Page:The religious instruction of the colored population.djvu/6

 those things which ye do see and hear. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and (to cap the marvellous climax) the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who shall not be offended in me." As if He had said, "Blessed is he who shall recognize, in all these tokens, the proofs of my divine authority. Blessed is he who can, by a spiritual discernment, give to each its absolute, and to each its comparative, weight and importance. Blessed is he who has an eye to see that the chief glory of the gospel is not those miracles wherewith it was introduced, but its testimony to God's free, sovereign, all-humbling, all-equalizing love for the poorest; its testimony to Christ's compassion and friendship for the poorest; its testimony to the regard had, in the plan of salvation, for the very poorest; its testimony to the immortality of the poorest; its testimony to the priceless value of the souls of the poorest, for whom Christ shed his blood, and to whom, emphatically, Christ preached; its testimony to the grand duty of the church and the minisiry, to see that the poor have the gospel preached unto them." The grandest and most distinctive peculiarity of the gospel dispensation is, therefore, its adaptedness to the state of the most miserable, and the attention it pays to them in particular. Not those that are whole, but the sick; not the righteous, but sinners; not many wise, or mighty, or noble, but the foolish, the weak, the base, the despised, hath God chosen, that no flesh should glory in his presence. The gospel is for those who have nothing and deserve nothing. It is for the poor in every sense of the term. But, alas! those who need do not always desire. "The blessings dispensed by the gospel possess no charm for men morally and spiritually dead." They will not come to the gospel; it, therefore, goes to them. To the poor the gospel is preached. As the great peculiarity of the gospel is its adaptedness to the poor, so the great duty of its friends and receivers is to carry it to the poor. Where the greatest destitution of the gospel is, thither its lovers most earnestly seek to send it. The Christian delights in hearing the blessed sound himself but he is no Christian if he will not sacrifice its music for his own ear to that mercy which it may and can convey to the ear of the poor and guilty and wretched around him. No Christian man, therefore, and no Christian church, acts up to the spirit of the Christian dispensation, if he or they will not sacrifice time, toil, ease, money, every