BENEVOLENCE PERVERTED.

 Poverty is well spoken of as the wolf— for nothing is more cruel and terrible, and nothing more destructive of morals. Of course the poverty meant is not that comfortable sort which has a warm coat, a good roof, and a substantial meal : but real hunger, rags and general destitution. Persons of real moral fibre, or those actuated by mighty religious faith, can bear up and still preserve a human-like spirit and character when thus dreadfully circumstanced. Ordinary people, under the pressure of such need, are ready to do or be anything, and lose all faith in virtue, all belief in immortality, and all hope in God, though they are ready to sham these faiths if anything can be got by so doing. How sad is it, that millions of persons among the most civilized and Christian nations are in a state of degraded pauperism. For thus they are a burden to the community and a misery to themselves. From the number of charitable institutions we are obliged to maintain, it is evident that even in these new countries destitution holds many in its chains.
It is commonly imagined that Christ teaches that poor persons will always be found on the earth right on to the end of the days. Certainly, He said " The poor ye have always with you." But this was said to the Apostles, and simply taught that they could at any time help the poor, as they were always with them; but He was about to leave them soon, and opportunities to serve Him would cease. It is most unwarrantable to make the words mean that pauperism is to be perpetual. It is of the greatest importance to disabuse Christians and Protestants of the false sense attached to this text ; for if pauperism is ever to be abolished, and all human beings to be provided with a fair sufficiency of food clothing, culture, and dwelling, it will be by their philanthropic and self-denying labours. All the unbelievers can do is to find fault with the works of the faithful. But Christians have been largely prevented from forming a fixed resolution to stamp out pauperism by a feeling of the hopelessness of the attempt— a feeling produced as much by a misunderstanding of Christ's words as by the magnitude of the evil with which they will have to contend.
The Bible is dead against pauperism. Let the humanitarian principles of the Gospel be carried out, and it will vanish. The righteousness of life, the loving regard for others, the self-denial, self-control, and self-sacrifice enjoined on all men, if practiced by all, would be profitable on the grandest scale for the life that how is, as well as for the life to come. The Bible sings of "the good time coming," — the time of peace, of plenty, of knowledge, and of righteousness. It tells the glories of the latter day ; what folly to imagine rags and filth and wretchedness during the millennial era.
Pauperism and Popery will go together; and so they should. For these have been wonderfully interlinked in the history of the European nations. Popery makes men paupers in body soul and spirit ; while pauperism makes men Papists, and keeps them so in many countries! Romanism makes men paupers by her false doctrines concerning marriage, concerning the human body, and concerning the value and use of material goods. It does the same by the misdirection of human energies to barren enterprises. In nothing is the injurious nature of Roman teaching and influence more apparent than in the Romish ideas and practice of relieving the poor. Their relief is made a religious exercise, and so far the Romanists are right. But, by means of the false doctrine of works, benevolence is transformed into pious selfishness, and so assumes a wrong aspect, both to donor and recipient. "The poor man is made a treasure to the rich, a key to heaven, and a path to Paradise." Hence he becomes a very important person, and prizes his privileges. Rich penitents atone for sins, and secure weighty crowns of glory by supplying his necessities, and so the poverty of the pauper makes him important, powerful, and self-indulgent. Rome, by means of her indiscriminate charity, brought into being a lazy good for nothing class, which depend on the gifts of the wealthy, or on the enforced contributions of the community. Hitherto Protestantism has not been able to cope with the evil Rome has produced among the nations, by encouraging large classes to prefer beggary to honest work. How ingrained beggary is in the Roman system, is seen from, a fact recently brought out at the Manchester School Board, that at St. Joseph's Reformatory School the priests actually sent the boys out begging, though their maintainance was paid for by the School Board. Moreover, the very priests of Rome have been by the thousand mere mendicants in the countries of southern Europe. The Papist charity works evil and not good. Because it never seeks to emancipate the poor from the need of alms, by teaching them to help themselves. Because it breaks down self-reliance, and teaches the needy to hang on the rich. The Neapolitan Lazzaroni, in their detestable laziness, foolish superstition, mental and industrial ignorance, friendship to political despotism and shameless immorality, are the living monuments and products of that evil alms-giving which is inculcated by the Latin Church.

Protestant Standard (Sydney, 1876,) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article207783264