While the singing was going on, a lank and spectral figure appeared at the door of the chancel—stalked in, and prostrated himself before the altar. This was followed by a succession of elevations and prostrations, awkward in the extreme, and both violent and excessive: but whether required by the rubric, or dictated by personal fervor only, they added nothing to the solemnity of the scene. Meanwhile the hymn was continued by the disciples, as fanatically as the pantomime was performed by the Master. But could this be the man? Could this be he who once stood in the first pulpit of Christendom, and from his watch-tower in St. Mary’s, told us what of the night? Was this the burning and shining light who for a season allowed us to rejoice in his light? What an eclipse! I felt a chill creep over me as he mounted his rostrum, and turned towards us his almost maniacal visage. There could be no mistake. It was, indeed, poor fallen Newman. He crossed himself, unfolded a bit of broad ribbon, kissed it, put it over his shoulders, opened his little Bible, and gave his text from the Vulgate—_Surrexit enim, sicut dixit_—“He is risen, _as he said_.” The preaching was extemporaneous; the manner not fluent; the matter not well arranged; gesticulations not violent nor immoderate; the tone, affectedly earnest; and the whole thing, from first to last, painfully suggestive of a sham; of something not heartily believed; of something felt to be unreal by the speaker himself. And yet “the hand of Joab was in it.” There was no denying the craft of no common artist. He dwelt chiefly on _Sicut dixit_—to which he gave a very Newman-like force, repeating the words over and over again. “_Sicut dixit_, my friends, that is, _as he said_, but as you would not believe! This was a reproach: as much as to say—_What did you expect? Were you not told as much? Of course, he is risen, for he said so!_” In this way the preacher reached the point of his discourse, which was, that “the original disciples themselves, who thought they knew and loved Christ—nay, who did love him, and came to embalm his body, after he was crucified—had so little faith, as to deserve a rebuke, instead of a commendation. They had to be harshly reminded of what Jesus had said to them with his own mouth. Well, _just so in our day_, thousands who think they know and love him, have yet no real faith; don’t believe, in short, what the Church requires them to believe, and hence are strangers to the Catholic faith.” Drawing illustrations from the days of Noe (so he called him) and many Old Testament histories, he endeavored to show, in like manner, that God had always required men to believe the very things they were not willing to believe: and hence he drew his conclusion that the slowness of men to believe all that Romanism prescribes, is mere want of faith. It would have been quite to the point to have shown a _sicut dixit_ in support of the matters which he endeavored to force upon us,