Daily Inspiration Quote by John Bunyan

Bunyan sells charity the way a Puritan sells salvation: as a wager with receipts. "Bestows" signals deliberate transfer, not casual pity; this is alms as moral accounting. The promise of return, "as much again, and ten times more", borrows the cadence of scripture and the logic of investment. Give now, gain later. It flatters the donor with spiritual savvy while keeping the poor positioned as the occasion for someone else's reward.

The intent is double-edged in a way Bunyan often is. On the surface, it's an encouragement to relieve suffering in a society where poverty was ubiquitous and institutional support was thin. In 17th-century England, the parish poor laws existed, but they were as much about control as care, and dissenters like Bunyan lived under surveillance and periodic punishment. Private generosity became both a religious duty and a social counterweight to a harsh public order.

The subtext is where the line tightens. Bunyan isn't primarily appealing to empathy; he's appealing to assurance. The poor become a kind of test case for faith: your money is proof that your heart has been converted, and God will "repay" in a way the market never could. It's moral capitalism before capitalism gets its modern gloss: risk (parting with goods) exchanged for guaranteed yield (divine favor), with "ten times more" doing rhetorical heavy lifting as exaggeration that feels credible because it's framed as God's economy, not man's.

It works because it sanctifies self-interest without admitting it. Charity becomes less a loss than a strategy, and that sleight of hand makes the hard act easier to choose.