If we look fairly into the history of
their people, and the circumstances under which their own youth was
trained, we cannot expect that anything short of the most steadfast
patience and love can enlighten them as to the beauty and value of
implicit truth, and, having done so, fortify and refine them in the
practice of it.
This we admit at the outset: First, You must be prepared for a
religious and patient treatment of these people, not merely
_un_educated, but _ill_-educated; a treatment far more religious
and patient than is demanded by your own children, if they were born
and bred under circumstances at all favorable.
Second, Dismiss from your minds all thought of gratitude. Do what you
do for them for God's sake, and as a debt to humanity--interest to the
common creditor upon principal left in your care. Then insensibility,
forgetfulness, or relapse, will not discourage you, and you will
welcome proofs of genuine attachment to yourself chiefly as tokens
that your charge has risen into a higher state of thought and feeling,
so as to be enabled to value the benefits conferred through you. Could
we begin so, there would be hope of our really becoming the
instructors and guardians of this swarm of souls which come from their
regions of torment to us, hoping, at least, the benefits of purgatory.
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