But there is a feature of giving more obnoxious than either of these two, yet no less deeply rooted in giving than exceptionality and caprice. A gift has always something disparaging about it. It professes to honor, but deep in the heart of it there is disparagement, condescension at least. I declare another to be better than myself, preferring that he shall be the owner of something prized by me. Yet in reality I retain the superior position myself and make the one whom I honor my dependent. Rightly did Jesus say: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” How could it be otherwise? The giver is the wealthy man, the man of power and preference; the receiver confessedly the man of need, passive to another’s will. The very attempt, then, that I make to raise him up and provide him with something acceptable from my store sets him beneath me. He lacks, I abound. At the very moment when turning to him I say: “I prefer you to myself and desire that you rather than I should possess this,” I am really also saying: “But by all right it belongs to me and I part with it as its and your superior.” However glad, therefore, we may be to get our wants supplied, a disagreeable taste is apt to lurk about the acceptance of a gift. A good share of humility is required of one who will be an altogether happy receiver, a contented inferior. Our age has discovered this and has grown restive over charity. It would seem that in past ages those who lacked the things that make life worth living stood with outstretched hands to receive them from their rightful owners, and that those who owned counted it a prerogative of their station thus to assist their inferiors. But this humble attitude of the needy is disappearing, together with many other traditions of aristocratic days. Our poorer classes now have too much self-respect to be at ease in such relations. Certainly the poor to-day are vastly better off than at any other period of the world’s history, yet never more discontented. The new self-respect which has come with easier conditions makes them resent charity and dependence. “Give us what belongs to us,” they seem to say. “We want no benevolence. If a better living should be ours, we will take it as of right but not by favor. We stand on our own feet, acknowledging inferiority to no man.” This rejection of charity on grounds of self-respect is not uncommon to-day. I have met it in administering the little trust for the benefit of students of which I spoke. And though I do not altogether sympathize with it, I see in it much to honor.