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 it has conferred upon mankind from Adam, our first parent, to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and from Him, the Divine Head and Founder of our Church, to His present Vicegerent, Pius X. How sublime and beautiful is the Religion we profess! Everything connected with it calls out to us: God alone could have given such a Religion to mankind. Man has not invented it; Cod Himself has taught it to us, and has commanded us to observe it. He revealed it by holy men in the Old Testament (6, 11, 7); and in the New, precisely as the Prophecies of the Old Testament had foretold. His Only-Begotten, Eternal Son appeared on earth, and most convincingly confirmed His Divine Doctrine by numerous miracles, especially by His Resurrection from the dead (21, 22, 23, 26, 27). Cod has spoken, and no one has a right to "be indifferent to His word; to despise or reject it would be to condemn one's self to everlasting hell fire.

2. The Religion to which we belong did not take rise only a few centuries ago; properly speaking, it dates from the creation of man. For its first seeds were laid in Paradise when Cod promised a Redeemer to our First Parents after their fall; and the whole of the Old Law, with its sacrifices and wonderful events, was but a figure of the New Law, which contains the fulfilment and accomplishment of the Old (2, 7, 9, 12, and others). The Old Law believed in the Redeemer to come, and the New believes in Him already come. But it is the same belief in the same Redeemer, and therefore it is essentially the same Religion.

3. Although our Holy Religion is coeval with the be;ginning of mankind, yet its beginning is not lost in ob-