Page:Poverty and Riches, a sermon.djvu/21

Rh And at the head of them, and in the midst of them, there is a Lamb as it had been slain. Was He too one of them? Yea verily, for He was rich, and He made himself poor: He inhabited the praises of eternity, and the wealth of a myriad worlds was not worthy to deck the hem of his garment: but He chose to hang naked and bleeding on the trunk of an accursed tree, that his brethren might be saved,—that his Father's will might be done. Was there ever a poorer than He was? No place to lay his head—poorer than the birds and the foxes: forsaken by all his retainers—poorer than an exiled king: his raiment parted among his murderers, and his vesture cast lots on—poorer than the beggar in his rags: his side pierced, and the rich stream of the heart shed forth,—stripped even of life itself in his great deed of atoning love.

He was at their head, and they have followed Him. They have made themselves poor: not by abjuring society, and shrinking from temptation, and leaving duty undone; but by using this world as not grasping it; by laying out, not on self, but on Him and His; by passing through life, not in the ostentatious and compulsory poverty of monastic vows, but in the daily abnegation of luxuries and comforts and advantages,—in the voluntary and unseen surrender of the working hand, and the toiling brain, and the spreading influence, which might have been used for self, to the labour and service of love. These are they who wrestled for