“Your very wish has reached her now!” said Manuel. “How is it possible that you, in the spirit, could wish to communicate with one so beloved and she not know it? Love would be no use then, and there would be a grave flaw in God’s perfect creation.”

“Then you think we never lose those we love? And that they see us and hear us always?”

“They must do so,” said Manuel, “otherwise there would be cruelty in creating the grace of love at all. But God Himself is Love. Those who love truly can never be parted—death has no power over their souls. If one is on earth and one in heaven, what does it matter? If they were in separate countries of the world they could hear news of each other from time to time,—and so they can when apparent death has divided them.”

“How?” asked Angela with quick interest.

“Your wise men must tell you,” said Manuel, with a grave little smile, “I know no more than what Christ has said,—and He told us plainly that not even a sparrow shall fall to the ground without our Father’s knowledge. ‘Fear not,’ He said, ‘Ye are more than many sparrows.’ So, as there is nothing which is useless, and nothing which is wasted, it is very certain that love, which is the greatest of all things, cannot lose what it loves!”

It is worthy of note that, on account of “The Master Christian,” in spite of the teachings in it such as we have quoted, the author has been labeled an “atheist.

CHAPTER. XIII
“THE MASTER CHRISTIAN”—(Continued)

Of many interesting incidents which mark the Cardinal’s stay in Paris, the most sensational is the sermon of the Abbé Vergniaud and the extraordinary scene at its close.

Marie Corelli gives a wonderfully realistic word-picture of the scene in the famous church on a notable occasion. The Abbé’s sermon, which appears in its entirety, is scathingly sarcastic. In it he bitterly denounces the hypocrisy alike of people and of churches, especially the Roman Catholic Church, which he attacks for the ban it places upon many things, even discussion; he declares that all the intellectual force of the country is arrayed against priestcraft, and that the spirit of an insolent, witty, domineering atheism and materialism rules us all. “But what I specially wish to advise you—taking myself as an example—is, that none of you, whether inclined to virtue or to vice, should remain such arrant fools as to imagine that your sins will not find you out.

And then the Abbé makes open confession, before the congregation, of his past life.