Generosity
ave you ever observed how invariably your "last dollar" is restored to you, with additions, when you have given it for some worthy purpose?
Even if the purpose did not prove to be a worthy one, yet if you thought it so, and gave your last dollar with spontaneous sympathy and good will, you were not long left penniless.
Money is much like a man. If you do not hold it too jealously it returns to you the more readily.
Never hesitate to give aid where you feel there is sore and pressing need, for fear you will be left in want yourself. You will not be.
This does not mean that indiscriminate charity is commendable. It does not mean that you should lend money to everyone who asks, or lift and carry the burdens of everyone who is ready to lean upon you.
It is as wrong to encourage the man addicted to the vice of borrowing, as the one with the vice of alcohol or drugs.
One depends upon his acquaintances to tide him over hard places, instead of upon his own strength of character, and the other depends upon stimulants for the same purpose. The too ready lender is almost as great an evil to humanity as rum or opium, since he too helps a man to kill his own better nature and destroy his self-respect.
If you were able and willing to pay rents of all the poor people you know, and clothe their children, you would soon produce a condition of settled pauperism among them. Large and frequent favors of a financial nature are an injury to anyone, even if it is your son or brother.
Let no man lean on anyone save God and his own divine self.
But little helps, when they are unexpected, arouse hope and awaken new faith and new ambition in a discouraged soul.
Look about you for such souls, the worn and weary father of a brood of hungry children, the widow struggling with adverse fate in an effort to clothe and educate a child, the tired shop girl who uses all her earnings to sustain her parents, the ambitious boy or girl eager for a chance in life, and the poor cripple or invalid seeking health. You will find them all about you. Do not be afraid to use a dollar here or there to give these worthy ones a happy surprise, no matter how poor you are.
It is an insult to the Opulent Creator to suppose you will suffer want and poverty if you help those who are in temporary misfortune.
You will not.
Ofttimes we read and hear of the open-handed generous man who "helped everybody," and who "never refused to aid a needy brother," and who ended his life in penury because of his generosity.
Never believe these tales until you investigate them. Invariably you will find not generosity but extravagance and utter lack of forethought, caused the man's financial ruin.
I recall a gifted young woman who gave freely to all who asked her assistance and who died a lingering death as a charity patient in a hospital.
Yet this young woman had expended ten dollars on foolish and rapid living where she gave one in charity; it was her wasteful extravagance, not her open heart of sympathy, which made her a pauper.
It has been my observation that dollars planted in the soil of benevolence grow into harvests of prosperity. The man who is not afraid to use his small means to assist others need not fear poverty.