It would seem that his conscience had no cause for reproach, and that the situation was an ideal one for him.

But before that famine was well over, or the funds expended, he wrote a letter to a London newspaper, in which he declared that helping people by means of money was all wrong--positively a sin.

He felt that collecting and distributing money was not the best thing of which he was capable, and called it "making a pipe of one's self," personal service with brains, heart, and muscles being the only right service for God or man.

This service he certainly rendered, and without the money he could not have rendered it.
Nothing could more perfectly illustrate this point of view than the following little story, written in 1881, called "The Two Brothers and the Gold." In ancient times there lived not far from Jerusalem two brothers, the elder Afanasy, the younger Ioann.

They dwelt on a hill not far from the town, and subsisted on what people gave them.