Charity is the great desideratum of the present time. It is constantly being remarked that the age in which we live requires this and that. What the age really wants is this:--It needs to be loved. ... It needs to be drawn out of that egotism which frets and consumes it. It needs a little esteem and kindly treatment to make good all its deficiencies. How silly we are, then, to go so far in search of the desired object, overlooking the fact that _the kingdom of God is within us_--in our hearts. Be it ours, therefore, to love the people. ... Is it not to that end that we have no family ties? ... Let us prevent their hate, which is so harmful to them. Let love be present with us always, according to the saying of Saint Augustine:--"Let us love in speaking, and speak in love. Let there be love in our remonstrances ... love also in our reproofs. Let the mouth speak, but let the heart love." Yes, let us learn to love, to endure, to be devoted. What! do we not belong to the same family as those excellent and self-denying men who leave country and home to seek and to save souls beyond the ocean? Were we not brought up at the same school? They love infidels, they love pagans and savages sufficiently well to sacrifice every thing for them. ... Are not our pagans in France worth as much as the pagans of Oceania? Are not our French little ones as deserving of compassion as Chinese children? {39} True, their parents do not expose them on the highways; but they abandon them to shame, to vice, to the education of the streets. ... It is right that we should commiserate the heathen, that devotion should be manifested on their behalf; but let us have compassion on our own children also, on our brothers in France, that they be not suffered to perish before our eyes. ... Yes, I invoke pity for this people; pity for their sufferings, their miseries, their prejudices, their deplorable subjection to popular opinion, their ignorance, their errors. Let us, at least, try to do them good, to save them. Therein lies bur happiness; we shall never have any other. All other sources are closed to us; there is the well-spring of the most delectable joys. Apart from charity, what remains? Vanity, unprofitableness, bitterness, misery, nothingness. {40} Chapter II. The People. The actual State of the People. Their good and bad Qualities. The People in large Cities. The People in small Towns. The People in rural Districts. How to benefit these Three Classes of People. One powerful Means is to act upon the People through. the upper Classes, and upon the latter through the former.