Now, what made Isaiah and Rutherford and Fergushill such poor men
themselves, was just this, that they came out of every money-making
enterprise in the divine life far poorer men than they entered it. There
are some unlucky men in life who never prosper in anything. Everything
goes against them. Everything makes shipwreck into which they adventure
their time and their money and their hope. They go into one promising
concern after another with flying colours and a light heart. Other men
have made great fortunes here, and so will they; but before long their
old evil luck has overtaken them, and they are glad that they are not all
their life in prison for the uttermost farthing. And so on, till at last
they have to go to the poor man's market for the last decencies of their
death and burial; for their winding-sheet, and their coffin, and their
grave. And so was it with the ministers of Anwoth and Ochiltree; and so
it is with all that poverty-stricken class of ministers to which they
belonged. For, whatever their attainments and performances in preaching
or in pastoral work may do to enrich others, one thing is certain: all
they do only impoverishes to pennilessness the men who put their whole
life and their whole heart into the performance of such work. Their
whole service of God, both in the public ministry of the word, and in
their more personal submission to His law, has this fatal and hopeless
principle ruling it, that the better it is done, and the more completely
any man gives himself up to the doing of it, the poorer and the weaker it
leaves him who does it. So much so, that while he leads other men into
the way of the greatest riches, he himself sinks deeper and deeper into
poverty of spirit every day. Till, out of sheer pity, and almost
remorse, that His service should entail such poverty on all His servants,
Christ sends them out continually less with an invitation to their people
than to themselves, saying always to them, 'Take the invitation to
yourselves; and he of My servants who hath no money let him buy without
money and bear away what he will.' 'My dear Fergushill, our Lord is not
so cruel as to let a poor man see salvation and never let him touch it
for want of money; indeed, the only thing that commendeth sinners to
Christ is their extreme necessity and want. Ho, he that hath no money,
that is the poor man's market.' When James Guthrie was lying ill and
like to die, he called in his man, J