"Do you not see the difficulty?" continued the Legate, "so long as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, sit down by the firesides of the people, making themselves a part and parcel of the dearest memories of every household,—so long we may chop logic, weave plots, traffic in casuistry, but in vain!"
"True, that book is capable of much mischief," said the Prelate; "it has caused more revolutions than you could count in a year."
"In Spain, where this book is scarcely known, in Italy, where to read it is imprisonment and chains, we can get along well enough, but here, in the United States, where this book is a fireside book in every home, the first book that the child looks into, and the last that the dying old man listens to, as his ear is growing deaf with death,—here what shall we do? You know that it is a Democratic book?"
"Yes."
"That it is so simple in its enunciations of brotherly love, equality, and the love of God for all mankind, so simple and yet so strong, that it has required eighteen centuries of scholastic casuistry and whole tons of volumes, devoted to theological special pleading, to darken its simple meaning?"
"Yes, yes."
"That in its portraitures of Christ, there is something that stirs the hearts of the humblest, and sets them on fire with the thought, 'I too, am not a beast, but a child of God, destined to have a home here and an immortality hereafter?' That its profound contempt of riches and of mere worldly power,—its injunctions to the rich, 'sell all thou hast and give to the poor;' its pictures of Christ, coming from the workman's bench, and speaking, acting, doing and dying, so that the masses might no longer be the sport of priest or king, but the recreated men and women of a recreated social world; that in all this, it has caused more revolutions, given rise to more insurrections, leveled more deadly blows at absolute authority, than all other books that have been written since the world began?"
"Yes—y-e-s—y-e-s," said the Prelate. "True, true, a mischievous book. But how would you remedy the evil?"
"That's the question," said the Legate, dryly.
After a long pause they began to talk concerning the mission of San Luis in California—its fertile hills and valleys, rich in the olive, fig, grape, orange and pomegranate,—and of the thousand acres of barren land, claimed alike by the Jesuits and Dr. Martin Fulmer.