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CHRISTIAN HOME

By

James Cardinal Gibbons

New York

The Paul ist Press

401 W. 59th St.



Copyright, 1918, by

The Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle

IN THE State of New York



Tbe Christian Ideal of the Home.

I

T was only with the dawn of Christianity that the
true ideal of the home received its full and perfect

suppression in the words of the Divine Teacher. Among

the Greeks and Romans it had been the formation of the

perfect citizen which was aimed at. That the child be

taught to dare all things, suffer all things for his coun-

try’s sake—this was the goal.
With Christ it was indeed a citizenship—aye, more,

a brotherhood—which the home was to inculcate in a
spirit of mutual love and forbearance. And just as

Christ taught nothing else which He did not show forth

by example in His divine life, so He has given us, in

His own filial love and obedience to Mary and Joseph,

the divine type of the Christian home.

It is profitable for us to day to heed well these les-

sons of the Houie of Nazareth. Modern industrial con-

ditions have loosened the ties which should bind parent

and child with hoops of steel. And those sacred influ-

ences under which Christ grew in age and wisdom are

oftentimes neglected or rendered inoperative through

the indifference of parents and the besetting hurry of

the age.

To the mothers and fathers of families there is as-

signed a mission no less honorable than that of Joseph

and Mary. Their offspring are the

children of God, brothers and sisters

of Jesus Christ, redeemed by His

parents are appointed by heaven their

The Mission of

Parents.

blood, and the

I



first apostles and teacners. Whether they will he

teachers of salvation or of destruction, angels of light

or of darkness, rests with them.

The love and solicitude of Mary and Joseph for the

Child Jesus is expressed in the words : “ Behold Thy

father and I have sought Thee sorrowing.’* And the

filial obedience of the Son is made manifest in the short

sentence: ‘‘He was subject to them.” Herein are

contained the two duties of parent and of child : the

one of watchful, constant care
;
the other of simple,

ready obedience, of respect for authority, of reverence

for age—lessons so needed to be learned in our day.
The home is the primeval school. It is the best, the

most hallowed, and the most potential of all the acade-

mies
;
and the parent, especially the

mother, is the first, the most influen-

tial, and the most cherished of all

teachers. No human ordinance can abrogate or annul

the divine right of parents to rule their own household,

neither can any vicarious instruction given in the day-

school or Sunday-School exempt them from the obliga.

tion of a personal supervision over their offspring. If

Christian training is eliminated from the home and rele-

gated to the class-room, the child, when emancipated

from his studies, may be tempted to regard religious

knowledge as a mere detail of school work, and not, as

it should be, a vital principal in his daily life and con-

duct.

And yet I fear there are many parents who imagine

that they discharge their whole duty to their children

by placing them under the zealous care of our Catholic

teachers. These instructors may supplement and de-

Tbe Home As a First

School.



velop, but they were never intended to supplant the do-

mestic tuition.

The education ot a child should begin at its moth-

er’s knee. The mind of a child, like softened wax, re-

ceives first impressions with ease, and these impressions

last longest. “ Train up a child in the way he should

go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” A
child is susceptible of instruction much earlier than

parents commonly imagine. It has the capacity to per-

ceive and apprehend the truth, though unable as yet to

go through the process of reasoning and analysis.

Mothers should watch with a zealous eye the first un-

folding of the infant mind, and pour into it the seed of

heavenly knowledge.

For various reasons mothers should be the first in-

structors of their children.

First, as nature ordains that mothers should be the

first to feed their offspring with corporal nourishment

of their own substance, so the God of nature ordains

that mothers should be the first to impart to their little

ones ” the rational, guileless milk ” of heavenly knowl-

edge, “whereby they may grow unto Salvation”

(I. Peter ii. 2).

Second, the children that are fed by

Mothers As Teachers, their own mothers are usually more

healthy and robust than those that

are nurtured by wet-nurses. In like manner, the chil-

dren who are instructed by their own mothers in the

elements of Christian knowledge are commonly more

sturdy in faith than those who are committed for in-

struction to strangers.

Third, the progress of a pupil in knowledge is in a

5



great measure proportioned to the confidence he has in

his preceptor. Now, in whom does a child place so

much reliance as in his mother ? She is his oracle and

prophet. She is his guide, philosopher, and friend.

He never doubts what his mother tells him. The les-

son he receives acquires additional force because it pro-

ceeds from one to whom he gave his first love, and

whose image, in after life, is indelibly stamped on his

heart and memory. Mothers, do not lose the golden

opportunity you have of training your children in faith

and morals while their hearts are open to drink in your

every word.

Fourth, you share the same home with your chil-

dren, you frequently occupy the same apartment. You

eat at the same table with them. They are habitually

before your eyes. You are, therefore, the best fitted to

instruct them, and you can avail yourself of every little

incident that presents itself and draw from it some

appropriate moral reflection.

The fruits of the realization amongst us of the di-

vine beauties of the Home of Nazareth are not far to

seek. The most distinguished personages who have

adorned the Church by their apostolic virtues, or who

have served their country by fine patriotism, or who

have shed a luster on the home by the integrity of their

private lives, have usually been men who had the hap-

piness of receiving from pious mothers early principles

of moral rectitude.

Witness St. Augustine, the great

Doctor of the Church in the fifth

century. In his youth he had lost

his faith, and with it purity of conscience. He was

The Constancy of St.

Monica.

1%.



tainted with Manichaeism, the most pernicious error of

the times, and he became a prey to the hercest pas-

sions. Monica, his saintly mother, prayed for him with

a constancy which only a mother can exhibit. She

hoped against hope
;
and before her death she had the

consolation of seeing him restored to God and His

Church. St. Augustine attributes his conversion to

her, and in his matchless book, the Coyifessions^ he

speaks of her most tenderly.

St. lyouis. King of France, is another example of

what a mother may do. As a monarch and as a saint

he owes his virtues, under God, to Queen Blanche, his

mother. I love you tenderly,” she said to her child,

“but sooner would I see you a corpse at my feet, and

France bereft of an heir to the throne, than that you

should tarnish your soul by a corrupt life.”

If Queen Blanche could pay so much attention to her

son^s instruction, notwithstanding her engrossing ad-

ministrative cares, surely the mothers of to-day, in pri-

vate walks of life, should find leisure for a similar duty.

Nor need we look beyond our own country’s first

president for the fruition of that seed which was sown

by a devoted mother. Washington was conspicuous

for the natural virtues of frugality, industry, self-re-

straint, and respect for authority. Above all, he pos-

sessed a love of truth and an habitual recognition of

the overruling Providence of God. And he gloried in

declaring that these traits were impressed on hisyouth-

ful mind by his mother, for whom he had a profound

reverence, and whom in his letters he usually ad-

dressed as his “ honored ” mother.

If in our day we find the religion of Christ firmly

7



To Whom All Honor

Is Due.

rooted in the land
;

if the word of the Teacher of Men

has quickened and brought forth good fruit
;

if we see

about us homes spiritualized and

sanctified by the radiance of the

Home of Nazareth, and lifted above

the worldly and material by the memory of the Divine

Exemplar—this happy condition is largely due to the
faith and piety of Christian wives and mothers. This

noble army of apostolic women “ are the glory of Jerus-

alem, the joy of Israel, the honor of our people
;
they

are the saviors of society and a blessing to the nation.

It is true, indeed, that they are not clothed with

the priestly character. They cannot offer the Holy

Sacrifice or administer the Sacraments. But may we

not apply to them the words of St. Peter: ‘‘ Ye are a

chosen generation, a holy nation, a royal priesthood’’ ?

Yes, we may in all truth. They are consecrated priest-

esses of the domestic temple, where they daily offer up

in the sanctuary of their homes, and on the altar of

their hearts, the sacrifice of praise and prayer, of sup-

plication and thanksgiving to God. They cannot

preach the word of God in public, but they are apos-

tles by prayer, good deeds, and edifying example.

They preach most effectually to the members of their

households, and the word of God scattered from the

pulpit would often bear little fruit if it were not watered

and nurtured by the care of our pious mothers.

No more weighty obligation devolves upon Chris-

tian parents than that of recognizing and discharging

conscientiously these fundamental duties of the home.

It is a sublime task. “ What is more noble,” cries St.

John Chrysostom, ” than to form the minds of youth?



What the Home

Should Be.

He who fashions the morals of children performs a task

in my judgment more sublime than that of any painter

or sculptor.’* It is, Indeed, a far more exalted task

than that of sculptor or painter that is entrusted to

fathers and mothers. They are creating living* por-

traits, destined to adorn not only earthly temples, but

also the Temple above, not fashioned of man’s hand

And therefore built forever.

And mark well : home education does not mean

merely those lessons in Christian Doctrine which are

to be taught to children. The home should be per-

vaded by a religious atmosphere. It

should be the sanctuary of domestic

peace, sobriety, and parental love.

Discontent and anger should be banished from it
;
and

underthese sweet influences the child will grow in virtue.

Above all, let it be the asylum of daily prayer, and then

the angels of God and the God of angels will be there.

It is to the mothers and fathers of to-day that we

must look for the realization amongst us of this Chris-

tian ideal of the home—the Home of Nazareth. They
are doubly bound to seek it, if need be “sorrowing’^

—as did Mary and Joseph. They are bound, on the
one hand, by their Christian faith and the example of

Christ; and, on the other, they owe a duty to the

State. Thus shall they rear up for their country not

scourges of society, but loyal, law-abiding citizens.

“If any one,” says the Apostle, “ have not care of his

own, and especially of his own household, he hath de-

nied the faith, and is worse than an infidel ” (I. Tim.

V. 8; Prov. xxxi. 28). Aye, more—he hath fallen
short in his duty to his country.



Tbe Needs of Hnmanity Supplied by tbe Catbolic

Religion.

E live and move and have our being in the midst of

a civilization which is the legitimate cflfspring of

the Catholic religion. The blessings resulting from

our Christian civilization are poured out so regularly

and so abundantly on the intellectual, moral, and

social world, like the sunlight and the air of heaven and

the fruits of the earth, that they have ceased to excite

any surprise except to those who visit lands where the

religion of Christ is little known. In order to realize

adequately our favored situation, we should transport

ourselves in spirit to anti-Christian times and contrast

the condition of the pagan world with our own.

Before the advent of Christ, the whole world, with

the exception of the secluded Roman province of Pales-

sun and moon and stars of heaven. They worshipped

their very passions. They worshipped everything ex-

cept God only, to whom alone divine homage is

due. In the words of the Apostle of the Gentiles,

“They changed the glory of the incorruptible God

into the likeness of the corruptible man, and of birds

and beasts and creeping things. They worshipped and

served the creature rather than the Creator who is

blessed for ever.“

Divine Worship Due

to God Alone,

tine, was buried in idolatry. Every

Striking object in nature had its tute-

lary divinities. Men worshipped the

lo



The Coming of the

Light.

But at last the great light for which the prophets of

Israel had sighed and prayed, and toward which even

the pagan sages had stretched forth their hands with

eager longing, arose and shone unto them
*

‘ that sat in

darkness and the shadow of death.’’ The truth con-

cerning our Creator, which had hitherto been hidden

in Judaea, that there it might be sheltered from the

world-wide idolatry, was now proclaimed, and in far

greater clearness and fulness, unto the whole world.

Jesus Christ taught all mankind to

know the one, true God : a God ex-

isting from eternity unto eternity, a

God who created all things by his power, who governs

all things by his wisdom, and whose superintending

providence watches over the affairs of nations as well

as of men, “ without whom not even a bird falls to the

ground.
’

’ He proclaimed a God infinitely holy, just and

merciful. This idea of the Deity, so consonant to our

rational conceptions, was in striking contrast with the

low and sensual notions which the pagan world had

formed of its divinities.

The religion of Christ imparts to us, not only a sub-

lime conception of God, but also a rational idea of man

and of his relations to his Creator. Before the coming

of Christ, man was a riddle and a mystery to himself.

He knew not whence he came or whither he was go-

ing. He was groping in the dark. All he knew for

certain was, that he was passing through a brief phase

of existence. The past and the future were enveloped

in a mist which the light of philosophy was unable to

penetrate. Our Redeemer has dispelled the cloud, and

enlightened us regarding our origin and destiny and

II



the means of attaining it. He has rescued man from

the frightful labyrinth of error in which paganism had

involved him.

The Gospel of Christ as propounded by the Catholic

Church has brought not only light to the intellect, but ^

comfort also to the heart. It has given us “that peace

^ ^ ^ ^ of God which surpasseth all under-
ur ngman ur

standing “
;
the peace which springs

Destiny.
from the conscious possession of

truth. It has taught us how to enjoy that triple peace

which constitutes true happiness as far as it is attain-

able in this life
;
peace with God by the observance of

his commandments, peace with our neighbor by the ex-

ercise of charity and justice toward him, and peace

with ourselves by repressing our inordinate appetites,

and keeping our passions subject to the law of reason

and our reason illumined and controlled by the law of

God.

All other religious systems prior to the advent of

Christ were national like Judaism, or state-religions

like paganism. The Catholic religion alone is world-

wide and cosmopolitan, embracing all races and nations

and peoples and tongues.

Christ alone of all religious founders had the cour-

age to say to his disciples : “ Go, teach all nations.’^
‘

‘ Preach the Gospel to every crea-

ture.’’ “You shall be witnesses to

me in Judaea and Samaria, and even

to the uttermost bounds of the earth.” Be not re-

strained in your mission by national or State lines.

Tet my Gospel be as free and universal as the air of

heaven. “The. earth is the lyord’s and the fulness

The Universality of

the Church.

12



ihereof.*’ All mankind are the children of my Father
and my brethren. I have died for all, and embrace all
in my charity. Let the whole human race be your
audience, and the world be the theatre of your labors.

It is this recognition of the fatherhood of God and

the brotherhood of Christ that has inspired the Catho-

lic Church in her mission of love and benevolence.

That is the secret of her all-prevading charity. This

Mea has been her impelling motive in her work of the

fn
social regeneration of mankind. I

1110 o6CF0X 01 ll0r
4 1 1 1 i t <

behold, she says, in every human
Charity.

creature a child of God and a brother

or sister of Christ, and therefore I will protect helpless

infancy and decrepit old age. I will feed the orphan

and nurse the sick. I will strike the shackles from the

feet of the slave, and will rescue degraded woman from

the moral bondage and degradation to which her own

frailty and the passions of the stronger sex had con-

signed her.

Montesquieu has well said that the religion of Christ,

which was instituted to lead men to eternal life, has

contributed more than any other institution to promote

the temporal and social happiness of mankind. At

times some inquiring minds will meet in congress or

parliament to investigate, as they put it, the respective

claims ot the various religions, with the view that they

would “ prove all things, and hold that which is good,”

by embracing that religion which above all others com-

mends itself to their judgment and conscience. I am

not engaged in this search for the truth ; for, by the

grace of God, I am conscious that I have found it, and

instead of hiding this treasure in my own breast, I long

*3



to share it with others, especially as I am none the

poorer in making others the richer.

But for my part, were I occupied in this investiga-

tion, much as I would be drawn towards the Catholic

Church by her admirable unity of faith, which binds

together in a common worship over three hundred mil-

lions of souls
;
much as I would be attracted towards

her by her sublime moral code, by her world-wide

catholicity, and by that unbroken chain of apostolic

« *1.
succession which connects her indis-

^

solubly with apostolic times, I would
Weedy.

drawn still more forcibly towards

her by that wonderful system of organized benevolence

which she has established for the alleviation and com-

fort of suffering humanity.

Let us briefly review what the Catholic Church has

done for the elevation and betterment of society.

The Catholic Church has purified society in its very

fountain, which is the marriage bond. She has invari-

ably proclaimed the unity and sanctity and indissolu-

bility of the marriage tie by saying, with her Founder,

that “ what God hath joined together

The Marriage Bond, let no man put asunder.** Wives

and mothers, never forget that the

inviolability of the marriage contract is the palladium

of your womanly dignity and of your Christian liberty.

And if you are no longer the slaves of man and the toy

of his caprice, like the wives of Asiatic countries, but

the peers and partners of your husbands ; if you are no

longer tenants at will, like the wives of pagan Greece

and Rome, but the mistresses of your household ; if you

are no longer confronted by usurping rivals, like Mo-

14



The Sanctity of

Human Life.

hammedan and Mormon wives, but the queens of the

domestic kingdom, you are indebted for this priceless

boon to the ancient Church, and particularly to the

Roman Pontiffs, who inflexibly upheld the sacredness

of the nuptial bond against the arbitrary power of

kings, the lust of nobles, and the lax and pernicious

legislation of civil governments.

The Catholic religion has proclaimed the sanctity

of human life as soon as the body is animated by the

vital spark. Infanticide was a dark stain on pagan

civilization. It was universal in Greece, with the pos-

sible exception of Thebes. It was sanctioned, and even

sometimes enjoined, by such eminent Greeks as Plato

and Aristotle, Solon and Lycurgus.

The destruction of infants was also

very common among the Romans.

Nor was there any legal check to this inhuman crime

except at rare intervals. The father had the power of

life and death over his child. And as an evidence that

human nature does not improve with time, and is every-

where the same unless it is fermented with the leaven

of Christianity, the wanton sacrifice of infant life is

probably as general to-day in China and other heathen

countries as it was in ancient Greece and Rome. The

Catholic Church has sternly set her face against this

exposure and murder of innocent babes. She has de-

nounced it as a crime more revolting than that of Herod,

because committed against one’s own flesh and blood.

She has condemned with equal energy the atrocious

doctrine of Malthus, who suggested unnatural methods

for diminishing the population of the human family.

Were I not restrained by the fear of offending modesty,

15



and of imparting knowledge where “ignorance is bliss/'

I would dwell more at length on the social plague of

ante-natal infanticide which is insidiously and syste-

matically spreading among us in defiance of civil penal-

ties and of the divine law which says, “ Thou shalt not

kill/'

There is no phase of human misery for which the

Church does not provide some remedy or alleviation.

She has established infant asylums for the shelter of

helpless babes who have been cruelly abandoned by

their own parents, or bereft of them in the mysterious

dispensations of Providence before

As a Nursing Mother, they could know and feel a mother’s

love. These little waifs, like the in-

fant Moses drifting in the turbid Nile, are rescued from

an untimely death and are tenderly raised by the

daughters of the great King, those consecrated virgins

who become nursing mothers to them. And I have

known more than one such motherless babe who, like

Israel’s lawgiver, in after years became a leader among

his people.

As the Church provides homes for those yet on the

threshold of life, so too does she secure retreats for

those on the threshold of death. She has asylums in

which the aged, men and women, find at one and the

same time a refuge in their old age from the storms of

life, and a novitiate to prepare them for eternity. Thus

from the cradle to the grave she is a nursing mother.

She rocks her children in the cradle of infancy, and she

soothes them to rest on the couch of death.

Louis XIV. erected in Paris the famous H6tel des

Invalides for the veteran soldiers of France who had
t*.

i6



fought in the service of their country. And so has the

Catholic religion provided for those who have been dis-

abled in the battle of life a home in which they are ten-

derly nursed to their declining years by devoted sisters.

The lyittle Sisters of the Poor, to mention but one

Catholic community, have now charge of hundreds of

establishments throughout the world wherein thous-

ands of the needy, the sick, the aged, are cared for,

even until death. To these asylums are welcomed, not

only the members of the Catholic religion, but those

also of every form of Christian faith, and even those

without any faith at all. The sisters make no distinc-

tion of person or nationality or color or creed
;
for true

charity embraces all. The only question proposed by

the sisters to the applicant for shelter is this : “Are

you oppressed by age and penury ? If so, come to ns

and we will provide for you.“

She has orphan asylums where children of both

sexes are reared and taught to become useful and

worthy members of society.

Hospitals were unknown to the pagan world before

the coming of Christ. The copious vocabularies of

Greece and Rome had no word even to express that

term.

The Catholic Church has hospitals for the treat-

ment and cure of every form of disease. She sends her

daughters of Charity and of Mercy to the battle-field

and to the plague-stricken city.

Kinistering Angels. During the Crimean War I remem-

ber to have read of a sister who was

struck dead by a ball while she was in the act of stoop-

ing down and bandaging the wound of a fallen soldier.

17



Much praise was then deservedly bestowed on Florence

Nightingale for her devotion to the sick and wounded

soldiers. Her name resounded in both hemispheres.

But in every sister you have a Florence Nightingale

with this difference, that like ministering angels they

move without noise along the path of duty, and like the

Angel Raphael, who concealed his name from Tobias,

the sister hides her name from the world.

Some years ago I accompanied to New Orleans

eight Sisters of Charity who were sent from Baltimore

to reinforce 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

At the Post of Duty, scene of their labors was neither an-

nounced by the press nor heralded

by public applause. They rushed 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 am-

bition 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 their 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 the many other instances of

heroic charity that have fallen under my own observa-

tion. Here are examples of sublime heroism not culled

from the musty pages of ancient martyrologies, or



books of chivalry, but happening in our own day and.

under our own eyes. Here is a heroism not aroused by

the emulation of brave comrades on the battle field, or

by the clash of arms or the strains of martial hymns, or

by the love for earthly fame, but inspired only by a

sense of Christian duty, and by the love of God and her

fellow-beings.

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 unregener-

ate 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 Saviour’s

merciful judgment on the adulterous woman. The

Scribes and Pharisees, who had perhaps participated

in her guilt, asked our I^ord to pronounce sentence of

death upon her in accordance with the Mosaic law„

“ Hath no one condemned thee? ” asked our Saviour.

'*No one, I^ord,” she answered. “Then,” said he,

“neither will I condemn thee. Go, sin no more.”

Inspired by this divine example, the

A Work of Mercy. Catholic Church shelters erring fe-

males in homes not inappropriately

called Magdalen Asylums and Houses of the Good

Shepherd. Not to speak of other institutions estab-

19



lished for the moral reformation of women, the Congre-

gation of the Good Shepherd at Angers, founded in

1836, has charge to-day of over one hundred and fifty

houses, in which more than four thousand sisters de-

vote themselves to the care of over twenty thousand

females who have yielded to temptation or were rescued

from impending danger.

The Christian religion has been the unvarying

friend and advocate of the bondmen. Before the dawn

of Christianity slavery was universal in civilized as well

as in barbarous nations. The apostles were every-

where 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 vol-

untarily became a slave that we might enjoy the glori-

ous 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-owners were admonished to be kind and hu-

mane to their slaves, by being reminded with apostolic

freedom that they and their servants had the same

, Master in heaven, who had no re-
The Advocate of ^ .

'

, . . ,

spect of persons. The ministers of
Bondmen.

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-day sun of the Gospel. No

Christian country contains to-day a solitary slave.

20



To paraphrase the words of a distinguished Irish

jurist : as soon as the bondman puts his foot on a

Christian land he stands redeemed, regenerated, and

disenthralled on the sacred soil of Christendom.

The Savior of mankind never conferred a greater

temporal boon on mankind than by ennoblingiiand

sanctifying manual labor, and by rescuing it from the

Manual Labor Sancti-
of degradation which had

been branded upon it. Before Christ
fled by Christ. . . .^

appeared among men, manual and

even mechanical work was regarded as servile and de-

grading to the freemen of pagan Rome, and was con-

sequently relegated to slaves. Christ is ushered into

the world, not amid the pomp and splendor of imperial

majesty, but amid the environments of an 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 pri-

meval 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 mechan-

ic’s tools and has shed a halo around the workshop.

If the profession of a general, a jurist, and a states-

man is adorned by the example of a Washington, a

Taney, and a Burke, how much more is the calling of

a workman ennobled by the example of Christ ! What

De Tocqueville said over seventy years ago of the

United States is true to day, that with us every honest

labor is laudable, thanks to the example and teaching

of Jesus Christ.

To sum up : The Catholic Church has taught man

the knowledge of God and of himself
;
she has brought

21



comfort to his heart by instructing him to bear the ills

^ ^ ^ of life with Christian philosophy i
The Church and , - .-n . .

she has sanctified the marriage
Humanity.

bond
;
she has proclaimed the sanc-

tity and inviolability of human life from the moment

thafijthe body is animated by the spark of life till its

extinction
;
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 towards the mitigation and

abolition of human slavery ; she has been the unwav-

ering 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

avow, that the various Christian bodies outside the

Catholic Church have been and are to-day zealous pro-

moters of most of those works of Christian benevolence

which I have enumerated.

But will not our separated brethren have the can-

dor to acknowledge that we had first possession of the

field, that these beneficent movements have been in-

augurated by us, and that the other Christian com-

munities 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 ?

lyet 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-being. Though we differ

in faith, thank God there is one platform on which we
22



What We Oorseltres

Gan Do.

stand united, and that is the platform of charity an<j

benevolence! We cannot, indeed, like our Divine
Master, give sight to the blind and

hearing to the deaf and speech to

the dumb and strength to the para-

lyzed limb
;

but we can work miracles of grace and

mercy by relieving the distress of our suffering breth-

ren. And never do we approach nearer to our Heav-

enly Father than when we alleviate the sorrows of

others. Never do we perform an act more God-like

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. “ Re-

ligion, says the Apostle, “ pure and undefiled before

God and the Father, is this—to visit the fatherless and
#

the widow in their tribulation, and to keep one’s self

unspotted from this world.” Or to borrow the words

of the pagan Cicero: ^'Homines ad deos nulla re pro-

plus accedunt quant saluiem hominibus dando ”
—

“ There

is no way by which men can approach nearer to the

gods than by contributing to the welfare of their fel*

!ow-oreature«.”



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