PnOFESSION OF TIIK CATIIOUC rAIllI. 120 



riage wliich lias been sundered by death. Still youii;2f, 

 and the mother of a fatherless child, you miaht; have 

 contracted new tics that "would have given a father to 

 your little one, and to yourself a husband. You have 

 decided otherwise. You have made your entrance into 

 the Catholic Church tlie epoch of a great transformation 

 in your spiritual life, and liavc desired, on this day so 

 full of loving and sorrowful memories, to lay your suf- 

 fering hand in the hand of the crucified Spouse, never 

 again to be withdrawn. 



How beautiful appears that Spouse of Calvary, in his 

 blood and through your tears, and how truly is he made 

 for you, my daughter ! It is not only '•' Patience smiling 

 at grief,"* it is Love transported with sorrow and re- 

 posing in death. I remember the day when first I saw 

 you in the parlor of my humble convent: you wore 

 already on your bosom a Catholic crucifix, and your 

 eyes, full of light and tears, glanced from time to time 

 toward that other cross on the wall which looked down 

 upon our meeting, with an expression that revealed 

 your whole soul — all it still lacked — all it already fore- 

 saw. 



I do not wish to overstate anything ; above all, I 

 would give no offence to any man. But may I not say 

 that the orbit wherein Protestant piety ordinarily moves 

 is the divine, rather than God himself? It is conscience 

 with its steely temper, at once evangelical and personal ; 

 it is reverence for truth, the instinctive love for moral 

 and religious things. I call all this the divine, not 

 God ; it is the glorious rays of the sun, not its dazzling 

 disk. Where is the upspringing of the soul to the living 

 God? ^^My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: 

 when shall I come and appear before God ?"f "Where is 



* Shakspeare. t Psalm slii. '2. 



