THE BISHOP OF LONDON ON CHARITY.'
THE Bishop of London addressed on Monday a repre:i.- sentative " Conference " of persons engaged in charity in an excellent speech, which nevertheless, we think, will be read by critics with a certain amusement. It is pleasant to see s. Bishop, and that Bishop one of the ablest Of his Order, obviouilt perplexed over a moral question. Most Bishops have an air- of being completely cohvineed upon all the subjects they disf cuss, Bait is a peculiarity of Dr. Creighton, who has read so, much, and reflected so much, to let himself be seen occasion- ally while his thinking is still in the doing. It 'obviously had not been quite done this time: Neither as a Bishop nor as philanihropist was he prepared to condemn charity—we use the word throughout. in its more popular sense—but asi. an experienced man of the world, with an especial knowledge of weak natures, he washy no means sure that charity was inch' a good thing. With a moral courage which we cannot but admire, he was ready to affirm that charity was an instinct of humanity' as widely diffused as the instinct for eating and_ drinking—it is on the evidence an impulse of about 5 per cent, even of fairly good humanity—but like eating and drinking it needed to be regulated. It was liable, if rashly indulged, to ruin many of its objects. He 'himself had, unfortunately,. means of knowing how often it degraded even the educated into mere begging-letter writers, and among the uneducated it often sapped the very foundations of character. That seems a hard saying, but there is' not an experienced man in London who has not occasionally felt the Bishop's per-- plexity. Why is it, if charity is so entirely good , a. thing, that almost • alone among the virtues it prodimei Such a quantity of evil ? That it is a good thing it is impossible for Christians to doubt. Pity, though it sometimes breeds a strange, or even a murderous, fanaticism, is in itself an absolutely good impulse. There is no need Of texts to prove that, for the very essence of the ethical teach; ing of Christ is the duty of sympathy, and the sympathy of the man who with distress before him, distress which he sees and acknowledges, closes his purse-strings is, "if lint a hypocrisy, at, least a sterile emotion, closely akin to that. belief which it is said, by a fine metaphor, even devils. entertain. That is true if anything is true, and it is also. true that if charity is to exist there must be objeCts of. charity. Yet it is certain that those objects are on the whole not nice people. There is usually some rottenness in their nature. The habitual acceptance of charity takes some virtue out of them, diminishes their self-respect, reduces their industry, turns them too often from men and women into limpets. It is an almost universal experience that those who ask once ask again, and if gratified keep on asking till they establish in their own minds a positive claim to be " assisted " which is as fatal to gratitude as to healthy self-reliance. : We will say nothing of the scientific and evil argument that it is better the world should be weeded . of its weaklings,, and that all should be self-dependent, and confine ourselves to character alone ; and still the haughty; and in its way un-Christian, nature, which will' perish before . it Will accept unearned- money, is the nature of the nobler mkn, the better citizen, the man who in all the relations of life is the more to be 'depended on.. He is not always an agrezable person, but at least he does net lie, does not fawn, does not regard himself with an ecstasy Of self-pity, but struggles While he can, and when he cannot turns his faee to the wall and awaits - With -rdighatitm; or in dogged Submissiveness, accOrdilig to his temperament, the final will of God. How is' that if -charity is' so gobd ? Can the revealed will be so utterly opposed to the experience of life that there seem to be t*o revelations whic,li clash with one another P The Bishop world be horrified if , we said that he thought so, yet to the lay remind he seemed in his speech to see something of the kind, tind,to be perplexed and startled by the double and con- tradictory iinpression.
'We feel the puzzle very keenly, and are probably more perplexed by it than Dr. Creighton really is, but we would suggest, at the risk of being. thought priggish, that the explanation may be something of this kind. There are virtues which Christianity is intended to inculcate, but which, being virtues to. be fully displayed only when the world is Christianised, as yet are scarcely born, or which from time to time sink momentarily, out of sight. One of them, very rare in our day, and by means. high in general esteem even among the good, is Christian humility: Nobody doubts that the charitable man is good so far as his charity goes, and we suspect that the man of genuinely Christian spirit could 'Pro- Sire that charity and yet reniain good with a goodness which is higher than that of the charitable,—the goodness that can endure to be the under-dog, as the Americans say, yet feel neither repining, nor malice, nor any loss of -beneficial energy: It is a lofty level, to which St. Paul confessed that he had not quite . risen—witness his protest that he received no wagert save from his own labour—but we think we have seen, in one instance at least, something very like it, the recipient genuinely feeling how good it was for the donor to have been provoked to charity, and how good kir himself to have been tried, and we can conceive of a world in Which such- a sentiment was usual, and which would be a better world than-the present. There are some virtues which demand for their full development that all shoUld be Christian, atachatitY in its 'popular sense May' well be one of them; like' the duty of non-resistance,--which; if all were Christian,' would be at once obligatory- and possible without the domiir- arie of the bad.
It is but, an imperfect explanation, but when we come to the " training, of .charity " which it was the Bishop's great object in that particular speech to inculcate,.we step upon firmer ground. We thoroughly agree with .him that the man whb. means to be really charitable should, take some little trouble: bout it, and not content himself entirely with .the glow of self-satisfaction that comes from giving money. He engirt to be fairly well convinced that be is not doing mischief. We db not mean by this that he should never give except to the deserving. Christ did not suggest that Dives should ask LaZartis for his testimonials. It is very difficult in presence of _tb.e crystal wall, so thin yet so impenetrable, which divides eaChiruman being from all others—we always wonder what SoCialists think of that great Individualist,the Creator—to ascer- tain-accurately who are deserving and who are not, and we fancy the:ultimate claim is suffering and not-character; but still any true charity requires some basis of conviction. In the first place, one should be fairly sure that the suffering is not a pretence,: that the . donor is not in fact helping . what is practically a theft from the general fund of :benevolence. That. is the inquiry which, as we understand their idea, the members. of the charity Organisation Society set them- selves to .carry out, . that and not an investigation into character. - They. do .not- want. to be sure that Lazarus is good before .recommending him to :Dives, -but only to be sire: that:his sores 'are not artful impostures intended to • obtain -the crumbs that properly should go to. the hungry.' The 'charitable ;Man ought .further to 'be fairly sure that he is doing- good- and not evil, is not, in fact, ruining .character as well as increasing . poverty.. It - is at. this point ..that the hitch generally occurs, the man in whom pity is weak—still an immense majority:Aaking refuge -in- the assertion' that- he would: giveif only: he were sure of • this.. He does not want, he- says,..to pauperise the community. He can very easily make himself sure.--He must be very oddly placed if cases in: which he is morally -sure- never come before him,. and he can make up by his 'treatment. of them for his -disregard of the world at large. If. he is so -oddly placed, let him give to the: hoSpitals, or to the . blind, or to -the wounded, or to the victims . of a famine.. It is only. .moral certainty that is required, and he_ may be morally certain that no -one will -develop cancer, 'or .put out . his, own :eyes, or .take a bullet in the lungs, or grow- attenuated with hunger, in order to develop somebody else's charity. Or if he doubts of even claims like these, let him do as the old Kings used to do, and trust some almoner to do his duty of benevolence for him, just as in any other business he trusts a confidential clerk. The risk is not so very great, and he runs it in money- making every day. He need not console himself with the idea that there is plenty of charity already. Half the hospi- tals in the country' are starving ; the Charity Organisation Society, most vigilant and most pitiful of all almoners— almost the only one, indeed, to which need is a letter of intro- duction—never has a tenth of the income it could beneficially employ; and the total charity of the country, large as it is, is little compared with its total wealth. Is 5 per cent. of a man's income too much to give away P The ideal limit suggested by all Churches is 10 per cent., the ancient "tithe," but if only the payers of Income-tax paid, and limited themselves to 5 per cent., the charity revenue of the Kingdom would be twenty-five millions a year.
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