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,