THE HELP THAT HARMS. 727 



"Provide things honest in the sight of all men"; "Not slothful 

 in business " ; and the like. But, as a matter of fact, such socie- 

 ties have had no more bitter antagonists than the churches, and 

 no more vehement opponents than ministers of religion. In a 

 meeting composed of such persons I have heard one of their num- 

 ber denounce with the most impassioned oratory any agency which 

 undertook, by any mechanism, to intrude into the question of the 

 circumstances, resources, or w^orthiness of those wdio were the ob- 

 jects of ecclesiastical almsgiving. Who, he demanded, could know 

 so well as the clergy all the facts needed to enable them wisely and 

 judiciously to assist those worthy and needy brethren w^ho were 

 of their ow^n household of faith? Xothing could sound more plau- 

 sible or probable; but in a little while it happened that a woman 

 who had for years been a beneficiary of this very pastor died, leav- 

 ing behind her, among her effects, sundry savings-bank books which 

 showed her to be possessed of some thousands of dollars, which she 

 bequeathed to relatives in a distant land. Still more recently a 

 case of a similar character has occurred in which a still larger 

 amount ha\dng been paid over in small sums through a long series 

 of years by a church, the whole, with interest, has been found to 

 have been hoarded, the recipient having been a person entirely 

 capable of self-support, and, as a matter of fact, during the whole 

 period self-supporting, and the large accumulations are at present 

 the subject of a suit in which the church is endeavoring to recover 

 what it not unnaturally regards as its own misappropriated money. 

 And yet, as any one knows who knows anything of the deli- 

 cacy, vigilancy, and thoroughness with which a well-organized so- 

 ciety conducts its work, any such grotesque and deplorable result 

 would, with a little wise co-operation between the Church and 

 such a society, have been rendered impossible. I know how impa- 

 tient many good people are of the services of any such association, 

 and we have all heard ad nauseam of their protests against a " spy 

 system wdiich invades the sacred privacy of decent poverty," and 

 the rest; but, in fact, such persons never seem to realize that, in 

 one aspect of it, the Church stands, or, as a matter of common hon- 

 esty, as the administrator of trust funds, ought to stand, on the 

 same equitable basis, at least, as a life-insurance company. Now, 

 when I seek the benefits of a life-insurance company I am asked 

 certain questions which affect not only my physical resources but 

 my diseases, my ancestry and their diseases, my personal habits, in- 

 firmities, and the like. If the company has the right, in the just 

 interests of its other clients, to ask these questions, as administering 

 a large trust, has not the Church', which is also the administrator of 

 a trust no less in the interest of other clients? 



