o you, that this poor widow hath
cast in more than they all; for all these have, of their abundance, cast
in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the
living that she had." What more tender, more solemnly affecting, more
profoundly pathetic, than this charity, this offering to God, of a
farthing! We know nothing of her name, her family, or her tribe. We only
know that she was a poor woman, and a widow, of whom there is nothing
left upon record but this sublimely simple story, that, when the rich
came to cast their proud offerings into the treasury, this poor woman
came also, and cast in her two mites, which made a farthing! And that
example, thus made the subject of divine commendation, has been read,
and told, and gone abroad everywhere, and sunk deep into a hundred
millions of hearts, since the commencement of the Christian era, and has
done more good than could be accomplished by a thousand marble palaces,
because it was charity mingled with true benevolence, given in the fear,
the love, the service, and honor of God; because it was charity, that
had its origin in religious feeling; because it was a gift to the honor
of God!

Cases have come before the courts, of bequests, in last wills, made or
given to God, without any more specific direction; and these bequests
have been regarded as creating charitable uses. But can that be truly
called a charity which flies in the face of all the laws of God and all
the usages of Christian man? I arraign no man for mixing up a love of
distinction and notoriety with his charities. I blame not Mr. Girard
because he desired to raise a splendid marble palace in the neighborhood
of a beautiful city, that should endure for ages, and transmit his name
and fame to posterity. But his school of learning is not to be valued,
because it has not the chastening influences of true religion; because
it has no fragrance of the spirit of Christianity. It is not a charity,
for it has not that which gives to a charity for education its chief
value. It will, therefore, soothe the heart of no Christian parent,
dying in poverty and distress, that those who owe to him their being may
be led, and fed, and clothed by Mr. Girard's bounty, at the expense of
being excluded from all the means of religious instruction afforded to
other children, and shut up through the most interesting period of their
lives in a seminary without religion, and with moral sentiments as cold
as its own