encouraged pauperism instead of enabling the poor to help themselves by honest work, we still
have left one of the noblest chapters in the history of morals to which no other religion can furnish
a parallel. For the regular gratuitous distribution of grain to the poor heathen of Rome, who under
Augustus rose to 200,000, and under the Antonines to 500,000, was made from the public treasury
and dictated by selfish motives of state policy; it called forth no gratitude; it failed of its object,
and proved, together with slavery and the gladiatorial shows for the amusement of the people, one
of the chief demoralizing influences of the empire.^375
Finally, we must not forget that the history of true Christian charity remains to a large part
unwritten. Its power is indeed felt everywhere and every day; but it loves to do its work silently
without a thought of the merit of reward. It follows human misery into all its lonely griefs with
personal sympathy as well as material aid, and finds its own happiness in promoting the happiness
of others. There is luxury in doing good for its own sake. "When thou doest alms," says the Lord,
"let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret: and thy
Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee."^376
Notes.
Uhlhorn closes his first work with this judgment of mediaeval charity (p. 396 sq. of the
English translation): "No period has done so much for the poor as the middle ages. What wholesale
distribution of alms, what an abundance of institutions of the most various kinds, what numbers of
hospitals for all manner of sufferers, what a series of ministrant orders, male and female, knightly
and civil, what self-sacrifice and devotedness! In the mediaeval period all that we have observed
germinating in the ancient Church, first attains its maturity. The middle ages, however, also
appropriated whatever tendencies existed toward a one-sided and unsound development. Church
care of the poor entirely perished, and all charity became institutional; monks and nuns, or members
of the ministrant orders, took the place of the deacons—the diaconate died out. Charity became
one-sidedly institutional and one-sidedly ecclesiastical. The church was the mediatrix of every
exercise of charity, she became in fact the sole recipient, the sole bestower; for the main object of
every work of mercy, of every distribution of alms, of every endowment, of all self-sacrifice in the
service of the needy, was the giver’s own salvation. The transformation was complete. Men gave
and ministered no longer for the sake of helping and serving the poor in Christ, but to obtain for
themselves and theirs, merit, release from purgatory, a high degree of eternal happiness. The
consequence was, that poverty was not contended with, but fostered, and beggary brought to
maturity; so that notwithstanding the abundant donations, the various foundations, the well-endowed
institutions, distress was after all not mastered. Nor is it mastered yet. "The poor ye have always
with you" (John 12:8). Riggenbach (l.c.) maintains that in the middle ages hospitals were mere
provision-houses (Versorgungshäuser), and that the Reformation first asserted the principle that
they should be also houses of moral reform (Rettungshäuser and Heilanstalten).
(^375) "There can be," says Lecky, (II. 78), "no question that either in practice nor in theory, neither in the institution, that
were founded nor in the place that was assigned to it in the scale of duties, did charity in antiquity occupy a position at all
comparable to that which it has obtained by Christianity. Nearly all the relief was a State measure, dictated much more by policy
than by benevolence; and the habit of selling young children, the innumerable expositions, the readiness of the poor to enroll
themselves as gladiators, and the frequent famines, show how large was the measure of unrelieved distress. A very few pagan
examples of charity have, indeed, descended to us."
(^376) Matt. 6:3, 4. The word "openly" (ἐν τῳ̑ φανερῳ̑) is omitted in the best MSS. and critical editions, and in the E.
Revision.