Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/497

 only by imitating his goodness, and endeavouring the assistance and protection of each other; and our Judge, who has already declared that the merciful shall obtain mercy, and that in the awful day, in which every man shall be recompensed according to his works, he that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly.

If we cast our eyes over the earth, and extend our observations through the system of human beings, what shall we find but scenes of misery and innumerable varieties of calamity and distress, the pains of sickness, the wounds of casualty, the gripings of hunger, and the cold of nakedness; wretches wandering without an habitation, exposed to the contempt of the proud, and the insults of the cruel, goaded forward, by the stings of poverty, to dishonest acts, which perhaps relieve their present misery, only to draw some more dreadful distress upon them? And what are we taught, by all these different states of unhappiness? what, but the necessity of that virtue by which they are relieved; by which the orphan may be supplied with a father, and the widow with a defender; by which nakedness may be clothed, sickness set free from adventitious pains; the stranger solaced in his wanderings, and the hungry restored to vigour and to ease?

If we turn from these melancholy prospects, and cast our eyes upon ourselves, what shall we find, but a precarious and frail being, surrounded on every side with danger, and besieged with miseries and with wants? miseries, which we cannot avert by our own power, and wants which our own abilities cannot supply. We perceive ourselves wholly unable to stand alone, and compelled to solicit, every moment, the assistance of our fellow-creatures; whom, perhaps, our Maker enables us at present to repay by mutual kindness, but whom we know not how soon we may be necessitated to implore, without the capacity of returning their beneficence.

This reflection surely ought immediately to convince us of the necessity of charity; prudence, even without religion, ought to admonish every one to assist the helpless, and