_a bountiful eye_
we should look upon the poor and destitute.

Such is our solemn duty; and it is important that it should be regarded
in this light. Beneficence should not be merely the overflowing of a
generous heart. This would be an unsafe and uncertain ground on which to
place the principle of charitable distribution. Interesting objects
indeed might not suffer from it, the orphan, the afflicted widow,
decayed and broken age. Cold and insensible must be the heart that could
shut up its sympathies from such petitioners. True beneficence however,
cannot always be a delight. "It is not," says a powerful writer,[8] "an
indulgence to the finer sensibilities of the mind, but according to the
sober declarations of scripture, a work and a labor, a business in which
you must encounter vexation, opposition, and fatigue, where you are not
always to meet with that elegance which allures the fancy, or with that
humble and retired adversity which interests the more tender
propensities of the heart, but as a business, where reluctance must
often be overcome by a sense of duty, and where, though opposed at every
step by envy, disgust and disappointment, you are bound to persevere in
obedience to the law of God, and the sober instigation of principle." Is
it not well then, my brethren, to establish beneficence upon the broad
ground of christian obligation, rather than commend it to you by the
high gratifications which it sometimes affords? Are not the interests of
the poor in this manner more effectually secured? If the grand principle
can be established in your breasts, that you are to do good not simply
because you delight in this work, but because the dictates of justice
and the laws of God require you to be charitable, will you not be
preserved from the indiscretions of a heated benevolence on the one
hand, and from the cruelty and consequent punishment of selfishness and
avarice on the other?

3. But are there then any demands made upon our charity, which when
answered can yield us no reward or blessing? Surely not. Has it not
already been declared that God demands of us no duty or sacrifice for
which he does not offer us an abundant remuneration? And does he not
emphatically pronounce his blessing upon the virtue I am now attempting
to explain and enforce? "_He that hath a bountiful eye shall be_
BLESSED." The scriptures are filled with motives, inducements, promises,
encouragements, addressed to every generous, nay to eve