First, let us consider the expediences of public charity, especially in reference to the persons or characters of its organs.
The best interest of society demands that there shall be a place for every one, and every one in his place; or, in other words, that as specific vocations are inherent to each type of character, so _that_ use should be allotted to each for which nature supplies the aptitudes, and which it embraces with ardor.
The attractiveness of certain functions< or the aversion occasioned by them, has very little to do with the impression they make on the senses of a party indifferent. The cares required by an infant, for example, which excite maternal zeal in all its plenitude, appear simply tedious and disgusting to most men. So it is with the care of the sick, in which science and affection find powerful attachments insensible to others, who, good in other ways, feel no vocation for it. Finally, and beyond all special vocations, there is the enthusiasm of devotion, the religious instinct to which Christianity appeals, which it awakens in many souls, and which it justifies in affording to it the highest spheres of use. The contemplative idealist may try to escape the normal limitations of his nature in vague aspiration; but Jesus has provided against this Brahminic perversion by the culture of charity, in identifying the love of God with the love of the neighbor, and himself with the least of mankind. "As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me." (St. Matthew xxv. 40.)
We do not suppose that Christianity endowed human nature with philanthropy as a new passion; it gave this aspect, this evolution, this modality, to what had been patriotism for the heroic states of Rome, of Greece, and other nations, which had always sought, and sometimes found, a social channel, but which Christianity more fully satisfied in the theory and practice of unity.
There have always been developed, in proportion with the industrial progress of civilization, wants extraordinary without being fantastic. Such are the cares of illness. The wisdom of Christian charity has adapted to these extreme wants vocations equally extreme, in the devotion of religious orders; and this duty has devolved especially upon the female sex, because it is better gifted than the male for the ministry of compassion.