Note, 1. Among the children of men divine Providence has so ordered it
that some are rich and others poor, and these are intermixed in
societies: The Lord is the Maker of both, both the author of their
being and the disposer of their lot. The greatest man in the world must
acknowledge God to be his Maker, and is under the same obligations to
be subject to him that the meanest is; and the poorest has the honour
to be the work of God's hands as much as the greatest. Have they not
all one Father? Mal. ii. 10; Job xxxi. 15. God makes some rich, that
they may be charitable to the poor, and others poor, that they may be
serviceable to the rich; and they have need of one another, 1 Cor. xii.
21. He make some poor, to exercise their patience, and contentment, and
dependence upon God, and others rich, to exercise their thankfulness
and beneficence. Even the poor we have always with us; they shall never
cease out of the land, nor the rich neither. 2. Notwithstanding the
distance that is in many respects between rich and poor, yet in most
things they meet together, especially before the Lord, who is the Maker
of them all, and regards not the rich more than the poor, Job xxxiv.
19. Rich and poor meet together at the bar of God's justice, all guilty
before God, concluded under sin, and shapen in iniquity, the rich as
much as the poor; and they meet at the throne of God's grace; the poor
are as welcome there as the rich. There is the same Christ, the same
scripture, the same Spirit, the same covenant of promises, for them
both. There is the same heaven for poor saints that there is for rich:
Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham. And there is the same hell for rich
sinners that there is for poor. All stand upon the same level before
God, as they do also in the grave. The small and great are there.