ing on his own
account. It seemed a little ungrateful in him, and First Cave-dweller
felt that it would be no more than right to arrange legislation in the
cave so that this should not happen again.

"Christian Charity is a very beautiful thing, but sometimes it gets
mixed up with these ideas of the cave-dwellers. Sometimes it perpetuates
the very evils that it laments. Perhaps you won't mind my reading a bit
from a homily of St. Augustine on this very subject. St. Augustine was a
man who was a good many centuries ahead of his time. He begins his
argument by saying: 'All love, dear brethren, consists in wishing well
to those who are loved.' This seems like a harmless proposition. It is
the sort of thing you might hear in a sermon and think no more about.
But St. Augustine goes to the root of the matter, and asks what it means
to wish well to the person you are trying to help. He comes to the
conclusion that if you really wish him well, you must wish him to be at
least as well off and as well able to take care of himself as you are.
The first thing you know, you are wishing to have him reach a point
where he will not look up to you at all. 'There is a certain
friendliness by which we desire at one time or another to do good to
those we love. But how if there be no good that we can do? We ought not
to wish men to be wretched that we may be enabled to practice works of
mercy. Thou givest bread to the hungry, but better were it that none
hungered and thou hadst none to give to. Thou clothest the naked; oh,
that all men were clothed and that this need existed not! Take away the
wretched, and the works of mercy will be at an end, but shall the ardor
of charity be quenched? With a truer touch of love thou lovest the happy
man to whom there is no good office that thou canst do; purer will that
love be and more unalloyed. For if thou hast done a kindness to the
wretched, perhaps thou wishest him to be subject to thee. He was in
need, thou didst bestow; thou seemest to thyself greater because thou
didst bestow than he upon whom it was bestowed. Wish him to be thine
equal.'

"There, Scrooge, is the text for the little Christmas sermon that I
should like to preach to you and to your elderly wealthy friends who
feel that they are not so warmly appreciated as they once were. 'Wish
him to be thine equal'--that is the test of charity. It is all right to
give a poor devil a turkey. But are you anxious that he shall have as
good a chan