CHARITY AND ITS MOTIVE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5490, 21 June 1879, Page 7

CHARITY AND ITS MOTIVE.

When some one complained in Thomas Campbell's hearing that Rogers said spiteful things, "Borrow £500 of him," was the comment, "and he will never say one word against you until you want to repay him." He told a lady that Campbell had borrowed £500 upon the plea that, if he had that sum, it would do him a good service. Three weekß afterwards he brought back the money, saying that he found it would not be prudent to risk it. "At this time," added Rogers, "I knew that he was overy day pressed for small sums." Here is an exemplary kind action followed up by unexceptionally kind words. We could fill pages with other wellauthenticated instances of his considerate generosity. They had come to light gradually ; and it is a remarkable fact that, while ho was annually giving away large Bums, his name figured little in subscription-lists-He may (as we have heard objected} have been acting all along rather from calculation than impulsiveness—from head, not heart. He may have been following Paley's counsel, who recommends us to cultivate our better feelings by almsgiving, if only with a view to our own self-complacency. Or he may have been simply more fortunate in his experimental benevolence than the nobleman who, on being advised to try doing a little good by way of a new pleasure, replied that he had tried it already and found no pleasure iu it. To what does this analysis of motives a la Rochefoucauld amount after all 1 Surely to seek and find happiness in doing good is to be good. Admitting that the mere voluptuary and the general bonefactor have each the same end, self—that is, "true self-love and social are the same"—still the difference in the means employed constitutes a sufli ciently wide and marked distinction between the two. "Sir," said Adams, my definition of charity is, a generous disposition to relieve the distressed." "There is something in that definition," answered Mr. Peter Pounce, " which I like well enough ; it is, as you say, a disposition, and does not so much consist in the act as in tbo disposition to do it." There are plenty of Peter Pounces in our society. What we want are the Allwortbys, or the worldly philosophers, on whose tombstones may be read without provoking a smile ofirony, "Whatlspentl had ; what I gave, I have ; what I saved, I lost." We commend this epitaph to the attention of the millionaire, who has been accused of wishing to invest the accumulations of more than half a century in one big banknote and carry it out of the world with him. When Erskine heard that somebody had died worth £200,000, he observed, "Well, that's a very pretty sum to begin the next world with." Rogers had reserved for the next world just one-eight of that sum, exclusive of the contents of his house—not enough, had his income from the bank failed, to enable him to enjoy the comforts which age, infirmity, and comfirmed habits had made noeeaaary to him in tbis.—tfefectaJ Essays, by A. H.ftyward,iQ.O, ..