SERMON XI.
ON CHARITY.
"And Jesus took the loaves, and, when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down." — John vi. 11.
It is not without design that our Saviour associates the disciples, in the prodigy of multiplying the loaves, and that he makes use of their ministry in distributing the miraculous food among a people pressed with hunger and want. He might again, no doubt, have made manna to rain upon the desert, and saved his disciples the trouble of so tedious a distribution.
But might he not, after raising up Lazarus from the dead, have dispensed with their assistance in unloosing him? Could his almighty voice, which had just broken asunder the chains of death, have found any resistance from the feeble bands which the hand of man had formed? It is because he wished to point out to them, beforehand, the sacred exercise of their ministry; the part they were afterward to have in the spiritual resurrection of sinners; and that whatever they should unloose upon the earth should be unloosed in heaven.
Again, when there was question of paying tribute to Csesar, he needed not to have recourse to the expedient of Peter's casting his hook into the sea for the purpose of producing a piece of money out of the bowels of a fish: he who, even from stones, was able to raise up children to Abraham, might surely with greater ease have converted them into a precious metal, and thereby furnished the amount of the tribute due to Ceesar. But, in the character of the Head of the Church, he meant to teach his ministers to respect those in authority; and, by rendering honour and tribute to the powers established by God, to set an example of submission to other believers.
Thus, in making use, upon this occasion, of the intervention of the apostles to distribute the loaves to the multitude, his design is, to accustom all his disciples to compassion and liberality toward the unfortunate: he establishes you the ministers of his providence, and multiplies the riches of the earth in your hands, for the sole purpose of being distributed from thence among that multitude of unfortunate fellow-creatures which surrounds you.
He, no doubt, might nourish them himself, as he formerly nourished Paul and Elijah in the desert; without your interference he might comfort those creatures which bear his image; he, whose invisible hand prepares food even for the young ravens which invoke him in their want; but he wishes to associate you in the merit of his liberality; he wishes you to be placed between himself and the poor, like refreshing clouds, always ready to shower upon them those fructifying streams which you have only received for their advantage.
Such is the order of his providence; it was necessary that means of salvation should be provided for all men: riches would corrupt the heart, if charity were not to expiate their abuse; indigence would fatigue and weary out virtue, if the succours of compassion were not to soften its bitterness; the poor facilitate to the rich the pardon of their pleasures; the rich animate the poor not to lose the merit of their sufferings.
Apply yourself, then, be whom you may, to all the consequence of this gospel. If you groan under the yoke of poverty, the tenderness and the care of Jesus Christ toward all the wants of a wandering and unprovided people will console you; if born to opulence, the example of the disciples will now instruct you. You will there see, first, the pretexts which they oppose to the duty of charity confuted: secondly, you will learn what ought to be its rules. That is to say, that in the first part of this Discourse we shall establish this duty against all the vain excuses of avarice; in the second, we shall instruct you in the manner of fulfilling it against even the defects of charity; it is the most natural instruction with which the history of the gospel presents us.
Part I. — It is scarcely a matter of controversy now in the world, whether the law of God makes a precept to us of charity. The gospel is so pointed on this duty; the spirit and the groundwork of religion lead us so naturally to it; the idea alone which we have of Providence, in the dispensation of temporal things, leaves so little room on that point to opinion or doubt, that, though many are ignorant of the extent of this obligation, yet there are almost none who do not admit of the foundation and principle.
Who, indeed, is ignorant that the Lord, whose providence hath regulated all things with an order so admirable and beautiful, and prepared food even for the beasts of the field, would never have left men, created after his own image, a prey to hunger and indigence, whilst he would liberally shower upon a small number of happy individuals the blessings of heaven and the fat of the earth, if he had not intended that the abundance of the one should supply the necessities of the other.
Who is ignorant, that originally every thing belonged in common to all men: that simple nature knew neither property nor portions; and that at first, she left each of us in possession of the universe: but that, in order to put bounds to avarice, and to avoid trouble and dissensions, the common consent of the people established that the wisest, the most humane, and the most upright, should likewise be the most opulent; that, besides the portion of wealth destined to them by nature, they should also be charged with that of the weakest, to be its depositaries, and to defend it against usurpation and violence: consequently, that they were established by nature itself as the guardians of the unfortunate, and that whatever surplus they had was only the patrimony of their brethren confided to their care and to their equity?
Who, lastly, is ignorant that the ties of religion have still more firmly cemented the first bonds of union which nature had formed among men; that the grace of Jesus Christ, which brought forth the first believers, made of them not only one heart and one soul, but also one family, where the idea of individual property was exploded; and that the gospel, making it a law to us to love our brethren as ourselves, no longer permits us to be ignorant of their wants, or to be insensible to their sorrows?
But it is with the duty of charity as with all the other duties of the law: in general the obligation is not, even in idea, denied; but does the circumstance of its fulfilment take place? A pretext is never wanting, either to dispense with it entirely, or at least to be quit for a moiety of the duty. Now, it would appear that the Spirit of God hath meant to point out to us all these pretexts, in the answers which the disciples made to Jesus Christ in order to excuse themselves from assisting the famished multitude which had followed him to the desert.
In the first place, they remind him that they had scarcely wherewithal to supply their own wants; and that only five loaves of barley and two fishes remained: behold the first pretext, made use of by covetousness, in opposition to the duty of compassion. Scarcely have they sufficient for themselves; they have a name and a rank to support in the world; children to establish; creditors to satisfy; public charges to support; a thousand expenses of pure benevolence, to which attention must be paid; now, what is any income, not entirely unlimited, to such endless demands? In this manner the world continually speaks; and a world the most brilliant, and the most sumptuous.
Now, I well know, that the limits of what is called a sufficiency are not the same for all stations; that they extend in proportion to rank and birth; that one star, says the apostle, must differ in lustre from another; that, even from the apostolic ages, men were seen in the assemblies of believers, clothed in robes of distinction, with rings of gold, while others, of a more obscure station, were forced to content themselves with the apparel necessary to cover their nakedness; that, consequently, religion does not confound stations; and that, if it forbid those who dwell in the palaces of kings to be effeminate in their manners, and indecently luxurious in their dress, it doth not at the same time prescribe to them the poverty and the simplicity of those who dwell in cottages, or of those who form the lower ranks of the people: I know it.
But, my brethren, it is an incontestable truth, that, whatever surplus you may have, belongs not to you; that it is the portion of the poor; and that you are entitled to consider as your own, only that proportion of your revenues which is necessary to support that station in which Providence hath placed you. I ask, then, is it the gospel or covetousness, which must regulate that sufficiency? Would you dare to pretend, that all those vanities of which custom has now made a law, are to be held, in the sight of God, as expenses inseparable from your condition? That every thing which flatters, and is agreeable to you, which nourishes your pride, gratifies your caprices, and corrupts your heart, is for that reason necessary to you? That all which you sacrifice to the fortune of a child, in order to raise him above his ancestors; all which you risk in gaming; that luxury, which either suits not your birth, or is an abuse of it: would you dare to pretend, that all these have incontestable claims on your revenues which are to be preferred to those of charity? Lastly, would you dare to pretend, that, because your father, perhaps obscure, and of the lowest rank, may have left to you all his wealth, and perhaps his crimes, you are entitled to forget your family and the house of your father, in order to mingle with the highest ranks, and to support the same eclat, because you are enabled to support the same expense?
If this be the case, my brethren, if you consider as a surplus only, that which may escape from your pleasures, from your extravagancies, and from your caprices, you have only to be voluptuous, capricious, dissolute, and prodigal, in order to be wholly dispensed from the duty of charity. The more passions you shall have to satisfy, the more will your obligation to charity diminish! and your excesses, which the Lord hath commanded you to expiate by acts of compassion, will themselves become a privilege to dispense yourselves from them. There must necessarily, therefore, be some rule here to observe, and some limits to appoint ourselves, different from those of avarice; and behold it, my brethren, — the rule of faith. Whatever tends to nourish only the life of the senses, to flatter the passions, to countenance the vain pomp and abuses of the world, is superfluous to a Christian: these are what you ought to retrench, and to set apart; these are the funds and the heritage of the poor; you are only their depositaries, and you cannot encroach upon them without usurpation and injustice. The gospel reduces to very little the sufficiency of a Christian however exalted in the world; religion retrenches much from the expenses; and, did we live all according to the rules of faith, our wants, which would no longer be multiplied by our passions, would still be fewer; the greatest part of our wealth would be found entirely useless; and, as in the first age of faith, indigence would no longer grieve the church, nor be seen among believers. Our expenses continually increase, because our passions are everyday multiplied; the opulence of our fathers is no longer to us but an uncomfortable poverty; and our great riches can no longer suffice, because nothing can satisfy those who refuse themselves nothing.
And, in order to give this truth all the extent which the subject in question demands, I ask you, secondly, do the elevation and abundance in which you are born dispense you from simplicity, frugality, modesty, and holy restraint? By being born great, you are not the less Christians. In vain, like those Israelites in the desert, have you amassed more manna than your brethren; you cannot preserve for your use more than the measure prescribed by the law* Were it not so, our Saviour would have forbidden pomp, luxury, and worldly pleasures but to the poor and unfortunate, those to whom the misery of their condition renders needless that defence.
Now, this grand truth admitted, if, according to the rule of faith, it be not permitted to you to employ your riches in the gratification of your appetites; if the rich be obliged to bear the cross, continually to renounce themselves, and to look for no consolation in this world, equally as the poor; what can the design of Providence have been in pouring upon you all the riches of the earth, and wrhat advantage could even accrue to you from them? Could it be in order to administer to your irregular desires? But you are no longer bound to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. Could it be in order to support the pride of rank and birth? But whatever you give to vanity, you cut off from charity. Could it be for the purpose of hoarding up for your posterity? But your treasure should be only in heaven. Could it be in order that you might pass your life more agreeably? But if you weep not, if you suffer not, if you combat not, you are lost. Could it be in order to attach you more strongly to the world? But the Christian is not of this world; he is citizen of the age to come. Could it be for the purpose of aggrandizing your possessions and your inheritances? But you would never aggrandize but the place of your exile; and the gain of the whole world would be vain, if you thereby lost your soul. Could it be that your table might be loaded with the most exquisite dishes? But you well know, that the gospel forbids a life of sensuality and voluptuousness, equally to the rich as to the indigent. Review all the advantages, which, according to the world, you can reap from your prosperity, and you will find almost the whole of them forbidden by the law of God.
It has not, therefore, been his design, that they should be merely for your own purposes, when he multiplied in your hands the riches of the earth. It is not for yourself that you are born to grandeur; it is not for yourself, as Mordecai formerly said to the pious Esther, that the Lord hath exalted you to this point of prosperity and grandeur; it is for the sake of his afflicted people; it is to be the protector of the unfortunate. If you fulfil not the intentions of God, with regard to you, continued that wise Israelite, he will employ some other, who shall more faithfully serve him; he will transfer to them that crown which was intended for you; he will elsewhere provide the enlargement and deliverance of his afflicted people; for he will not permit them to perish; but you, and your father's house shall perish. In the designs of the Almighty, you therefore are but the ministers of his providence toward those who suffer; your great riches are only sacred deposits, which his goodness hath entrusted to your care, for security against usurpation and violence, and in order to be more safely preserved for the widow and the orphan; your abundance, in the order of his wisdom, is destined only to supply their necessities; your authority, only to protect them; your dignities only to avenge their interests; your rank only to console them by your good offices: whatsoever you be, you are it only for them; your elevation would no longer be the work of God, and he would have cursed you, in bestowing on you all the riches of the earth, had he given them to you for any other use.
Ah! allege, then, no more to us, as an excuse for your hardheartedness toward your brethren, wants which are condemned by the law of God; rather justify his providence toward all who suffer; by entering into his order, let them know, that there is a God for them as well as for you; and make them bless the adorable designs of his wisdom, in the dispensation of earthly things, which hath supplied them, through your abundance, with such resources of consolation.
But, besides, what can the small contributions required from you retrench from those wants, the urgency of which you tell us so much? The Lord exacteth not from you any part of your possessions and heritages, though they belong wholly to him, and he hath a right to despoil you of them. He leaveth you tranquil possessors of those lands, of those palaces, which distinguish you and your people, and with which the piety of your ancestors formerly enriched our temples. He doth not command you, like the young man in the gospel, to renounce all, to distribute your whole wealth among the poor, and to follow him: he maketh it not a law to you, as formerly to the first believers, to bring all your riches to the feet of your pastors: he doth not strike you with anathema, as formerly Annanias and Sapphira, for daring to retain only a portion of that wealth which they received from their ancestors; — you, who only owe the aggrandizement of your fortunes perhaps to public calamities, or other shameful means of acquirement, he consenteth that, as the prophet saith, you shall call the land by your name, and that you transmit to your posterity those possessions which you have inherited from your ancestors; — he wisheth that you lay apart only a portion for the unfortunate, whom he leaveth in indigence: he wisheth that, while in the luxury and splendour of your apparel you bear the nourishment of a whole people of unfortunate fellow-creatures, you spare wherewith to cover the nakedness of his servants who languish in poverty, and know not where to repose their head; he wisheth that, from those tables of voluptuousness, where your great riches are scarcely sufficient to supply your sensuality and the profusions of an extravagant delicacy, you drop at least a portion for the relief of the Lazaruses pressed with hunger and want: he wisheth that, while paintings of the most absurd and the most boundless price are seen to cover the walls of your palaces, your revenues may suffice to honour the living 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 people! If you, with all your resources, feel so much the misery of the times, what must they not suffer, those who are destitute of every comfort! If the plagues of Egypt obtrude even into the palaces of the great, and of Pharaoh, what must be the desolation in the hut of the poor and of the labourer! If the princes of Israel, afflicted in Samaria, no longer find consolation in their palaces, to what dreadful extremities must the common people not be reduced! Reduced, alas! perhaps like that unfortunate mother, not to nourish herself with the blood of her child, but to make her innocence and her soul the melancholy price of her necessity.
But, besides, these evils with which we are afflicted, and of which you so loudly complain, are the punishment of your hardness toward the poor: God avengeth upon your possessions the iniquitous use to which you apply them: it is the cries and the groanings of the unfortunate, whom you abandon, which draw down the vengeance of Heaven upon your lands and territories. It is in these times, then, of public calamity, that you ought to hasten to appease the anger of God by the abundance of your charities: it is then that, more than ever, you should interest the poor in your behalf. Alas! you bethink yourselves of addressing your general supplications to the Almighty, through these to obtain more favourable seasons, the cessation of public calamities, and the return of peace and abundance; but it is not there alone that your vows and your prayers ought to be carried. You can never expect that the Almighty will attend to your distresses while you remain callous to those of your fellow-creatures. You have here on the earth the masters of the winds and of the seasons: address yourselves to the poor and the afflicted; it is they who have, as I may say, the keys of heaven; it is their prayers which regulate the times and the seasons, — which bring back to us days of peace or of misery, — which arrest or attract the blessings of heaven: for abundance is given to the earth only for their consolation, and it is only on their account that the Almighty punisheth or is bountiful to you.
But, completely to confute you, my brethren, you who so strongly allege to us the evil of the times, does the pretended rigour of these times retrench any thing from your pleasures? What do your passions suffer from the public calamities? If the misfortune of the times oblige you to retrench from your expenses, begin with those of which religion condemns the use; regulate your tables, your apparel, your amusements, your followers, and your edifices, according to the gospel; let your retrenchings in charity at least only follow the others. Lessen your crimes before you begin to diminish from your duties. When the Almighty strikes with sterility the kingdoms of the earth, it is his intention to deprive the great and the powerful of all occasions of debauchery and excess: enter, then, into the order of his justice and his wisdom: consider yourselves as public criminals, whom the Lord chastiseth by public punishments. Say to him, like David, when he beheld the hand of the Lord weighing down his people, " Lo, I have sinned, and have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me and against my father's house/'
Behold your model. By terminating your disorders, terminate the cause of the public evils; in the persons of the poor, offer up to God the retrenchment of your pleasures and of your profusions, as the only righteous and acceptable sacrifice which is capable of disarming his anger; and seeing these scourges fall upon the earth only in punishment of the abuses which you have made of your abundance, bear you likewise, in lessening these abuses, their anguish and bitterness. But that the public misfortunes should be perceivable neither in the splendour and pride of your equipages, nor in the sensuality of your repasts, nor in the magnificence of your palaces, nor in your rage for gaming and every criminal pleasure, but solely in your inhumanity toward the poor; that every thing abroad, the theatres, the profane assemblies of every description, the public festivals, should continue with the same vigour and animation, while charity alone shall be chilled; that luxury should every day increase, while compassion alone shall diminish; that the world and Satan should lose nothing through the misery of the times, while Jesus Christ alone shall suffer in his afflicted members; that the rich, sheltered in their opulence, should see only from afar the anger of Heaven, while the poor and the innocent shall become its melancholy victims: great God! thou wouldst then overwhelm only the unfortunate in sending these scourges upon the earth! Thy sole intention then should be to complete the destruction of those miserable wretches, upon whom thy hand was already so heavy in bringing them forth to penury and want! The powerful of Egypt should alone be exempted by the exterminating angel, while thy whole wrath would fall upon the afflicted Israelite, upon his poor and unprovided roof, and even marked with the blood of the Lamb! Yes, my brethren, the public calamities are destined to punish only the rich and powerful, and the rich and the powerful are those who alone suffer not: on the contrary, the public evils, in multiplying the unfortunate, furnish an additional pretext toward dispensing themselves from the duty of compassion.
Last excuse of the disciples, founded on the great number of the people who had followed our Saviour into the desert: These people are so numerous, said they, that two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one may take a little. Last pretext which they oppose to the duty of charity — the multitude of the poor. Yes, my brethren, that which ought to excite and to animate charity, extinguishes it: the multitude of the unfortunate hardens you to their wants: the more the duty increases, the more do you think yourselves dispensed from its practice, and you become cruel by having too many occasions of being charitable.
But, in the first place, whence comes, I pray you, this multitude of poor, of which you so loudly complain? I know that the misfortune of the times may increase their number: but wars, pestilences, and irregularity of seasons, all of which we at present experience, have happened in all ages; the calamities we behold are not unexampled; our forefathers have witnessed them, and even much more melancholy and dreadful: civil dissensions, the father armed against the child, the brother against brother, countries ravaged and laid waste by their own inhabitants, the kingdom a prey to foreign enemies, no person in safety under his own roof: we see not these miseries; but have they seen what we witness — so many public and concealed miseries, so many families worn out, so many citizens, formerly distinguished, now low in the dust, and confounded with the meanest of the people? Arts become almost useless? The image of hunger and death spread over the cities and over the fields? What shall I say? — so many hidden iniquities brought every day to light, the dreadful consequences of despair and horrible necessity? Whence comes this, my brethren? Is it not from a luxury unknown to our fathers, and which engluts every thing? From your expenses which know no bounds and which necessarily drag along with them the extinction of charity?
Ah! was the primitive church not persecuted, desolated, and afflicted? Do the calamities of our age bear any comparison with the horrors of those times? Proscription of property, exilement and imprisonment were then daily; the most burdensome charges of the state fell upon those who were suspected of Christianity: in a word, so many calamities were never beheld; and, nevertheless, there was no poor among them, says St. Luke, nor any that lacked. Ah! it is, because riches of simplicity sprung up, even from their poverty itself, according to the expression of the apostle; it is, because they gave according to their means, and even beyond them; it is, because the most distant provinces, through the care of the apostolic ministers, flowed streams of charity, for the consolation of their afflicted brethren in Jerusalem, more exposed than the rest to the rage and hatred of the synagogue.
But more than all that; it is, because the most powerful of the primitive believers were adorned with modesty; and that our great riches are now scarcely sufficient to support that monstrous luxury, of which custom has made a law to us; it is, that their festivals were repasts of sobriety and charity; and that the holy abstinence itself, which we celebrated, cannot moderate among us the profusions and the excesses of the table, and of feasts; it is, that, having no fixed city here below, they did not exhaust themselves in forming brilliant establishments, in order to render their names illustrious, to exalt their posterity, and to ennoble their own obscurity and meanness; they thought only of securing to themselves a better establishment in the celestial country; and that at present no one is contented with his station; every one wishes to mount higher than his ancestors: and that their patrimony is only employed in buying titles and dignities, which may obliterate their name and the meanness of their origin: in a word, it is because the frugality of these first believers constituted the whole wealth of their afflicted brethren, and that at present our profusions occasion all their poverty and want. It is our excesses, then, my brethren, and our hardness of heart toward them, which multiply the number of the unfortunate: excuse no more then, on that head, the failing of your charities; that would be making your guilt itself your excuse. Ah! you complain that the poor overburden you; but they would have reason in retorting the charge one day against you: do not then accuse them for your insensibility: and reproach them not with that, which they undoubtedly shall one day reproach to you before the tribunal of Jesus Christ.
If each of you were, according to the advice of the apostle, to appropriate a certain portion of your wealth toward the subsistence of the poor; if, in the computation of your expenses and of your revenues, this article were to be always regarded as the most sacred and the most inviolable one, then should we quickly see the number of the afflicted to diminish: we should soon see renewed in the church that peace, that happiness, and that cheerful equality which reigned among the first Christians: we should no longer behold with sorrow that monstrous disproportion, which, elevating the one, places him on the pinnacle of prosperity and opulence, while the other crawls on the ground, and groans in the gulf of poverty and affliction: no longer should there be any unhappy except the impious among us; no secret miseries except those which sin operates in the soul; no tears except those of penitence; no sighs but for heaven; no poor, but those blessed disciples of the gospel, who renounce all to follow their master. Our cities would be the abode of innocence and compassion; religion, a commerce of charity; the earth the image of heaven, where, in different degrees of glory, each is equally happy; and the enemies of faith would again, as formerly, be forced to render glory to God, and to confess that there is something of divine in a religion which is capable of uniting men together in a manner so new.
But, in what the error here consists, is, that, in the practice, nobody considers charity as one of the most essential obligations of Christianity; consequently, they have no regulation on that point; if some bounty be bestowed, it is always arbitrary; and, however small it may be, they are equally satisfied with themselves, as if they had even gone beyond their duty.
Besides, when you pretend to excuse the scantiness of your charities, by saying that the number of the poor is endless; what do you believe to say? You say that your obligations, with respect to them, are become only more indispensable; that your compassion ought to increase in proportion as their wants increase; and that you contract new debts whenever any increase of the unfortunate takes place on the earth. It is then, my brethren, it is during these public calamities that you ought to retrench even from expenses which at any other period might be permitted, and which might even be proper; it is then that you ought to consider yourselves but as the principal poor, and to take as a charity whatever you take for yourselves; it is then that you are no longer either grandee, man in office, distinguished citizen, or woman of illustrious birth; you are simply believer, member of Jesus Christ, brother of every afflicted Christian.
And surely say, — while that cities and provinces are struck with every calamity; that men, created after the image of God, and redeemed with his whole blood, browse like the animal, and through their necessity go to search in the fields a food which nature has not intended for man, and which to them becomes a food of death; would you have the resolution to be the only one exempted from the general evil? While the face of the whole kingdom is changed, and that cries and lamentations alone are heard around your superb dwelling; would you preserve, within, the same appearance of happiness, pomp, tranquillity, and opulence? And where, then, would be humanity, reason, religion? In a pagan republic, you would be held as a bad citizen; in a society of sages and worldly, as a soul, vile, sordid, without nobility, without generosity, and without elevation; and in the church of Jesus Christ, in what light, think you, can you be held? Oh! as a monster, unworthy of the name of Christian which you bear, of that faith in which you glorify yourself, of the sacrament which you approach, and even of entry into our temples where you come, — seeing all these are the sacred symbols of that union which ought to exist among believers.
Nevertheless, the hand of the Lord is extended over our people in the cities and in the provinces; you know it, and you lament it: Heaven is deaf to the cries of this afflicted kingdom; wretchedness, poverty, desolation, and death, walk every where before us. Now, do any of those excesses of charity, become at present a law of prudence and justice, escape you? Do you take upon yourselves any part of the calamities of your brethren? What shall I say? Do you not perhaps take advantage of the public misery? Do you not perhaps turn the general poverty into a barbarous profit? Do you not perhaps complete the stripping of the unfortunate in affecting to hold out to them an assisting hand? And are you acquainted with the inhuman art of deriving individual profit even from the tears and the necessities of your brethren? Bowels of iron! when you shall be filled, you shall burst asunder; your felicity itself will constitute your punishment, and the Lord will shower down upon you his war and his wrath.
My brethren, how dreadful shall be the presence of the poor before the tribunal of Jesus Christ to the greatest part of the rich in this world! How powerful shall be these accusers! And how little shall remain for you to say, when they shall reproach to you the scantiness of the succour which was required to soften and to relieve their wants; that a single day cut off from your profusions, would have sufficed to remedy the indigence of one of their years; that it was their own property which you withheld, since whatever you had beyond a sufficiency belonged to them; that consequently you have not only been cruel, but also unjust in refusing it to them; but that, after all, your hard-heartedness has served only to exercise their patience and to render them more worthy of immortality, while you, for ever deprived of those riches which you were unwilling to lodge in safety in the bosom of the poor, shall receive for your portion only the curse prepared for those who shall have seen Jesus Christ suffering hunger, thirsty and nakedness in his members, and shall not have relieved him. Such is the illusion of the pretexts employed to dispense themselves from the duty of charity: let us now determine the rules to be observed in fulfilling it; and, after having defended this obligation against all the vain excuses of avarice, let us endeavour to save it from even the defects of charity.
Part II. — Not to sound the trumpet in order to attract the public attention in the compassionate offices which we render to our brethren; to observe an order even of justice in charity, and not to prefer the wants of strangers to those with whom we are connected; to appear feeling for the unfortunate, and to know how to soothe the afflicted by our tenderness and affability, as well as by our bounty; in a word, to find out, by our vigilance and attention, the secret of their shame; behold the rules which the present example of our Saviour prescribes to us in the practice of compassion.
First. He went up into a desert and hidden place, says the gospel; he ascended a mountain, where he seated himself with his disciples. His design according to the holy interpreters, was to conceal from the eyes of the neighbouring villages the miracle of multiplying the loaves, and to have no witnesses of his compassion except those who were to reap the fruits of it. First instruction, and first rule; the secrecy of charity.
Yes, my brethren, how many fruits of compassion are every day blasted in the sight of God, by the scorching wind of pride and of vain ostentation! How many charities lost for eternity! How many treasures, which were believed to have been safely lodged in the bosom of the poor, and which shall one day appear corrupted with vermin, and consumed with rust!
In truth, those gross and bare faced hypocrites are rare which openly vaunt to the world the merit of their pious exertions: pride is more cunning, and it never altogether unmasks itself: but, how diminutive is the number of those who, moved with the true zeal of charity, like our Saviour, seek out solitary and private places to bestow, and, at the same time, to conceal their holy gifts! We now see only that ostentatious zeal, which nothing but necessities of eclat can interest, and which piously wishes to make the public acquainted with every gift: they will sometimes it is true, adopt measures to conceal them, but they are not sorry when an indiscretion betrays them; they will not perhaps court public attention, but they are delighted when the public attention surprises them, and they almost consider as lost any liberality which remains concealed.
Alas! our temples and our altars, are they not every where marked with the gifts and with the names of their benefactors; that is to say, are they not the public monuments of our forefathers and of our own vanity? If the invisible eye of the heavenly Father alone was meant to have witnessed them, to what purpose all that vain ostentation? Are you afraid that the Lord forgets your offerings? If you wish only to please him, why expose your gifts to any other eye? Why these titles and these inscriptions which immortalize, on sacred walls, your gifts and your pride? Was it not sufficient that they were written, even by the hand of God, in the book of life? Why engrave on a perishable marble the merit of a deed which charity would have rendered immortal?
Solomon, after having completed the most superb and the most magnificent temple of which the earth could ever boast, engraved the awful name of the Lord alone upon it, without presuming to mingle any memorial of the grandeur of his race with those of the eternal majesty of the King of kings. We give an appellation of piety to this custom; it is thought that these public monuments excite the liberality of believers. But the Lord, hath he charged your vanity with the care of attracting gifts to his altars? And hath he permitted you to depart from modesty, in order to make your brethren more charitable? Alas! the most powerful among the primitive believers, carried humbly as the most obscure their patrimony to the feet of the apostles: they beheld with a holy joy their names and their wealth confounded among those of their brethren who had less than they to offer: they were not distinguished in the assembly of the faithful in proportion to their gifts: honours and precedency were not yet the price of gifts and offerings, and they knew better than to exchange the eternal recompense which they awaited from the Lord for any frivolous glory they could receive from men; and now the church has not privileges enough to satisfy the vanity of her benefactors: their places are marked out in the sanctuary; their tombs appear even under the altar, where only the ashes of martyrs should repose. Custom, it is true, authorizes this abuse; but custom does not always justify what it authorizes.
Charity, my brethren, is that sweet smelling savour of Jesus Christ, which vanishes and is extinguished from the moment that it is exposed. I mean not that public acts of compassion are to be refrained from: we owe the edification and example of them to our brethren: it is proper that they see our works; but we ought not ourselves to see them, and our left hand should be ignorant of what our right bestows: even those actions which duty renders the most shining, ought always to be hidden in the preparation of the heart: we ought to entertain a kind of jealousy of the public view on their account, and to believe their purity in safety only when they are exposed to the eyes of God alone. Yes, my brethren, those liberalities which have flowed mostly in secret, reach the bosom of God much more pure than others, which, even contrary to our wishes, having been exposed to the eyes of men, become troubled and defiled, as I may say, in their course by their inevitable flatteries of self-love, and by the applauses of the beholders: like those rivers which have flowed mostly under ground, and which pour their streams into the ocean pure and undefiled; while, on the contrary, those which have traversed plains and countries, exposed to the day, carry there, in general, only muddy waters, and drag along with them the wrecks, carcasses, and slime which they have amassed in their course. Behold, then, the first rule of charity which our Saviour here lays down — to shun show and ostentation in all works of compassion — to be unwilling to have your name mentioned in them, either on account of the rank which you may here hold, or from the glory of having been the first promoter, or from the noise which they may make in the world, and not to lose upon the earth that which charity had amassed only for heaven.
The second circumstance which I remark in our gospel, is, that no one, of all the multitude who present themselves to Jesus Christ, is rejected: all are indiscriminately relieved; and we do not read that with regard to them our Saviour hath used any distinction or preference. Second rule: charity is universal; it banishes those capricious liberalities which seem to open the heart to certain wants, only in order to shut it against all others. You find persons in the world, who, under the pretext of having stated charities and places destined to receive them, are callous to all other wants. In vain would you inform them that a family is on the brink of ruin, and that a very small assistance would extricate it; that a young person hangs over a precipice, and must necessarily perish, if some friendly and assisting hand be not held out; that a certain meritorious and useful establishment must fall, if not supported by a renewal of charity; these are not necessities after their taste; and, in placing elsewhere some trifling bounties, they imagine to have purchased the right of viewing with a dry eye and an indifferent heart every other description of misery.
I know that charity hath its order and its measure; that in its practice it ought to use a proper distinction; that justice requires a preference to certain wants: but I would not have that methodical charity (if I may thus speak) which to a point knows where to stop, — which has its days, its places, its persons, and its limits, — which, beyond these, is cruel, and can settle with itself to be affected only in certain times and by certain wants. Ah! are we thus masters of our hearts when we truly love our brethren? Can we at our will mark out to ourselves the moments of warmth and indifference? Charity, that holy love, is it so regular when it truly inflames the heart? Has it not, if I may so say, its transports and its excesses? And do not occasions sometimes occur so truly affecting, that, did but a single spark of charity exist in your heart, it would show itself, and in the instant would open your bowels of compassion and your riches to your brethren.
I would not have that rigidly circumspect charity which is never done with its scrutiny, and which always mistrusts the truth of the necessities laid open to it. See if, in that multitude which our Saviour filleth, he apply himself to separate those whom idleness or the sole hope of corporeal nourishment had perhaps attracted to the desert, and who might still have sufficient strength left to go 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 tears to the chimerical adventures of a theatrical personage, — we honour fictitious misfortunes with real sensibility, — we depart from a representation with hearts still moved for the disasters of a fabulous hero, — and a member of Jesus Christ, an inheritor of heaven, and your brother, whom you encounter in your way from thence, perhaps sinking under disease and penury, and who wishes to inform you of the excess of his sufferings, finds you callous; and you turn your eyes with disgust from that spectacle, and deign not to listen to him? and you quit him even with a rudeness and brutality which tend to wring his heart with sorrow! Inhuman soul! have you, then, left all your sensibility on an infamous theatre? Doth the spectacle of Jesus Christ suffering in one of his members offer nothing worthy of your pity? And, that your heart may be touched, must the ambition, the revenge, the voluptuousness, and all the other horrors of the pagan ages be revived.
But, it is not enough that we offer hearts feeling for the distresses which present themselves to our view: charity goes farther: it does not indolently await those occasions which chance may throw in its way; it knows how to search them out, and even to anticipate them itself. Last rule: the vigilance of charity. Jesus Christ waits not till those poor people address themselves to him and lay open their wants: he is the first to discover them: scarcely has he found them out, when, with Philip, he searches the means of relieving them. That charity which is not vigilant, anxious after the calamities of which it is yet ignorant, ingenious in discovering those which endeavour to remain concealed, which require to be solicited, pressed, and even importuned, resembles not the charity of Jesus Christ. We must watch, and penetrate the obscurity which shame opposes to our bounties. This is not a simple advice: it is the consequence of the precept of charity. The pastors, who, according to faith, are the fathers of the people, are obliged to watch over their spiritual concerns; and that is one of the most essential functions of their ministry. The rich and the powerful are established by God the fathers and the pastors of the poor according to the body: they are bound, then, to watch continually over their necessities. If, through want of vigilance, they escape their attention, they are guilty before God, of all the consequences, which a small succour in time would have prevented.
It is not, that you are required to find out all the secret necessities of a city; but care and attention are exacted of you: it is required, that you, who, through your wealth or birth, hold the first rank in a department, shall not be surrounded, unknown to you, with thousands of unfortunate fellow-creatures, who pine in secret, and whose eyes are continually wounded with the pomp of your train, and who, besides their wretchedness, suffer again, as I may say, in your prosperity: it is required, that you, who, amid all the pleasures of the court, or of the city, see flowing into your hands the fruits of the sweat and of the labour of so many unfortunate people, who inhabit your lands and your fields; it is required that you be acquainted with those whom the toils of industry and of age have exhausted, and who, in their humble dwellings, drag on the wretched remains of dotage and poverty; those whom a languishing health renders incapable of labour, their only resource against indigence and want; those whom sex and age expose to seduction, and whose innocence you might have been enabled to preserve. Behold what is required, and what, with every right to justice, is exacted from you; behold the poor with whom the Lord hath charged you, and for whom you shall answer to him; the poor, whom he leaveth on the earth only for your sake, and to whom his providence hath assigned no other resource than your wealth and your bounty.
Now, are they even known to you? Do you charge their pastors to make them known to you? Are these the cares which occupy you, when you show yourself in the midst of your lands and possessions? Ah! it is with cruelty to screw your claims from the hands of these unfortunate people; it is to tear from their bowels the innocent price of their toil, without regard to «their want, to the misery of the times which you allege to us, to their tears, and often to their despair:— what shall I say? It is perhaps to crush down their weakness, to be their tyrant, and not their lord and their father. O God! cursest thou not these cruel generations, and these riches of iniquity? Dost thou not stamp upon them the marks of misfortune and desolation, and which shall soon blast the source of their families; which wither the root of a proud posterity; which produce domestic discord, public disgraces, the fall, and total extinction of houses? Alas! we are sometimes astonished to see fortunes apparently the best established, go to wreck in an instant; those ancient, and formerly so illustrious names fallen into obscurity, no longer to offer to our view but the melancholy wrecks of their ancient splendour; and their estates become the property of their rivals, or perhaps of their own servants. Ah! could we investigate the source of their misfortunes; if their ashes, and the pompous wrecks, which in the pride of their monuments remain to us of their glory, could speak, — Do you see, they would say to us, these sad marks of our grandeur? It is the tears of the poor, whom we neglected, whom we oppressed, which have gradually sapped, and at last have totally overthrown them: their cries have drawn down the thunder of Heaven upon our palaces. The Lord hath blown upon our superb edifices, and upon our fortune, and hath dissipated them like dust. Let the name of the poor be honourable in your sight, if you wish that your names may never perish in the memory of men. Let compassion sustain your houses, if you wish that your posterity be not buried under their ruins. Become wise at our cost; and let our misfortunes, in teaching you our faults, teach you also to shun them.
And behold, my brethren, (that I may say something respecting it before I conclude,) the first advantage of Christian charity; blessings even in this world. The bread, blessed by our Saviour, multiplies in the hands of the apostles who distribute it; five thousand are satisfied; and twelve baskets can hardly contain the remnants gathered up: that is to say, that the gifts of charity are riches of benediction, which multiply in proportion as they are distributed, and which bear along with them into our houses a source of happiness and abundance. Yes, my brethren, charity is a gain; it is a holy usury; it is a principle which returns, even here below, an hundred fold. You sometimes complain of a fatality in your affairs: nothing succeeds with you; men deceive you; rivals supplant you; masters neglect you; the elements conspire against you; the best concerted schemes are blasted: — associate with you the poor; divide with them the increase of your fortune; in proportion as your prosperity augments, do you augment your benefactions; flourish for them as well as for yourself; and God himself shall then be interested in your success; you shall have found out the secret of engaging him in your fortune, and he will preserve, — what do I say? — he will bless, he will multiply riches, in which he sees blended the portion of his afflicted member.
This is a truth, confirmed by the experience of all ages: charitable families are continually seen to prosper; a watchful Providence presides over all their affairs; where others are ruined, they become rich: they are seen to flourish, but the secret canal is not perceived which pours in upon them their property: they are the fleeces of Gideon, covered with the dew of heaven, while all around is barren and dry.
Such is the first advantage of compassion, I say nothing even of the pleasure, which we ought to feel in the delightful task of soothing those who suffer, in making a fellow-creature happy, in reigning over hearts, and in attracting upon ourselves the innocent tribute of their acclamations and their thanks. O! were we to reap but the pleasure of bestowing, would it not be an ample recompense to a worthy heart? What has even the majesty of the throne more delicious than the power of dispensing favours? Would princes be much attached to their grandeur, and to their power, were they confined to a solitary enjoyment of them? No, my brethren, make your riches as subservient as you will, to your pleasures, to your profusions, and to your caprices; but never will you employ them in a way which shall leave a joy so pure, and so worthy of the heart, as in that of comforting the unfortunate.
What, indeed, can be more grateful to the heart, than the confidence that there is not a moment in the day in which some afflicted souls are not raising up their hands to heaven for us, and blessing the day which gave us birth? Hear that multitude whom Jesus Christ hath filled; the air resounds with their blessings and thanks: they say to themselves, This is a prophet; they wish to establish him their king. Ah! were men to choose their masters, it would neither be the most noble, nor the most valiant; it would be the most compassionate, the most humane, the most charitable, the most feeling: masters who, at the same time, would be their fathers.
Lastly, I need not add that Christian charity assists in expiating the crimes of abundance; and that it is almost the only mean of salvation which Providence hath provided for you, who are born to prosperity. Were charity insufficient to redeem our offences, we might certainly think ourselves entitled to complain, says a holy father; we might take it ill, that God had deprived men of so easy a mean of salvation; at least might we say that, could we but open the gates of heaven through the means of riches, and purchase with our whole wealth the glory of the holy, we then should be happy. Well, my brethren, continues the holy father, profit by this privilege, seeing it is granted to you; hasten, before your riches moulder away, to deposit them in the bosom of the poor, as the price of the kingdom of heaven. The malice of men might perhaps have deprived you of them; your passions might have perhaps swallowed them up; the turns of fortune might have transferred them to other hands; death, at last, would sooner or later have separated you from them: ah! charity alone deposits them beyond the reach of all these accidents; it renders you their everlasting possessor; it lodges them in safety in the eternal tabernacles, and gives you the right of for ever enjoying them in the bosom of God himself.
Are you not happy in being able to assure to yourself admittance into heaven by means so easy; — in being able, by clothing the naked, to efface from the book of divine justice the obscenities, the luxury, and the irregularities of your younger years; — in being able, by filling the hungry, to repair all the sensualities of your life; — lastly, in being able, by sheltering innocence in the asylums of compassion, to blot out from the remembrance of God the ruin of so many souls, to whom you have been a stumbling-block? Great God! what goodness to man, to consider as meritorious a virtue which costs so little to the heart; to number in our favour feelings of humanity of which we could never divest ourselves, without being, at the same time divested of our nature; to be willing to accept, as the price of an eternal kingdom, frail riches, which we even enjoy only through thy bounty, which we could never continue to possess, and from which, after a momentary and fleeting enjoyment, we must at last be separated! Nevertheless, mercy is promised to him who shall have shown it; a sinner, still feeling to the calamities of his brethren, will not continue long insensible to the inspirations of heaven; grace still reserves claims upon a heart in which charity has not altogether lost its influence; a good heart cannot long continue a hardened one; that principle of humanity alone, which operates in rendering the heart feeling for the wants of others, is a preparation, as it were, for penitence and salvation; and while charity still acts in the heart, a happy conversion is never to be despaired of. Love, then, the poor as your brethren; cherish them as your offspring; respect them as Jesus Christ himself, in order that he say to you on the great day, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; I was naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me: for, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."