Part 20

There are people who, having no children of their own, resolve to 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.

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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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