The spontaneous sympathies of human nature, when they are vigorous enough to produce the fruits of charity, rest on an expectation of an opposite kind; for we first seek to dispel from our own bosoms the uneasy sensation of pity; then look for the gratitude of the wretch we have solaced, and for the approbation of spectators; and then take a sweet after-draught of self-complacency. But the Christian virtue of beneficence stands altogether on another ground; and its doctrine is this, that whoever would remedy misery must himself suffer; and that the pains of the vicarious benefactor are generally to bear proportion to the extent or malignity of the evils he labors to remove: so that, while the philanthropist who undertakes the cure only of the transient ills of the present life, may encounter no greater amount of toils or discouragements than are amply recompensed by the immediate gratifications of successful benevolence, he who, with a due sense of the greatness of the enterprise, devotes himself to the removal of the moral wretchedness in which human nature is involved, will find that the sad quality of these deeper woes is in a manner reflected back upon himself; and that to touch the substantial miseries of degenerate man is to come within the infection of infinite sorrow.
And this is the law of success in the Christian ministry—that highest work of philanthropy. Every right-minded and heaven-commissioned minister of religion is "baptized with the baptism wherewith his Lord was baptized." In an inferior, yet a real sense, he is, like his Lord, a vicarious person, and has freely undergone a suretyship for the immortal welfare of his fellow-men. He has charged himself with a responsibility that can never be absolutely acquitted while any power of exertion or faculty of endurance is held back from the service. The interests which rest in his hand, and depend on his skill and fidelity—depend, as truly as if divine agency had no part in the issue—are as momentous as infinity can make them; nor are they to be promoted without a willingness to do and to bear the utmost of which humanity is capable. Although the servant of Christ be not unconditionally responsible for the happy result of his labors, he is clearly bound, both by the terms of his engagement and the very quality of the work, to surrender whatever he may possess that has in it a virtue to purchase success; and he knows that, by the great law of the spiritual world, the suffering of a substitute enters into the procedures of redemption.
He who "took our sorrows and bore our griefs," left, for the instruction of his servants, a perfect model of what should ordinarily be a life of beneficence. Every circumstance of privation, of discouragement, of insult, of deadly hostility, which naturally fell in the way of a ministry like his, exercised among a people profligate, malignant, and fanatical, was endured by him as submissively as if no extraordinary powers of relief or defence had been at his disposal.
On the very same conditions of unmitigated toil and suffering he consigned the publication of his religion to his apostles: "Ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake: Whosoever killeth you shall think that he doeth God service: Behold, I send you forth as sheep among wolves." Though endowed with an opulence of supernatural power for the attestation of their commission, the apostles possessed none for the alleviation of their own distresses; none which might tend to generate a personal enthusiasm by leading them to think that they, as individuals, were the darlings of Heaven. And in fact, they daily found themselves, even while wielding the arm of omnipotence, exposed to the extremest pressures of want, to pain, to destitution, to contempt. "Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place." Such was the deplorable lot, such to his last year of houseless wanderings, houseless except when a dungeon was his home, of the most honored of Heaven's agents on earth. Such was the life of the most successful of all philanthropists!
Nor have the conditions of eminent service been relaxed: the value of souls is not lowered; and as the "sacrifice once offered" for the sins of the world remains in undiminished efficacy, so, in the process of diffusing the infinite benefit, the rule originally established continues in force; and although reasons drawn from the diversity of character and of natural strength, among those who are the servants of God, may occasion great apparent differences in the amount of suffering severally endured by them, it is always true that the path of Christian beneficence is more beset than the common walks of life with disheartening reverses. Whoever freely takes up the cause of the wretched, is left to feel the grievous pressure of the burden. The frustration of his plans by the obstinate folly of those whom he would fain serve, the apathy, the remissness, or the sinister oppositions of professed coadjutors, the dangerous hostility of profligate power, and worse than all, the secret misgivings of an exhausted spirit; these, and whatever other instruments of torture Disappointment may hold in her hand or have in reserve, are the furniture of the theatre on which the favorite virtue of Heaven is to pass its trial.
But this law of vicarious charity is altogether opposed to the expectations of inexperienced and ardent minds. Among the few who devote themselves zealously to the service of mankind, a large proportion derive their activity from that constitutional fervor which is the physical cause of enthusiasm. In truth, a propensity rather to indulge the illusions of hope, than to calculate probabilities, may seem almost a necessary qualification for those who, in this world of abounding evil, are to devise the means of checking its triumphs. To raise fallen humanity from its degradation, to rescue the oppressed, to deliver the needy, to save the lost, are enterprises so little recommended, for the most part, by a fair promise of success, that few will engage in them but those who, by a happy infirmity of the reasoning faculty, are prone to hope where cautious men despond.
Thus furnished for their work by a constitutional contempt of frigid prudence, and engaged cordially in services which seem to give them a peculiar interest in the favor of Heaven, it is only natural that benevolent enthusiasts should cherish secret, if not avowed hopes, of extraordinary aids, and of interpositions of a kind not compatible with the constitution of the present state, and not warranted by promise of Scripture. Or if the kind-hearted visionary neither asks nor expects any peculiar protection of his person, nor any exemption from the common hazards and ills of life, he yet clings with fond pertinacity to the hope of a semi-miraculous interference on those occasions in which the work, rather than the agent, is in peril. Even the genuineness of his benevolence leads the amiable enthusiast into this error. To achieve the good he has designed does indeed occupy all his heart, to the exclusion of every selfish thought: what price of personal suffering would he not pay, might he so purchase the needful miracle of help! How piercing, then, is the anguish of his soul when that help is withheld; when his fair hopes and fair designs are overthrown by a hostility that might have been restrained, or by a casualty that might have been diverted!
Few, perhaps, who suffer chagrins like this, altogether avoid a relapse into religious—we ought to say, irreligious—despondency. The first fault, that of misunderstanding the unalterable rules of the divine government, is followed by a worse, that of fretting against them. When the sharpness of disappointment disperses enthusiasm, the whole moral constitution often becomes infected with the gall of discontent. Querulous regrets take the place of active zeal; and at length vexation, much more than a real exhaustion of strength, renders the once laborious philanthropist "weary in well doing."
And yet, not seldom, a happy renovation of motives takes place in consequence of the very failures to which the enthusiast has exposed himself. Benevolent enterprises were commenced, perhaps, in all the fervor of exorbitant hopes; the course of nature was to be diverted, and a new order of things to take place, in which what human efforts failed to accomplish should be achieved by the ready aid of Heaven. But Disappointment, as merciless to the venial errors of the good, as to the mischievous plots of the wicked, scatters the project in a moment. Then the selfish, and the inert, exult; and the half-wise pick up fragments from the desolation, wherewith to patch their favorite maxims of frigid prudence with new proofs in point! Meanwhile, by grace given from above in the hour of despondency, the enthusiast gains a portion of true wisdom from defeat. Though robbed of his fondly-cherished hopes, he has not been stripped of his sympathies, and these soon prompt him to begin anew his labors, on principles of a more substantial sort. Warned not again to expect miraculous or extraordinary aids to supply the want of caution he consults Prudence with even a religious scrupulosity; for he has learned to think her voice, if not misunderstood, to be in fact the voice of God. And now he avenges himself upon Disappointment, by abstaining almost from hope. A sense of responsibility which quells physical excitement, is his strength. He relies indeed upon the divine aid; yet not for extraordinary interpositions, but for grace to be faithful. Thus, better furnished for arduous exertion, a degree of substantial success is granted to his renewed toils and prayers. And while the indolent, and the over-cautious, and the cold-hearted, remain what they were; or have become more inert, more timid, and more selfish than before, the subject of their self-complacent pity has not only accomplished some important service for mankind, but has himself acquired a temper which fits him to take rank among the thrones and dominions of the upper world.
II. Christian philanthropy is obligatory.