to that spirit which has its origin in the fountain of all good, and of which we have on record an example the most beautiful, the most touching, the most intensely affecting, that the world’s history contains, I mean the offering of the poor widow, who threw her two mites into the treasury.  “And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury; and he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites.  And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all; for all these have, of their abundance, cast in unto the offerings of God:  but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had.”  What more tender, more solemnly affecting, more profoundly pathetic, than this charity, this offering to God, of a farthing!  We know nothing of her name, her family, or her tribe.  We only know that she was a poor woman, and a widow, of whom there is nothing left upon record but this sublimely simple story, that, when the rich came to cast their proud offerings into the treasury, this poor woman came also, and cast in her two mites, which made a farthing!  And that example, thus made the subject of divine commendation, has been read, and told, and gone abroad everywhere, and sunk deep into a hundred millions of hearts, since the commencement of the Christian era, and has done more good than could be accomplished by a thousand marble palaces, because it was charity mingled with true benevolence, given in the fear, the love, the service, and honor of God; because it was charity, that had its origin in religious feeling; because it was a gift to the honor of God!

Cases have come before the courts, of bequests, in last wills, made or given to God, without any more specific direction; and these bequests have been regarded as creating charitable uses.  But can that be truly called a charity which flies in the face of all the laws of God and all the usages of Christian man?  I arraign no man for mixing up a love of distinction and notoriety with his charities.  I blame not Mr. Girard because he desired to raise a splendid marble palace in the neighborhood of a beautiful city, that should endure for ages, and transmit his name and fame to posterity.  But his school of learning is not to be valued, because it has not the chastening influences of true religion; because it has no fragrance of the spirit of Christianity.  It is not a charity, for it has not that which gives to a charity for education its chief value.  It will, therefore, soothe the heart of no Christian parent, dying in poverty and distress, that those who owe to him their being may be led, and fed, and clothed by Mr. Girard’s bounty, at the expense of being excluded from all the means of religious instruction afforded to other children, and shut up through the most interesting period of their lives in a seminary without religion, and with moral sentiments as cold as its own marble walls.