Page:Whole works of joseph butler.djvu/295

264. So that you, the contributors to this charity, and more especially those of you by whose immediate care and economy it is in so high repute, are encouraged to go on with "your labour of love," Heb. vi. 10, not only by the present good, which you see is here done, but likewise by the prospect of what will probably be done, by your means in future times, when this Infirmary shall become, as I hope it will, no less renowned, than the city in which it is established.

But to see how far it is from being yet complete, for want of contributions, one need only look upon the settled rules of the house for admission of patients. See there the limitations which necessity prescribes, as to the persons to be admitted. Read but that one order, though others might be mentioned, that "none who are judged to be in an asthmatic, consumptive, or dying condition, be admitted on any account whatsoever." Harsh as these words sound, they proceed out of the mouth of charity herself. Charity pronounces it to be better, that poor creatures, who might receive much ease and relief should be denied it, if their case does not admit of recovery, rather than that others, whose case does admit of it, be left to perish. But it shocks humanity to hear such an alternative mentioned; and to think that there should be a necessity, as there is at present, for such restrictions, in one of the most beneficent and best managed schemes in the world. May more numerous or larger contributions, at length, open a door to such as these; that what renders their case in the highest degree compassionable, their languishing under incurable diseases, may no longer exclude them from the house of mercy! But, besides the persons to whom I have been now more particularly speaking, there are others, who do not cast about for excuses for not contributing to the relief of the necessitous, perhaps are rather disposed to relieve them, who yet axe not so careful as they ought to be, to put