, when some extra resources will be wanted and be found to make all the difference, in an aphorism like the following : " The rich man's wealth is his strong city : the destruc- tion of the poor is their poverty." And lest a man should rely overmuch on his own powers and the strength of his own exertions, and forget the Giver of all, we read : " The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow therewith." Now in all