, but in the cathedral.

He was much beloved. Notwithstanding that among the clergy there were
two or three who shook their heads and raised their eyebrows, and said
he would be at least as orthodox if he did not make quite so much of the
Bible and quite so little of the dogmas, yet "the common people heard
him gladly." When told, one day, of the unfavorable whispers, he smiled
a little and answered his informant,--whom he knew to be one of the
whisperers himself,--laying a hand kindly upon his shoulder:

"Father Murphy,"--or whatever the name was,--"your words comfort me."

"How is that?"

"Because--_'Voe quum benedixerint mihi homines!'_" [1]

[Footnote 1: "Woe unto me when all men speak well of me!"]

The appointed morning, when it came, was one of those exquisite days in
which there is such a universal harmony, that worship rises from the
heart like a spring.

"Truly," said Pere Jerome to the companion who was to assist him in the
mass, "this is a sabbath day which we do not have to make holy, but only
to _keep_ so."

Maybe it was one of the secrets of Pere Jerome's success as a preacher,
that he took more thought as to how he should feel, than as to what he
should 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 elegant 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 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 over-ate
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