2. But the _bountiful eye_ will not only industriously search for occupation, it will also exercise a discriminating watchfulness. How essential is this to a profitable exercise of charitable distribution. He who is not aware of the deceptions which are constantly practised by many of the poor, and of the injudicious modes which are often adopted for relieving their wants, must have had but small experience in this duty. Sound judgment is required, and without it a liberal and active charity may produce evil rather than good. Evil to the community, not to the benevolent individual. If our alms are given with proper motives, we shall not fail of our reward from our Heavenly Father, though we fail of doing the good we intended. We are often deceived; but this should not be made an argument, as is frequently the case, for contracting our bounties. It should only excite us to greater caution. The common applicants at our doors and in our streets, are in general, undeserving of the alms which they entreat. This however, is by no means uniformly their character, for I have known the most worthy objects, those whom modesty and a laudable pride had restrained, until acute distress had fairly driven them forth to seek needful comforts for the destitute sick, or perhaps, bread for their famishing children. We must not, with cruel indifference, drive such away in the common herd of undeserving beggars. We must _consider the cause of the poor_,[6] as respects their characters and their condition.