ing images of your God: he wisheth, in a word, that while nothing is spared toward the gratification of an inordinate passion for gaming, and every thing is on the verge of being for ever swallowed up in that gulf, you come not to calculate your expenses, to measure your ability, to allege to us the mediocrity of your fortune and the embarrassment of your affairs, when there is question of consoling an afflicted Christian. He wisheth it; and with reason doth he wish it. What! shall you be rich for evil, and poor for good! — your revenues be amply sufficient to effect your destruction, and not suffice to save your soul, and to purchase heaven! — and, because you carry self-love to the extreme, that every barbarity of heart should be permitted you toward your unfortunate brethren?
But whence comes it that, in this single circumstance, you wish to lower the opinion that the world has of your riches? On every other occasion you wish to be thought powerful; you give yourselves out as such; you even frequently conceal, under appearances of the greatest splendour, affairs already ruined, merely to support the vain reputation of wealth. This vanity, then, does not abandon you but when you are put in remembrance of the duty of compassion. Not satisfied then with confessing the mediocrity of your fortune, you exaggerate it, and sordidness triumphs in your heart, not only over truth, but even over vanity. Ah! the Lord formerly reproached the angel of the church of Laodicea, " Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that in my sight thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." But at present he ought, with regard to you, to change that reproach and to say, " O! you complain that you are poor and destitute of every thing, and you will not see that you are rich and loaded with wealth; and that in times when almost all around you suffer, you alone want for nothing in my sight."
This is the second pretext made use of in opposition to the duty of charity — the general poverty. Thus the disciples reply, in the second place, to our Saviour, as an excuse for not assisting the famishing multitude — that the place is desert and barren, that it is now late, and that he ought to send away the people that they might go to the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread, for they had nothing to eat. A fresh pretext they make use of to dispense themselves from compassion — the misery of the times, the sterility and irregularity of the seasons.
But first, might not our Saviour have answered to the disciples, as a holy father says, It is because the place is barren and desert, and that this people knows not where to find food to allay their hunger, that they should not be sent away fasting, lest their strength fail them by the way. And, behold, my brethren, what I might also reply to you — the times are bad, the seasons are unfavourable. Ah! for that very reason you ought to enter with a more feeling concern, with a more lively and tender anxiety, into the wants of your fellow-creatures. If the place be desert and barren even for you, what must it be for so many unfortunate
