Boaz may be exhibited as a specimen of that prudential charity which should always regulate our distributions. He might have supplied Ruth at once from his ample repository of grain, or from the sheaves of the golden harvest; but he chose, on the contrary, to encourage her industry, though he kindly mitigated her toil. Indiscriminate gifts may rather favour idleness than relieve necessity; and it is as much a duty to see to the mode of distributing help to the needy, as to render them the requisite aid: besides which, the poor are more likely to value and to use properly what has been industriously acquired, than what is lavishly, however, as to its principle, benevolently communicated. Alleviate the toil of the necessitous, but do not prevent their useful employment of time and means. Industry is the law of the universe; and the Supreme Disposer of human affairs has appointed that "in the sweat of his face man should eat bread till he return unto the ground." To Ruth this was one of the happiest evenings of a life which had been chequered with vicissitude, and of late particularly beclouded with, sorrow. How different were the feelings with which she returned to the cottage of her mother-in-law from those which afflicted her bosom when she quitted it in the early part of this memorable day. Distressed and friendless she had gone forth; "not knowing whither she went," anxious only to procure some scanty subsistence for the day to satisfy the cravings of appetite, and to sustain the weakness of her dear and aged relative; but she returned laden with the spoils of the harvest field, an ephah of barley; she had been noticed by a very liberal proprietor of the soil, and invited to continue gleaning in his field. With what heartfelt satisfaction did she present the fruits of her first-day's exertion at the feet of Naomi, and sit down to share that kind of comfort to which Solomon has so strikingly alluded--"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox, and hatred therewith."