one parish, you will find that by far the greater part of the misery
in it has sprung from this very selfishness and separateness--from
the perpetual struggle between man and man, and between family and
family: so that there have been men, and those learned, and
thoughtful, and well-meaning men enough, who have said that the only
cure for the world's quarrelling and selfishness was to take all
children away from their parents, and bring them up in large public
schools; ay, and even to try plans which are sinful, foul, and
wicked, all in order to prevent parents knowing which were their own
children, that they might care for all the children in the parish as
much as if they were their own.

A foolish plan, my friends, and for this one reason, that it is
driving out one evil by a still greater one. It destroys the root
to get the fruit; by destroying family life, and love, and
obedience, to get at the communion of saints, or rather at some
ghost of it. The real communion of saints is founded on the Fifth
Commandment--'Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother;' and
grows out of it, not by destroying it, but by fulfilling it, as the
tree grows out of the root, without taking away from the life of the
root, but rather by nourishing and increasing it. Now, the ancient
institution of godfathers and godmothers would, it seems to me, if
it were carried out honestly and really, do for us what we certainly
have not done for ourselves as yet, and bind us all together as one
family. It would do all the good which those fanciful philosophers
of whom I first spoke, have dreamt, without any of the evil; and it
would do it because it goes simply on the belief that the foundation
is already laid, and that that foundation is Christ. It says,
because this child is not merely the child of his father and mother,
but the child of God, the universal Father, therefore other people