aims and religious or philosophic
conceptions. It is assumed also that the charity of the religious life,
if rightly understood, cannot be inconsistent with that of the social
life.

Perhaps some closer definition of charity is necessary. The words that
signify goodwill towards the community and its members are primarily
words expressive of the affections of family life in the relations
existing between parents, and between parent and child. As will be
seen, the analogies underlying such phrases as "God the Father,"
"children of God," "brethren," have played a great part in the
development of charitable thought in pre-Christian as well as in
Christian days. The germ, if we may say so, of the words [Greek:
philia, agape], _amor_, love; _amicitia_, friendship, is the sexual or
the parental relation. With the realization of the larger life in man
the meaning of the word expands. _Caritas_, or charity, strikes
another note--high price, and thus dearness. It is charity, indeed,
expressed in mercantile metaphor; and it would seem that it was
associated in thought with the word [Greek: charis], which has also a
commercial meaning, but signifies as well favour, gratitude, grace,
kindness. Partly thus, perhaps, it assumed and suggested a nobler
conception; and sometimes, as, for instance, in English ecclesiastical
documents, it was spelt _charitas_. [Greek: Agape], which in the
Authorized Version of the Bible is translated charity, was used by St
Paul as a translation of the Hebrew word _hesed_, which in the Old
Testament is in the same version translated "mercy"--as in Hosea vi.
6, "I desired mercy, and not sacrifice." This word represents the
charity of kindness and goodness, as distinguished from almsgiving.
Almsgiving, _sedaqah_, is translated by the word [Greek: eleemosune]
in the Septuagint, and in the Authorized Version by the word
"righteousness." It represents the deed or the gift which is due--done
or made, not spontaneously, but under a sense of religious obligation.
In the earlier Christian period the word almsgiving has this meaning,
and was in that sense applied to a wide range of actions and
contracts, from a gift to a beggar at a church door to a grant and a
tenure of land. It also, in the word almoner, represented the
fulfilment of the religious obligation with the aid of an agent or
delegate. The words charity or love (_caritas_ or [Greek: agape