Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/114

124 “If you enter by the gate of San Sebastiano, and I by the Porte del Popolo, what does it matter? merely that we are both in Rome!” said I on one occasion.

“No, no you are not in Rome, not in the active Rome, the holy, eternal city !” replied she, gravely; “but you will come in, nevertheless! God will enlighten you. I shall pray for you, and you must talk with Monsignor L——.”

“But like you, I believe in one God and Saviour; like you, I see his church, or his kingdom, embrace, elevate the whole world, mankind, nature, and——”

“No, no: you do not believe in the right church; you do not belong to the church which Christ founded on earth, and unless you do, you cannot have relationship with him!”

“But I love Him, He is all my joy and hope—I desire to be his servant!”

“But it is not sufficient to be called Christian.”

“Well, I will ask the Pope!”

Such have hitherto been our conversations on these questions, but my half-jokingly expressed threat of appealing to the Pope, I mean some day to carry into execution.

In the mean time, I study industriously my Möhler, given to me by the good fathers at Einsiedeln, and this honest, profound, and candid work, for Catholicism, aids me more decidedly to understand the strength and weakness of Protestantism in relation to the Catholic church; for I must confess, that, in my examination and proving of the tenets of the two opposing churches, I do not always stand on the