Great and new lights had flashed through my soul in that hour; evidently my God wanted to open my eyes to the awful absurdities and impieties of a religion whose God could be dragged and eaten by rats. Had I been faithful to the saving lights which were in me then, I was saved in that very hour; and before the end of that day I would have broken the shameful chains by which the Pope had tied my neck to his idol of bread. In that hour it seemed to me evident that the dogma of transubstantiation was a sic monstrous imposture, and my priesthood an insult to God and man.
My intelligence said to me with a thundering voice: “Do not remain any longer the priest of a God whom you make every day, and whom the rats can eat.”
Though blind, Father Daule understood very well by the stern accents of my voice, that my faith in the god whom he had created that morning, and whom the rats had eaten, had been seriously modified, if not entirely crumbled down. He remained silent for some time, after which he invited me to sit by him; and he spoke to me with a pathos and an authority which my youth and his old age alone could justify. He gave me the most awful rebuke I ever had; he opened on my poor wavering intelligence, soul and heart, all the cataracts of heaven. He overwhelmed me with a deluge of Holy Fathers, Councils and infallible Popes, who had believed and preached before the whole world, in all ages, the dogma of transubstantiation.
If I had paid attention to the voice of my intelligence, and accepted the lights which my merciful God was giving me, I could easily have smashed the arguments of the old priest of Rome. But what has the intelligence to do in the Church of Rome? What could my intelligence say? I was forbidden to hear it. What was the weight of my poor, isolated intelligence, when put in the balance against so many learned, holy infallible intelligences?
Alas! I was not aware, then, that the weight of the intelligence of God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost was on my side; and that, weighted against the intelligence of the Popes, they were greater than all the words against a grain of sand.
One hour after, shedding tears of regret, I was at the feet of Father Daule, in the confessional box, confessing the great sin I had committed by doubting, for a moment, of the power of the priests to change a wafer into God.
The old priest, whose voice had been like a lion’s voice, when speaking to the unbelieving curate of Beauport, had become sweet as the voice of a lamb when he had me at his feet, confessing my unbelief. He gave me my pardon. For my penance, he forbade me ever to say a word on the sad end of the god he had created that morning; for, said he: “This would destroy the faith of the most sincere Roman Catholics.” For the other part of the penance, I had to go on my knees every day, during nine days, before the fourteen images of the way of the cross, and say a penitential psalm before every picture, which I did. But the sixth day the skin of my knees was pierced, and the blood was flowing freely. I suffered real torture every time I kneeled down, and at every step I made. But it seemed to me that these terrible tortures were nothing compared to my great iniquity!
I had refused, for a moment, to believe that a man can create his God with a wafer! and I had thought that a church which adores a god eaten by rats must be an idolatrous church!
Chapter XXXVII
VISIT OF A PROTESTANT STRANGER—HE THROWS AN ARROW INTO MY PRIESTLY SOUL NEVER TO BE TAKEN OUT.