The primary charm of church architecture is veracity. The interior of Santo Spirito is perfect truth. The columns are, what they claim to be, stone; the balustrade of the choir is, what it claims to be, bronze; the altar what it claims to be, _pietra dura_. {200} You do not sound a pillar and hear a lie, or scratch a panel and see a lie, or touch a jewel and feel a lie. All is fair, square, honest--not even the minutest lurking insincerity to vex the Paraclete. I soon learned to love Santo Spirito as well as any Florentine; to love it better than the Duomo with its windows of a thousand dyes; better than the bride of Buonarroti With her frescoes of Masaccio, her Madonna of Cimabue's, her Crucifix of Giotto's; better even than Santa Croce with its ashes of Angelo, its Annunciation of Donatello's, its Canova's Alfieri. I used to sit for hours in its spacious choir, undisturbed even by the dull, nasal, inharmonious chanting of the good Augustinians, and listen to the sermons preached by those dim, unending arches. ---------- Translated From The Revue Du Monde Catholique. The Statue Of The Cure D'ars, Inaugurated At Ars, August 5, 1867. God's purposes sometimes reveal themselves in a manner greatly to perplex us. They move contrary to all foresight or to any human logic. Day succeeds to night, light to darkness, hope to despair, without any apparent reason, indeed in spite of reason itself. When all seems lost, then everything is regained, and even death itself appears to live anew. The history of religion is full of such decay and such regeneration. After the frightful crisis of the eighteenth century, one would have thought the Church entirely abandoned, and that no new breath could revive the fallen ruins which the efforts of a hundred years had accumulated. "The pinnacle of the temple is crumbled, and the clew of heaven comes to moisten the face of the kneeling believer," says, in his theatrical and pseudo-biblical style, the most celebrated enemy of our time. [Footnote 89] [Footnote 89: M. Renan.] Many Christians were distressed, and the timid braved with difficulty the universal defection. That which they believed in was denied, that which they adored was burned, and that which they loved was disgraced.