one voice that the remedy answers; are you not bound,
Callista, at least to look that way, to inquire into what you hear about
it, and to ask for His help, if He be, to enable you to believe in Him?"

"This is what a slave of mine used to say," cried Callista, abruptly; "...
and another, Agellius, hinted the same thing.... What is your remedy, what
your Object, what your love, O Christian teacher? Why are you all so
mysterious, so reserved in your communications?"

Caecilius was silent for a moment, and seemed at a loss for an answer. At
length he said, "Every man is in that state which you confess of yourself.
We have no love for Him who alone lasts. We love those things which do not
last, but come to an end. Things being thus, He whom we ought to love has
determined to win us back to Him. With this object He has come into His
own world, in the form of one of us men. And in that human form He opens
His arms and woos us to return to Him, our Maker. This is our Worship,
this is our Love, Callista."

"You talk as Chione," Callista answered; "only that she felt, and you
teach. She could not speak of her Master without blushing for joy.... And
Agellius, when he said one word about his Master, he too began to
blush...."

It was plain that the priest could hardly command his feelings, and they
sat for a short while in silence. Then Callista began, as if musing on
what she had heard.

"A loved One," she said, "yet ideal; a passion so potent, so fresh, so
innocent, so absorbing, so expulsive of other loves, so enduring, yet of
One never beheld;--mysterious! It is our own notion of the First and only
Fair, yet embodied in a substance, yet dissolving again into a sort of
imagination.... It is beyond me."

"There is but one Lover of souls," cried Caecilius, "and He loves each one
of us, as though there were no one else to love. He died for each one of
us, as if there were no one else to die for. He died on the shameful
cross. 'Amor meus crucifixus est.' The love which he inspires lasts, for
it is the love of the Unchangeable. It satisfies, for He is inexhaustible.
The nearer we draw to Him, the more triumphantly does He enter into us;
the longer He dwells in us, the more intimately have we possession of Him.
It is an espousal for eternity. This is why it is so easy for us to die
for our faith, at which the world marvels."

Presently he said, "Why will not _you_ approach Him? why will not you
leave the creature for the Creat