and unveil the cross. It is one of our highest ceremonies,
the adoration of the cross, which the Protestants persist in calling
idolatry, though I presume they will give us leave to know the meaning
of our own words and actions, and hope they will believe us when we tell
them that our genuflexions and kissing of the cross are no more than
exterior expressions of that love which we bear in our hearts to Jesus
crucified; and that the words adoration and adore, as applied to
the cross, only signify that respect and veneration due to things
immediately relating to God and His service."

"I see no idolatry in it," said Lothair, musingly.

"No impartial person could," rejoined Father Coleman; "but unfortunately
all these prejudices were imbibed when the world was not so well
informed as at present. A good deal of mischief has been done, too, by
the Protestant versions of the Holy Scriptures; made in a hurry, and by
men imperfectly acquainted with the Eastern tongues, and quite ignorant
of Eastern manners. All the accumulated research and investigation of
modern times have only illustrated and justified the offices of the
Church."

"That is very interesting," said Lothair.

"Now, this question of idolatry," said Father Coleman, "that is a
fertile subject of misconception. The house of Israel was raised up
to destroy idolatry because idolatry thou meant dark images of Moloch
opening their arms by machinery, and flinging the beauteous first-born
of the land into their huge forms, which were furnaces of fire; or
Ashtaroth, throned in moonlit groves, and surrounded by orgies of
ineffable demoralization. It required the declared will of God to redeem
man from such fatal iniquity, which would have sapped the human race.
But to confound such deeds with the commemoration of God's saints, who
are only pictured because their lives are perpetual incentives to purity
and holiness, and to declare that the Queen of Heaven and the Mother of
God should be to human feeling only as a sister of charity or a gleaner
in the fields, is to abuse reason and to outrage the heart."

"We live in dark times," said Lothair, with an air of distress.

"Not darker than before the deluge," exclaimed Father Coleman; "not
darker than before the nativity; not darker even than when the saints
became martyrs. There is a Pharos in the world, and, its light will
never be extinguished, however black the clouds and wild the waves. Man
is on his trial now, not th