I. GOD'S PEOPLE EVER HAVE SYMPATHY WITH THEIR BRETHREN.

1. If we belong to the people of God — if this were so in Israel, much more should it be among Christians — then there will be in our hearts a tender feeling toward our fellow men — a feeling implanted by God Himself. The heart will say: "This is thy brother; help him." This results from God's love in the heart, which leads the brethren to "love one another."

2. But this tender-heartedness can be destroyed and the heart be hardened, even among Christians, and this against the light of conscience. They often do as it is rumoured the New Zealanders did with their children. They pressed down the necks of the children under a flinty stone in order to harden them, so Christians make their hearts sometimes hard as flints through avariciousness. The avaricious heart ever thinks: "This belongs to me and to no one else, and none shall share it."

3. This is not well-pleasing to God. He sees that by covetousness men are led to destruction, and to reject His love toward them. For when men are so hard-hearted, how can they have the love of God in them?

II. THE HEARTS AND HANDS OF GOD'S PEOPLE ARE OPEN TOWARD THEIR BRETHREN.

1. When this is so, then the love of God has full scope in their hearts; and thus He causes through those open hands and hearts much good to flow out into this evil world. For to His children who are ever ready to give to those who need He will give yet more, so that from their increased store they may give yet more fully to others, and that thus these also may learn to praise God.

2. Therefore he who has a kind heart and open hand will experience and receive a blessing. As he gives, so he receives. It is with such as with Cornelius: "Thy prayers and thine alms are come up before God." Thus, too, the way is made open for the reception of God's gifts both temporal and spiritual. Let us all, then, endeavour to preserve a tender heart, arid not let our heart be hardened.

(J. C. Blumhardt.)

(Homilist.)

II. OUR DUTY TOWARDS THE POOR. Now if we looked only at the declaration in the first part of the text, and were disposed to reason on it, we might say, Be our duty to the poor what it may, we must not interfere with their poverty; it is God's will they should be poor, and we must not interfere with His will. This would be like saying, God has sent sickness amongst us, and we must not make use of any means to cure or relieve it; or, He has made the winter, and we will do nothing to mitigate the rigour of it; or, He has created the darkness, and it is wrong to have lights in our dwelling to enlighten it. Many of what we call the evils of our condition are designed of God to bring into lawful and healthy action the powers of man's mind and the feelings of man's heart, and this evil of poverty among the number. "The poor shall never cease out of the land"; that is My will, says God. "Therefore I command thee" — what? to let the needy alone in their poverty? No; I have placed them in the land to call forth and exercise thy bounty. The painful work is Mine — I have ordained poverty; the pleasant work shall be thine — thou shalt relieve it. "Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor and to thy needy in thy land." It is a touching circumstance that not only is the general duty of what we call charity to the poor enjoined in Scripture, but so great is the interest God takes in it that the measure and manner of it are strongly enjoined. Here we are told, in the first place, that it must be liberal. "Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother." And it must be extensive charity; that is, as extensive as we can make it. "I will not give my money," we sometimes say, "to this man or that; he has no claim on me; I must keep the little I have to spare for those who have claims on me." But look again, "Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother" — to "thy brother" first, to those who from relationship or from some other cause seem to have claims on thee; but not to "thy brother" only, "to thy poor and to thy needy in thy land." The words are multiplied; to those who have no claims whatever on thee but their poverty and their need. And it must be also a cheerful charity.

III. We may go on now to THE MOTIVES BY WHICH WE ARE URGED TO THE EXERCISE OF THIS GRACE. For these, some of you may be ready to say, I must turn to the Gospel. But no, the God of the Gospel is the God of the law also, the God of the Christian Church was the God of the ancient Church, and there is no motive urged now on us in these Gospel days which was not urged in substance on the Jews in the days of old.

1. For instance, to begin, our own mercies are made use of under the Gospel to impel us to show mercy to others. "Freely ye have received," our Lord says, "freely give." Now look at this chapter. "Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor and to thy needy" — why? "For the Lord thy God," the sixth verse says, is opening His hand wide unto thee; He "is blessing thee," and blessing thee as abundantly as He said He would; "the Lord thy God blesseth thee as He promised thee."

2. But again, the special love of God to the poor is another reason why our hands should be opened to them. Of all the books that were ever written, no book manifests such care for the poor as the Bible. This has often been noticed by those who have closely studied this book, and many others with it, as one of the many internal evidences of its Divine original. But turn to the tenth chapter of the part of it now before us, the nineteenth verse. "Love ye therefore the stranger," says God. And why? Ye yourselves, He adds, "were strangers in the land of Egypt." But this is not the only reason; read what goes before. The Lord Himself "loveth the stranger." "The Lord loveth the stranger," "love ye therefore the stranger," says God. And this applies with much greater force to the widow and fatherless. If natural feeling, as we call it — if our own parental feelings — do not incline us to open our hand to them, let the feelings of God towards them incline us to do so. I love the fatherless, He says; let us, for His sake, because He loves them, love them also.

3. But here is a third motive pressed on you; this "opening of our hand" to the poor will lead the Lord to open His hand to us. "For this thing," we read in the verse before the text — "for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto." This is the legal promise, you may say. And true, it is; but the Lord is not less bountiful or less generous under the Gospel than under the law.

(U. Bradley, M. A.)

I. That poverty is a real evil which, without any impeachment of the goodness or wisdom of providence, the constitution of the world actually admits.

II. That providential appointment of this evil in subservience to the general good, brings a particular obligation upon men in civilised society to concur for the immediate extinction of the evil wherever it appears.

(Bp. Horsley.)

(J. Parker, D. D.)

II. CHARITY IS DUE TO OURSELVES. It is due to ourselves, as we would wish with uprightness to discharge the duties of that station in which we are placed. To administer relief to the poor is graciously connected with our present comfort and our future well-being. The very act of charity is accompanied with the most refined complacency; it is answering that sympathy which is born in the heart of every man, and which, unless stifled by unnatural discipline, calls loudly for gratification. They are happy who are the objects of your bounty, but ye who have experienced it can tell that "it is more blessed to give than to receive." Connected with this is that blessing over our worldly concerns "which maketh rich, and to which is added no sorrow." And let it be remembered, that prosperity is but for a season; now, therefore, it is time to lay up a store of good deeds, the remembrance of which shall be the best support when misfortune overtakes the prosperous. Let it be remembered yet again that what possessions men have are not their own, but are the property of their Master, who hath committed it to their stewardship. All their opportunities, and all their means of doing good, must he accounted for.

III. IT IS DUE TO RELIGION — to a religion which is in its origin, its effects, its principle, and its precepts a system of charity; a religion which, originating in the love of God, proposes to restore to happiness and dignity those who are "poor, and miserable, and wretched, and blind, and naked." They to whom mercy is shown should be merciful. This is what Christianity requires, nay, what it affirms to be the amount and the criterion of a genuine profession.

IV. IT IS DUE TO THE POOR. As a something voluntary is implied in the idea of charity, it may sound paradoxical to speak of the rights of the poor on the charity of the rich. But the incongruity is only in sound, for it is an acknowledged maxim of civil economy that the poor (the industrious poor, of whom only I now speak) have an absolute right to be supported by the State, whose agriculture, commerce, and manufactures have benefited by their exertions. Further, the poor have a right as brethren, and this is a right which the heart of a Christian cannot deny.

V. IT IS DUE TO THE AGE IN WHICH WE LIVE — an age characterised for beneficence, an age distinguished above all others for the magnitude of its political events, for the advancement of science, for the general diffusion of literature, and more especially for a spirit that has amalgamated all classes of society, the most opposite ranks and professions, into one mass, and stamped the whole with benevolence.

(A. Waugh, M. A.)

1. Mankind can never be too strongly or too frequently cautioned against self-deception. If a state of vice be a state of misery, a state of vice of which we are ignorant is doubly so, from the increased probability of its duration. It is surprising how many men are cheated by flighty sentiments of humanity into a belief that they are humane, how frequently charitable words are mistaken for charitable deeds, and a beautiful picture of misery for an effectual relief of it.

2. Another important point in the administration of charity is a proper choice of the objects we relieve. To give promiscuously is better, perhaps, than not to give at all, but instead of risking the chance of encouraging imposture, discover some worthy family struggling up against the world, a widow with her helpless children, old people incapable of labour, or orphans destitute of protection and advice; suppose you were gradually to attach yourselves to such real objects of compassion, to learn their wants, to stimulate their industry, and to correct their vices; surely these two species of charity are not to be compared together in the utility or in the extent of their effects, in the benevolence they evince or in the merits they confer.

3. The true reason why this species of charity is so rarely practised is that we are afraid of imposing such a severe task upon our indolence, though, in truth, all these kinds of difficulties are extremely overrated. When once we have made ourselves acquainted with a poor family, and got into a regular train of seeing them at intervals, the trouble is hardly felt and the time scarcely missed; and if it is missed, ought it to be missed?

4. These charitable visits to the poor, which I have endeavoured to inculcate, are of importance, not only because they prevent imposture by making you certain of the misery which you relieve, but because they produce an appeal to the senses which is highly favourable to the cultivation of charity. He who only knows the misfortunes of mankind at second hand and by description has but a faint idea of what is really suffered in the world. We feel, it may be said, the eloquence of description, but what is all the eloquence of art to that mighty and original eloquence with which nature pleads her cause; to the eloquence of paleness and of hunger; to the eloquence of sickness and of wounds; to the eloquence of extreme old age, of helpless infancy, of friendless want! What pleadings so powerful as the wretched hovels of the pool, and the whole system of their comfortless economy!

5. You are not, I hope, of opinion that these kinds of cares devolve upon the clergy alone, as the necessary labours of their profession, but upon everyone whose faith teaches And whose fortune enables him to be humane.

6. Nor let it be imagined that the duties which I have pointed out are much less imperative because the law has taken to itself the protection of the poor; the law must hold out a scanty relief, or it would encourage more misery than it relieved: the law cannot distinguish between the poverty of idleness and the poverty of misfortune; the law degrades those whom it relieves, and many prefer wretchedness to public aid; do not, therefore, spare yourselves from a belief that the poor are well taken care of by the civil power, and that individual interference is superfluous. Many die in secret, — they perish and are forgotten.

7. Remember that every charity is short-lived and inefficacious which flows from any other motive than the right. There is a charity which originates from the romantic fiction of humble virtue and innocence in distress, but this will be soon disgusted by low artifice and scared by brutal vice. The charity which proceeds from ostentation can exist no longer than when its motives remain undetected. There is a charity which is meant to excite the feelings of gratitude, but this will meet with its termination in disappointment. That charity alone endures which flows from a sense of duty and a hope in God. This is the charity that treads in secret those paths of misery from which all but the lowest of human wretches have fled; this is that charity which no labour can weary, no ingratitude detach, no horror disgust; that toils, that pardons, that suffers, that is seen by no man, and honoured by no man, but, like the great laws of nature, does the work of God in silence, and looks to future and better worlds for its reward.

(Sydney Smith, M. A.)

     8463   priority, of faith, hope and love

Deuteronomy 15:1-11

     5353   interest

Deuteronomy 15:6-8

     5389   lending

Deuteronomy 15:6-11

     5233   borrowing

Deuteronomy 15:7-8

     5449   poverty, remedies
     8262   generosity, human
     8821   self-indulgence

Deuteronomy 15:7-9

     8243   ethics, social

Deuteronomy 15:7-11

     5289   debt