Love One To Another

I was struck by the story of Mrs. Pardiggle’s “charity” in chapter 8 of Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Mrs. Pardiggle was a woman who insisted on dragging her five children around with her into the homes of the poor to “help” them. The children were miserable and were forced to give any money that they received to different charitable organizations (that the other then boasted of). Two young women and main characters in the book, Esther and Ada, were asked to go along with her for one particular visit to a poor bricklayer and his family who lived in despicable conditions. The man made it clear that Mrs. Pardiggle was not welcome there, but she was undeterred in her efforts to fix their situation. Esther described the scene this way, “Mrs. Pardiggle, who had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were a constable’s staff and took the whole family into custody. I mean into religious custody, of course; but she really did it as if she were an inexorable moral policeman carrying them all off to a station-house…. Even what she read and said seemed to us to be ill-chosen for such auditors, if it had been imparted ever so modestly and with ever so much tact.” After she finally finished giving her religious sermon to them, Mrs. Pardiggle declared, “I am never fatigued. I shall come to you again in your regular order.” Clearly no one had listened to her and they just wanted her gone. Esther commented, “I hope it is not unkind in me to say that she certainly did make, in this as in everything else, a show that was not conciliatory of doing charity by wholesale.”

In contrast to the austere, forced charity of Mrs. Pardiggle was the affection shown by Esther and Ada after the lady departed with her children. These two approached the mother of the family who was by the fire to ask about the baby she was holding. Esther recounted, “She only looked at it as it lay on her lap. We had observed before that when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her hand, as though she wished to separate any association with noise and violence and ill treatment from the poor little child. Ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to touch its little face. As she did so, I saw what happened and drew her back. The child died.” Esther’s description of Ada in that moment stands out in stark contrast with Mrs. Pardiggle’s approach: “‘Oh, Esther!’ cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside it. ‘Look here! Oh, Esther, my love, the little thing! The suffering, quiet, pretty little thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so sorry for the mother. I never saw a sight so pitiful as this before! Oh, baby, baby!’ Such compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down weeping and put her hand upon the mother’s might have softened any mother’s heart that ever beat. The woman at first gazed at her in astonishment and then burst into tears.” Ada showed true compassion from the heart, as did Esther: “Presently I took the light burden from her lap, did what I could to make the baby’s rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf, and covered it with my own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the mother, and we whispered to her what Our Saviour said of children. She answered nothing, but sat weeping—weeping very much.” The difference between these two young women—full of love for this destitute woman who was abused by her husband and now without her youngest child—and the unkind, judgmental “charity” of Mrs. Pardiggle are perhaps exactly what Dickens wanted us to see. True love and charity come from the heart with genuine kindness, concern, and compassion for others.

               The actions of Mrs. Pardiggle bring to mind these harsh words of the Savior for the religious hypocrites he saw in His day. He said to them, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” He bemoaned the fact that they “have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done” (Matthew 23:23, 27-28). Shortly after this He said to His disciples, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:34-35). He did not say that His disciples would be known because they kept the law perfectly (as the Pharisees sought to do), or because they did good works in front of men. No, to be His disciples we must truly love, and that love looks much more like the compassion Dickens showed in Ada and Esther than in the cold, calculating “help” given by Mrs. Pardiggle. And, of course, that is exactly how He lived His life: “He ‘went about doing good’ (Acts 10:38), yet was despised for it. His gospel was a message of peace and goodwill. He entreated all to follow His example. He walked the roads of Palestine, healing the sick, causing the blind to see, and raising the dead.” And in our dispensation, He asks us to do the same: “Be not partial towards them in love above many others, but let thy love be for them as for thyself; and let thy love abound unto all men” (Doctrine and Covenants 112:11). To follow Him, we must develop the kind of abounding love that these young girls found so naturally as they reached out in compassion to one in need.