1. Agur pleads for the golden mean, neither poverty nor riches. It is true that he may serve God in either, but he will serve Him best in that middle state in which he is neither poor nor rich. And it is in this fact that we find the warrant for this prayer of Agur. It is but a lawful desire to wish to serve the Lord under the most favourable conditions. We are not all called to be moral adventurers, craving the post of greatest risk that our fidelity may have the greatest honour. That would savour of spiritual pride. Our undeniable infirmities and Satan's undeniable strength counsel a more modest course than that. When once we have resolved to do our best in any circumstances, we certainly may ask to be favoured with the easiest. Our Lord Himself taught us to pray " Lead us not into temptation," before He added the words " Deliver us from evil." So the prayer of our text is lawful and in every way expedient, " Give us neither poverty nor riches."
^ William Watson's translation of one of Horace's odes gives Agur's meaning to a nicety :
Who sees in fortune's golden mean
All his desires comprised, Midway the cot and court between
Hath well his life devised ; For riches hath not envied been.
Nor for their lack, despised.
2. But where is the standard that settles the proper measure of worldly prosperity ? The settlement of that question largely decides the value and the applicability of everything that can be said on this engrossing topic. To speak of " neither poverty nor riches" is to speak indefinitely, for men's opinions as to what constitute these two states vary as widely as the poles. What one calls riches another would call poverty. Eiches may mean a million a year or a hundred, and poverty a penny a day or a pound.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 23
354 THE GOLDEN MEAN
What is the determining law and the proper point of view ? You will find this if you notice the hint this passage gives us as to the proper designation of our property — "Feed me with food convenient for me." The lawfully expanded meaning of these words is — Apportion my possessions to my needs, my means to the ends of my being. And thus we are presented with this truth : A person has the proper measure of temporal wealth when he has sufficient to enable him to do the proper work of life. Thus the question as to what is riches and what poverty is not a question to be decided by either feeling or opinion. That we think we have too little and want more is beside the point. It is the proportion of means to ends that is the question. Our possessions are not simply sources of enjoyment ; they are instru- ments for service. Our business in this world is to do the will of God, and not to please ourselves. Our kind of service, of course, varies — varies almost as widely as do our characters. And as our duty varies, it follows that our necessary means will also vary.
Let no man create all sorts of artificial obligations and un- necessary work, and then protest that his means are unequal to his needs. Let no man thrust himself into a station of life for which he was never intended, and then say he must live up to his position in society. Let him not create all sorts of lofty tastes and extravagant modes of living, and then think himself too poor because his possessions are not equal to these new inflated notions. Our means should be adjusted to our providential lot, not to our factitious circumstances. Life's obligation and life's glory lie in filling the space appointed by God, in doing well the task pre- scribed by Him, and in making the most, for our own good and the world's, of what He has given us, whether it be little or whether it be much.
3. But the prayer of Agur does not carry us far enough. The ancient world possessed very little idea of causation; the antiquated East of to-day is still almost totally devoid of the idea. The text shows how the matter was regarded in pre- scientific times. The man of old sought for the roots of poverty and of riches, not in human arrangements or in physical environment, but in the dispensation of God. " Give me," he says, " neither poverty nor riches." Perhaps, on the whole, an
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industrious man would be more likely to thrive than a sluggard ; but often and often drought or a storm sent by God would cancel all his thrift. It was, after all, God who settled the lot of man. Poverty aud riches came from Him. For the old Hebrew an omnipotent God held in the hollow of His hand the fate of the individual man. He meted out to him poverty or wealth, with all that these might mean to soul or body.
The modern outlook is different. God in these latter days has revealed Himself as law. He works through Nature and the rules of Nature. He reveals His action as cause and effect. His faithfulness never swerves. There is nothing arbitrary in what He does. We look for the causes, and we know that they will fit the effects. We recognize, too, in these latter days what the ancients did not at all understand — that the individual is the product of society. If we see prevailing poverty, we are certain that it is due to social conditions. If we see overweening and plethoric wealth, we are sure that something in the social system produces or allows it. To us a man is not an isolated person ; he is a member of society. God works not only through nature as a whole ; He works through humanity as a whole. And so we do not think it sufficient to send up a prayer to God : " Give me neither poverty nor riches " ; we know that we must ask why He gives us poverty or riches, and how He is to be prevented from giving us such poverty — how He is to be hindered from making us so disastrously rich. In other words, when we have duly weighed this saying of Agur's, we may come to see that among all the pressing religious and spiritual problems of our day, this also must be entertained and solved — How to secure a more equable distribution of wealth, so that the extremes of wealth and poverty shall disappear, and all shall be fed with the food that is needful for them.