'The poor ye have always with you'—words which he misconceives only because he misses their sad irony. Why had our learned exegetes so rarely a sense of humour?
We have revered the Christian virtues in the letter, but humanity is still so unregenerate that we have consistently debased them. Nothing shows this more clearly than our inability to keep any definite nomenclature for manifestations of Christian love. We can only get people to realize the love of God by using a fresher but much weaker word like 'friendliness'. 'Is God friendly to me?' they say, 'what a beautiful idea!' It seems a new idea, because 'the love of God' has become to us something cold and austere, or even cruel. In the same way, if we tell people that they ought to try and like their neighbours, they are surprised at the novelty of the idea, and often are delighted with it.
'Charity' was invented by S. Jerome, as a rendering of the Greek agapè, which had been coined, it is supposed, by the translators of the Septuagint—it is not found in any pagan writer—because there was no Greek word pure enough or intense enough—ἔρως meant the sexual passion. Greeks and Romans had no word, because they had not the thing. Christians were given the thing, found new words, and then lost them. Charity, instead of meaning the love of God and man, came to mean mere kindly disposition and tolerance, then to be a synonym for almsgiving.
