hould say.

The cathedral of those days was called a very plain old pile, boasting
neither beauty nor riches; but to Pere Jerome it was very lovely; and
before its homely altar, not homely to him, in the performance of those
solemn offices, symbols of heaven's mightiest truths, in the hearing of
the organ's harmonies, and the yet more eloquent interunion of human
voices in the choir, in overlooking the worshipping throng which knelt
under the soft, chromatic lights, and in breathing the sacrificial odors
of the chancel, he found a deep and solemn joy; and yet I guess the
finest thought of his soul the while was one that came thrice and again:

"Be not deceived, Pere Jerome, because saintliness of feeling is easy
here; you are the same priest who overslept this morning, and overate
yesterday, and will, in some way, easily go wrong to-morrow and the day
after."

He took it with him when--the _Veni Creator_ sung--he went into the
pulpit. Of the sermon he preached, tradition has preserved for us only a
few brief sayings, but they are strong and sweet.

"My friends," he said,--this was near the beginning,--"the angry words
of God's book are very merciful--they are meant to drive us home; but
the tender words, my friends, they are sometimes terrible! Notice these,
the tenderest words of the tenderest prayer that ever came from the lips
of a blessed martyr--the dying words of the holy Saint Stephen, 'Lord,
lay not this sin to their charge.' Is there nothing dreadful in that?
Read it thus: 'Lord, lay not this sin to _their_ charge.' Not to the
charge of them who stoned him? To whose charge then? Go ask the holy
Saint Paul. Three years afterward, praying in the temple at Jerusalem,
he answered that question: 'I stood by and consented.' He answered for
himself only; but the Day must come when all that wicked council that
sent Saint Stephen away to be stoned, and all that city of Jerusalem,
must hold up the hand and say: 'We, also, Lord--we stood by.' Ah!
friends, under the simpler meaning of that dying saint's prayer for the
pardon of his murderers is hidden the terrible truth that we all have a
share in one another's sins."

Thus Pere Jerome touched his key-note. All that time has spared us
beside may be given in a few sentences.

"Ah!" he cried once, "if it were merely my own sins that I had to answer
for, I might hold up my head before the rest of mankind; but no, no, my
friends--we cannot look each other in the face, fo