ever
fully known. Peace brooded over the great nave, and hovered in the
soft air that drifted slowly through the deserted aisle up to the High
Altar, where lay the Sacred Host. A few votive candles were struggling
to send their feeble glow through the darkness. The great images of
the suffering Christ, of the Saints and the Virgin Mother had merged
their outlines into the heavy shadows which lay upon them.

The haunting memory of years of soul-struggle with doubt and fear, of
passionate longing for the light of truth in the gloom of superstition
and man-made creeds, for guidance among the devious paths of human
conjecture which lead nowhither--or to madness--seemed to fade into
the darkness which wrapped him in that holy calm. After all, what had
he won in his lifelong warfare with human beliefs? What had he gained
by his mad opposition to Holy Church? There she stood, calm, majestic,
undisturbed. Had not the Christ himself declared that the gates of
hell should not prevail against her? Was not the unfoldment of truth a
matter, not of years, but of ages? And were the minds of men to-day
prepared for higher verities than those she offered? Did not the
Church plant the seed as rapidly as the barren soil of the human mind
was tilled and made fallow? True, her sons, whom he had so obstinately
opposed, were blindly zealous. But were they wholly without wisdom?
Had not his own zeal been as unreasoningly directed to the forcing of
events? And still, through it all, she had held her indulgent arms
extended to him, as to all erring mankind. Why not now, like a tired
child, weary of futile resistance, yield to her motherly embrace and
be at last at peace? Again the temptation which he had stubbornly
resisted for a lifetime urged upon him with all its mesmeric
insistence.

He looked up, and his glance fell upon a small, glass-covered case,
dimly visible in the uncertain light at one side of the little altar.
The case was filled with tiny images of gold--_milagros_. Each had
received priestly blessing, and each was believed to have worked a
miraculous cure. The relaxed lines of the priest's care-worn face
instantly drew into an expression of hard austerity. Like the ebb of
the ocean, his recalcitrant thought surged back again in a towering
flood.

"What a spectacle!" he murmured. "Holy Church, assuming spiritual
leadership of the world, sunken in idolatry, and publicly parading her
fetishism in these lingering echoes of primiti