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/498

 relieve the wretched, that, when the day of distress shall come upon him, he may confidently ask that assistance which he himself, in his prosperity, never did deny.

As it has pleased God to place us in a state, in which we are surrounded with innumerable temptations; so it has pleased him, on many occasions, to afford us temporal incitements to virtue, as a counterbalance to the allurements of sin; and to set before us rewards which may be obtained, and punishments which may be suffered, before the final determination of our future state. As charity is one of our most important duties, we are pressed to its practice by every principle of secular, as well as religious wisdom; and no man can suffer himself to be distinguished for hardness of heart, without danger of feeling the consequence of his wickedness in his present state; because no man can secure to himself the continuance of riches, or of power; nor can prove, that he shall not himself want the assistance which he now denies, and perhaps be compelled to implore it from those whose petition he now rejects, and whose miseries he now insults. Such is the instability of human affairs, and so frequently does God assert his government of the world, by exalting the low, and depressing the powerful.

If we endeavour to consult higher wisdom than our own, with relation to this duty, and examine the opinions of the rest of mankind, it will be found, that all the nations of the earth, however they may differ with regard to every other tenet, yet agree in the celebration of benevolence, as the most amiable disposition of the heart, and the foundation of all happiness. We shall find that, in every place, men are loved and honoured in proportion to the gifts which they have conferred upon mankind, and that nothing but charity can recommend one man to the affection of another.

But if we appeal, as is undoubtedly reasonable and just, from human wisdom to Divine, and search the Holy Scriptures, to settle our notions of the importance of this duty,