When the development of intelligence in civilized communities renders them conscious of needs and of resources outlying the circles of family providence; one of their first Christian movements is to care for their disabled members, stricken by disease or wounds from the army of the working poor.
In our monster cities, the hospital acquires gigantic proportions, and political economy meets humanity in the research for a system which shall afford the greatest mitigation of inevitable suffering and the best chances of restoring the sufferers to social uses.
In this research, charity has anticipated experimental science, and to the religious orders belongs the honor of fulfilling the highest ideal of this sacred function.
The organization of hospitals contains for modern civilization and for cosmopolite New York problems of the highest practical import, which especially interest the Christian church.
What has been hitherto effected under the social pressure of extreme necessity, whether to avert the generation and diffusion of pestilence, or the shame of allowing millions of the poor to perish in their squalid misery, is still painfully inadequate to meet the needs of humanity at points where Europe disgorges her miseries upon America. New institutions are annually struggling into existence to supply this demand. Among the most important by their social and religious nature are those of the Sisters of the Poor of Saint Francis, which may serve as a type of what we would urge concerning the superiority of piety and charity--those daughters of the Christian church--over secular calculations, in this work.
Few, small, and poor as are the hospitals of this order in America, they shine by the spirit which animates them, by the naked purity of their Christian faith, and its works, that confront the world now, precisely as they did eighteen hundred years ago. [Footnote 9]
[Footnote 9: This order of the "Sisters of the Poor of Saint Francis" has been introduced already into several of our larger cities, and with much promise of success. Houses of their order exist in Cincinnati, in Brooklyn, in Hoboken, and elsewhere, and, more recently, have been established here in New York.
If they shall have the wisdom--the church's wisdom of old and of all time, and the spirit which has always animated and characterized her workings--to adapt themselves to the country, to its needs and requirements, to its speech, and (so far as compatible with piety) to its habits and customs, they will doubtless receive vocations, will grow in numbers, will be able to accomplish much in alleviating the sufferings of humanity, and will do no small share of the great work of bringing the Catholic Church rightfully before the American people.