This does not mean that indiscriminate charity is commendable. It does
not mean that you should lend money to everyone who asks, or lift and
carry the burdens of everyone who is ready to lean upon you.
It is as wrong to encourage the man addicted to the vice of borrowing,
as the one with the vice of alcohol or drugs.
One depends upon his acquaintances to tide him over hard places,
instead of upon his own strength of character, and the other depends
upon stimulants for the same purpose. The too ready lender is almost
as great an evil to humanity as rum or opium, since he too helps a man
to kill his own better nature and destroy his self-respect.
If you were able and willing to pay rents of all the poor people you
know, and clothe their children, you would soon produce a condition of
settled pauperism among them. Large and frequent favors of a financial
nature are an injury to anyone, even if it is your son or brother.
Let no man lean on anyone save God and his own divine self.
But little helps, when they are unexpected, arouse hope and awaken new
faith and new ambition in a discouraged soul.
Look about you for such souls, the worn and weary father of a brood of
hungry children, the widow struggling with adverse fate in an effort to
clothe and educate a child, the tired shop girl who uses all her
earnings to sustain her parents, the ambitious boy or girl eager for a
chance in life, and the poor cripple or invalid seeking health. You
will find them all about you. Do not be afraid to use a dollar here or
there to give these worthy ones a happy surprise, no matter how poor
you are.
It is an insult to the Opulent Creator to suppose you will suffer want
and poverty if you help those who are in temporary misfortune.
You will not.
Ofttimes we read and hear of the open-handed generous man who "helped
everybody," and who "never refused to aid a needy brother," and who
ended his life in penury because of his generosity.
Never believe these tales until you investigate them. Invariably you
will find not generosity but extravagance and utter lack of
forethought, caused the man's financial ruin.
I recall a gifted young woman who gave freely to all who asked her
assistance and who died a lingering death as a charity patient in a
hospital.
Yet this young woman had expended ten dollars on foolish and rapid
living where she gave one in charity; it was her wasteful extravagance,
not her open heart of sympathy, which made her a pauper.
It has been my observation that dollars planted in the soil of
benevolence grow into harvests of prosperity. The man who is not
afraid to use his small means to assist others need not fear poverty.
Woman's Opportunity
The greatest opportunity to better the world which can come to any
woman is through the experience of maternity.
The power of prenatal influence which a mother possesses is
awe-inspiring to realize.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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