Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/189

Rh I am not like other men, who trust in good works and the light of nature; I give tithes of all that I possess. I thank Thee that I am one of Thine Elect, and shall have glory when this Samaritan goeth down to the pit."

I once knew a little boy in the country, whose father gave him a half-dime to help the sufferers at a fire in New Brunswick; the young lad dropped his mite into the box at church,—it was his earliest alms,—with a deep delight which sweetened his consciousness for weeks to come with the thought of the good that his five cents would do. What were all sweetmeats and dainties to this? Our little boy's mother had told him that the good God loved actions such as these, Himself dropping the sun and moon into the alms-box of the world; and the grave, sober father, who had earned the silver with serious sweat, his broadaxe ringing in the tough oak of New England, brushed a tear out of his eye at seeing the son's delight in helping men whom none of the family had ever seen.

Philanthropy begins small, and helps itself along, some- times by love of sheep and oxen, and dogs and swine. Did not the great Jesus ride into the holy city " on the foal of an ass"? By and by our philanthropist goes out to widest circles, makes great sacrifice of comfort, of money, of reputation; his philanthropic power continually grows, and an inundation of delight fills up his mighty soul. The shillings which a poor girl pays for missionaries to Burmah and Guinea are shillings which bring more delight than all the gewgaws they could buy.

I have seen a man buy baskets of cherries in a foreign town, and throw them by handfuls to the little boys and girls in the streets wholly unknown to him. He doubtless got more joy from that, than if he had had the appetite of a miser, and stomach enough to eat up all the cherries in the valley of the Rhine. Men of wealth, who use money for philanthropy, to feed the poor, to build hospitals and asylums, schools and colleges, get more joy from this use thereof, than if they had the pecuniary swallow and stomach of a gigantic miser, and themselves eat up the schools and colleges, the hospitals and asylums, which others built. They who build widows' houses, not they who devour them, have the most joy thereof.

The man who devotes the larger wealth of the mind,