{189} But then, what were you? One day I interrogated one of your most distinguished fellow-countrymen, Protestant by birth, now a Catholic and a priest, and in the outburst of that pious curiosity which is awakened by the history of souls I asked him this same question: "What were you?" He answered me thus: "I did not belong to any Protestant communion; I had been baptized in the church of my parents, but I had never professed their faith." "You were, then, a rationalist?" said I. "No," responded he smilingly; "we of the United States know nothing of that mental malady of the Europeans." I blushed and was silent an instant, then pressed him to explain further, when he gave me this noble reply: "I was a natural man, seeking the truth with my whole intelligence and heart." Well, madam, you were like that: you also--a noble, womanly nature--seeking the truth in love, and love in truth. But you were more: you were a Christian; ay, a Catholic. This is a fundamental distinction without which it becomes impossible to be just toward communions separated from the Catholic Church, and toward the souls which compose them. All religious schisms contain within their bosom two elements entirely contrary: the negative element, which makes it a schism and often a heresy; and the positive element, which preserves for it a portion more or less great of its ancient heritage of Christianity. Not only distinct, but hostile, these two elements are nevertheless brought together in constant combat; the darkness and the light--life and death--meet without mingling, or without either being vanquished; and then results what I shall call the profound mystery of the life of error. As for myself, I do not give to error that undeserved honor to suppose that it can live of its own life, breathe of its own breath, or nourish of its own substance souls who are not without virtue, and peoples who are not without greatness. Madam, Protestantism, as Protestantism, is that negative element which you have repudiated, and which with the Catholic Church you have condemned and abjured. But the spirit of Protestantism has not been alone in your religious life: by the side of its negations there were its affirmations, and, like savory fruit confined within its bitter husk, you were in possession of Christianity from your infancy. Before coming to us, you were a Christian by baptism, validly received, and when the hand of your minister poured the water upon your forehead with the words of eternal life, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," it was Jesus Christ himself that baptized you. "Of little importance is the hand," writes Saint Augustine, "whether it be that of Peter or that of Paul: it is Christ that baptizes."