rgin Mary rested, with the child
Jesus, in the course of the flight into Egypt. This holy stone is sadly
worn to-day and polished smooth by the touch of many pious hands, and
the Byzantine cross which once was carved on it is almost effaced.

But even if the Virgin had never rested there, the humble crypt of St.
Sergius would remain no less one of the oldest Christian sanctuaries in
the world. And the Copts who still assemble there with veneration have
preceded by many years the greater part of our Western nations in the
religion of the Bible.

Although the history of Egypt envelops itself in a sort of night at the
moment of the appearance of Christianity, we know that the growth of the
new faith there was as rapid and impetuous as the germination of plants
under the overflow of the Nile. The old Pharaonic cults, amalgamated at
that time with those of Greece, were so obscured under a mass of rites
and formulae, that they had ceased to have any meaning. And nevertheless
here, as in imperial Rome, there brooded the ferment of a passionate
mysticism. Moreover, this Egyptian people, more than any other, was
haunted by the terror of death, as is proved by the folly of its
embalmments. With what avidity therefore must it have received the Word
of fraternal love and immediate resurrection?

In any case Christianity was so firmly implanted in this Egypt that
centuries of persecution did not succeed in destroying it. As one goes
up the Nile, many little human settlements are to be seen, little groups
of houses of dried mud, where the whitened dome of the modest house
of prayer is surmounted by a cross and not a crescent. They are the
villages of those Copts, those Egyptians, who have preserved the
Christian faith from father to son since the nebulous times of the first
martyrs.

*****

The simple Church of St. Sergius is a relic hidden away and almost
buried in the midst of a labyrinth of ruins. Without a guide it is
almost impossible to find your way thither. The quarter in which it is
situated is enclosed within the walls of what was once a Roman fortress,
and this fortress in its turn is surrounded by the tranquil ruins of
"Old Cairo"--which is to the Cairo of the Mamelukes and the Khedives, in
a small degree, what Versailles is to Paris.

On this Easter morning, having set out from the Cairo of to-day to be
present at this mass, we have first to traverse a suburb in course of
transformation, upon whose ancient soil wi