O my brethren! how can men turn away from Catholicity? I understand how they can turn away from it as you and I express it; how we can fail to remove their difficulties, or even put new perplexity in their way. But how can they turn away from Catholicity as it is expressed by the great saints of the Church? {268 } What a divine religion! What majesty, what sweetness, what wisdom, what power! How it commands the homage of the world! What a universal testimony it has in its favor, after all! Do you know, my brethren, I believe men are far more in favor of Catholicity than we suspect. I believe half the difficulties they find in our religion are not in our religion at all, but in us; in our ignorance, in our prejudices, in our short-sightedness and narrow-heartedness. What renders the world without excuse is the line of saints, the true witnesses to the genius and spirit of the Catholic religion. And yet, even the saints themselves are not the perfect exponents of the faith, for even the saints were not altogether free from ignorance and error. To understand fully the nobleness of the Christian faith, we should need the help of inspiration itself. Did it never occur to you, my brethren, that the expressions of the prophets and apostles in reference to the light and grace brought by Jesus Christ into the world, were extravagant? "_Behold, I will lay thy stones in order, and will lay thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy bulwarks of jasper: and thy gates of graven stones, and all thy borders if desirable stones. All thy children shall be taught of the Lord: and great shall be the peace of thy children." "Thou shalt no more have the sun for thy light by day, neither shall the brightness of the moon enlighten thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee for an everlasting light, and thy God for thy glory_." [Footnote 31] [Footnote 31: Isaiah liv. 11-13; lx. 19.] Does the Catholic Church, as you understand it, come up to these descriptions? Is Catholic truth, as you appropriate it, so high and glorious a thing as this? No! And the reason is, that you are straitened in yourselves. Your conceptions are so low, your knowledge of the truth is so partial and limited that you do not recognize the description when the Holy Ghost presents that truth as it is in itself, as it is seen and known by God. {269}