"Yes—no—not precisely," replied Mr. Billups, with some confusion of manner, and coughing two or three short little coughs in his hand. "We eat the communion bread, and drink the communion wine, and then we believe we partake, by faith, of the body and blood of the Saviour."
"But, then," asked Ally, pushing the difficulty, "don't we eat and drink what we believe we eat and drink?"
"H'm, h'm," coughed the minister, shifting uneasily in his seat. "We believe—we think—in short, as I was about to remark, we have faith in Jesus Christ as our blessed Saviour."
"But don't eat his flesh nor drink his blood?" added Ally.
"Not at all, not at all," replied Mr. Billups decidedly.
"Then I can't see what the Bible means," said Ally, scratching his head in a disappointed manner: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye cannot have life in you."
"My dear, de-ar child," cried Mr. Billups, quite distractedly, "what can you have been reading to put this in your head?"
"Only the Bible, sir," replied Ally simply, "what you have read just now, sir, and the story of the Last Supper; and I heard Pompey Simpson say it was all true."
"Pompey Simpson," returned Mr. Billups, "is a negro, and I am sorry," he continued, turning to me, "I should say both grieved and shocked, to add, doctor, one of those misguided beings groping in the darkness of Roman idolatry, whose numbers are increasing to an alarming extent in our country. Have nothing to do with Pompey Simpson, my dear," again addressing Ally, "or who knows you might be led away to become a Romanist?" An event which Mr. Billups's head intimated at that moment to be too deplorable to be expressed. "Yes, one of those emissaries of giant Pope, described so truthfully in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, as you remember. Do not go near them, Ally, for my sake, for your mother's sake, for the sake of the church of your baptism, or they will make you like unto them, an idolatrous worshipper of the host; which, as you have never seen it, I will tell you, is only a piece of bread. You see what ignorant, deluded people these Catholics must be. Just to think of it—to worship a piece of bread!"
"But the Catholic is the old church and the first one, Pompey said," rejoined Ally, "and the old church ought to know. Besides, I—I—saw it myself."