time, and means, and faculties; we shall have fewer grounds of self-reproach for going wrong, by not being careful to go right, and for missing the object, which less feeling and more discretion would have enabled us to attain.

It is not meant, by all this, that we should never offer to do good till we have made a minute inquiry, and given a lengthened consideration, and come to a logical or mercantile conclusion, concerning the particular case that has been brought before us. Such a cold, elaborate, constant calculation, would operate like a freezing process upon our benevolence; the current of our benevolence would be stopped, and its warmth expelled; and before it had time to recover what it had thus lost, the misery that required our aid may have proved fatal, or our power of removing it become unavailing. We would not have it forgotten, that charity is an affection of the heart, and not a faculty of the understanding; and that therefore it must be indulged in a freedom and a forthcoming which are not compatible with rigid computations, nice adjustments, and perpetual checks. It must take the lead in all benevolent operations; it must be paramount in every act of kindness; and in cases of urgent danger or distress, it must be allowed to express itself, and display its energies, without waiting for any other dictate, or any other guidance, than what it derives from the instinct which gives it birth, or the inspiration which breathes upon it from heaven. But it is nevertheless true, that while charity is an affection of the heart, that heart beats in the bosom of a rational being; and it would ill become us, who are endowed with such a nature, not to

make one department of it subservient to another, and to put our charity so far under the control and direction of our reason, as to render it a more steady, a more painstaking, a more efficient, and a not less tender and zealous friend of humanity, than it could possibly be, if left to its own ungoverned sensibilities. This is all that we argue for; and if the argument is not only admitted, but is allowed to have a practical and habitual influence, philanthropy gains by it to an inconceivable degree.

Were it necessary to get any authoritative sanction for the views we have been inculcating, we might refer you to the example of Christ. No one can doubt the intensity of his love to men; and yet, from first to last, he was regulated in the expression of it by the maxims of wisdom. When, under its impulse, he came into the world, he did not come as if any time would have answered for his advent; but he came at the time which, by the arrangements of Providence, was the most seasonable that could be chosen. And he did not come as if any place would have suited his appearance and his work; but he came to the place which, from the character of the people that dwelt in it, and of the dispensation that prevailed in it, was the fittest for the fulfilment of his gracious designs. He did not rashly and unadvisedly enter upon that career of mercy which he afterwards pursued with so much glory to God and so much benefit to man; but he spent many years in meditating upon it, and in preparing himself for it. He did not waste his miraculous power, by performing his works of wonder and compassion, wherever and whenever he was asked to do so, either by a

malignant curiosity, or by unfeigned distress; he gave these manifestations of his divinity and his grace, only on such occasions as promised to answer the beneficent ends which he then contemplated. He did not preach and rebuke without regard to the temper and character of his audience, and to the special circumstances in which he himself was placed; but he spoke, or he was silent, in obedience to the suggestions of a prudence, which was as far removed from recklessness on the one hand, as it was from humour and caprice on the other. He did not heedlessly and causelessly expose his life to danger, in the course of his benevolent itinerancy through the land of Judea; but, taking a prospective view of what he had ultimately to suffer in behalf of those whom he had come to save, he sometimes withdrew himself from the presence and the malice of his enemies, and thus took care that his death should not be premature for the redemption of the world. In short, in tracing the footsteps of Christ through the whole course of his merciful and generous enterprise, you will find every one of them marked by a wise and premeditated adaptation to the great purposes which his mission was intended to subserve. He always did what was best fitted either to promote the beneficent object that was immediately before him, or to accomplish the grand and ultimate purpose for which his benevolence had prompted him to become incarnate. Charity beams through every action of his life; but his charity is uniformly accompanied with the exercise of that wisdom which is profitable to direct. We never see it, even in its most ardent moods, disdaining or despising the government of wisdom,

but on the contrary, calling in its aid, and submitting to its guidance, as often as there is a kind word to be spoken, or a kind deed to be performed; and, instead of being cramped by its interference, becoming on that very account more efficient in its exertions, and more successful in its results.

We quote the example of Christ, chiefly to protect us against the reproaches of those soft-hearted or warm-blooded philanthropists, whose sympathies are raised by the least appearance of suffering, who enter at once into every scheme of mercy that is proposed to them, who gratify their compassionate feelings by doing or giving, without reflection, what is merely asked, and may not be deserved; who applaud as the only true lovers of their species such as are equally unthinking and indiscriminate in almsdeeds with themselves, and who stigmatise us as unsusceptible of kind sentiment, or as enemies to the poor and needy, because we often hesitate, and sometimes withhold, and because we carry with us through the whole range of our charities, spiritual and temporal, the maxims of a rational as well as a liberal policy. To persons of this description we the conduct of the Saviour, as justifymay hold up ing what they are so apt to condemn; and, under the shelter of its high authority, we may read them lessons on the economy of benevolence in relation to every particular exercise of that virtue in which they may be accustomed or disposed to indulge.

If they are engaged in the laudable practice of giving alms to the poor, we would say to them, "Certainly give alms of such things as ye have;' but see that your gifts be not conferred on such as have

the pretence and the appearance, but not the reality of want to recommend them, and thus bestow upon the undeserving, what should have rewarded the meritorious and relieved the needy. And when, by your mode of rendering assistance, you can help two families in place of one, or can produce the effect by quickening their own industry, and calling forth their own resources instead of holding out a bounty to their idleness and improvidence, or can accomplish your object in such a way as to guard your liberality against abuse, and prevent the indigence from recurring, and convert both the evil and its remedy into an instrument of spiritual benefit to those whom you are aiding; then, unquestionably, give that mode the preference, and comfort yourselves with the assurance, that though there may be as little, or even less of the eclat of lavishing money, there is far more of the virtue of doing good."

If they are employing themselves in imparting education to the young, we would say to them, "You can scarcely be better occupied; but supposing that if by properly husbanding, and judiciously expending your funds, you can instruct a hundred in room of fifty; that you can get the pupils taught to be sound thinkers as well as good readers, and to acquire the principles and sentiments of Christianity as well as the accomplishments of arithmetic and penmanship; and that while you prepare the children for acting a useful, and an honourable, and a religious part in the after period of their existence, you also contrive to keep up the independent spirit, and improve the moral character of their parents-would not you choose to have the schools that you estab