is a continual returning upon men of what they have done, and that in their history we may read their judgment? [Sidenote: Charity begins at home.] _Charity begins at home_, is the most obvious and familiar of these proverbs, selfishly abused. It may be, no doubt it often is, made the plea for a selfish withholding of assistance from all but a few, whom men may include in their “at home,” while sometimes the proverb receives a narrower interpretation still; and self, and self only, is accounted to be “at home.” And yet, in truth, what were that charity worth, which did _not_ begin at home, which did _not_ preserve the divine order and proportion and degree? It is not for nothing that we have been grouped in families, neighbourhoods, and nations; and he who will not recognise the divinely appointed nearnesses to himself of some over others, who thinks to be a cosmopolite without being a patriot, a philanthropist without owning a distinguishing love for them that are peculiarly “his own,” who would thus have a circumference without a centre, deceives his own heart; and affirming all men, to be equally dear to him, is indeed affirming them to be equally indifferent. Home, the family, this is as the hearth at which the affections which are afterwards to go forth and warm in a larger circle, are themselves to be kept lively and warm; and the charity which did not exercise itself in outcomings of kindness and love in the narrower, would be little likely to seek a wider range for itself. Wherever else it may _end_, and the larger the sphere which it makes for itself the better, it must yet _begin_ at home.[145] [Sidenote: Prudential morality.]