"About My Father's Business": Work Amidst the Sick, the Sad, and the Sorrowing

by Thomas Archer

The present fashion of dealing with such an unfortunate traveller would very much depend on which particular class of philanthropists the modern Samaritan who found him by the road-side happened to belong to.

Of course, it would be a scandal to our Christianity to follow either priest or Levite, although our cowardly sympathies might lie between the two; so, in order to make all safe, we hit on a compromise, and, according to our circumstances, try to find a medium line of conduct between Samaritan and Levite, or Samaritan and priest. We are ashamed to pass on without doing something, and so we call at the inn on our way, and leave the twopence there, in case anybody else should think fit to bring on the man who is lying, stunned and bleeding, in the roadway. Or else, having contrived to rouse the poor fellow to a little effort, we borrow an ass and take him back with us, to find some organised institution for the relief of those who fall among thieves, where the wine and oil are contracted for out of the funds. And there we leave him, without remembering anything whatever about the twopenny contribution which would represent our own share in the benefaction.

It is an awful thought, and one which it may be hoped will soon become intolerable, that, with the mechanical perfection of means for relieving the necessities of those who are afflicted, there seems to grow upon us a deadly indifference to the very deepest need of all—that personal, human sympathy, without which all our boast of benevolence is but as the sounding of brass and the tinkling of a cymbal. Can it be possible that we are approaching a condition when, refusing to have the poor and the afflicted, the widow and the orphan always with us, we shut them away out of our sight, leaving the whole duty of visiting them, of clothing them, of giving them meat and drink, to be done by an official committee; a charitable board, distributing doles, exactly calculated, on a carefully devised scale, and divided to the ounce or the inch, in supposed proportion to the individual need of each recipient? Will there ever come a time when we shall persuade ourselves that we fulfil the law of Christ by paying so much in the pound for a charity rate, and leaving all the actual "relief" to be effected by an official department, or a series of official committees?

The present aspect of charitable administration would be truly appalling if this were likely to be the result, for there are far too many evidences of that deadly indifference which will get rid of all real personal responsibility by paying a subscription, and will pay handsomely, too, at the same time smiling grimly, and half satirically, at the recollection that there are a number of people who always have on hand "cases," of whom they are anxious to rid themselves by placing them in any institution that will receive them without payment.

Let it not be imagined that these latter words of mine are intended to apply to those workers among the poor, who, with small means of their own, cannot do much more than speak words of advice and comfort, and give their earnest help to better the condition of sordid homes and of neglected children. There are scores of true, tender-hearted women who, spending much time amongst the sick and the afflicted, feel their hearts sink within them as they see how much more might be done, if they had but the wherewithal to appease the actual physical needs of those to whom they try to come spiritually near.

If but the miracle so easy to others were first performed, and the five thousand fed, then indeed might follow that still greater miracle, the earnest listening of the once turbulent multitude to the words of the Bread of Life.

But there are those who pursue what they regard as "charitable work" as an excitement—an amusement—just as children are sometimes set to play with Scripture conversation cards, and puzzles out of the Old Testament, with a kind of feeling that the employment comes nearly to a religious exercise. There is as much danger of these persons missing the true work of charity as there would be in the employment of paid officials—indeed, the latter would have one advantage; they would be less likely to be imposed upon by those who to obtain some special advantage would cringe and flatter.

The first great difficulty in visiting and temporarily relieving the lower class of destitute poor, is to disabuse their minds of an inveterate notion that the benevolent visitor and distributor is paid by some occult society, of which the recipients of bounty know nothing, and for which they care very little. Unfortunately, the sharp determined amateur visitor, who "does a district" as other people with leisure do a flower show or a morning concert—but, alas! these very words of mine show how common is that lack of true charity of which I designed to speak. Who am I that I should sum up the disposition and the heart of my brother or my sister? Only I would say that this suspicion on the part of the ignorant poor, which is so often complained of—the notion that their interviewers are paid for the work of charity—can only yield to the conviction that the work itself is undertaken with warm living human sympathy. Before the true relief shall come to any man, it must come by faith. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness," and in righteousness also.

The two tendencies that are driving us away from charity to a kind of selfish economy, are the habit of "relieving our overcharged susceptibilities by secreting a guinea," and thinking we have thereby fulfilled the claims of religion and humanity, and the practice of going about seeking where we may find candidates for other people's guineas, and so becoming a kind of charitable detectives, with an eye to reputation and advancement in the force.

We are forgetting that heartfelt sympathy, that clasp of the hand and beam of the eye which will make even a cup of cold water a benefaction, if we have no more to give, or if the need goes no further than a refreshing draught, that shall be turned from water into wine by the power of loving fellowship. Or we may be saying, "Be ye clothed, and be ye fed," trusting to some other hand to do the necessary work, without having ourselves first wrought for the means of taking our part in it, either by a deep personal interest in the relieving institution or in the destitute recipient.