The Ways Of Charity

________________________________________________
Title:     The Ways Of Charity
Author: Timothy Titcomb [More Titles by Titcomb]

"The Holy Supper is kept indeed,
In whatso we share with another's need;
Not that which we give, but what we share.
For the gift without the giver is bare:
Who bestows himself, with his alms feeds three,--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me."
LOWELL.

"It may not be our lot to wield
The sickle in the ripened field;
Nor ours to hear on summer eves,
The reaper's song among the sheaves;
Yet, when our duty's task is wrought,
In unison with God's great thought,
The near and future blend in one,
And whatsoe'er is willed is done."
WHITTIER.

I have come to entertain very serious doubts about my "orthodoxy" on the subject of doing good. If I know my own motives, I certainly have a desire to do good; but this desire is yoke fellow with the perverse wish to do it in my own way. I do not feel myself inclined to accept the prescriptions of those who have taken out patents for various ingenious processes in this line of effort. My attention has just been attracted to this subject, by the perusal of a long story, which must be not far from the one hundred and ninety-ninth that I have read during the past twenty years, all tipped with the same general moral. A good-natured lady, in easy circumstances, and of benevolent impulses, is appealed to by a poor man in the kitchen. She feeds him, gives him clothes, sends him away rejoicing, and feels good over it. The man comes again and again, tells pitiful stories, excites her benevolence of course, and secures a reasonable amount of additional plunder. Months pass away; and being out upon a walk one pleasant afternoon, and finding herself near the poor man's residence, the fair benefactress calls upon him. She finds the wife (who was reported dead) very comfortable indeed, and the destitute family of four children reduced to a single fat and saucy baby, and the poor liar himself smelling strongly of rum. Then come the denouement, and a grand tableau: lady very much grieved and astonished--wife, who has known nothing of her husband's tricks, exceedingly bewildered--fuddled husband, blind with rum and remorse, owns up to his meanness and duplicity. He found (as he confessed) that he could work upon the lady's sympathies, got to lying and couldn't stop, and, finally, felt so badly over the whole operation, that he took to drink to drown his conscience! _Moral:_ Women should not help poor people without going to see them, and finding out whether they lie.

Now that woman did exactly as I should have done, under the same circumstances. In the first place, I should never have had the heart to doubt a man who carried an honest face, and was cold, hungry, and ragged. I should have regarded his condition as a claim upon my charity. In the second place, I should have had no time to call upon his family, and satisfy myself with regard to their circumstances; and in the third place, I should have felt very delicate about putting direct questions to them if I had. The same story tells incidentally of one of these men who do good in the proper way. He visited a house which presented all the signs of poverty; but the angel of mercy was too 'cute' to be taken in; so he walked up stairs. Every thing presenting there the same aspect of abject poverty that prevailed below, the angel of mercy looked around him, and discovered a ladder leading to the garret. The angel of mercy "smelt a rat," and mounted the ladder. In the garret he found half a cord of wood, and any quantity of goodies for the table. Another denouement and tableau. _Moral:_ as before. If the story has taught me any thing, it is that it is my duty to question every beggar that comes to my door, visit his house, explore it from cellar to garret, and satisfy myself of the truth or falsehood of his representations. Otherwise, my charity goes for nothing, and I do my beggar an absolute unkindness. In other words, while the law holds every man innocent until he is proved to be guilty, charity holds every man guilty until he is proved to be innocent.

It has become the fashion in certain circles to decry that benevolence which sits at home in slippers, and gives its money without seeing where it goes; but it is forgotten that the money dispensed in slippers was earned in boots, and that the man who has money to give, has usually so much business on hand that he can make no adequate personal examination of the cases which are referred to his charity. I can never forget Mr. Dickens' Cheeryble Brothers, who were so very much obliged to a friend for calling upon them, and telling them of the circumstances of a poor family. It was taken as a great personal kindness when they were informed how and where they could relieve want and distress. They had no genius for going about and looking up cases of charity, but their hearts leaped at the opportunity to do good. They did their work in their counting-room, and had no time and no talent for visiting those whom they benefited; but who would question either the genuineness or the judiciousness of their benevolence? The applications for aid made at the doors of our dwellings come oftener to the mistresses of those dwellings than to the masters; and these mistresses, four times in five, are women with the care of children on their hands, or household duties which demand almost constant attention. If a beggar come to the door, they are grateful for the opportunity to afford relief; but they have no time to visit another quarter of the town, to learn whether their charities have been well bestowed, nor do they withhold their charities through fear of being imposed upon.

In my judgment, the character and circumstances of a man determine his office in the work of charitable relief. I know there are some persons who have a peculiar natural adaptation to the work of visiting the subjects of sickness and of need. Their presence and their sympathy are grateful to those to whom they delight to minister. They are masters and mistresses of all those thrifty economies which enable them to manage for the poor. They have genuine administrative talent in this particular department. They are cheerful and active, and sympathetic and ingenious; and they can do more for a poor, discouraged family with ten dollars than others can do with fifty. I do not suppose that these people are one whit more benevolent than those whose purses are always open to the poor, and who at the same time would feel very awkward upon a visit of charity, and would make the family visited feel as awkward as themselves. The poor we have always with us; and every man and woman who possesses means for their relief owes a duty to them which is to be discharged in the most efficient way. If I have money, and do not feel that I am the proper person to look after the details of its dispensation, I will put it into the hands of one more competent to the business, and I will rationally conclude that I have done my duty. In the mean time, if a man come to my door, and ask for the supply of his immediate necessities, he shall not be turned empty away because I do not happen to have the means at hand for verifying his story.

I know that there are multitudes of tender-hearted women--women of abounding benevolence and sensitive conscience--who are troubled upon this subject. They have a desire to do good, and to do it in the right way; but, somehow, they find if impossible to do it according to the views of the story-writers. They are any thing but rugged in health, perhaps, or they have a dependent family of young children around them, or the care of their dwellings absorbs their time. They fail to find the opportunity to visit the poor, or they do not feel themselves adapted to the office; and still they carry about with them the uncomfortable suspicion that they are meanly shrinking from duty. My thought upon this point is that my duties never conflict with one another, and that if I can do good in one way better than another, then that is my way to do good. I shall not permit the story-writers to prescribe for me, nor shall I allow them to make me uncomfortable.

There is a class of men and women in all Protestant communities who think it a very neat thing to do good at random. They sow broadcast of cheap seed, content to reap nothing at all, and pleasantly disappointed if they find here and there a stalk of corn to reward their sowing. They do not prepare their ground, they do not cultivate it at all, but they sow, hoping that in some open place a seed may fall and germinate. Some of these people regard this method of doing good as a kind of holy stratagem--a Christian trick--which takes the devil at a disadvantage. I once knew a kind old gentleman who did a business that brought him considerably into contact with rough and profane persons; and as he wished to do something for them, he kept his pockets filled with little printed cards entitled "The Swearer's Prayer;" and whenever an oath came out, the utterer was immediately presented with this card with a little story on it, and a statement that "to swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise." I very well remember hearing the old gentleman say that, though he had given away hundreds of these cards, he had never learned that one of them had done any good. I do not wonder at it. It was a sneaking way of doing good, or of trying to. If the old man had remonstrated personally with these swearing fellows, and told them that their habit was both vulgar and wicked, does any one suppose that the result would have been so unsatisfactory? He had not pluck enough to do this; so he gave them a card, and they either threw it in his face or threw it away. But then, the cards didn't cost much!

I have been much interested in watching a car-load of passengers, while receiving each from the hands of a professional distributor a religious tract. All have received the gift politely, in deference to the motive which prompted, or was supposed to prompt, its bestowal; yet I have never failed to perceive that politeness was really taxed in the matter. Now let me be candid, and confess that I was never pleasantly impressed by being presented with a tract in a railroad car. This fact cannot be attributed to any lack of disposition to contemplate religious subjects; but there is something which tells me that it is improper and indelicate for any man to come into a public vehicle, and thrust upon me and upon my fellow-passengers a set of motives and opinions on religion which may or may not accord with my own and theirs--just as it happens. I think the natural action of the mind is to brace itself against influences sought to be sprung upon it in this manner; and I am yet to be convinced that this indiscriminate and wholesale distribution of religious tracts in railroad stations and public conveyances is not doing, and has not done, more harm than good. I know that multitudes of men--not vicious--are disgusted with it, and offended by it, and that there is something--call it what you may--in the emotions excited by the presentation of a tract under such ill-chosen circumstances, which counteracts any good influence it was intended to produce. A gentleman will receive a tract politely, and read it or not according to his whim; but it will be very apt to disgust him with the style of Christianity which it represents.

I am aware that the secretary and the agents of the tract societies make very encouraging reports of the results of their operations. I am always interested in these details, and do not discredit at all the statements which they make. Nay, I am convinced that in certain departments of their effort they are successful in doing much good. I believe that their noble army of colporteurs, going from lonely neighborhood to neighborhood, and carrying with them an unselfish, devoted life, and the living voice of prayer, exhortation, and counsel, win many souls to Christian virtue. I am willing to acknowledge, further, that here and there a tract, chance-sown, may fall into ground ready to receive it; but I have a right to question whether the same outlay of effort and money, applied directly in other fields, would not bring very much larger returns. My point is that in all efforts to do good, in this way, appropriateness of time and place is always to be consulted. I once took my seat in a dentist's chair to have an operation performed upon my teeth. If I remember correctly, an ugly fang was to be removed,--at any rate, pain was involved in the matter; but no sooner was the dentist's arm around my head, and his instrument in my mouth, than the well-meaning and zealous operator began to question me upon the subject of personal religion. Now it seemed quite as bad to undertake to propagate Christianity at the point of a surgical instrument, as it would be to win proselytes by the sword; and the utter incongruity of the two operations disgusted me. At any rate, _I changed my dentist_. I felt like the man who found upon his landlady's table an article of butter that was inconveniently encumbered with hair, and who informed her that he had no objection to hair, but would prefer to have it served upon a separate dish.

A good many years ago, I read a Sunday-school book entitled, if I remember correctly, "Walks of Usefulness." It represented a man going out into the street, and "pitching into" every person he met with, upon the subject of religion, or starting a conversation and immediately giving it a spiritual twist. I thought then that he was a remarkably ingenious man--a wonderful story-teller, to say the least of him. I am inclined to think now that he romanced a little. Every operation was so neatly done, and turned out so well, that I really suspect it was pure fiction. I have this to say, at any rate, that if he did and said what he professed to have done and said, under the circumstances which he described, he owed it to the politeness of those whom he addressed that he was not dismissed with a decided rebuff, and told to go about his business. "A word fitly spoken, how good it is!" Ah yes! how very good it is! Christian zeal is no excuse for bad taste, nor is Christian effort exempt from the laws of fitness and propriety which attach to human effort of other aims in other fields. If I wish to reach a man's mind upon any important subject, and circumstances do not favor me, I wait for circumstances to change, or I pave my way to his mind by a series of carefully-adjusted efforts. Abrupt transitions of thought and feeling, and violent interruptions of the currents of mental life and action, are never favorable to reflection. If I wish to cheer a man who is bowed to the earth in grief for the loss of a companion, I will not break in upon his mourning with a lively tune upon a fiddle. If I wish to attract him to a religious life, I will not interrupt the flow of his innocently social hours by some terrible threat or warning. In truth, I know of nothing that calls for more care, or nicer discrimination, or choicer address, than a personal attempt to move an irreligious mind in a religious direction. The word of gold should always have a setting of silver.

There seems to be a prevalent disposition in the religious world to do good by indirection and stratagem. If a man can reach one mind by scattering ten thousand tracts, the result is more grateful than it would be if that mind were reached by direct personal effort without any tracts; and it makes a larger and more interesting show in the reports. This disposition is manifest in the matter of charitable fairs. The women of a religious society will make up a batch of little-or-nothings, freeze a few cans of ice cream, hire a hall, and advertise a sale. We all go, and buy things that we do not want, with a good-natured and gallant disregard of prices, and the footings of receipts are published in the newspapers. The charitable women feel pleasantly about it, and think that they have done a great deal of good at a small cost, without remembering that all the money they have made has cost somebody the amount of the declared figures. It seems to be a great deal pleasanter to get possession of the money in this way, than it would be to obtain it by a general subscription. They forget that all they have done is to obtain a subscription by a graceful and attractive stratagem, and that the motives which they have pocketed with the money would not stand the test of a scrupulous analysis. The main point seems to be to get the money, and do the good with the least possible sense of sacrifice; as a man goes to a charitable ball, and pays two dollars for the privilege of dancing all night, in order to give a shilling of profits to the widow and fatherless without feeling the burden of the charity.

Of all the means of doing good, I know of none so repulsive as that which is purely professional. I think we do not have so much of this in these days as our fathers had. Our pastors are more thoroughly our companions and friends than they used to be. They do not assume to be our dictators and censors as they did in the earlier days of Puritanism. The idea of the regular parochial visit is essentially changed. But I know clergymen, even now, who visit the house of mourning professionally, and give their professional consolation in a professional way, and depart feeling that they have faithfully performed their professional duty. I know clergymen who go round from house to house with their professional inquiries, and do up any quantity of professional work in a day. The family come in, (those who do not run away,) and take seats around the room, and answer questions, and listen to a prayer, and then they bid their pastor a good afternoon with a sense of relief, and go about their business again, while he pushes on to his next parishioner, and repeats the professional task. It is all a dry and unfruitful formality on the part of the families visited, and a professionally-discharged duty on the part of the pastor, and a pitifully-ridiculous caricature of the visit of a religious teacher to his disciples every way. What shall be said of an interview of which the pastor's part consisted of these words: "Very late spring--Hem!" (looking out of the window)--"who is building that barn?--potatoes seem to be getting along very well;" (turning to a member of the family)--"Jane, how do you enjoy your mind?" A spiritual frame that could stand such a transition as that, without taking a fatal cold, must be based upon a very sound constitution, and toughened by frequent repetition of the process.

I suppose there will always be obtuse men in the pastoral office-- men who know no way of getting into a sensitive soul except by knocking in the door and walking in with their boots on; but all such men are out of their place. The souls of an average people-- tied to the tasks of life, burdened by care, oppressed by routine, and depressed in many instances by bodily weakness--need sympathy more than counsel, and encouragement and inspiration more than a solemn, professional catechetical probing of their religious state. But I think, as I have already said, that the world is improving in this matter. Our pastors are more social, more facile, more appreciative of the fact that, in all their personal intercourse with their people, they must win love and give sympathy if they would do good in the line of their profession.

So much in the vein of criticism; and if I am asked what guide a man shall have in the matter of doing good in the world, I shall answer: a loving, honest, and brave heart, and a mind that judges for itself. The heart that loves its fellow-men will move its possessor to do good; and the mind that thinks and judges for itself will decide in what direction its efforts ought to be made. If a man be moved to do good, he will do it, and his heart will lead him in the right direction. Under a mistaken sense of duty, inculcated by incompetent counsellors, men find themselves in fields of benevolent action to which they are very poorly adapted; and the world is full of these blunders; but an honestly-loving heart and an ordinarily clear brain, that nobody has been allowed to meddle with and muddle, will tell a man where he belongs and what he ought to do. If a man have a gift for ministering to the sick, let him do it. If he have a gift for dealing personally with the poor, let him do that. If he have a gift for making money, and none for properly applying his charities, let him hand his money to those who are competent to dispense it. I do not believe that many loving hearts, coupled with unsophisticated judgments, are engaged in indiscriminate and random efforts to act for religious ends upon the minds they meet with. I believe that with all such hearts and judgments there is connected a sense of that which is fit and proper in time, place, and circumstance, so that wherever they strike they leave their mark. I believe that such hearts and judgments will scorn to do that by indirection which they can do better directly, and that if it be fit and proper for them to offer reproof to a man, they will do it by the brave word of mouth, and not sneak up to him and put a card or a tract into his hand. I believe that men with such hearts and judgments would prefer making a subscription directly to a charitable object, to making one indirectly by paying double price for articles they do not want. And last, I think that pastors, with such hearts and judgments, are not at all in danger of becoming coldly professional in their noble duties. A life in any sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of God and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction.

[The end]
Timothy Titcomb's essay: The Ways Of Charity

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN