Letter on Christian charity and almsgiving (page 2 of 4) — conformity to the will of the Creator; the duty of benevolence

The continuation of the letter begun on the previous page, in the same brown ink and cursive hand.

the finite can approach the infinite. This relation involves conformity in the creature to the will of the Creator. This conformity is developed in our wills and in our lives — in our wills it is exhausted by good intention & human frailty makes it impossible that any life can be never ruled by good intention. In our lives it is exhausted by doing to our fellow creatures as we would they should do unto us. And no day passes over our heads without warning us, when we give account to ourselves, that we have done to others what we would not have done to ourselves. It is in this department of our spiritual discipline that the question of alms giving is found. — The teaching and example of our Saviour are alike the work of love benevolence — we may say Charity if that were not an equivocal word, sometimes taken in a more general sense, sometimes in the sense of almsgiving, just as the word love has, an acceptation more or less comprehensive, we will take benevolence as a word preferable to either because of no doubtful import.

Our great [struck through: Categorical] Exemplar instructs us in the duty of benevolence, but leaves us in the application of this duty to the free use of our own faculties as he does in