Year: 1876




But the greatest of these is charity


CHARITY may be defined as the love
of man. A low order of human nature
can love itself or its own little group
Of home or family, but it is higher
order of soul that can love mankind.
Christ said if you love those only who
love you, you are equal only to the
heathen or publican, for publican
can do the same. If you would pass
beyond the publican your heart must
pass far beyond the little space that
limits the publIcan'S affections, and
find the human family outside your
house or garden-walls. Strangers
have borne witness of thy charity"
said st. John. Inasmuch as no soul
can love man without loving all that
is good of heaven and earth, the term
often is the equivalent of all love
toward man or God. But its prime
import is to be found in that tender
sentiment toward humanity, which
sent Paul out on his mission, or led
Christ to his works and self-denial and
death. 1t is the sentiment that lies
beneath the heroes, turning their suf-
ferings into triumph. To find the
meaning of term, look into the def
nitiOnS and usageS of the past, and
thus from the long experiment and
the many witnesses, the meaning of
the word will come to you with not a
single secret kept back. What the
Bible says of this grace you well
know. Call other witnesses. Con-
fuciuS says: Charity is that rational
and constant affection which makes us
sacrifice ourselves to the human race
as if we were united with it so as to
form one individual, partaking equally
in its prosperity and adversely"
John Bunyan says: 1.-The Shepherds
led the Pilgrims to Mount Charity,
where they showed him a man that
had bundle of cloth before him, out
of which he was cutting coats and gar
ments for the poor who stood around
him, and yet his bundle or roll of cloth
never was less" 1t would consume
the hour should the poets be consulted
as to the meaning of this potent word.


But Dryden says:


In such blest charities she passed the day.
IT'S wondrous how she found an hour TO pray.


Another says:


half his earned pittance to poor neighbors went
They had his aims and he had his content.


Marking thus the usage of all wri-
ters, you will find that charity is love
which breaks over the narrow con-
fines of ones own life and home and
sweeps away off over the wide fields
of man. 1t is like the suns warmth
and light which leave the sun itself and
fly away, seeking worlds remote, to
cover them with warmth, and light,
and life.


A great love cannot limit itself to
one work. What our mother did for
us yesterday was not the exhaustion of
her love. She comes back to-day with
new deeds, and stands with a heart
oyerfowing with new affection for the
morrow. So the charity of which
Paul speaks has no special mission
among old Roman captives or Ameri-
can slaves. Those scenes only illus
trate principle which is wider than a
prison or a cotton field. No deed of
yesterday exhausts it. 1t stands by a
nation indeed, but also by a single
heart, ready TO emancipate race or
take up little child in its arms and
bless it with education, and honor, and
piety. Charity is the simple overflow
ing of a noble soul.


No one knows why it is so, but it is
historically true that out of the love
of things comes such an action or such
an impulse as no indifference or hate
can ever show. The naturalist so
loves the external world that he ram
bles all over it in his fond quest of its
wonders of life or form. The musician
SO loves the harmonies of sound that
night and day he is fastened by this in
diSSoluble bond TO his pursuit. Now,
what III the economy of God is charity
except positive affection that should
fasten each high intellect to the hui
man race that the soul may wander all
over it, finding everywhere the world S
need and worth, and, through the help
of these, its own usefulness and devel-
Opment?


Illwill shuts the gates between that
within us and that without. Let pain
or sorrow rack one, and how empty is
the spring or summer, the bird-song OF
the blossoms; but let the pain or the
grief all pass away, and how delicious
is the landscape from the window
Thus ill-Will shuts out the great human
universe and the narrowed heart
scorns the poetry, the art, the learn
ing, the thought. the condition, even
the friendship of mankind; but when
the broad love of man fully possesses
the soul, then one hears with delight
the prattle of TIE infant or the moral
izings of even the heather, and finds
some beauty in religion not his own
and in lands under foreign flag. As
prejudice closes the mind and makes
man dweller in cave or Diogenes
tub, shuts him out from mankind as
by sea of ice, SO charity is the oppo
site faculty and transforms den int
palace and peoples that palace will
the minds and hearts of all times neal
and far. There is no evidence tha
this love Of man was implanted only
that man might befriend a beggar O.
set free slave; but that the hear
might always draw up near to the hu