der my pillow, whereof certain chapters satisfied my needs
in the article of spiritual lore, furnishing such precept and example
as, to my heart's core, I was convinced could not be improved on.

Then Pere Silas showed me the fair side of Rome, her good works; and
bade me judge the tree by its fruits.

In answer, I felt and I avowed that these works were _not_ the fruits
of Rome; they were but her abundant blossoming, but the fair promise
she showed the world, That bloom, when set, savoured not of charity;
the apple full formed was ignorance, abasement, and bigotry. Out of
men's afflictions and affections were forged the rivets of their
servitude. Poverty was fed and clothed, and sheltered, to bind it by
obligation to "the Church;" orphanage was reared and educated that it
might grow up in the fold of "the Church;" sickness was tended that it
might die after the formula and in the ordinance of "the Church;" and
men were overwrought, and women most murderously sacrificed, and all
laid down a world God made pleasant for his creatures' good, and took
up a cross, monstrous in its galling weight, that they might serve
Rome, prove her sanctity, confirm her power, and spread the reign of
her tyrant "Church."

For man's good was little done; for God's glory, less. A thousand ways
were opened with pain, with blood-sweats, with lavishing of life;
mountains were cloven through their breasts, and rocks were split to
their base; and all for what? That a Priesthood might march straight on
and straight upward to an all-dominating eminence, whence they might at
last stretch the sceptre of their Moloch "Church."

It will not be. God is not with Rome, and, were human sorrows still for
the Son of God, would he not mourn over her cruelties and ambitions, as
once he mourned over the crimes and woes of doomed Jerusalem!

Oh, lovers of power! Oh, mitred aspirants for this world's kingdoms! an
hour will come, even to you, when it will be well for your
hearts--pausing faint at each broken beat--that there is a Mercy beyond
human compassions, a Love, stronger than this strong death which even
you must face, and before it, fall; a Charity more potent than any sin,
even yours; a Pity which redeems worlds--nay, absolves Priests.

* * * * *

My third temptation was held out in the pomp of Rome--the glory of her
kingdom. I was taken to the churches on solemn occasions--days of fete
and state; I was shown the Papa