While the rich giver is saying, "Poor fellow, he will be just as bad next month again!" the poor fellow is breathing the airs of paradise, reaping more joy of life in half a day than his benefactor in half a year, for help is a quick seed and of rapid growth, and bourgeons in a moment into the infinite aeons.
Everything in this world is but temporary: why should temporary help be undervalued?
Would you not pull out a drowning bather because he will bathe again to-morrow?
The only question is--DOES IT HELP?
Jonah might grumble at the withering of his gourd, but if it had not grown at all, would he ever have preached to Nineveh?
It set the laird on a Pisgah-rock, whence he gazed into the promised land.
The rich, so far as money-needs are concerned, live under a cloudless sky of summer--dreary rather and shallow, it seems to me, however lovely its blue light; when for the poor man a breach is made through a vaporous firmament, he sees deeper into the blue because of the framing clouds--sees up to worlds invisible in the broad glare.

I know not how the born-rich, still less those who have given themselves with success to the making of money, can learn that God is the all in all of men, for this world's needs as well as for the eternal needs.

I know they may learn it, for the Lord has said that God can even teach the rich, and I have known of them who seemed to know it as well as any poor man; but speaking generally, the rich have not the same opportunity of knowing God--nor the same conscious need of him--that the poor man has.

And when, after a few years, all, so far as things to have and to hold are concerned, are alike poor, and all, as far as any need of them is concerned, are alike rich, the advantage will all be on the side of such as, neither having nor needing, do not desire them.

In the meantime, the rich man who, without pitying his friend that he is not rich also, cheerfully helps him over a stone where he cannot carry him up the hill of his difficulty, rejoicing to do for him what God allows, is like God himself, the great lover of his children, who gives a man infinitely, though he will not take from him his suffering until strength is perfected in his weakness.
The laird called Cosmo, and they went out together for a walk in the fields, where they might commune in quiet.