days are yet left to you, go into the house of mourning, under the roof of affliction, and mingle with the old, the wretched, and the sad bow down thy spirit with them, and chasten thy soul with their sorrow;-when thy feet sound on on the threshold of the door, the widowed woman shall say there is bread for us to day; children shall flock about thee, and thou shalt be to them as a God, antient people shall have joy in their last days because of thee; thy mind shall be moved within thee, and the bread, and the estate of the poor, and oppressed, shall be precious in thine eyes. Many are charitable in order to enjoy the luxury of gratitude; an accidental good if it comes; but an unworthy motive for benevolence, because it makes the virtue to depend upon the caprice of the individual, towards whom it is exercised: For the permanent and unchangeable rule of religion, it gives me a rule which varies with the feelings of every wretched being whom I relieve: If my taste is gratified with the display of every proper sentiment, I am compassionate; but the slightest dis gust is sufficient to avert me from one of the highest duties of a Christian; I love moral effect more than religious obedience; my principal object is not to relieve human misery, but to excite in my own mind. agreeable feeling: The pity which Jesus taught was a modest, and invisible pity, thinking only of lightening the heavy heart, trembling at fame, fearful lest any pleasure in the gratitude of man might mingle with the spirit of charity, and pollute the pure sacrifice which it was offering up to God. To conclude, let us always remember that every charity is short lived, and inefficacious, which flows from any other motive than the right. There is a charity which originates from the romantic fiction of humble virtue, and innocence in distress; but this will be soon disgusted by low artifice, and scared by brutal vice. The charity which proceeds from ostentation can exist no longer than when its motives remain undetected. There is, (as I have just stated) a charity which is meant to excite the feelings of gratitude, but this will meet with its termina tion in disappointment. That charity alone endures, which flows from a sense of duty, and a hope in God: This is the charity that treads in secret those paths of misery, from which all but the lowest of human wretches have fled; this is that charity which no labour can weary, no ingratitude detach, no horror disgust, that toils, that pardons, that suffers, that is seen by no man, and honoured by no man, but, like the great laws of nature, does the work of God in silence, and looks to future, and better worlds for its reward. |