may walk and breathe on earth. He whom we adore must not be relegated to a corner of the heavens, or forbidden to appear in our midst; and they must not be made sport of, who see him, and feel him, and touch him. Free-thinkers may laugh, if they have the courage, at the priest who believes that God is present in the Host that he holds in his hands, and present in the temple when he officiates. They may laugh at the peasant children who believe that Saints or the Virgin present themselves before them to listen to their wants, but a true believer cannot do otherwise than take all this seriously. Protestants take baptism very seriously, and think it absolutely necessary to salvation. Luther certainly believed in the devil; he saw him everywhere, in storms, in fires, in the tumult that his passage along the streets often excited, in the interruptions that occurred in his sermons; he challenged, and threatened all devils, “were they as numberless as the tiles of the roofs.” One day he even exorcised the Evil One, who had been vociferating in the person of the audience, so efficiently that the sermon, which opened in the midst of the greatest disturbance, was finished in peace; the devil had been frightened. Why, then, do orthodox Protestants, especially in our day, so genuinely wish to stop arbitrarily short in their faith? Why believe that God or the devil appeared to men two thousand years ago, and at no time since? Why believe in the Gospel cures and not in the naïve legends that are related of the Communion, or in the miracles at Lourdes? All things hold together in a faith, and if you propose outraging human reason, why not do it thoroughly? As Mr. Matthew Arnold observes, the orthodox Protestant doctrine, in admitting that the Son of God could substitute himself as an expiatory victim for man, condemned for the fault of Adam,—in other words that he could suffer for a crime that he had not committed for men who had not committed it either,—is only to accept the following passage literally and rudely: “The son of man is come to give his life as a ransom unto many.” From the moment that one holds literally to a single text, why not do the same in regard to others? In introducing a certain share of liberty into their faith, the Protestants have also introduced a spirit of inconsequence; this is its characteristic and its defect. Someone said to me once: “If I should try to believe everything, I should end by believing nothing.” This was Luther’s reasoning; he wished to make some allowances for enlightenment; he hoped to preserve the faith by minimizing it. But the limits are artificial. Only listen to Pascal, who possesses the French talent for logic, and is at the same time a mathematician, making light of Protestantism. “How I detest such nonsense!” he cries: that is, not to believe in the Eucharist, etc. “If the Gospel is true, if Jesus Christ is God, what difficulty is there in all that?” Nobody