540 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT -II 



me. The first of these was Dr. Alonzo Potter, Bishop of 

 Pennsylvania, who had been the leading professor at 

 Union College, Schenectady, before his elevation to the 

 bishopric, and who, both as professor and as bishop, had 

 exercised a very wide influence. He was physically, in 

 tellectually, and morally of a very large pattern. There 

 was something very grand and impressive about him. He 

 had happened to come to Syracuse during one of my vaca 

 tions ; on a Saturday evening he gave a lecture upon the 

 tendencies to loose supernaturalism as shown in what were 

 known as i l spiritualistic phenomena ; and on the follow 

 ing day he preached a simple, plain, straightforward ser 

 mon on Christian morals. Both these utterances im 

 pressed me and strengthened my conviction that every 

 thinking young man and woman ought to maintain rela 

 tions with some good form of religious organization just 

 as long as possible. 



Toward the end of my Yale course came an influence of 

 a very different sort. It was at the consecration of a Ko- 

 man Catholic church at Saratoga. The mass was sung 

 by an Italian prelate, Bedini, who as governor and arch 

 bishop at Bologna had, a few years before, made himself 

 detested throughout the length and breadth of Italy by the 

 execution of the priest patriot Ugo Bassi; and he was 

 now, as papal nuncio to Brazil, environed by all the pomp 

 possible. The mass did not greatly impress me, but the 

 sermon, by Archbishop Hughes of New York, I shall al 

 ways remember. His subject was the doctrine of transub- 

 stantiation, and, standing upon the altar steps, he de 

 veloped an argument most striking and persuasive. He 

 spoke entirely without notes, in a straightforward way, 

 and at times with eloquence, though never with any show 

 of rhetoric: voice and bearing were perfect; and how 

 any one accepting his premises could avoid his conclusions 

 I could not see then and cannot see now. I was proof 

 against his argument, for the simple reason that I felt the 

 story of the temptation of Jesus by Satan, which he took 

 for his text, to be simply a legend such as appears in 

 various religions; still, the whole was wonderfully pre- 



