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SERMON XXXV.

DEUTERONOMY, XV. 11.

For the poor shall never cease out of the land: Therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor and to thy needy in thy land. *

SINCE civilized society is unquestionably the life which Providence designs for man, formed, as he evidently is, with powers to derive his proper happiness from what he may contribute to the public good, nor less formed to be miserable in solitude, by want of employment for the faculties which something of a natural instinct prompts him to exert, — since what are commonly called

* Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Sons of the Clergy, May 18. 1786.

the artificial distinctions of society, the inequalities of rank, wealth, and power, must in truth be a part of God's design, when he designs man to a life in which the variety of occupations and pursuits, arising from those discriminations of condition, is no less essential to the public weal, than the diversity of members in the natural body, and the different functions of its various parts, are essential to the health and vigour of the individual,—since, in harmony with this design of driving man by his powers and capacities, no less than by his wants and infirmities, to seek his happiness in civil life, it is ordained that every rank furnish the individual with the means, not only of subsistence, but of comfort and enjoyment, (for although the pleasures of the different degrees of men are drawn from different sources; and differ greatly in the elegance and lustre of their exterior form and show, yet the quantity of real happiness within the reach of the individual will be found, upon a fair and just comparison, in all the ranks of life the same,) — upon this view of the divine original of civil society, with the inequalities

of condition which obtain in it, and the provision which is equally made in all conditions for the happiness of the individual, -it may seem perhaps unreasonable — it may seem a presumptuous deviation from the Creator's plan, that any should become suitors to the public charity for a better subsistence than their own labour might procure. Poverty, it may seem, can be nothing more than an imaginary evil; of which the modest never will complain, which the intelligent never will commiserate, and the politic never will relieve. And the complaint, it may seem, can never be more indecent, or less worthy of regard, than when it is used by those who profess to be strangers and pilgrims upon the earth, and to have a balm for all the evils of the present world in the certainty of their prospects in a better country.

Shocking as I trust these conclusions must be to the feelings of a Christian assembly, it may nevertheless be useful to demonstrate, that they have no real connexion with the principles from which they seem to be drawn, that they are not

less contrary to reason and to sound policy than to the feelings of philanthropy and the precepts of the gospel. For although I shall not readily admit that the proof of moral obligation cannot in any instance be complete unless the connexion be made out between the action which the heart naturally approves, and that which a right understanding of the interests of mankind would recommend, (on the contrary, to judge practically of right and wrong, we should feel rather than philosophize; and we should act from sentiment rather than from policy,) yet we surely acquiesce with the most cheerfulness in our duty when we perceive how the useful and the fair are united in the same action.

I therefore undertake to prove these two things:

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

Secondly, That the providential appoint

ment of this evil, in subservience to the general good, brings a particular obligation upon men in civilized society to concur for the immediate extinction of the evil,

wherever it appears. "The poor shall

never cease out of the land." And for this especial reason, because the poor shall never cease, therefore it is commanded, "that thou open thine hand wide unto thy brother; that thou surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth."

The distribution of mankind into various orders is not more essential to the being of society than it is conducive to the public good that the fortunes of every individual in every rank should be in a considerable degree uncertain: For were things so ordered that every man's fortune should be invariably determined by the rank in which he should be born, or by the employment to which he should be bred, an Epicurean indolence, the great bane of public prosperity, would inevitably take place among all ranks of men; when industry, of all qualities of the individual

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