The inhibition of instinctive repugnance is proved not only by
the showing of love to enemies, but by the showing of it to any
one who is personally loathsome. In the annals of saintliness we
find a curious mixture of motives impelling in this direction.
Asceticism plays its part; and along with charity pure and
simple, we find humility or the desire to disclaim distinction
and to grovel on the common level before God. Certainly all
three principles were at work when Francis of Assisi and Ignatius
Loyola exchanged their garments with those of filthy beggars.
All three are at work when religious persons consecrate their
lives to the care of leprosy or other peculiarly unpleasant
diseases. The nursing of the sick is a function to which the
religious seem strongly drawn, even apart from the fact that
church traditions set that way. But in the annals of this sort
of charity we find fantastic excesses of devotion recorded which
are only explicable by the frenzy of self-immolation
simultaneously aroused. Francis of Assisi kisses his lepers;
Margaret Mary Alacoque, Francis Xavier, St.
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