Sacred Host. What had I to do with the
inward purity and peace this memento of Christ is supposed to leave in
our souls? Methought the Crucified Image in the chapel regarded me
afresh with those pained eyes, and said, "Even so dost thou seal thine
own damnation!" Yet SHE, the true murderess, the arch liar, received
the Sacrament with the face of a rapt angel--the very priest himself
seemed touched by those upraised, candid, glorious eyes, the sweet lips
so reverently parted, the absolute, reliable peace that rested on that
white brow, like an aureole round the head of a saint!

"If _I_ am damned, then is SHE thrice damned!" I said to myself,
recklessly. "I dare say hell is wide enough for us to live apart when
we get there."

Thus I consoled my conscience, and turned resolutely away from the
painted appealing faces on the wall--the faces that in their various
expressions of sorrow, resignation, pain, and death seemed now to be
all pervaded by another look, that of astonishment--astonishment, so I
fancied, that such a man as I, and such a woman as she, should be found
in the width of the whole world, and should be permitted to kneel at
God's altar without being struck dead for their blasphemy!

Ah, good saints, well may you be astonished! Had you lived in our day
you must have endured worse martyrdoms than the boiling oil or the
wrenching rack! What you suffered was the mere physical pain of torn
muscles and scorching flesh, pain that at its utmost could not last
long; but your souls were clothed with majesty and power, and were
glorious in the light of love, faith, hope, and charity with all men.
WE have reversed the position YOU occupied! We have partly learned, and
are still learning, how to take care of our dearly beloved bodies, how
to nourish and clothe them and guard them from cold and disease; but
our souls, good saints, the souls that with you were everything--THESE
we smirch, burn, and rack, torture and destroy--these we stamp upon
till we crush out God's image therefrom--these we spit and jeer at,
crucify and drown! THERE is the difference between you, the strong and
wise of a fruitful olden time, and we, the miserable, puny weaklings of
a sterile modern age.

Had you, sweet St. Dorothy, or fair child-saint Agnes, lived in this
day, you would have felt something sharper than the executioner's
sword; for being pure, you would have been dubbed the worst of
women--being prayerful, you would have been called h