It is no excuse that my conscience did not tell me to do such
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and such things. We live up to our conscience, but it is a vastly important truth that we are expected to be enlightening our conscience. Our conscience is not furnished without trouble from ourselves any more than our intellect. "We have to think, we have to fight out, to open our conscience to the light of God ; otherwise, like the Pharisee, like the Priest and the Levite, we are continually passing by on the other side, our conscience making no particular suggestion as to our duty towards this person or that person, our heart not awake to the claims of neigh- bourliness, because we have been content to take the estimate of duty which prevailed in the society about us. It is our duty not only to obey our conscience, but before that to enlighten our conscience with the light of Christ.
If I can live
To make some pale face brighter, and to give
A second lustre to some tear-dimmed eye, Or e'en impart One throb of comfort to an aching heart.
Or cheer some wayworn soul in passing by;
If I can lend
A strong hand to the fallen, or defend
The right against a single envious strain. My life, though bare Perhaps of much that seemeth dear and fair
To us on earth, will not have been in vain.
The purest joy,
Most near to heaven, far from earth's alloy,
Is bidding clouds give way to sun and shine, And 'twill be well If on that day of days the angels tell
Of me : " She did her best for one of Thine."
(1) It is our duty to be charitable, and to be liberal in our charity. We owe it to those who are poorer than we are. Many would tell us that the less we give away in charity the better ; and such a maxim naturally falls in with the indolence or selfishness of mankind. The reason is supposed to be that charity tends to destroy independence ; men will not do for themselves what others are willing to do for them. If aged persons are supported by the parish they will often be neglected by their
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children ; if education is free, if relief in sickness is given, there will be some corresponding relaxation of duty: the family tie will be weakened and the social state of the country will decline. Such is the argument, and there is a great deal of truth in it. In works of charity I think we might fairly be required to start with some such principle as this — that we should never relieve physical suffering at the cost of moral degradation. But may there not be modes of charity which increase the spirit of in- dependence instead of diminishing it? A small loan of money given to a person who is engaged in a hard struggle to keep himself or his children out of the workhouse, for a purpose such as education, which is least liable to abuse, can scarcely be imagined to do harm. It would be more satisfactory if the poor were able to manage for themselves, and perhaps, when they have been educated for a generation or two, they may be in a different position, and may no longer require the assistance of others. But at present, and in this country, they must have some help from the classes above them ; they have no adequate sense of their own higher wants, of education, of sanitary improvement, of the ordering of family life, and the like. We all know the difference between the lot of a parish in one of our rural districts, which has been cared for by the landlord and looked after by the ministers of religion, and one which has not. And therefore it is that great responsibilities fall upon us who have money or education, nothing short of the care of those who in the social scale are below us. Property has its duties as well as its rights, but the sense of right is apt to be stronger in most of us than the sense of duty. Instead of habitually feeling that the poor are our equals in the sight of God, that " there is nothing which we have not received," that our advantages, whatever they may be — money, talent, social position — are a trust only ; instead of rendering to God the things which He has given, we claim and assert them for ourselves.
^ Let us start fairly with the great truth: for those who possess there is only one certain duty, which is to strip them- selves of what they have, so as to bring themselves into the condition of the mass that possesses nothing. It is understood, in every clear-thinking conscience, that no more imperative duty exists ; but, at the same time, it is admitted that this duty,
ROMANS — 23
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for lack of courage, is impossible of accomplishment. For the rest, in the heroic history of the duties, even at the most ardent periods, even at the beginning of Christianity and in the majority of the religious orders that made a special cult of poverty, this is perhaps the only duty that has never been completely fulfilled.!