Considering all these agencies--how they are at work day after day,
never resting, never ceasing, never relaxing their hold, always
compelling the people more and more within the circle of their
influence; how they incline the hearts of the children to better
things and show them how to win these better things--one wonders that
the whole parish is not already clad in white robes and sitting with
harp and crown. On the other hand, walking down London Street,
Ratcliff, looking at the foul houses, hearing the foul language,
seeing the poor women with black eyes, watching the multitudinous
children in the mud, one wonders whether even these agencies are
enough to stem the tide and to prevent this mass of people from
falling lower and lower still into the hell of savagery. This parish
is one of the poorest in London; it is one of the least known; it is
one of the least visited. Explorers of slums seldom come here; it is
not fashionably miserable. Yet all these fine things are done here,
and as in this parish so in every other. It is continually stated as a
mere commonplace--one may see the thing advanced everywhere, in
'thoughtful' papers, in leading articles--that the Church of Rome
alone can produce its self-sacrificing martyrs, its lives of pure
devotion.
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