It is feasible, moreover, for religious orders to accept as well the penitent as the virgin; and shaming the world's intolerance, to rescue from sin and disgrace a lower world of souls, whom passion or imprudence had otherwise ruined.
There is no depth of crime, indeed, from which its subjects may not be rescued by charitable labors; and in proportion as their organization is extended and perfected, legal as well as simply moral offences may find here at once their prevention and their expiation. The brothel and the penitentiary, those two institutions of hell on earth, may thus be countermined, and the means of redemption afforded to their victims. { 49} The salutary influence which the discipline of charitable works exerts over mental and moral aberrations, may even reclaim not a few of the insane, or those who, under ordinary circumstances, are drifting fatally toward the lunatic asylum.
That extraordinary virtue which the impulse and exercise of active benevolence has in developing the soul and awakening its latent powers from torpor, may appear from the following incident lately observed at Mr. Bost's, in Laforce, Dordogne:
One day a poor girl, deaf, dumb, blind, paralytic, and epileptic, was brought to Bethesda. "It required some courage," says the narrator, Mr. De Liefde, "to fix one's eyes on that miserable creature, with her dried-up, contracted limbs, her repulsive face, the features of which were constantly contorted in the most hideous manner. Well, an idiot took charge of that child, guarded and nursed it, and stood by its death-bed to administer to it the last solace of love! And such was the indefatigable care and even intelligent thoughtfulness with which she tended her poor helpless charge that Mr. Bost said, 'When I lie on my death-bed, I shall count it a blessing to be nursed in this way.' I do not wonder at such hearts being able to understand what is the meaning of the simple sentence, 'God loveth you,' long before the intellect is able to catch the difference between two and three; nor can I be surprised at what Mrs. Castel told me, that the same children who do not know whether a shoe ought to be on the foot or on the head, or who, if not prevented, would, like beasts, walk on all fours and lick the dirt, may yet sometimes be heard ejaculating, '_Mon Dieu! prends pitié de moi. J'en at bien besoin_.'