But it is not our time alone that we thus waste. We waste likewise a fortune which in reality is not ours.
We are born rich, while all around us the poor--children of the same God--are without bread to eat, and ready to die of hunger, perhaps under the same roof.
We forget that, according to the designs of Providence, we have a duty to discharge toward the suffering and the needy! It is not for ourselves alone that God has given us riches. He wishes us to be his almoners, and the practice of charity is a strict duty.
The bestowing of alms is not only an evangelical counsel; it is often a precept. If the divine Ruler employs the most tender images in describing the merit of charity and the clearest and strongest promises when speaking of its reward, he has for the one who refuses to assist a brother, and leaves him in want, the severest of condemnations. Consider the parable of Lazarus and the rich sinner, but especially those terrible words: "I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat.... Depart into everlasting fire."[25]
Will a few gold pieces ostentatiously dropped each year into the collection boxes, a few contributions to other charities, which we are ashamed to refuse, suffice to save us from a similar sentence? What has become of that pious custom of tithes for the poor formerly found in rich families?
If, before entering the establishment of the fashionable jeweller, we would ascend to the garret of the indigent--we should often purchase fewer bracelets. It is not heart that is wanting in us, but reflection.
A young woman of whom some one was asking assistance for a family which had fallen into misery, and whose sufferings they were picturing to her, exclaimed with a simplicity which was her only excuse:
"Why, are there people who are poor? I did not know it!"
We know that there are poor people, but we too often forget it. Love of dress and the voice of vanity smother in us the love of the suffering members of Jesus Christ and render us deaf to the appeal of our unhappy brethren.
If we would only consider that by sacrificing a few yards of lace, or by consenting to appear twice during a season in the same dress, we might with the money thus saved assist several families each winter, we would more frequently be kind and charitable.