Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1879-02-02
ALMSGI

For the poor ye have always with yOu-JOHN
Xn:8.
What the Savior of mankind said as a
rebuke to the cupidity of the false disciple
has come to be employed as an excuse for
failure to discharge an obvious duty. It is
a patent truth that the poor are always with
US, and claim our sympathy and charity, yet
that does not furnish an excuse for putting
of those claims-of refusing to give of the
plenty that is bestowed by kind providence
to those who are less fortunate and are needy.
The giving of aims is necessary part of
Christianity. The man who turns deaf
ear to the appeals of the needy for charity
when he is abundantly able to heed them
by pleading that the poor are always with
another purpose, is at heart neither Chris
tian nor a humane citizen.
The habit of protesting Christians in per-
verting the words of scripture to suit their
own selfish purposes or desires, is a crying
evil in the church of to-day. All manner of
malice, uacharity, and falsehood is excused
or an attempt made to palliate it by per-
version or misconstruction of q passage of
scripture. "The laborer is worthy of his
hire" is construed in these latter DAYS to
mean that minister of the gospel should
receive ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand dol
lars q year for two hours labor each week.
"Render unto Cesar the things that are
Caesar's,'' is the favorite text of the usurer
as he forecloses the mortgage upon the
household effects of poor widow. IF
thine enemy smite thee on the one cheek,
turn to him the other aIso,' is quoted by
those who wish to smite without being smit-
ten in return. So it comes about that for
every transgression of the moral law-for
every dishonest or disreputable act COM
mitted by church member, he affects to
find warrant for it in passage of scrip
ture. It makes no difference how far he
strains its construction. He satisfies his
own conscierce-if he can, by any
stretch of the imagination, be sup
posed to have one-by quotation
from the book of books. He satisfies him
self, but does he satisfy the moral sense of
the community or him whose words he so
grossly misconstrues?
The duty the church owes to it's poor is
most flagrantly neglected. The church has
tens of thousands to donate to the support of
foreign missions convert the heather in
Boora Boola Cha; it has hundreds of
thousands to spend for the erection of a
magnificent temple of worship; it has thou
sands for tract distribution, but scarcely
dollar for the support of the needy poor at
home. These are put off with the remark
that the money is needed for other purposes,
and hence nothing remains for them. "The
poor ye have always with you,'' but the op-
portunity to build hundred thousand dollar
church, or to make reputation for liberality
on the records of the foreign missionary So
clety, cannot be lost. It is a standing dis
grace to many of our most fashionable
churches that there are people included in
their membership that are suffering for the
actual necessaries of life-sufering panps
that are disgrace to the community-and
are turned away from the door of the sane
tuary empty~handed.
''If man care not for those of his own
he is worse than an infdel.u and
the church that neglects its own poor is
worse than no church at all. 1t violates one
of the cardinal principles of religion, and
brings odium upon the cause it processes to
promote. What we need is a broader spirit
OF charity-a charity that will not neglect
the wants of those who are at the doors beg
ging for bread while it lavishes wealth upon
less deserving objects in foreign lands. We
need charity such as that possessed by the
founders of Christianity, that gave to him
that asked and withheld not from those who ]
were in need. The church can save itself
from contumely by taking care that mono of
those deserving poor who apply to it for
aid be turned hungry away. High-sounding
Titles will avail nothing when the books are
finally balanced if it shall be found that
cup of cold water was refused to one of the
least Of Christ's disciples.