It is a schoolmaster to bring you to Christ, to
that higher inspiration of His, which tells your heart to alleviate the
unseen woes which will never come into painful contact with your
sensibilities, to bestow pleasures in which you yourself have no
immediate share. It will tell your hearts especially in the case of this
very Hospital for Consumption not to be slack in giving, because so much
of what you will give--it is painful to recollect how much--will be
spent, not in prevention, not even in cure, but in mere alleviation, mere
increased bodily ease, mere savoury food, even mere passing amusements
for wearied minds. Be it so. If (which God forbid) we could do nothing
SAVE alleviate; if (which God forbid) permanent cure, even lengthening of
life, were impossible, I should say just as much, Give. Give money to
alleviate; give, even though what you give were, in the strictly economic
sense, WASTED. We are ready enough, most of us, to waste upon ourselves.
It is well for us to taste once in a way the luxury of wasting on others;
though I have yet to learn that anything can be called wasted which
lessens, even for a moment, the amount of human suffering.
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