In every age God seems to have raised up men with a genius for holiness, to speak to the people according to the needs of their day. And thus, in a century in which the powers of darkness were directed towards destroying childhood and youth by godless teaching, and by lack of any teaching at all, either sacred or profane, the providence of Divine Love raised up the humble peasant priest of Turin as an apostle to youth and a bulwark against its enemies.
There is a vast margin for the following and the extension of his example right here among us. We have with us always, not only the unfortunate and neglected little ones of every race and color on the earth, but, even more pitiable, those little ones who, by nature and inheritance, would be with us, as a matter of course, were it not for the careless drifting of their parents on the easy and pleasant current of indifference, that spiritual sluggishness in some ways more reprehensible and certainly less respectable than honest doubt or definite unbelief.