you deny in religion, namely, that we can show respect to persons in their representations.

Henry." Still I should fear this clashed with the second commandment."

Bookseller.-"How absurd, when you know this was directed against the idolatries of the heathen, who made gods to adore. Did not God himself appear in the shape and the person of Christ to be adored? Did He not command images of angels to be placed in the Holy of Holies1? No one objects to a picture of Christ: if a picture, why not an embossed lithograph ? if that, why not a bas-relief? if that, why not a statue ? 'Tis absurd! It is the adoration of false gods that is forbidden, not the respect due to a representation. If it were otherwise, even a Protestant would commit idolatry every time he prayed; for the mind is so constituted that, to aid our mental efforts, we must have an intellectual creation in our mind of the person we pray to, or we cannot pray. I dare say when you repeat 'Our Father,' you make an image in your brain of the 'Eternal Ancient of Days,' and so does the best iconoclast amongst you. No! at least credit us when we protest against the charge of Paganism. But if you object to images, you never need pray before one, there is no command of the Church to do so."

Henry.-"I wish your services were not in Latin ; it seems as though you wished to keep the people in the dark by using an unknown tongue.'

Bookseller." Pardon me, Latin was formerly the best known language in the world; and as the Church is universal so must its language be, and Latin comes nearest to that. Do not all the physicians of Europe write their prescriptions in Latin? and the consequence

1 See Exodus xxv. 18-22.

is they are understood everywhere by educated persons. In the same way a Catholic going to Mass in China or Brazil, in France or England, hears the familiar language of the Sacraments in which he was taught in infancy. Even our children and servants find no difficulty whatever in following the services, they so soon get familiar with the words. Besides, it is only the priest who uses the Latin text, the people all have the translation in the vernacular in their own prayer-books, and consequently know what passes as well as if said in their own tongue."

Henry." But why not have the services in the common language of the country ?"

Bookseller. "Partly for the reason I have given you, but chiefly because it is necessary for the Church desiring to be exact in her terminology, and avoid new interpretations, to use a dead and scientific language in her Offices in preference to a new and constantly changing tongue."

Henry.-"If I were sure that the poor and unlettered found no hindrance to their devotion by the use of the Latin tongue, I for my own part should be well pleased by its use."

Bookseller."Well, as in all countries, the poor flock to our churches in crowds, and you Protestants, Episcopalians and Dissenters alike, are for ever complaining that you cannot reach the masses, I think your scruples are answered."

Henry."I thank you for your attention to me and rest assured I shall trouble you frequently, if you are good enough to permit me. I will go and muse over what I have learnt to-day."

Bookseller.-"Good-bye; I hope you will soon be more settled in your mind, and I will do anything I can to aid you."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY.

IT seemed the better the answers to his difficulties, the farther he was off solving them. He went again and again to the good Bookseller, till at last he resolved to see the priest to whom his clerical correspondent had recommended him. He went accordingly, and was shown into an ordinary but plainly furnished parlour; here were no peculiarities like those in Father Layton's room at the Puseyite clergy-house; the latter was a museum of ecclesiastical fine arts, this was a common sitting-room, such as any ordinary mortal might use.

When the good Canon knew his errand, and who had sent him, he was very kind and courteous; though he lacked the suavity of the Anglican Priest, he was by no means so ascetic and unsympathetic as the Roman Priest of his imagination. Henry laid before him exactly the state of his mind, and told him how as fast as one difficulty was answered another rose up ; like the turning of an endless chain, the old ones kept coming forward for re-solution.

"Exactly," says the Canon, "and if you proceed on the principles you have begun, you will never be any nearer the end than you are now. The devil

will take care that you shall never be without a difficulty, be it a great or a paltry one, to keep you out of the true Church. If you wait till all your scruples are satisfied you will die an alien to the faith, take my word for it."

"What am I to do then?" said the astonished inquirer, surprised beyond measure that the Canon

did not propose some method of settling his difficulties seriatim.

"I will tell you in a few words," said the Canon. "Either God has founded one true and infallible Church who has authority over you, and who claims your unquestioning obedience, or He has not. If He has, and you know where to find it, is it not your bounden duty to submit to it, and leave the objections you feel to some minor points in its teaching till God shall give you grace to understand it more fully? If He has not, and you are convinced that our Saviour left His beautiful teaching to be scrambled for, fought about and wrangled over, none of the sects being altogether right and none altogether wrong, then you may just as well go away and found a new religion for yourself, taking what you please, and rejecting what does not suit you, as not. In that case, as there is no truth at all, but only confusion and a Babel of teachers, I should not bother myself about it at all. But as you know this is the reductio ad absurdum, I leave you to settle the other side of the question, the Church's authority over you."

This was entirely a new view of the whole question. Henry's mind was too logical not to see at once the immense force of this way of stating the case, but as it needed a great deal of thinking over, he soon closed the interview, promising to call again before long. And the more he thought of the subject the more he found that all the rest of the difficulty was as nothing to this. Here was the great question to settle. Was there an infallible teaching Church? this was the thing to examine. Now he felt all the other points he had been worrying himself about, were childish and insignificant to this. If God had left one Authority in matters of faith, whose decision was

final, who was preserved from falling into error, who was always the same living, accessible, active Court of appeal, how ridiculous it was to trouble oneself about the use of one language in preference to another, or the Baptism of infants in preference to leaving it to riper years, or the Canon of Scripture, or any other points that must necessarily be insignificant when compared to this great question.

And did it not seem wonderfully reasonable that there should be a teaching authority? The Jewish Church had authority over the Old Testament believers. Would it be reasonable to suppose Christ had dissolved the old and left no successor in its place? That the endless divisions and logomachies of the present day, for instance, were actually foreseen and intended, as a Dissenting Divine once said, that they might be as the multitudinous roots of the Banyantree, although widely separate, making by a slender bond of union one great tree.

So the more he pondered over the matter, the more clearly shone out the legend over the gates of Rome, "One fold of the One Shepherd."

He soon found himself once more in consultation with the Canon, who demanded to know if he had been thinking over the question of the Church's authority which he had propounded to him at the last interview.

Henry. "The theory is magnificent in the extreme; my difficulty is, can it be proved to be the fact?"

The Canon.-"Do you think it would have been the wisest and best thing for us if Our Lord had left this teaching authority of which I spoke? Would it have been better for us, I mean, than the uncertainty in matters of faith that exists among strangers to the Catholic faith?"