There are so many loving, sincere, foolish, cruel uplift movements in
the land. They spring up, fail, wail, disappear, only to be succeeded
by twice as many more. They fail because instead of having the barrel
do the uplifting, they try to do it with a derrick.
The victims of the artificial uplift cannot stay uplifted. They rattle
back, and "the last estate of that man is worse than the first."
You cannot uplift a beggar by giving him alms. You are using the
derrick. We must feed the hungry and clothe the naked, but that is not
helping them, that is propping them. The beggar who asks you to help
him does not want to be helped. He wants to be propped. He wants you to
license him and professionalize him as a beggar.
You can only help a man to help himself. Help him to grow. You cannot
help many people, for there are not many people willing to be helped on
the inside. Not many willing to grow up.
When Peter and John went up to the temple they found the lame beggar
sitting at the gate Beautiful. Every day the beggar had been "helped."
Every day as they laid him at the gate people would pass thru the gate
and see him. He would say, "Help me!" "Poor man," they would reply,
"you are in a bad fix. Here is help," and they would throw him some
money.
And so every day that beggar got to be more of a beggar. The public
"helped" him to be poorer in spirit, more helpless and a more hopeless
cripple. No doubt he belonged after a few days of the "helping" to the
Jerusalem Beggars' Union and carried his card. Maybe he paid a
commission for such a choice beggars' beat.
But Peter really helped him. "Silver and gold have I none; but such as
I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and
walk."
