Chesterton on Charity 慈善

Charity is a paradox....Stated baldy, charity means one of two things-pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. But if we ask ourselves... what a sensible pagan would feel about such a subject, we shall probably be beginning at the bottom of it. A sensible pagan would say that there were some people one could forgive, and some one couldn't: a slave who stole wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his benefactor could be killed, and cursed even after he was killed. Insofar as the act was pardonable, the man was pardonable. That again is rational, even refreshing; but it is a dilution. It leaves no place for a horror of injustice.... And it leaves no place for a mere tenderness for men as men, such as is the whole fascination of the charitable . Christianity came in... startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It was not enough that the slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly kindly. We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild. ~ Orthodoxy