necessities of
the poor at the same time that we relieve them, and make ourselves not
only their patrons, but their fellow-sufferers.

Sir Thomas Brown, in the last part of his "Religio Medici," in which he
describes his charity in several heroic instances, and with a noble heat
of sentiments, mentions that verse in the Proverbs of Solomon: "He that
giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." There is more rhetoric in that
one sentence, says he, than in a library of sermons; and indeed, if those
sentences were understood by the reader with the same emphasis as they
are delivered by the author, we needed not those volumes of instructions,
but might be honest by an epitome.

This passage of Scripture is, indeed, wonderfully persuasive; but I think
the same thought is carried much further in the New Testament, where our
Saviour tells us, in a most pathetic manner, that he shall hereafter
regard the clothing of the naked, the feeding of the hungry, and the
visiting of the imprisoned, as offices done to Himself, and reward them
accordingly. Pursuant to those passages in Holy Scripture, I have
somewhere met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much
pleased me. I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of it is to this
purpose: What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I
gave away remains with me.

Since I am thus insensibly engaged in Sacred Writ, I cannot forbear
making an extract of several passages which I have always read with great
delight in the book of Job. It is the account which that holy man gives
of his behaviour in the days of his prosperity; and, if considered only
as a human composition, is a finer picture of a charitable and
good-natured man than is to be met with in any other author.

"Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me:
When his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked
through darkness: When the Almighty was yet with me; when my children
were about me: When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me
out rivers of oil.

"When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it
gave witness to me. Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the
fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that
was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing
for joy. I was eyes to the blind; and feet was I to the lame; I was a
father to the poor, and the ca