Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/77

Rh the sibyl with the wonderful books, carved with names of the past and the future.

If the human being have sinned, if he have broken some divine or human law, if he lie awake during the night with the gnawing pang of conscience, if the day be made burdensome to him by the weight of this memory—how good, how blessed to know some means of obliteration and atonement! The necessity of this has sent men and women on pilgrimages to holy places, and does so still; the necessity for this has caused them to undertake the severest penance. It is a holy necessity; it is founded upon the consciousness of eternally sacred laws. One cannot but respect it, at the same time that one must condemn the power which dares to absolve the sin and the sinner, on the performance of some outward miserable penance more like play than punishment. Thus have I felt and thought many a time in Italy, when I read, over its churches, chapels, or other sacred places, the promise of indulgenza plenaria, for those who prayed there, generally five Pater Nosters and three Ave Marias, or kissed a certain cross, and so on. But seldom have I felt this more vividly than yesterday, when I saw some men and women creeping on their knees up La Scala Santa, kissing the places where a copper ring indicated that a drop of the Saviour's blood had fallen.

The Scala Santa is a flight of white marble steps said to have been brought from the Council Hall in Jerusalem, and which Christ, during his last night, ascended on his way to receive sentence from Pilate. The Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, had them conveyed from Jerusalem to Rome, with other