Saturday, September 30, 2006
We have been so desperately anxious to secure a moral gymnasium in which the righteous rich could exercise their souls—not by selling all and giving to the poor, but by giving away what they do not really want—that we have failed to remember the effect of their patronage upon the poor. The strong have reserved to themselves the blessing of giving without receiving. The amount that is given away in charity in a single year in this country [U.K.], or in direct relief—which is the name by which we hide our shame of charity—is positively staggering. And yet people are not fed, and by that means never will be. By Charity alone can the world be saved, but this is not charity. It tends to obscure rather than to realise the Brotherhood of Man, it is—and thank God we increasingly feel it to be—a put-off, a refusal of the way of the Cross. It is not Christianity; it is an excuse for not being Christian.More and more the quality of our modern mercy becomes exceedingly strained. It does not drop as the gentle dew from heaven, but is screwed from the pockets of shamefaced people, uncomfortably conscious of the poverty-stricken places beneath. It is twice cursed: it curseth him that gives and him that takes, and is meanest in the mightiest, because they feel it least.
... G. A. Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), The Wicket Gate, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923, p. 151-152 
(see the book; see also Mark 12:42-44; more at Historical)
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Last updated:
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