The
very evil and woe of man's condition upon earth may be oftentimes
detected in the necessity of looking to some other woe as the pledge of
its purification; so that what separately would have been hateful for
itself, passes mysteriously into an object of toleration, of hope, or
even of prayer, as a counter-venom to the taint of some more mortal
poison. Poverty, for instance, is in both senses necessary for man. It
is necessary in the same sense as thirst is necessary (_i. e._
inevitable) in a fever--necessary as one corollary amongst many others,
from the eternal hollowness of all human efforts for organizing any
perfect model of society--a corollary which, how gladly would all of us
unite to cancel, but which our hearts suggest, which Scripture solemnly
proclaims, to be ineradicable from the land. In this sense, poverty is
a necessity over which we _mourn_,--as one of the dark phases that
sadden the vision of human life. But far differently, and with a stern
gratitude, we recognize another mode of necessity for this gloomy
distinction--a call for poverty, when seen in relation to the manifold
agencies by which it developes human energies, in relation to the
trials by which it searches the power of patience and religion, in
relation to the struggles by which it evokes the nobilities of
fortitude; or again, amongst those who are not sharers in these trials
and struggles, but sympathizing spectators, in relation to the
stimulation by which it quickens wisdom that watches over the causes of
this evil, or by which it vivifies the spirit of love that labors for
its mitigation.
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