and search for food in the neighbouring villages; no one is excepted from his divine bounty. Is the being reduced to feign wretchedness not a sufficient misery of itself? Is it not preferable to assist fictitious wants, rather than to run the risk of refusing aid to real and melancholy objects of compassion? When an impostor should even deceive your charity, where is the loss? Is it not always Jesus Christ who receives it from your hand? And is your recompense attached to the abuse which may be made of your bounty, or to the intention itself which bestows it?
From this rule there springs a third, laid down in the history of our gospel, at the same time with the other two: it is, that not only ought charity to be universal, but likewise mild, affable, and compassionate. Jesus Christ, beholding these people wandering and unprovided at the foot of the mountain, is touched with compassion; he is affected at the sight, and the wants of the multitude awaken his tenderness and pity. Third rule: the gentleness of charity.
We often accompany pity with so much asperity toward the unfortunate, while stretching out to them a helping hand, — we look upon them with so sour and so severe a countenance, that a simple denial had been less galling to them than a charity so harshly and so unfeelingly bestowed; for the pity which appears affected by our misfortunes, consoles them almost as much as the bounty which relieves them. We reproach to them their strength, their idleness, their wandering and vagabond manners; we accuse their own conduct for their indigence and wretchedness: and, in succouring, we purchase the right of insulting them. But, were the unhappy creature whom you outrage permitted to reply, — if the abjectness of his situation had not put the check of shame and respect upon his tongue, what do you reproach to me? would he say. An idle life, and useless, and vagabond manners. But what are the cares which in your opulence engross you? The cares of ambition, the anxieties of fortune, the impulses of the passions, the refinements of voluptuousness. I may be an unprofitable servant; but are you not yourself an unfaithful one? Ah! if the most culpable were always to be the poorest and the most unfortunate in this world, would your lot be superior to mine? You reproach me with a strength which I apply to no purpose; but to what use do you apply your own? Because I work not, I ought not to have food; but are you dispensed yourself from that law? Are you rich merely that you may pass your life in a shameful effeminacy and sloth? Ah! the Lord will judge between you and me, and, before his awful tribunal, it shall be seen whether your voluptuousness and profusion were more allowable in you than the innocent artifice which I employ to attract assistance to my sufferings.
Yes, my brethren, let us at least offer to the unfortunate, hearts feeling for their wants. If the mediocrity of our fortune permit us not altogether to relieve our indigent fellow-creatures, let us, by our humanity, at least soften the yoke of poverty. Alas! we give
