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.