adopt one. This is often well, and often ill, too. Ill--when the
self-constituted parent only wants a child as he would a pet dog, and
puts it through no higher course of training; when he feeds it from
his own plate with choice bits, till it becomes too dainty for the
chance wayside bone, and then, getting weary of the pastime, opens the
door and thrusts it out to forage again in gutters and ash-heaps and
street corners. Such things have been. Let none assume this sacred
relation _who are not prepared for its sacrifices as well as its
pleasures_--who have not counted in days of sickness, and hours of
childish waywardness, and possible hereditary moral weeds to be rooted
out; for these little stray waifs of humanity suffer much from these
causes, physically and morally. Let no one, we say, open wide his arms
and doors to it, unless God's patience be in his soul, God's
all-suffering, all-forgiving love, in his heart, to weave a chord from
that child's heart to his own, over which no vibration shall pass
unheeded, no more than if it were bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh.
* * * * *
The phrase, "Vulgar Saints," occurs in a late work of great repute, in
which the author's aristocratic tendencies stick out through some of
the otherwise finest passages ever penned. "Vulgar Saints!" The term
itself is a contradiction: there never was, or will be, a vulgar
saint; true religion is sublimating, etherealizing. "Breeding" has
nothing to do with it; there are vulgar hypocrites, but never a vulgar
saint. We might carry you to old houses that never knew a carpet or
piano, and leading you up the rickety stairs, into a rough chamber,
show you the mother on her knees, pleading with an eloquence no
college could ever teach, for her absent sailor-boy; or show you the
wrinkled grandmother, who never saw a grammar, singing some old hymn
which brings the tears to your eyes, and all your long-forgotten
follies to daylight. _True_ religion banishes vulgarity. It is
calm-eyed, soft-voiced, all-pervading, like the warm sunshine. There
never was a "Vulgar Saint." We don't care what are his antecedents, or
where he lives, or what he eats, or what clothes he wears, or how
rough are his toil-worn hands, he has that in him which lifts him far
beyond turreted libraries, stained-glass windows, and softly carpeted
floors, and allies him with the angels; although through the broken
roof above his head, the stars may nightly look in upon his peaceful
slumbers.
THE END.
Transcriber's Note:
Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.
* * * * *
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