“For twenty years,” observed a recently converted Minister of the Protestant Church, “I fought and struggled against the Church with all the energy of my will. But when I became a Catholic all my doubts ended, my inquiries ceased. I became as a little child, and rushed like a lisping babe into the arms of my mother.” By Baptism Christians become children of the Church, no matter who pours upon them the regenerating waters. If she is our Mother, where is our love and obedience? When the infant seeks nourishment at its mother’s breast it does not analyze its food. When it receives instructions from its mother’s lips it never doubts, but instinctively believes. When the mother stretches forth her hand the child follows unhesitatingly. The Christian should have for his spiritual Mother all the simplicity, all the credulity, I might say, of a child, guided by the instincts of faith. “Unless ye become,” says our Lord, “as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”(133) “As new-born babes, desire the rational milk without guile; that thereby you may grow unto salvation.”(134) In her nourishment there is no poison; in her doctrines there is no guile. Chapter VIII. THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE. The Church, as we have just seen, is the only Divinely constituted teacher of Revelation. Now, the Scripture is the great depository of the Word of God. Therefore, the Church is the divinely appointed Custodian and Interpreter of the Bible. For, her office of infallible Guide were superfluous if each individual could interpret the Bible for himself. That God never intended the Bible to be the Christian’s rule of faith, independently of the living authority of the Church, will be the subject of this chapter. No nation ever had a greater veneration for the Bible than the Jewish people. The Holy Scripture was their pride and their glory. It was their national song in time of peace; it was their meditation and solace in time of tribulation and exile. And yet the Jews never dreamed of settling their religious controversies by a private appeal to the Word of God. Whenever any religious dispute arose among the people it was decided by the High Priest and the Sanhedrim, which was a council consisting of seventy-two civil and ecclesiastical judges. The sentence of the High Priest and of his associate judges was to be obeyed under penalty of death. “If thou perceive,” says the Book of Deuteronomy, “that there be among you a hard and doubtful matter in judgment, ... thou shalt come to the Priests of the Levitical race and to the judge, ... and they shall show thee the truth of the judgment.... And thou shalt follow their sentence; neither shalt thou decline to the right hand, nor to the left.... But he that will ... refuse to obey the commandment of the Priest, ... that man shall die, and thou shalt take away the evil from Israel.”(135)