In this country the people were, in the outset, as hostile to the church as they could be anywhere or in any age, and they are not even yet converted, very generally, into warm and eager friends; yet without any public provision, relying solely on the alms of the faithful at home and abroad, principally at home, the missionaries of the cross have been sustained, the widow's handful of meal and cruse of oil have not failed; and yet we have founded and sustained schools, colleges, universities, erected convents for men and for women, and are erecting throughout the whole country churches, the finest in it, and some of which may be regarded as architectural ornaments; and nearly all this has been achieved within a single lifetime. Men who sit at their ease in Zion, and find their most engrossing occupation in solving an antiquarian problem, or disserting on some heathen relic just dug up, though the world is breaking up and falling to pieces around them, may be frightened at the prospect of being deprived of comforts they are used to; but let governments and peoples do their worst, they cannot do worse than heathen Rome did, worse than France did in the revolution of 1789, or England has been doing in Ireland for three hundred years. Fear! What is there to fear? If God be for us, who can be against us? The danger seems great, no doubt, to many; but let Catholics have the courage of their faith, and they will no longer fear him who can kill the body, and after that hath no more power. The danger before men of Christian courage will disappear as the morning mist before the rising sun. Can a Catholic fear poverty, want, labor, suffering, torture, or death in His cause who for our sakes became poor, and had not where to lay his head; who took the form of a servant, and obeyed unto death, even the death of the cross? Know we not that Catholic faith and Catholic charity can weary out the most cruel and envenomed persecutors, and in the end gain the victory over them? If the church finds it necessary, then, in order to maintain her independence, to incur the hostility of kings or peoples, and the loss of her goods, there need be no fear; God will not forsake her, and the charity of the faithful never faileth. FOOTNOTE: [21] _Chiesa e Stato_: Rapsodie di C. Cantù, dalla _Rivista Universale_. Corretto e riveduto dall' Autore. 1867. 8vo, pp. 94. DION AND THE SIBYLS. A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL. BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC. CHAPTER III. Tiberius, when all had disappeared along the road, suddenly stopped in his walk. His companion, toward whom he had turned, did the same, and looked at him with an air of expectation.