The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 137

cherish sympathy with all our brethren, The poor with the rich, and they with the poor. It is equally difficult but equally obligatory on each. (2) To be eacrer in 0 telling to the poor of this gospel of the meeting of the rich and the poor. (3) To come to Christ and to his cross, and to abide there, that the Spirit of him who was the J!'riend and Saviour of all may dwell in us more and more.-C. Ver. 4.-17ie moral disadvantages of the poor. Jeremiah recognizes and refers to these disadvantages as a well-known fact, and he tells how he expected to find in them an explanation of the deplorable wickedne~s with which Jerusalem was filled. "There- fore I said, Surely these are poor," etc. We note- I. THAT THESE ARE THE REAL EVILS OF THE LOT OF THE POOR. At once all manner of other distresses which attend poverty arise to our minds, and therefore we would observe: 1. That we do not deny that their physical and social disadvantages are also evils. To be ill fed, ill housed, ill clothed, as so many of the poor are,-who can make light of a lot like theirs? Therefore: 2. Still less do we deny our duty to relieve their physical evils to the utmost of our power. 3. But we do deny that these are their chief evils. For: (1) Many of these are more than counterbalanced by what is so commonly found amongst the rich. Dr. Channing says, "When I compare together different classes as existing at this moment in the civilized world, I cannot think the difference between the rich and the poor in regard to mere physical suffering so great as is some- times imagined. That some of the indigent among us die of scanty food is undoubtedly true, but vastly more in this community die from eating too much than from eating too little, vastly more from excess than starvation. So as to clothing: many shiver from want of defeuces against the cold; but there is vastly more suffering among the rich from absurd and criminal modes of dress, which fashion has sanctioned, than among the poor from deficiency of raiment. Our daughters are oftener brought to their grave by their rich attire than our beggars by their nakedness. So the poor are often overworked; but they suffer less than mnny among the rich, who have no work to do, no interesting object to fill up life, to satisfy the infinite cravings of man for act-ion. According to our present modes of education, how many of our daughters are victims of ennui-a misery unknown to the poor, and more intolerable than the weariness of excessive toil! 'l'he idle young man, spending the day in exbibi ting his person in the street, ought not to excite the envy of the overtasked poor; and this cumberer of the ground is found exclusively among the rich." (2) And their in- tellectual disadvantages are nearly as great an evil as those that belong to their outward lot. "Knowledge is power," but to be without knowledge is to lack the power to lighten, to elevate, to refine, to cheer, and in ways manifold to ameliorate our lot in life. Therefore to lack knowledge and education deserves to be looked upon with even more compassion the.n the lack of physical comforts. But still, the chief evil of poverty is its moral disadvantage. Now- II. 'l'HESE MORAL DISADVANTAGES OF THE POOR ARE SU0H AS ARISE FROM: 1. T/,e difficulty of maintaining self-re;;pect. All the world seems agreed to regarcl the poor as the " lower orders," and to confine the term" respectable" to those who have enough and to spare. And when poverty necessitates the receiving, nnd yet more the asking, of charity, how hard it is then to maintain that erect moral bearing, that spirit of independence, which is so essential to the formation of all true, worthy moral character I 2. The almost impossibility of mental culture. How can the man who has to contiuua at prolonged and laborious bodily toil from morn to night, day nfter day all his life long, and only then can earn scarce sufficient to provide for his actual bodily necessities, be expected to bo other than rough, rude, illiterate, and contented to be so? What mockery H seems to talk of mental cultivation to a man like that I But shut off from such cultivation, how utterly is the door closed upon him which leads to so much that would cheer and brighten bis whole life, and would lift him up in the scale of moral being I 3. The risk to all moral delicacy and refinement which their crowded and wretched habitations involve. If men are obliged to herd like cattle, only less comfortably than they, how can "a man be better than a sheep" in such case? 4. The temptation to envy and sullen discontent at the~r beholding what seems to them the so much brighter lot of the well-to-do. The pe.t1ence of the poor beneath the awful injustices and hardships which arise from the unequal distribution of wealth is a  'l'IIE: BOOK OF 'l'HE PROPHET JEltEMIAH. [en. v. 1-31.