In fact, to be true to a man in any way is
to help him. He who goes out of common paths to look for opportunity,
leaves his own door and misses that of his neighbor. It is by following
the path we are in that we shall first reach somewhere. He who does as I
say will find his acquaintance widen and widen with growing rapidity;
his heart will fill with the care of humanity, and his hands with its
help. Such care will be death to one's own cares, such help balm to
one's own wounds. In a word, he must cultivate, after a simple human
manner, the acquaintance of his neighbors, who would be a neighbor where
a neighbor may be wanted. So shall he fulfil the part left behind of the
work of the Master, which He desires to finish through him.
Of course I do not imagine that Hester understood this. She had no
theory of carriage towards the poor, neither confined her hope of
helping to them. There are as many in every other class needing help as
among the poor, and the need, although it wear different dresses, is
essentially the same in all. To make the light go up in the heart of a
rich man, if a more difficult task, is just as good a deed as to make it
go up in the heart of a poor man.
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