I 81. CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 361
to 200,000, and under the Autonines to 500,000, was made from the public treasury and dictated by selfish motives of state policy ; it called forth no gratitude ; it failed of its object, and proved, together with slavery and the gladiatorial shows for the amusement of the people, one of the chief demoralizing influences of the empire.1
Finally, we must not forget that the history of true Christian charity remains to a large part unwritten. Its power is indeed felt everywhere and every day ; but it loves to do its work silently without a thought of merit or reward. It follows human misery into all its lonely griefs with personal sympathy as well as material aid, and finds its own happiness in promoting the happiness of others. There is luxury in doing good for its own sake. " When thou doest alms," says the Lord, " let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret : and thy Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee." 2
NOTES.
Uhlhorn closes his first work with this judgment of mediaeval charity (p. 306 sq. of the English translation): "No period has done so much for the poor as the middle ages. What wholesale distribution of alms, what an abundance of institutions of the most various kinds, what num bers of hospitals for all manner of sufferers, what a series of ministrant orders, male and female, knightly and civil, what self-sacrifice and devotedness ! In the mediaeval period all that wre have observed germi nating in the ancient Church, first attains its maturity. The middle ages, however, also appropriated whatever tendencies existed towards a one-sided and unsound development. Church care of the poor entirely
1 ''There can be," says Lecky (II. 78), "no question that neither in practice nor in theory, neither in the institutions that were founded nor in the place that was assigned to it in the scale of duties, did charity in antiquity occupy a position at all comparable to that which it has obtained by Christianity. Nearly all the relief was a State measure, dictated much more by policy than by benevolence; and the habit of selling young children, the innumera ble expositions, the readiness of the poor to enroll themselves as gladiators, and the frequent famines, show how large was the measure of unrelieved dis tress. A very few Pagan examples of charity have, indeed, descended to us."
2 Matt. 6: 3, 4. The word "openly'1 (h> rw 6ai>fpcj) is omitted in the be*t MSS. and critical editions, and in the E. Revision.
362 FOUETH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
perished, and all charity became institutional ; monks and nuns, or members of the ministrant orders, took the place of the deacons — the diaconate died out. Charity became one-sidedly institutional and onesidedly ecclesiastical. The church was the mediatrix of every exercise of charity, she became in fact the sole recipient, the sole bestower ; for the main object of every work of mercy, of every distribution of alms, of every endowment, of all self-sacrifice in the service of the needy, was the giver's own salvation. The transformation was complete. Men gave and ministered no longer for the sake of helping and serving the poor in Christ, but to obtain for themselves and theirs merit, release from purgatory, a high degree of eternal happiness. The consequence was, that poverty was not contended with, but fostered, and beggary brought to maturity ; so that notwithstanding the abundant donations, the various foundations, the well-endowed institutions, distress was after all not mastered." Nor is it mastered yet. " The poor ye have always with you" (John 12: 8). Riggenbach (Z. c.) maintains that in the mid dle ages hospitals were mere provision-houses ( Versorgungshduser], and that the Reformation first asserted the principle that they should be also houses of moral reform (Rettungshauser and Ileilanstalten}.
Lecky, who devotes a part of the fourth chapter of his impartial hu manitarian History of European Morals to this subject, comes to the fol lowing conclusion (II. 79, 85) : " Christianity for the first time made charity a rudimentary virtue, giving it a leading place in the moral type, and in the exhortations of its teachers. Besides its general influence in stimulating the affections, it effected a complete revolution in this sphere, by regarding the poor as the special representatives of the Chris tian Founder, and thus making the love of Christ, rather than the love of man, the principle of charity. . . . The greatest things are often those which are most imperfectly realized ; and surely no achievements of the Christian Church are more truly great than those which it has effected in the sphere of charity. For the first time in the history of mankind, it has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often under circumstances of ex treme discomfort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It has covered the globe with Qountless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown to the whole Pagan world. It has indissolubly united, in the minds of men, the idea of supreme goodness with that of active and constant benevolence. It has placed in every parish a religious minister who, whatever may be his other functions, has at least been officially charged with the superin tendence of an organization of charity, and who finds in this office one of the most important as well as one of the most legitimate sources of his power."