American Charities

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from American Charities: A Study in Philanthropy and EconomicsThe in¿uence Of religion upon the benevolent instincts Of man can be studied in nearly all its phases in the history Of charities administered by the Christian church, and in that history can be traced the power of an accepted theology both to exalt and to degrade the charitable impulse. While the antiquarian may be able to point out many traces of active benevolence before the Christian era, while there is much genuine philan thropy outside Of Christianity, and while it may even be said that the church of the present day that administers its charities most wisely is not Christian at all, but J ew ish, -it yet remains true that charity, as we know it, gets its chief religious authority and incentive from Him who gave as the summary Of all the law and prophets the co-ordinate commands to love God and to love our neighbor, and who, in explaining these commands, pro nounced the parable Of the Good Samaritan. At first, Christianity brought to the world a purified and enno bled charity, a love of fellow men very different from the semi-selfish motives that prompted to prayer, pen ance, and almsgiving as means to a common end - that Of securing divine favor. The early diaconate seems to have been a satisfactory way Of organizing what is now called friendly Visiting.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.