[Footnote 77: Canticle v. 2.] "Here am I." He says again in the Apocalypse, "I stand at the door, and knock: if any one shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in, and will sup with him, and he with me." [Footnote 78] He never forces an entrance into the heart; he enters it only when it is opened for him. How tender and beautiful those words that prove that with God as with man there is the same love and the same tenderness! True love respects as much as it loves, and disdains triumph at the expense of liberty! [Footnote 78: Apocalypse iii. 20.] Is this all, however? For his love is jealous and liberty is not enough; there must be the combat and the sacrifice. What were the desperate conflicts, free though you were, that rendered your decision so difficult and so painful? I may not speak of them. Family, friends, country: I have seen these sacred wounds too near to dare to touch them. I will only say that I was ignorant until now of what it costs even to the mind most perfectly convinced, and to the strongest will, to leave the religion of their mother and of their country! Ah! why is it that on that noble soil of the United States our church is still, I do not say unknown, but despised, by so many souls? Would to God it were only unknown! A new apostle will invoke upon her shores the God whom Paul invoked before the Areopagus, _ignoto Deo_, the church which they love in the ideal, without knowing it in its reality; and, free from prejudices, the sober-minded Americans will receive it better than did the frivolous Athenians. {193} But they think they know us, while they see us through such base report that even our name excites disgust and hatred. How much longer must these sectarian misapprehensions continue? and when will God at last command that the walls of division shall be thrown down? At all events, it depends upon us to prepare for that much desired day, by coming together, not with doctrinal concessions, which would be criminal if not chimerical, but by abandoning our respective prejudices before the better known reality, and by the formation of those kindly relations, while esteem and charity could yet unite those whom diversity of beliefs still separate. As for me, this is my most ardent prayer, and as far as I understand and appreciate the situation of religious affairs in this century, this feeling is invested with a quickened and more pressing character. And since, then, the time has come when judgment should begin at the house of God, [Footnote 79] let us Roman Catholics know how to give the example; let us arise resolutely and give a loyal hand to our separated but well-be-loved brethren. [Footnote 79: "Quoniam tempus est ut incipiat judicium a domo Dei." (i Peter iv. 17.)]