“Let us be much and oft in studying with ourselves, “What good may I do with those talents, wherewith my Lord Jesus Christ has betrusted me?”
Christians, if we are advised of any opportunity to do good, let us be as ready to do as the angel that came down to the pool of Bethesda was to help the miserables assembled there.
Yea, though they should never be so poor, never so small, never so mean people, that we may do good unto, let us be ready to do it with all our hearts.”
Cotton Mather (1663-1728) in The Ecclesiastical History of New England (Hartford: Silas Andrus and Son, 1853) 133.