Vincent de Paul

A RECENT work by a learned and brilliant writer contains the following passage: "It was the age of S. Vincent de Paul, patron Saint of practical philanthropists. The air was thick with orphanages and hospitals, with Sisterhoods of Charity, with schemes for evangelizing the inferior clergy. But practical philanthropists seldom escape a touch of superficiality. They may be content with little, with small profits and quick returns; but a brisk turnover they must have." This-if we can eliminate the note of scorn-is representative of the popular view of Vincent de Paul. He is accepted as the pioneer of social reform and organized-charity- the charity of Annual Reports and Balance Sheets. The biographical study contained in the following pages is an attempt to pierce the veil with which the celebrity of his achievements has enshrouded him. His own choice, undoubtedly, would have been to remain unknown, but as fame has been forced upon him, it is well to connect it as nearly as we may with the reality of his labours and of his aspirations. An endeavour to show that he was not chiefly a philanthropist does not involve any denial of the value and success of his philanthropic labours. He was born in the sixteenth century, and by a combination of inspirationand experience he arrived at conclusions which are regarded as discoveries in the twentieth. He dealt almost single-handed with problems of destitution involving many thousands of lives, and devised remedies for some of the diseases of social life which are still in use. Of the difficulties that harass and discourage the benevolent there were very few that did not come under his eye, for the whole field of social service lay open before him. He realized and met the need for the teaching and tending of the young, the nursing of the sick, the aiding of the prisoner, and passed on to the more difficult enterprises that concern the fallen and the wastrel. In his old age a grateful nation hailed him as Father of his Country, and in the ungodly Paris of the present day his effigy may still be seen presiding at the corner of those streets where the poor will find assistance for their wants. Originally published in 1913