Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/67

 sweet Virgin Mary is ever ready with outstretched hands to listen to all our little griefs and vexations. It is a beautiful and fascinating Creed, hallowed by long antiquity, graced by deeds of romance and chivalry, sanctified by the memories of great martyrs and pure saints, and even in these degenerate days, glorified by the noble-hearted men and women who follow it without bigotry or intolerance, doing good everywhere, tending the sick, comforting the sorrowful, and gathering up the little children into their protecting arms, even as Jesus Himself gathered them. It would need an angel's pen dipped in fire, to record the true history of a faithful, self-denying priest of the Roman Church, who gives up his own advantage for the sake of serving others,—who walks fearlessly into squalid dens reeking with fever, and sets the pure Host between the infected lips of the dying,—who combats with the Demon of Drink, and drags up the almost lost reprobate out of that horrible chasm of vice and destruction. No one could ever give sufficient honour to such a man for all the immense amount of good he does, unostentatiously and without hope of reward. But many men like himself exist equally in the English Church as the Roman,—in the Presbyterian Church, in the Greek Church, in the Buddhist temples, among the Quakers, "Plymouth Brethren," and other sects—among the followers of Mahomet or of Confucius. For there are good men and good women in every Church, faithful to the, and, therefore, "Christians," even if called Jews or Hindoos.

Personally, I have no more objection or dislike to Romanism than I have to any other "ism" ever