olic Church, and he had. He
"welcomed any social disorder in any part of Italy, as likely to be
annoying to the Papacy." He "celebrated the announcement in the
newspapers of a considerable emigration from the Papal dominions, by
rejoicing at this outcrowding of many, throughout the harlot's domain,
from her sin and her plagues," and he even carried his hatred so far as
to denounce the keeping of Christmas, which to him was nothing less than
an act of idolatry.

On a certain Christmas Day, the servants, greatly daring, disobeyed the
order of their master and actually had the audacity to make a small
plum-pudding for themselves. Actuated by pity, no doubt, and by a
feeling of kindness towards a small boy deprived of all the joys of the
season, they pressed a slice of this pudding upon the son, who
succumbed--very naturally--to the temptation. Shortly after, however,
being afflicted by a stomach-ache, remorse came upon him and he rushed
to his father, exclaiming: "Oh! papa, papa, I have eaten of flesh
offered to idols!" When the father learned what had happened, he sternly
said, "Where is the accursed thing?" Having heard that it was on the
kitchen table, "he took me by the hand, and ran with me into the midst
of the startled servants, seized what remained of the pudding, and with
the plate in one hand and me still tight in the other, ran till we
reached the dust-heap, where he flung the idolatrous confectionery on to
the middle of the ashes, and then raked it deep down into the mass. The
suddenness, the velocity of this extraordinary act, made an impression
on my memory which nothing will ever efface." Such is a plain
unvarnished account of the kind of way in which numbers of people were
brought up in the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last century. Can it be
wondered that those who had such a childhood should grow up with an
absolute horror of the Person in Whose name such things--absurdities
when not positive crimes--were perpetrated? I firmly believe that these
wholly false ideas of God and of sin have had more to do with the spread
of materialism than many will perhaps be disposed to admit. Educated
people, especially those trained in scientific methods, demand a certain
common sense and sobriety in their beliefs. If they are brought up to
believe that a grievous sin is committed when they invent an innocent
story; when they go to a theatre or to a dance, or play a game of cards;
if they have never known the demands of