History is at hand to confirm the conclusions of reason, though the full history of charity has never been written, and the greater part of her deeds are known only to him whose eye seeth all things, and will be revealed, only at the last day. But something has been recorded and is known. We in our day think we are doing much to relieve the poor and oppressed, to console the suffering, and to bind up the broken-hearted; but the best of us would be put to shame were we to study what charity did during the decline and fall of the Roman empire and the barbarous ages that immediately followed. We have boasted, and perhaps justly, of the services rendered to humanity during our late civil war by our Christian Commissions and Sanitary Commissions; but what was done by them during four years is nothing in comparison with what was done daily by Christian charity to relieve suffering and distress far greater than were experienced by those even who suffered most from the ravages of our civil war, and that not for four years only, but for four centuries. I have here no room for details, or even for the barest outline of what charity did during the long agony of the old world and the birth of the new; but this much must be said, that it was everywhere present and energetic, and seemed everywhere to renew the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes; and when that old world had passed away, it was found that a new world on a far broader and more durable foundation had taken it's place. Charity had to deal with poverty and want, with sickness and sorrow, and she relieved them; with captives and prisoners of war, and she ransomed them even with the plate from the altar; with barbarians whose highest vision of heaven was to sit in the halls of Valhalla, and quaff from human skulls the blood of their enemies—she tamed, humanized, and civilized them, and made them the foremost nations of the world; with slaves, for Europe was covered over with them—and she mitigated their lot, lightened their oppression, secured for them the moral rights of Christians, and finally broke their chains and made them, not freedmen only, but freemen, Christian freemen, and brothers of the noblest and proudest.
What if it took centuries to abolish slavery? It did not take her centuries to christen the slaves, to bring them spiritual freedom, and provide for their souls. She did not wait till she had abolished the slavery of the body before abolishing the far more grievous slavery of the soul, teaching the slaves the truth that liberates, incorporating them into the church of God, and making them free and equal citizens of the commonwealth of Christ. With this spiritual freedom, of which philanthropy knows nothing, but which is the basis of all real freedom, and with ample provisions for the wants of the soul, [{445}] the slave could wait in patience for the day of deliverance from bodily servitude. That day might be long in coming, come it surely would; and it did come, and peaceably, without civil war, social convulsion, industrial or economical disturbance. But, unhappily, with us only a feeble portion of the slaves were really Christianized, and by their moral and spiritual training as free and equal members of the church, which makes no distinction between the bond and the free, the white and the black, fitted to take their position and play there are parts as free and equal members of civil society Moreover, we have not been able to emancipate them peaceably; we have done it only by a terrible civil war, in the midst of the clash of arms, as a means of saving the life of the nation, or of perpetuating the union of the states; and the most difficult problem remains to be solved, which the humanitarians flatter themselves will be solved without trouble by political economy, or the general law of demand and supply; but which they will find it will need more Christian Charity than the nation has hitherto possessed to solve, without the gradual extinction in this country of the negro race. The last thing to be relied on for adjusting any social question, elevating any class to social or civil equality, or making freedmen really freemen, is political economy, which treats man not as a free moral agent, or as a social being, but simply as a producing, distributing, and and consuming machine, placed in the same category with the steam-plough, patent reaper, spinning-jenny, and the power-loom. If the question, What shall be done with our freedman? be left to politics, political economy, or philanthropy, without the intervention of Christian charity, emancipation will only have changed the form of their slavery, or given them all the cares and burdens of freedom with none of its blessings.
It is the same in all human affairs. No measured of reform or progress, individual or social, domestic or political, ever succeed or succeed without an overbalance of evil, unless inspired and directed by charity. They may and do succeed without perfect charity, but never without the principle of charity. Philanthropy is man's method, and leads to nothing; charity is God's method, and conducts to its end. But we must not confound charity with weakness or effeminacy of character, for that would be to confound it with sentimentalism. Charity is not credulity or mental imbecility; it is always robust and manly, the rational soul raised above itself by divine grace, and endowed in the spiritual order with superhuman power.
Charity loves peace, but follows after the things which make for peace, and shrinks not from following after them, when need is, even through war. Modern peace-societies are founded by philanthropy, not by charity, and though they have been in existence for half a century, and proudly boasted that there would be no more war, yet there have been more wars and bloodshed during the last twenty years than during any period of equal duration since modern history began. Charity founds no anti-hangman societies for the abolition of capital punishment in all cases whatsoever, or prisoners' friends societies to convert our prisons into palaces; yet recoils from all cruelty or undue severity, and seeks to prevent punishment by preventing crime. She never forgets justice, nor sacrifices in her love for individuals the protection of society or the safety of the state. Her great care is to save the soul of the criminal, and to this end she visits the most loathsome cells, takes her stand on the scaffold by the side of the condemned, and will not give him up till she has made his peace with God. She fills the soul with love for enemies and forgiveness of injuries, but they are my enemies she bids me love, and my personal injuries she bids me forgive. I cannot forgive injuries, done to my neighbor, to society, or to my country, for they are not mine; and she herself bids me, when summoned by the proper authority, to shoulder my musket and march to the battle-field to defend public right and repress public wrong. Charity is never weak, sentimental, lackadaisical, or cowardly. It is the principle of all true greatness and manliness, and the most charitable are the strongest, bravest, the most heroic, wherever duty calls them to act as well as to suffer.
From the London Society.
CHRISTMAS WITH THE BARON.
A RATHER REMARKABLE FAIRY TALE.
Once upon a time—fairy tales always begin with once upon a time, you know—once upon a time there lived in a fine old castle on the Rhine, a certain Baron von Schrochslofsleschshoffinger. You won't find it an easy name to pronounce; in fact, the baron never tried it himself but once, and then he was laid up for two days' afterward; so in future well merely call him "the baron," for shortness, particularly as he was rather a dumpy man. After having heard his name, you won't be surprised when I tell you that he was an exceedingly bad character. For a German baron, he was considered enormously rich; a hundred and fifty pounds a year wouldn't be thought much over here; but still it will buy a good deal of sausage, which, with wine grown on the estate, formed the chief sustenance of the baron and his family. Now, you'll hardly believe that, notwithstanding he was the possessor of his princely revenue, the baron was not satisfied, but oppressed and ground down his unfortunate tenants to the very last penny he could possible squeeze out of them. In all his exactions he was seconded and encouraged by his steward, Klootz, an old rascal who took a malicious pleasure in his master's cruelty, and who chuckled and rubbed his hands with the greatest apparent enjoyment when any of the poor landholders couldn't pay their rent, or afforded him any opportunity for oppression. Not content with making the poor tenants pay double value for the land they rented, the baron was in the habit of going round every now and then to their houses, and ordering anything he took a fancy to, from a fat pig to a pretty daughter, to be sent up to the castle. The pretty daughter was made parlor-maid, but as she had nothing a year, and to find herself, it wasn't what would be considered by careful mothers an eligible situation The fat pig became sausage, of course. Things went on from bad to worse, till at the time of our story, between the alternate squeezings of the baron and his steward, the poor tenants had very little left to squeeze out of them. The fat pigs and the pretty daughters had nearly all found their way up to the castle, and there was little else to take. The only help the poor fellows had was the baron's only daughter, Lady Bertha, who always had a kind words, and frequently something more substantial, for them, when her father was not in the way. Now, I'm not going to describe Bertha, for the simple reason that if I did, you would imagine that she was the fairy I'm going to tell you about, and she isn't. However, I don't mind giving yon a few outlines. In the first place, she was exceedingly tiny—the nicest girls, the real lovable little pets, always are tiny—and she had long silken black hair, and a dear, dimpled little face, full of love and mischief. Now then, fill out outline [{447}] with the details of the nicest and prettiest girl you know, and you'll have a slight idea of her. On second thoughts, I don't believe you will, for your portrait wouldn't be half good enough; however, it'll be near enough for you. Well, the baron's daughter, being all your fancy painted her, and a trifle more, was naturally much distressed at the goings on of her unamiable parent, and tried her best to make amends for her father's harshness. She generally managed that a good many pounds of the sausage should find their way back to the owners of the original pig; and when the baron tried to squeeze the and of the pretty parlor-maid, which he occasionally did after dinner, Bertha had only to say, in a tone of mild remonstrance, "Pa!" and pa dropped the hand like a hot potato, and stared very hard the other way, instantly. Bad as the disreputable old baron was, he had a respect for the goodness and purity of his child. Like the lion, tamed by the charm of Una's innocence, the rough old rascal seemed to lose in her presence half his rudeness; and though he used awful language to her sometimes (I dare say even Una's lion reward occasionally) he was more tractable with her than with any other living being. Her presence operated as a moral restraint upon him, which possibly was the reason that he never stayed down stairs after dinner, but always retired to a favorite turret, where he could get comfortably tipsy, which, I regret to say, he had got so in the way of doing every afternoon, that I believe he would have felt unwell without.