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Page 36
It is carefully to be remembered that the excess of every natural virtue
becomes a vice, and that these apparently opposing qualities are only
divided from each other by almost insensible boundaries. The habitual
exercise of strong self-control can alone preserve even our virtues from
degenerating into sin, and a clear-sightedness as to the very first
step of declension must be sought for by self-denial on our own part,
and by earnest prayer for the assisting graces of the Holy Spirit, to
search the depths of our heart, and open our eyes to see.
Thus it is that the free and generous impulses of a warm and benevolent
nature, though in themselves among the loveliest manifestations of the
merely natural character, will and necessarily must degenerate into
extravagance and self-indulgence, unless they are kept vigilantly and
constantly under the control of prudence and justice. And this, if you
consider the subject impartially, is fully as much the case when these
generous impulses are not exercised alone in procuring indulgences for
one's friends or one's self, but even when they excite you to the relief
of real suffering and pitiable distress.
This last is, indeed, one of the severest trials of the duty of economy;
but that it is a part of that duty to resist even such temptations, will
be easily ascertained if you consider the subject coolly,--that is, if
you consider it when your feelings are not excited by the sight of a
distressed object, whose situation may be readily altered by some of
that money which you think, and think justly, is only useful, only
enjoyable, in the moment of expenditure.
The trial is, I confess, a difficult one: it is best the decision with
respect to it should be made when your feelings are excited on the
opposite side, when some useful act of charity to the poor has
incapacitated you from meeting the demands of justice.
I am sure your memory, ay, and your present experience too, can furnish
you with some cases of this kind. It may be that the act of generosity
was a judicious and a useful one, that the suffering would have been
great if you had not performed it; but, on the other hand, it has
disabled you from paying some bills that you knew at the very time were
lawfully due as the reward of honest labour, which had trusted to your
honour that this reward should be punctually paid. You have a keen sense
of justice as well as a warm glow of generosity; one will serve to
temper the other. Let the memory of every past occasion of this kind be
deeply impressed, not only on your mind but on your heart, by frequent
reflection on the painful thoughts that then forced themselves upon
you,--the distress of those upon whose daily labour the daily
maintenance of their family depends, the collateral distress of the
artisans employed by them, whom they cannot pay because you cannot pay,
the degradation to your own character, from the experience of your
creditors that you have expended that which was in fact not your own,
the diminished, perhaps for ever injured, confidence which they and all
who become acquainted with the circumstances will place in you, and,
finally, the probability that you have deprived some honest,
industrious, self-denying tradesman of his hardly-earned dues, to bestow
the misnamed generosity upon some object of distress, who, however real
the distress may be now, has probably deserved it by a deficiency in all
those good qualities which maintain in respectability your defrauded
creditor. The very character, too, of your creditor may suffer by your
inability to pay him, for he, miscalculating on your honesty and
truthfulness, may, on his side, have engaged to make payments which
become impossible for him, when you fail in your duty, in which case you
can scarcely calculate how far the injury to him may extend; becoming a
more permanent and serious evil than his incapacity to answer those
daily calls upon him of which I have before spoken. In short, if you
will try to bring vividly before you all the painful feelings that
passed through your mind, and all the contingencies that were
contemplated by you on any one of these occasions, you will scarcely
differ from me when I assert my belief that the name of dishonesty would
be a far more correct word than that of generosity to apply to such
actions as the above: you are, in fact, giving away the money of another
person, depriving him of his property, his time, or his goods, under
false pretences, and, in addition to this, appropriating to yourself the
pleasure of giving, which surely ought to belong by right to those to
whom the gift belongs.
I have here considered one of the most trying cases, one in which the
withholding of your liberality becomes a really difficult duty, so
difficult that the opportunity should be avoided as much as possible;
and it is for this very purpose that the science of economy should be
diligently studied and practised, that so "you may have to give to him
that needeth," without taking away that which is due to others. Probably
in most of the cases to which I have referred your memory, some previous
acts of self-denial would have saved you from being tempted to the sin
of giving away the property of another. I would not willingly suppose
that an act of self-denial at the very time you witnessed the case of
distress might have provided you with the means of satisfying both
generosity and honesty, for, as I said before, I know you to have a keen
sense of justice; and though you have never yet been vigilant enough in
the practice of economy, I cannot believe that, with an alternative
before you, you would indulge in any personal expenditure, even bearing
the appearance of almost necessity, that would involve a failure in the
payment of your debts. I speak, then, only of acts of previous
self-denial, and I wish you to be persuaded, that unless these are
practised habitually and incessantly you can never be truly generous. A
readiness to give that which costs you nothing, that which is so truly a
superfluity that it involves no sacrifice, is a mere animal instinct, as
selfish perhaps, though more refinedly so than any other species of
self-indulgence. Generosity is a nobler quality, and one that can have
no real existence without economy and self-denial.
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