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Several years ago I accompanied to New Orleans eight Sisters of Charity who were sent from Baltimore to reenforce the ranks of their heroic companions, or to supply the places of their devoted associates who had fallen at the post of duty in the fever-stricken cities of the South. Their departure for the scene of their labors was neither announced by the press nor heralded by public applause. They went calmly into the jaws of death, not bent on deeds of destruction, like the famous Six Hundred, but on deeds of mercy. They had no Tennyson to sound their praises. Their only ambition was,—and how lofty is that ambition-that the recording angel might be their biographer, that their names might be inscribed in the Book of Life, and that they might receive the recompense from him who has said: "I was sick and ye visited me; for as often as ye did it to one of the least of my brethren, ye did it to me." Within a few months after their arrival, six of the eight Sisters died victims to the epidemic. These are a few of many instances of heroic charity that have fallen under my own observation. Here are examples of sublime heroism not culled from the musty pages of ancient martyrologies, or books of chivalry, but happening in our day and under our own eyes. Here is a heroism not aroused by the emulation of brave comrades on the battlefield, or by the clash of arms, or the strains of martial hymns, or by the love of earthly fame, but inspired only by a sense of Christian duty and by the love of God and her fellow-beings.

VII. The Catholic religion labors not only to assuage the physical distempers of humanity, but also to reclaim the victims of moral disease. The redemption of fallen women from a life of infamy was never included in the scope of heathen philanthropy; and man's unregenerate nature is the same now as before the birth of Christ. He worships woman as long as she has charms to fascinate, but she is spurned and trampled upon as soon as she has ceased to please. It was reserved for him who knew no sin to throw the mantle of protection over sinning woman. There is no page in the Gospel more touching than that which records our Savior's merciful judgment on the adulterous woman. The Scribes and Pharisees, who had, perhaps, participated in her guilt, asked our Lord to pro

nounce sentence of death upon her, in accordance with the Mosaic law. "Hath no one condemned thee?" asked our Savior. "No one, Lord," she answered. "Then," said he, "neither will I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more." Inspired by this divine example, the Catholic Church shelters erring females in homes not inappropriately called Magdalene Asylums and Houses of the Good Shepherd. Not to speak of other institutions established for the moral reformation of women, the congregation of the Good Shepherd at Angers, founded in 1836, has charge to-day of one hundred and fifty houses, in which upward of four thousand Sisters devote themselves to the care of over twenty thousand females, who had yielded to temptation or were rescued from impending danger.

VIII. The Christian religion has been the unvarying friend and advocate of the bondman. Before the dawn of Christianity, slavery was universal in civilized, as well as in barbarous nations. The Apostles were everywhere confronted by the children of oppression. Their first task was to mitigate the horrors and alleviate the miseries of human bondage. They cheered the slave by holding up to him the example of Christ, who voluntarily became a slave that we might enjoy the glorious liberty of children of God. The bondman had an equal participation with his master in the sacraments of the Church, and in the priceless consolation which religion affords. Slave-own

ers were admonished to be kind and humane to their slaves, by being reminded with apostolic freedom that they and their servants had the same master in heaven, who had no respect of persons. The ministers of the Catholic religion down the ages sought to lighten the burden and improve the condition of the slave, as far as social prejudices would permit, till, at length, the chains fell from their feet. Human slavery has, at last, thank God, melted away before the noon-tide sun of the Gospel. No Christian country contains to-day a solitary slave. Το paraphrase the words of a distinguished Irish jurist—as soon as a bondman puts his foot in a Christian land, he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, on the sacred soil of Christendom.

IX. The Savior never conferred a greater temporal boon on mankind than by ennobling and sanctifying man

ual labor, and by rescuing it from the stigma of degradation which had been branded upon it. Before Christ appeared among men, manual and even mechanical work was regarded as servile and degrading to the freeman of pagan Rome, and was consequently relegated to slaves. Christ is ushered into the world, not amid the pomp and splendor of imperial majesty, but amid the environments of a humble child of toil. He is the reputed son of an artisan, and his early manhood is spent in a mechanic's shop. "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" The primeval curse attached to labor is obliterated by the toilsome life of Jesus Christ. Ever since he pursued his trade as a carpenter, he has lightened the mechanic's tools, and shed a halo around the workshop. If the profession of a general, a jurist, and a statesman is adorned by the example of a Washington, a Taney, and a Burke, how much more. is the character of a workman ennobled by the example of Christ. What De Tocqueville said of the United States sixty years ago is true to-day-that with us every honest labor is laudable, thanks to the example and teaching of Christ.

To sum up: The Catholic Church has taught man the knowledge of God and of himself; she has brought comfort to his heart by instructing him to bear the ills of life with Christian philosophy; she has sanctified the marriage bond; she has proclaimed the sanctity and inviolability of human life from the moment that the body is animated by the spark of life, till it is extinguished; she has founded asylums for the training of children of both sexes and for the support of the aged poor; she has established hospitals for the sick and homes for the redemption of fallen women; she has exerted her influence toward the mitigation and abolition of human slavery; she has been the unwavering friend of the sons of toil. These are some of the blessings which the Catholic Church has conferred on society.

I will not deny-on the contrary, I am happy to avowthat the various Christian bodies outside the Catholic Church have been, and are to-day, zealous promoters of most of these works of Christian benevolence which I have enumerated. Not to speak of the innumerable humanitarian houses established by our non-Catholic brethren

throughout the land, I bear cheerful testimony to the philanthropic institutions founded by Wilson, by Shepherd, by Johns Hopkins, Enoch Pratt, and George Peabody, in the city of Baltimore. But will not our separated brethren have the candor to acknowledge that we had first possession of the field, that these beneficent movements have been inaugurated by us, and that the other Christian communities in their noble efforts for the moral and social regeneration of mankind, have, in no small measure been stimulated by the example and emulation of the ancient Church?

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Let us do all we can in our day and generation in the cause of humanity. Every man has a mission from God to help his fellow-beings. Though we differ in faith, thank God there is one platform on which we stand united, and that is the platform of charity and benevolence. cannot, indeed, like our Divine Master, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and strength to the paralyzed limb, but we can work miracles of grace and mercy by relieving the distress of our suffering brethren. And never do we approach nearer to our Heavenly Father than when we alleviate the sorrows of others. Never do we perform an act more Godlike than when we bring sunshine to hearts that are dark and desolate. Never are we more like to God than when we cause the flowers of joy and of gladness to bloom in souls that were dry and barren before. "Religion," says the apostle, "pure and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." Or, to borrow the words of pagan Cicero, Homines ad deos nulla re propius accedunt quam salutem hominibus dando. (There is no way by which men can approach nearer to the gods than by contributing to the welfare of their fellow-creatures.)

DANIEL COIT GILMAN

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A UNIVERSITY

[Address by Daniel Coit Gilman, first President of Johns Hopkins University, inaugurated in 1875 (born in Norwich, Conn., July 6, 1831; −), delivered at the commemoration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., July 1, 1886. On the same day the second President, Dwight, became President of Yale, Dr. Gilman's alma mater, and his theme was suggested by the conjunction of the two events.]

No one can visit Cambridge this summer without remembering that two hundred and fifty years ago an acorn was here planted from which an oak has grown. No scholar can come from a distant State without wishing to offer his tribute, however inadequate it may be, to the wisdom which has governed the counsels of Harvard through eight generations. A graduate of Yale will, I trust, be pardoned for associating the name of his own alma mater with that of her elder sister. Their united influence has not only been strong in New England, but strong in other portions of the land.

It is difficult to surmise what would have been the condition of American society if these foundations had never existed. Their graduates have promoted the literature, the science, the statesmanship, and the religion of the land; but more than this is true. Their methods of instruction, their unwritten laws, their high endeavors, and their academic spirit have reappeared in each new State of the West, as each new State has initiated its social order. To be governed by the experience of Harvard and Yale is in many an educational court an appeal to common law. To establish another Harvard or another Yale, to Copyright, by The Century Company. Published by permission.

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