taining
fruit."

"But how does this prevent your protesting against Rome?" objected
Moodie.

"It prevents my making that protest any part of the definition of my
faith. Names are things, and he who is perpetually dubbing himself a
Protestant, ends by making it the first article of his creed, that
Rome errs, and his active religion becomes opposition to Rome. Now I
find Voltaire quite as good a Protestant as you are."

"I can say nothing to that," answered Moodie, "never having met with
that gentleman."

L'Isle smiled for a moment, but went on earnestly to say: "We believe
that Christ not only gave us a father, but founded a church, and we
will not let go our hold upon it, as some sects and nations have done,
out of mere opposition to Rome. Our forefathers by God's providence,
set earnestly to work reforming it where corrupted, repairing it when
dilapidated, but did not pull it down, in the presumptuous hope of
building up another. They purified the temple, but did not destroy
it. They removed the idols, but did plough up and sow with salt the
consecrated spot, because it had been defiled."

"I see" said Moodie warmly, "that you aim your anathema at the Kirks
among other Christian bodies."

"Without anathematizing any one," L'Isle answered, "we take comfort to
ourselves, in the conviction that our church is a continuous branch of
that which the Apostles founded in Christ, and that it might have been
in essentials what it now is, were its history as closely connected
with the Greek church, as it is with that of Rome, or had it ever
stood unconnected with either of them. Never having been rebuilt from
its foundation, it has lost its apostolic character."

"You have given many branches to the vine planted by Christ," observed
Moodie. "Perhaps you admit the Church of Rome, to be one that still
bears fruit."

"To drop the figure of the vine, I will answer you by saying, that it
is possible for a Romanist to be a Christian."

"Are Christianity and idolatry one and the same?" said Moodie,
indignantly.

"Do you know how many dogmas the Kirk and Rome hold in common?"
answered L'Isle. "If you set down each article of Christian doctrine
in the order of its importance and certainty, you may travel the same
road with the Romanist a long way; nor is it easy to prove that Rome
does not hold to all Christian truths."

Moodie rose from where he sat and stretched forth a protesting
hand. But he saw that protest was useless