And with this little John were received into the Church of Christ an aged man and woman of the race of which He was born—Miriam and Eleazar. As in this great Whitsuntide baptism the large company of the newly-baptized were gathered together in their white baptismal robes, with the chrism on their foreheads, the voice of Leo rang through the silence in the vast spaces of the great basilica, and penetrated every heart, as he proclaimed— “This day’s solemnity, beloved, is to be accounted among our foremost festivals. For as to the Hebrew people of old, fifty days after the immolation of the paschal lamb, the law was given from Mount Sinai; so after the Passion of Christ, whereby the true Lamb of God was slain, on the fiftieth day after His Resurrection, the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles, and on the people of the faithful, so that the diligent Christian may recognize how the preparation (_initia_) of the Old Testament ministered to the beginnings (_principiis_) of the New, and the second was founded by the same Spirit who instituted the first.” As the great Bishop spake these words, Ethne’s heart turned sympathetically to her Hebrew friends. And then came a bit especially for her own Ireland. “Oh, how swift,” Leo said, “is the speech of wisdom! And when God is the Teacher, how quickly what is taught is learned! The Spirit of Truth bloweth where He listeth. The peculiar (_propriæ_) voices of every nation are made one common tongue in the mouth of the Church. From this day the trumpet of evangelic preaching has pealed forth. From this day showers of gifts and rivers of blessing have watered every desert. The Spirit of God has been on the waters, renewing the face of the earth; and on the departing darkness flashes the new dawn, sparkling in the many colours of the various tongues, indwelling in each heart as a fiery force to consume sin, to create intelligent perception, to illumine every faculty. Let us with one heart incite one another to the veneration of this Holy Spirit, by Whom the whole Catholic Church is sanctified, by Whom every soul is imbued with reason, Who is the Inspirer of faith, the Teacher of science, the Fount of love, the Seal of chastity, the cause of all virtue. From Him is the calling on the Father, from Him are the tears of penitents, from Him the groans of suppliants; and ‘none can call Jesus Lord except by Him.’ For the Spirit of Truth Himself makes the house of His glory shine with the splendour of His own light, and in His temple He will suffer nothing dark nor anything lukewarm.” It was always Ethne’s delight to bring Eleazar and Miriam to everything that linked the old with the new. She rejoiced therefore when, at the Festival of the Seven Maccabæan martyrs, Leo did honour to that noble mother of their race, the mother of the seven Maccabæan martyr brothers.