"And that obstacle is not so much the memory of the American Past, which some of these foolish Americans still consider holy--not so much the memory of Penn the Quaker; Calvert the Catholic, who planted their silly dogma of Brotherly love on the Delaware and St. Mary's, in the early dawn of this country,--not so much the Declaration of Independence, nor the blood-marks which wrote its principles, on the soil from Bunker Hill to Savannah, from Brandywine to Yorktown,--not so much the history of the sixty-eight years, which in the American Republic, have shown a growth, an enterprise, a development never witnessed on God's earth before,--not so much all this, as the single obstacle which I now lay on the table before you." And from the breast of his coat he drew forth a small, thin volume, which he laid upon the table: "This!" cried the Prelate, as though a bomb-shell had burst beneath his chair; "This! Why this is the four Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John!" "Precisely. And Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, those simple fellows are the very ones whom we have most to fear." "But I have driven this book from the Common Schools!" cried the Prelate, rather testily. "Have you driven it from the home?" quietly asked the Legate. The Prelate absently toyed with his cross, but did not answer. "Can you drive it from the home?" asked the Legate. The Prelate gazed at the portrait of Cardinal Dubois, and then at Richelieu's, but did not reply. "Do you not see the difficulty?" continued the Legate, "so long as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, sit down by the firesides of the people, making themselves a part and parcel of the dearest memories of every household,--so long we may chop logic, weave plots, traffic in casuistry, but in vain!" "True, that book is capable of much mischief," said the Prelate; "it has caused more revolutions than you could count in a year." "In Spain, where this book is scarcely known, in Italy, where to read it is imprisonment and chains, we can get along well enough, but here, in the United States, where this book is a fireside book in every home, the first book that the child looks into, and the last that the dying old man listens to, as his ear is growing deaf with death,--here what shall we do? You know that it is a Democratic book?" "Yes." "That it is so simple in its enunciations of brotherly love, equality, and the love of God for all mankind, so simple and yet so strong, that it has required eighteen centuries of scholastic casuistry and whole tons of volumes, devoted to theological special pleading, to darken its simple meaning?" "Yes, yes."