“Yourself,” exclaimed the cardinal, and he threw his glittering eye upon his companion. “Any one with the necessary gifts, who had implicit faith in the Divine purpose.” “But the Church is perplexed; it is ambiguous, contradictory.” “No, no,” said the cardinal; “not the Church of Christ; it is never perplexed, never ambiguous, never contradictory. Why should it be? How could it be? The Divine persons are ever with it, strengthening and guiding it with perpetual miracles. Perplexed churches are churches made by Act of Parliament, not by God.” Lothair seemed to start, and looked at his guardian with a scrutinizing glance. And then he said, but not without hesitation, “I experience at times great despondency.” “Naturally,” replied the cardinal. “Every man must be despondent who is not a Christian.” “But I am a Christian,” said Lothair. “A Christian estranged,” said the cardinal; “a Christian without the consolations of Christianity.” “There is something in that,” said Lothair. “I require the consolations of Christianity, and yet I feel I have them not. Why is this?” “Because what you call your religion is a thing apart from your life, and it ought to be your life. Religion should be the rule of life, not a casual incident of it. There is not a duty of existence, not a joy or sorrow which the services of the Church do not assert, or with which they do not sympathize. Tell me, now; you have, I was glad to hear, attended the services of the Church of late, since you have been under this admirable roof. Have you not then found some consolation?” “Yes; without doubt I have been often solaced.” And Lothair sighed. “What the soul is to man, the Church is to the world,” said the cardinal. “It is the link between us and the Divine nature. It came from heaven complete; it has never changed, and it can never alter. Its ceremonies are types of celestial truths; its services are suited to all the moods of man; they strengthen him in his wisdom and his purity, and control and save him in the hour of passion and temptation. Taken as a whole, with all its ministrations, its orders, its offices, and the divine splendor of its ritual, it secures us on earth some adumbration of that ineffable glory which awaits the faithful in heaven, where the blessed Mother of God and ten thousand saints perpetually guard over us with Divine intercession.” “I was not taught these things in my boyhood,” said Lothair. “And you might reproach me, and reasonably, as your guardian, for my neglect,” said the cardinal. “But my power was very limited, and, when my duties commenced, you must remember that I was myself estranged from the Church, I was myself a Parliamentary Christian, till despondency and study and ceaseless thought and prayer, and the Divine will, brought me to light and rest. But I at least saved you from a Presbyterian university; I at least secured Oxford for you; and I can assure you, of my many struggles, that was not the least.”