Christ, that the Church looked upon them as its jewels, and that their fate from the point of view of eternity was enviable to all? It would have relieved without consoling and raising the poor man to the height which belongs to him in Christian society. Official assistance, with the best intentions in the world, the most ingenious organization and the most perfect working, can, however, never be charity in the perfectly Christian sense of this word. If it could allay all needs and heal all sores it would still have accomplished only half of the task: relieving the body without reaching the soul. And man does not live by bread alone. He who has been disinherited of the boons of fortune, family and health, he who is incurable and who despairs of human joys needs something else besides the most comfortable hospital room that can be imagined; he needs the words which fell from the lips of God: "Blessed are the poor, blessed are they that suffer, blessed are they that mourn." He needs a pitying heart, a tender witness to indigence nobly borne, a respectful friend of his misfortune, still more than that, a worshipper of Jesus hidden in the persons of the poor, the orphan and the sick. They have become rare in the world, these real friends of the poor; the more assistance has become organized, the more charity seems to have lost its true nature; and perhaps we might find in this state of things a radical explanation for those implacable social antagonisms, those covetous desires, those revolts followed by endless repression, which bring about revolutions, and by them all manner of tyranny. Let us first respect the poor, let us love them, let us sincerely admire their condition as one ennobled by God, if we wish them to become reconciled with Him, and reconciled with the world. When the rich man is a Christian, generous and respectful of the poor, when he practises the virtues which most belong to his social position, the poor man is very near to conforming to those virtues which Providence makes his more immediate duty, humility, obedience, resignation to the will of God and trust in Him and in those who rule in His name. The solution of the great social problem lies, as it seems to us, in the spiritual love of the poor. Outside of this, there is only the heathen slave below, and tyranny above with all its terrors. That is what religious enthusiasm foresaw in centuries less well organized but more religious than ours. CHAPTER XIX DEATH OF MGR. DE LAVAL