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Poverty no virtue; wealth no sin. Nor yet is wealth morally good, poverty morally evil. Virtue is a plant which depends not on the atmosphere surrounding it, but on the hand that waters and the grace that sustains it. Grace must be sustained by Divine power. Yet, as a fact, God has been pleased for the most part to plant His grace in the soil of poverty. A very large multitude of His family are destitute, afflicted, tormented, and are kept leaning day by day upon the daily provisions of God, and trusting Him from meal to meal, believing that He will supply their wants out of the riches of His fulness.

I. THE FACT, THAT THE LORD HAS A POOR PEOPLE. A word from Him, and they might all be rich. Yet He does not speak that word. Why?

1. To teach us how grateful we should be for all the comforts He bestows on many of us.

2. To display His sovereignty in all He does.

3. To manifest the power of His comforting promises, and the supports of the gospel. The master.works of God are those that stand in the midst of difficulties — when all things oppose them, yet maintain their stand; these are His all-glorious works; and so His best children, those who honour Him most, are those who have grace to sustain them amidst the heaviest load of tribulations and trials.

4. To plague the devil, e.g., Job.

5. To give us some living glimpse of Christ. A poor saint is a better picture of Jesus than a rich one.

6. To give us opportunities of showing our love to Him. Take away the poor, and one channel wherein our love delights to flow is withdrawn at once.

II. THE DUTY, THAT WE SHOULD REMEMBER THE POOR.

1. In prayers.

2. In conversation.

3. In providing for their necessities.

IV. Why we should remember the poor.

1. They are the Lord's brethren. This is surely reason enough.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

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KJV: Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do.

WEB: They only asked us to remember the poor—which very thing I was also zealous to do.