'Ho, ye that have no money, come and buy in the poor man's
market.'--_Rutherford_.
It makes us think when we find two such men as Samuel Rutherford and John
Fergushill falling back for their own souls on a Scripture like this. We
naturally think of Scriptures like this as specially sent out to the
chief of sinners; to those men who have sold themselves for naught, or,
at least, to new beginners in the divine life. We do not readily think
of great divines and famous preachers like Rutherford, or of godly and
able pastors like Fergushill, as at all either needing such Scriptures as
this, or as finding their own case at all met in them. But it is surely
a great lesson to us all--a great encouragement and a great rebuke--to
find two such saintly men as the ministers of Anwoth and Ochiltree
reassuring and heartening one another about the poor man's market as they
do in their letters to one another. And their case is just another
illustration of this quite familiar fact in the Church of Christ, that
the preachers who press their pulpits deepest into the doctrines of
grace, and who, at the same time, themselves make the greatest
attainments in the life of grace, are just the men, far more than any of
their hearers, both to need and to accept the simplest, plainest, freest,
fullest offer of the Gospel. If the men of the house of Israel will not
accept the peace you preach to them, said our Lord to His first apostles,
then take that peace home to yourselves. And how often has that been
repeated in the preaching of the Gospel since the days of Peter and John!
How often have our best preachers preached their best sermons to
themselves! 'I preached the following Lord's Day,' says Boston in his
diary, 'on "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" and my sermon was mostly
on my own account.' And it was just because Boston preached so often in
that egoistical way that the people of Ettrick were able to give such a
good account of what they heard. Weep yourselves, if you would have your
readers weep, said the shrewd old Roman poet to the shallow poetasters of
his Augustan day. And the reproof and the instruction come up from every
pew to every pulpit still. 'Feel what you say, if you would have us feel
it. Believe what you say, if you would have us believe it. Flee to the
refuge yourselves, if you would have us flee. And let us see you selling
all in the poor man's market, if you would see us also selling all and
coming after you.' The people of Anwoth and Ochiltree were very well off
in this respect also that their ministers did not bid them do anything
that they did not first do themselves. The truest and best apostolical
succession had come to those two parishes in that their two pastors were
able, with a good conscience before God and before their people, to say
with Paul to the Philippians: 'Those things, which ye have both learned,
and received, and heard, and seen in me do; and the God of peace shall be
with you.'
As to the merchandise of the poor man's market,--that embraces everything
that any man can possibly need or find any use for either in this world
or in the next. Absolutely everything is found in the poor man's
market--everything, from God Himself, the most precious of all things,
down to the sinner himself, the most vile and worthless of all things.
The whole world, and all the worlds, are continually thrown into this
market, both by the seller and by the purchaser. The seller holds
nothing back from this market, and the purchaser comes to this market for
everything. Even what he already possesses; even what he bought and paid
for but yesterday; even what everybody else would call absolutely the
poor man's own, he throws it all back again upon God every day, and thus
holds all he has as his instant purchase of the great Merchantman. The
poor man's market is as far as possible from being a Vanity Fair, but the
catalogues and the sale-lists of that fair may be taken as a specimen of
the things that change hands continually in the poor man's market also.
For here also are sold such merchandise as houses, lands, trades, places,
honours, preferments, pleasures and delights of all sorts; wives,
husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, gold,
silver, and what not. All these things God sells to poor men every day;
and for all these things, as often as they need any of them, His poor men
come to His market for them. And, as has been said, even after they have
got possession of any or all of these things, as if the market had an
absolute fascination for them, like gamblers who cannot stay away from
the wheel, they are back again, buying and selling what, but yesterday,
they took home with them as the best bargain they had ever made. Yes,
the things that, once possessed, either by inheritance or by purchase or
by gift, you would think they would die rather than part with--a
patrimony in ancient lands and houses, a possession they had toiled and
prayed and waited for all their days, Christ on His cross, their own
child in his cradle--absolutely everything they possess, or would die to
possess, they part with again, just that they may have the excitement,
the debate, the delight, the security, and the liberty of purchasing it
all over again every day in the poor man's market.
Over all this merchandise God Himself is the Master Merchant. It all
belongs to Him, and He has put it all into the poor man's purchase. He
owns all the merchandise, and He has opened the market: He invites and
advertises the purchasers, fixes the prices, and settles the conditions
of sale. And the first condition of sale is that all intending
purchasers shall come to Himself immediately for whatever they need. All
negotiation here must be held immediately with God. There are no
middlemen here. They have their own place in the markets of earth; but
there is no room and no need for them here. The producer and the
purchaser meet immediately here. He employs whole armies of servants to
distribute and deliver His goods, but the bargain itself must be struck
with God alone. The price must be paid directly to Him; and then, with
His own hand, He will write out your right and title to your purchase.
Let every poor man, then, be sure to draw near to God, and to God alone.
Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Ho, ye that have no
money: incline your ear, and come to Me: hear, and your soul shall live!
Now, surely, one of the most remarkable things about the purchasers in
this market is just their fewness. We find Isaiah in his day canvassing
the whole of Jerusalem, high and low, and glad to get even one purchaser
here and another there. And Rutherford, looking back to Anwoth from
Aberdeen, was not sure that he had got even so much as one really earnest
purchaser brought near to God. And thus it was that, while at Anwoth, he
was so much in that market himself. Partly on the principle that
preachers are bidden to take to themselves for their trouble what their
proud people refuse, and partly because Rutherford was out of all sight
the poorest man in all Anwoth.
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, James Cowie, to read in the Epistle to
the Romans to him, and when Cowie came to these words, 'I will have mercy
on whom I will have mercy,' his master burst into tears, and said,
'James, I have nothing but that to lippen to.'
Look now at the prices that are demanded and paid in the poor man's
market. And, paradoxical and past all understanding as are so many of
the things connected with this matter, the most paradoxical and past all
understanding of them all is the price that is always asked, and that is
sometimes paid, in that market. When any man comes here to buy, it is
not the value of the article on sale that is asked of him; but the first
question that is asked of him is, How much money have you got? And if it
turns out that he is rich and increased with goods, then, to him, the
price, even of admittance to this market, is all that he has. The very
entrance-money, before he comes in sight of the stalls and tables at all,
has already stripped him bare of every penny he possesses. And that is
why so few purchasers are found in this market; they do not feel able or
willing to pay down the impoverishing entrance-price. As a matter of
fact, it is a very unusual thing to find a young man who has been so well
taught about this market by his parents, his schoolmasters, or even by
his ministers, that he is fit to enter early on its great transactions.
And increasing years do not tend of themselves to reconcile him to the
terms on which God sells His salvation. The price in the poor man's
market is absolutely everything that a rich man possesses; and then, when
he has nothing left, when he has laid down all that he has, or has lost
all, or has been robbed of all, only then the full paradox of the case
comes into his view; for then he begins to discover that the price he
could not meet or face so long as he was a rich and a well-to-do man is
such a price that, in his absolute penury, he can now pay it down till
all the market is his own. Multitudes of poor men up and down the land
remember well, and will never forget, this poor man Rutherford's so
Isaiah-like words, 'Our wants best qualify us for Christ'; and again,
'All my own stock of Christ is some hunger for Him.' 'Say Amen to the
promises, and Christ is yours,' he wrote to Lady Kenmure. 'This is
surely an easy market. You need but to look to Him in faith; for Christ
suffered for all sin, and paid the price of all the promises.'
'Faith cannot be so difficult, surely,' says William Guthrie in his
_Saving Interest_, 'when it consists of so much in _desire_.' Now, both
its exceeding difficulty and its exceeding ease also just consist in
that. Nothing is so easy to a healthy man as the desire for food; but,
then, nothing is so impossible to a dead man, or even to a sick man, as
just desire. Desire sounds easy, but how few among us have that capacity
and that preparation for Christ and His salvation that stands in desire.
Have you that desire? Really and truly, in your heart of hearts, have
you that desire? Then how well it is with you! For that is all that God
looks for in him who comes to the poor man's market; indeed, it is the
only currency accepted there. Isaiah's famous invitation is drawn out
just to meet the case of a man who has desire, and nothing but desire, in
his heart. All the encouragements and assurances that his evangelical
genius can devise are set forth by the prophet to attract and to win the
desiring heart. The desiring heart says to itself, I would give the
whole world if I had it just to see Christ, just to be near Christ, and
just, if it were but possible, that I should ever be the least thing like
Christ. Now, that carries God. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, cannot resist that. No true father could, and least of all a
father who loves his son, and who has such a son to love as God has in
Christ. Well, He says; if you love and desire, honour and estimate My
Son like that, I cannot deny Him the reward and the pleasure of
possessing you and your love. And thus, without any desert in you--any
desert but sheer desire--you have made the greatest, the easiest, the
speediest, the most splendid purchase that all the poor man's market
affords. No, William Guthrie; faith is not so very difficult to the
sinner who has desire. For where desire of the right quality is, and the
right quantity, there is everything. And all the merchandise of God is
at that sinner's nod and bid.
Ho, then, he that hath no money, but only the _desire_ for money, and for
what money can, and for what money cannot, buy, come and buy, without
money and without price. Instead of money, instead of merit, even if you
have nothing but Rutherford's only fitness for Christ, 'My loathsome
wretchedness,' then come with that. Come boldly with that. Come as if
you had in and on you the complete opposite of that. The opposite of
loathsomeness is delightsomeness; and the opposite of wretchedness is
happiness. Yes! but you will search all the Book of God and all its
promises, and you will not find one single letter of them all addressed
to the abounding and the gladsome and the self-satisfied. It is the poor
man's market; and this market goes best when the poor man is not only
poor, but poor beyond all ordinary poverty: poor, as Samuel Rutherford
always was, to 'absolute and loathsome wretchedness.' Let him here,
then, whose sad case is best described in Rutherford's dreadful words,
let him come to Rutherford's market and make Rutherford's merchandise,
and let him do it now. Ho, he that hath no money, he that hath only
misery, let him come, and let him come now.