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CHAPTER I.

CHRIST IN CHARITY AND REFORM.

THE CONDITION OF NEGLECTED CHILDREN BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.

The central figure in the world's charity is CHRIST. An eloquent
rationalistic writer--Mr. Lecky--speaking of the Christian efforts in
early ages in behalf of exposed children and against infanticide, says:

"Whatever mistakes may have been made, the entire movement I have traced
displays an anxiety not only for the life, but for the moral well-being,
of the castaways of society, such as the most humane nations of
antiquity had never reached. This minute and scrupulous care for human
life and human virtue in the humblest forms, in the slave, the
gladiator, the savage, or the infant, was indeed wholly foreign to the
genius of Paganism. It was produced by the Christian doctrine of the
inestimable value of each immortal soul.

"It is the distinguishing and transcendent characteristic of every
society into which the spirit of Christianity has passed."

Christ has indeed given a new value to the poorest and most despised
human being.

When one thinks what was the fate before He lived, throughout the
civilized world, of for instance one large and pitiable class of human
beings--unfortunate children, destitute orphans, foundlings, the
deformed and sickly, and female children of the poor; how almost
universal, even under the highest pagan civilization--the Greek and
Roman--infanticide was; how Plato and Aristotle both approved of it; how
even more common was the dreadful exposure of children who were
physically imperfect or for any cause disagreeable to their parents, so
that crowds of these little unfortunates were to be seen exposed around
a column near the Velabrum at Rome--some being taken to be raised as
slaves, others as prostitutes, others carried off by beggars and maimed
for exhibition, or captured by witches to be murdered, and their bodies
used in their magical preparations; when one remembers for how many
centuries, even after the nominal introduction of Christianity, the sale
of free children was permitted by law, and then recalls how utterly the
spirit of the Founder of Christianity has exterminated these barbarous
practices from the civilized world; what vast and ingenious charities
exist in every Christian country for this unfortunate class; what time
and wealth and thought are bestowed to heal the diseases, purify the