June 26
Daily Gleanings of the Saintly LifeWednesday in the Rotation Days
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me. S. Matthew 25:40.
WHITED sepulchres are the streets of our cities. They are beautiful outwardly, but within, but a few yards from all that pomp, luxury, and self-indulgence, which sweep unheeding by, Christ, as He Himself says, lies, an hungered, athirst, naked, sick, unvisited. You would not knowingly deck your walls with pictures, while men, the image of God and the representatives of Christ, you clothe not; you would not knowingly multiply delicacies upon yourselves, while men, like yourselves, members of Christ, and Christ in them, is an hungered. God allows you your enjoyments, and, in moderation, your amusements. But He does not allow you superfluities, to supply your passions, to enervate yourselves, to nourish the life of the senses, to dull the fineness of intellect, to strengthen self-indulgence, to injure your moral energy, to unfit you for devotion and self-denying duty. Not things lawful, but things unlawful, dry up charity, because they dry up the heart. The cry of the poor reacheth the ear of God. Let them not cry against you, "Ours is it which ye waste." "Woe to him whom the poor shall implead at the judgment-seat of Christ! Woe to him for whom they shall not plead!" Mercy is the only companion of the departed. Eternally blessed we, if, when our souls were justly forfeited to the strict justice of God, Mercy persuade our Judge to have mercy on us, and He, arrayed in the robe wherewith we have here clothed His poor, say to us—
When ye showed your charity, Giving bread and home and raiment, What ye did was done to Me.