He would have
children taught, in the first instance, to regard him under that aspect
alone; simply as a being who displayed infinite goodness in the
creation, in the government, and in the redemption of the world.
Language itself indicates, that the whole system of moral rectitude is
comprised in it--_[Greek: energetein], benefacere_, beneficencethe
generic term being, in common parlance, emphatically restricted to works
of charity. Nor was this mere theory in Parr. Most men who have been
economical from necessity in their youth, continue to be so, from habit,
in their age--but Parr's hand was ever open as day. Poverty had vexed,
but had never contracted his spirit; money he despised, except as it
gave him power--power to ride in his state coach, to throw wide his
doors to hospitality, to load his table with plate, and his shelves with
learning; power to adorn his church with chandeliers and painted
windows; to make glad the cottages of his poor; to grant a loan, to a
tottering farmer; to rescue from want a forlorn patriot, or a thriftless
scholar. Whether misfortune, or mismanagement, or folly, or vice, had
brought its victim low, his want was a passport to Parr's pity, and the
dew of his bounty fell alike upon the evil and the good, upon the just
and the unjust. It is told of Boerhaave, that, whenever he saw a
criminal led out to execution, he would say, "May not this man be better
than I? If otherwise, the praise is due, not to me, but to the grace of
God.
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