Yet there, like a crushed pearl upon a heap of garbage, lingers the trace of beauty; and there, surely, though sepulchred in the caverns of vice, dwells something that was once innocence, and not unredeemable.  But whence is the friendly word to come, whence the guardian hand that might lift them from the slough.  They live accursed by even charity, shunned by philanthropy, and shut from the Christian world like a tribe of lepers whose touch is contagion and whose breath is pestilence.  In the glittering halls of fashion, the high-born beauty, with wreaths about her white temples and diamonds upon her chaste bosom, gives her gloved hand for the dance, and forgets that an erring sister, by the touch of those white fingers, might be raised from the grave of her chastity, and clothed anew with the white garments of repentance.  But no; the cold world of fashion, that from its cushioned pew has listened with stately devotion to the words of the Redeemer, has taught her that to redeem the fallen is beneath her caste.  The bond of sisterhood is broken.  The lost one must pursue her hideous destiny, each avenue of escape blocked by the scorn and loathing which denies her the contact of virtue and the counsel of purity.  In the broad fields of charity, invaded by cold philosophers, losing themselves in searching unreal and vague philanthropies, none so practical in beneficence as to take her by the hand, saying, “Go, and sin no more.”

But whenever the path of benevolence is intricate and doubtful, whenever the work is linked with a riddle whose solving will breed discord and trouble among men, whenever there is a chance to make philanthropy a plea for hate, and bitterness and charity can be made a battle-cry to arouse the spirit of destruction, and spread ruin and desolation over the fair face of the earth, then will the domes of our churches resound with eloquence, then will the journals of the land teem with their mystic theories, then will the mourners of human woe be loud in lamentation, and lift up their mighty voices to cry down an abstract evil.  When actual misery appeals to them, they are deaf; when the plain and palpable error stalks before them, they turn aside.  They are too busy with the tangles of some philanthropic Gordian knot, to stretch out a helping hand to the sufferer at their sides.  They are frenzied with their zeal to build a bridge over a spanless ocean, while the drowning wretch is sinking within their grasp.  They scorn the simple charity of the good Samaritan; theirs must be a gigantic and splendid achievement in experimental beneficence, worthy of their philosophic brains.  The wrong they would redress must be one that half the world esteems a right; else there would be no room for their arguments, no occasion for their invective, no excuse for their passion.  To do good is too simple for their transcendentalism; they must first make evil out of their logic, and then, through blood and wasting flames, drive on the people to destruction, that the imaginary evil may be destroyed.  While Charity soars so high among the clouds, she will never stoop to lift the Magdalen from sin.