Knowledge brings the desire for purification from sin, original or actual; and now the church, the symbol of the soul, must be purified. The Bishop mingles wine with water, to denote the Humanity and the Divinity of Christ; to these he adds ashes to commemorate His death, and salt as an emblem of His resurrection; the mystic flood is poured in waves over the altar, and thence all down the pavement of the church, while hundreds of acolytes scale the ladders placed against the walls and the mystic liquid runs down them in glistening sheets to mingle with the mimic ripples on the floor. Let it run. When it has drained away the holy oil flows golden and fragrant over the carved and gleaming walls, and pious hands are applying it to the exterior of the building—sometimes even to its roof—in copious floods. Now indeed the church is ready for its destiny, even as the Christian emerges from Baptism ready for his God. The chants swell louder and sweeter, the Alleluia rings out triumphantly from a thousand hearts, the incense sends up its first perfumed spirals to hang among the fretted arches of the deep vault; the sub-deacons approach the Pontiff and offer for his blessing the rich vessels and vestments which are the wedding presents of the Faithful to the new-born Bride of Christ—the House is ready for the Master and His guests. The guests are waiting still in the exiles’ tent, with Knights and Prelates for their Guard of Honour. Such nobility could not be entertained save in a spotless mansion. Their names? Oh, they had many—Greek and Latin and Persian and Armenian—besides the “wonderful new names” that had been given them in heaven, for these guests were Holy Martyrs, and their relics were to be placed in the stone of the High Altar, because the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass must always be offered on them to-day, even as when the fervent yet trembling Christian knelt before their tombs in the catacombs, and the doomed priest asked the Lord to accept the sacrifice in honour of those whom perhaps he had laid there an hour before. Oh, the adorable continuity of the Church! In my eyrie in the Rockies, one of the loneliest spots on earth, there came to my door quite unexpectedly one summer evening—it was June 28—a missionary priest, very tired. He had driven some hundred and fifty miles to get to us; his game little horses, his buggy, his coat—everything about him was covered with dust, but his eyes beamed with benevolence as he said, “I have come to say Mass for you.” We could have kissed his feet. The next morning, very early, in the sitting-room that was a bower of wild flowers, my son and I knelt and watched him prepare the altar. From his worn portmanteau the first thing he drew out was a square of white alabaster of which the centre had been removed, replaced, and sealed with a cross sunk into the stone. Very reverently he slipped it under the white linen “corporal,” lighted the blessed candles on either side—and began “Introibo ad altare Dei.”