Finally, after the spirit of zeal and the spirit of penitence, the spirit of charity completes the fulness of the Christian life.
Now, can Protestantism take any offence, if, in looking over with it the list of its founders and apostles, we demand of it where there is to be found, among those ardent adversaries of Roman superstitions, a single man to whom one can conscientiously give the title of benefactor and consoler of men?
I see Luther, indeed, presenting the Bible to Germany surprised and misled; and Calvin administering the cup of the Lord's Supper to gentlemen of the court of Francis I. or to the rich burgesses of Geneva. Here, in one place, Reuchlin and Ulrich of Hutten are jeering, and laughing at the monks, and there, in another, Gustavus Adolphus is brandishing his valiant sword in defence of the new gospel; but still, again, among these bold promoters of the Reformation, among these indefatigable champions of gospel-christianity, as they proudly entitle themselves, would that I were shown _one_ of those souls inspired from above to pour upon the miseries of the age the treasures of divine consolations! I behold party-leaders, Bible-expounders, soldiers, politicians, and savants; but of friends of the poor, of protectors of old age and deserted infancy, of men who sacrifice all and who sacrifice themselves even, to gain the right, the privilege, of drying up the tears of the afflicted and of holding out the helping hand to the unfortunate--of these I see none. { 67} These are all in the ranks of that church whose privilege it will always be, and which no sect has ever been able to take from her, to prove that she alone is the veritable spouse of Jesus Christ, because she alone is the true mother of men! Behold St. Philip Neri and his companions of the Oratory of Rome, whose remembrances still live in the hospital of the Trinity for pilgrims--St. Philip Neri, whose name, after more than three hundred years, is always associated in the Eternal City with the idea of whatever is most tender and good. By the side of St. Philip, his contemporary and friend, St. Camillus of Lellis, institutor of a congregation specially devoted to the care of the sick poor; while, by a like inspiration, the Spaniard, St. John of God, established, in 1540, that charitable order, spread since then throughout Christendom, and whose members rival in self-sacrificing devotion the disciples of St. Camillus in consecrating themselves to the work of relieving human infirmities. In fine, if St. Vincent of Paul constitutes the glory and, more than the glory, the consolation of the seventeenth century, the sixteenth century has, nevertheless, the right to claim him in part; for it saw his birth, and it gave to him the first inspirations of that zeal and charity which draw down every day upon his name the grateful benedictions of all who languish and suffer--upon that name at once the humblest and the most popular of all names.