Love of Others. There will be little happiness in our house after all, if it has been built and conducted only for ourselves, and if we have not comprehended that the rest of the world has a share in it, and have not given ourselves the happiness of giving giving not indiscriminatingly but wisely and joyously. As the season approaches when want is most keenly felt by the poor, and begging children appear at every city alleyway and country door, we are tempted constantly to pay no heed to the rule we have been advised to form of giving no alms at the door, but of referring the applicant to the bureaus of associated charity, or to one society or another that stands ready to afford assistance where needed. But from this denial and cold reference the heart shrinks, whether or not reflection and reason show that in referring those asking help to these societies we in reality give them far more efficient help than it is possible for us to bestow ourselves. For certainly, in our large cities, charity has come under such a system, and philanthropy is so well organized as a business, with salaried agents, that it almost brings into being, as a counterpart, the profession of pauperism.
- Associated Charities
- Transmission of Vitiated Organisms
- Extremes of Wealth and Poverty
- Giving at the Door
- Lovely Examples
- A Degrading Course
- The Poor a Benison
- What the Poor Have Done
- The Story of Anstress
The Genial Temper.
Manlike is it to fall into sin,
Fiendlike is it to dwell therein,
Christlike is it for sin to grieve.
Godlike is it all sin to leave.
Friedrich Von Logan.
Before we reach our ideal shores of happiness we shall have learned to make sure of something besides the material advantages of life either for ourselves or others ; we shall have learned to make ourselves capable of receiving the ideal happiness, we shall have learned to cherish a sunny temper, and in doing that we shall also have learned to love humanity, and to put ourselves in relation to the claims of others, in some degree if not altogether out of sight. Many individuals possess what may be called an aptitude to suffer injury. They not only accept it at every turn and receive it at every pore, but actually seem to hunt it up and lie in wait for it. Nothing falls that does not hit them ; nothing breaks that does not hurt them ; nothing happens anyway that they do not reap a golden harvest of wrong from it. These people are miserable, as a matter of course that goes without saying; but they would be utterly and hopelessly miserable if they could not at any moment scrape the substance of an
injury together to solace some heavy hour destitute of other excitement. If somebody has not backbitten them, somebody is just about to do so; if somebody has not cheated them, somebody would like to cheat them, and if the number of the ill-intentioned living is insufficient to feed the appetite for boasted suffering, there is always an ancestry fortunate thing! to fall back upon, whose wrong-doings have been innumerable, and the results of whose wrong- doings are incalculable.
Of course these injured beings never do anything to provoke injury. They never insinuate or whine; they never openly or underhandedly charge the innocent with outrage; they never weary the patient with complaining, or repay good intentions with unceasing reproach, or "nag "the worm till it turns; they never abuse anybody's friends; they never criticise anybody's person; they never make themselves so disagreeable that people avoid them and escape them in self-defense; and they are never by any means so insolent over imaginary injuries that it becomes impossible for those having any self-respect at all to explain the circumstances and do away with the error they never in effect do anything but conduct themselves like suffering saints waiting for their translation.
Why, then, it may be asked, should anybody want to injure them? But there is the mystery, the problem they are always trying to solve, and whose solution, though they reach it in twenty days, will never be other than to the satisfaction of their self-esteem; and they invariably fall back on a comforting belief that they receive the injury because of envy of their superior virtues, grace, beauties, or position.
- An Unpleasant Idiosyncrasy
- Love of Injury
- Fancied Slights
- Quid Pro Quo
- The Undisciplined Temper
- The Sinners Themselves
- The Sulky Soul
- A Remedy
- The Perfection of the World
- Protoplasm and Dust
- Right and Light
- Transmuting Clay
- Self-Forgetfulness
- The Child's Troubles
- Another World to Complete This
- Changing Our Condition for Another's
- Rejoicing in Another's Joy
- The Golden Time for Love
- On Tranquil Heights
- Hand in Hand with Angels
- The Riches of Angels
- True Happiness at Last
- Matthew Arnold's Wish
No comments:
Post a Comment