r up among the
hills; then, as the word flows on and comes into service, it takes in
the force of other words from other sources, and becomes quite another
word--often much more than one word, after the junction--a word as it
were of many waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter. Thus the whole
force of our English "charity" depends on the guttural in "charis"
getting confused with the c of the Latin "carus;" thenceforward
throughout the middle ages, the two ideas ran on together, and both got
confused with St. Paul's [Greek: agape], which expresses a different
idea in all sorts of ways; our "charity" having not only brought in the
entirely foreign sense of alms-giving, but lost the essential sense of
contentment, and lost much more in getting too far away from the
"charis" of the final Gospel benedictions. For truly it is fine
Christianity we have come to, which, professing to expect the perpetual
grace or charity of its Founder, has not itself grace or charity enough
to hinder it from overreaching its friends in sixpenny bargains; and
which, supplicating evening and morning the forgiveness of its own
debts, goes forth at noon to take its fellow-servants by the throat,
saying,--not merely "Pay me that thou owest," but "Pay me that thou
owest me _not_."

It is true that we sometimes wear Ophelia's rue with a difference, and
call it "Herb o' grace o' Sundays," taking consolation out of the
offertory with--"Look, what he layeth out; it shall be paid him again."
Comfortable words indeed, and good to set against the old royalty of
Largesse--

Whose moste joie was, I wis,
When that she gave, and said, "Have this."

[I am glad to end, for this time, with these lovely words of Chaucer. We
have heard only too much lately of "Indiscriminate charity," with
implied reproval, not of the Indiscrimination merely, but of the Charity
also. We have partly succeeded in enforcing on the minds of the poor the
idea that it is disgraceful to receive; and are likely, without much
difficulty, to succeed in persuading not a few of the rich that it is
disgraceful to give. But the political economy of a great state makes
both giving and receiving graceful; and the political economy of true
religion interprets the saying that "it is more blessed to give than to
receive," not as the promise of reward in another life for mortified
selfishness in this, but as pledge of bestowal upon us of that sweet and
better nature, which does not mortif