ever assembled to hear him preach or see him crucified.

The pilgrims will not be allowed to examine the Holy Coat. Few of them,
perhaps, would be inclined to do so. Thev have the faith which removes
mountains, and swallowing a coat is but a trifle. Nor would the Church
allow a close inspection of this curious relic, any more than it
would allow a chemist to examine the bottle in which the blood of St.
Januarius annually liquefies. The Holy Coat will be held up by priests
at a discreet and convenient distance; the multitude of fools will fall
before it in ecstatic adoration; and the result will be the usual one in
such cases, a lightening of the devotees' pockets to the profit of Holy
Mother Church.

According to the Gospels, the Prophet of Nazareth had a seamless
overcoat. Perhaps it was presented to him by one of the rich women who
ministered unto him of their substance. Perhaps it was a birthday gift
from Joseph of Arimathaea. Anyhow he had it, unless the Gospels lie;
and, with the rest of his clothes, it became the property of his
executioners. Those gentlemen raffled for it. Which of them won it we
are not informed. Nor are we told what he did with it. It would be a
useless garment to a Roman soldier, and perhaps the warrior who won the
raffle sold it to a second-hand clothes-dealer. This, however, is merely
a conjecture. Nothing is known with certainty. The seamless overcoat
disappeared from view as decisively as the person who wore it.

For many hundreds of years it was supposed to have gone the way of other
coats. No one thought it would ever be preserved in a Church museum. But
somehow it turned up again, and the Church got possession of it, though
the Church could not tell now and when it was found, or where it
had been while it was lost. One coat disappeared; hundreds of years
afterwards another coat was found; and it suited the Church to declare
them the same.

At that time the Church was "discovering" relics with extraordinary
success and rapidity. Almost everything Christ ever used (or didn't use)
came to light. His baby linen, samples of his hair and teeth, and the
milk he drew from Mary's breast, the shoes he wore into Jerusalem,
fragments of the twelve baskets' full of food after the miracle of
the loaves and fishes, the dish from which he ate the last supper, the
thorns that crowned his brow, the sponge put to his lips on the cross,
pieces of the cross itself--these and a host of other relics were