should endeavour to promote the service of God, and the general happiness of society, and, therefore, we ought not to give them without inquiry into the ends for which they are desired; we ought not to suffer our beneficence to be made instrumental to the encouragement of vice, or the support of idleness; because what is thus squandered may be wanted by others, who would use our kindness to better purposes, and who, without our assistance, would perhaps perish.
Another precept, too often neglected, which yet a generous and elevated mind would naturally think highly necessary to be observed, is, that alms should be given in such a manner as may be most pleasing to the person who receives them; that our charity should not be accompanied with insults, nor followed by reproaches; that we should, whenever it is possible, spare the wretched the unnecessary, the mortifying pain of recounting their calamities, and representing their distress; and when we have relieved them we should never upbraid them with our kindness, nor recall their afflictions to their minds by cruel and unseasonable admonitions to gratitude or industry. He only confers favours generously, who appears, when they are once conferred, to remember them no more.
Poverty is in itself sufficiently afflictive, and to most minds the pain of wanting assistance is scarcely balanced by the pleasure of receiving it. The end of charity is to mitigate calamities; and he has little title to the reward of mercy, who afflicts with one hand, while he succours with the other. But this fault, like many others, arises from pride, and from the desire of temporal rewards. Men either forget the common nature of humanity, and, therefore, reproach others with those misfortunes to which they are themselves equally subject; or they expect, from the gratitude, or applause, of those whom they benefit, that reward which they are commanded to hope only from their Father which is in heaven.
Such are the rules of charity, and such the cautions required, to make our alms pleasing to him, in whose name
