ass through this room, on your way back," he
said.

Several minutes elapsed. They awaited the priest's return in silence.
The Pontiff, lost in thought, never raised his eyes from the little
table. Benedetto, standing, kept his eyes closed. He opened them when
the priest reappeared. When he had passed out through the suspicious
door, the Pope made a sign with his hand, and Benedetto spoke in a low
voice. The Pontiff listened, grasping the arms of his chair, his body
bent forward, his head bowed.

"Holy Father," Benedetto said, "the Church is diseased. Four evil
spirits have entered into her body, to wage war against the Holy
Spirit. One is the spirit of falsehood. And the spirit of falsehood
has transformed itself into an angel of light, and many shepherds, many
teachers in the Church, many pious and virtuous ones among the faithful,
listen devoutly to this spirit of falsehood, believing they are
listening to an angel. Christ said: 'I am the Truth.' But many in the
Church, even good and pious souls, separate truth in their hearts, have
no reverence for that truth which they do not call 'religious,' fear
that truth will destroy truth; they oppose God to God, prefer darkness
to light, and thus also do they train men. They call themselves the
faithful, and do not understand how weak, how cowardly is their faith,
how foreign to them is the spirit of the apostle, which probes all
things. Worshippers of the letter, they wish to force grown men to exist
upon a diet fit for infants, which diet grown men refuse. They do
not understand that though God be infinite and unchangeable, man's
conception, of Him grows ever grander from century to century, and that
the same may be said of all Divine Truth. They are responsible for a
fatal perversion of the Faith which corrupts the entire religious life;
for the Christian, who by an effort, has bent his will to accept what
they accept, to refuse what they refuse, believes he has accomplished
the greatest thing in God's service, whereas he has I accomplished less
than nothing, and it remains for him to live his faith in the word
of Christ, in the teachings of Christ; it remains for him to live the
_'fiat voluntas tua'_ which is everything. Holy Father, to-day few
Christians know that religion does not consist chiefly in the clinging
of the intellect to formulas of truth, but rather in actions, and a
manner of life in conformity with this truth, and that the fulfilment
of negative religiou