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to a memento of One whom he professes to love more than father and mother. 'He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me," says our Lord Himself (Matt. x. 37); how, then, can a Christian be indifferent to the relics of his Saviour?

And if we love Him, we love also in a special way His friends, those who are nearest and dearest to Him; His Mother, His foster-father St. Joseph, His Precursor St. John Baptist, His beloved disciple St. John the Apostle, and the other Apostles to whom He said, "I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends"; also the holy martyrs who laid down their lives for Him, and the saints who, more perfectly and completely than Christians in general, took up their cross and followed Him. So in a similar way we prize and treasure mementoes of them, as we would His own.

The only difference, then, which one would expect to find in this matter of mementoes and relics, as also in that of pictures and statues, between the Christian and the heathen would be in the persons in whom interest was thus shown. And this is the difference we do find. The world has pictures and statues of its great ones; of great rulers, military leaders, statesmen, poets, inventors in the arts and sciences, and it values their relics; the Christian has his

pictures, statues, and relics of those who have been distinguished in the matter which he must needs regard as of paramount importance-that is, the love of God.

But you will say, "It is all well enough for Catholics to care about relics of the saints" (and why not for Protestants, too?), "but what we object to is that they attach a superstitious veneration to them. They think that the possession of a relic will insure their salvation."

I do not deny that there is a possibility of superstition in this matter; but there is always a danger of any religious conviction running into superstition, and the only way to certainly guard against this is to extinguish the religious feeling too, and indeed to deny the supernatural altogether; but one cannot take this latter course and remain a Christian at all, unless one can be considered as a Christian who simply regards Christ as a great and good man. But the Catholic Church always labors to prevent and discourage this tendency to superstition, not to increase and encourage it.

The occasion for it lies in something that we cannot get rid of, unless we are to g‹: rid of the Bible itself. For the Bible tells us that God has been pleased to work miracles and confer great blessings by the means of relics. We find (II. Kings xiii. 21) that when a dead body was put into the sepulchre of Elisha, "and

touched the bones of Elisha, the man came to life, and stood upon his feet."

We find also (Matt. ix. 20-22) that a certain woman came behind our Lord "and touched the hem of his garment; for she said within herself, If I shall touch only his garment, I shall be healed." And she was healed. Our Lord did not call her act superstition, but faith; He said to her, "Be of good heart, daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole."

Again (Acts v. 15), we find that the people brought the sick into the streets, and placed them so that Peter's shadow at least might fall on them; and it would appear from the next verse that even these were cured. And (Acts xix. 12) that "there were brought from his body" (that of Paul) "to the sick handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the wicked spirits went out of them.

May I ask, why, if such things happened then, they should not also happen now? That they do happen, we have the most ample evidence. But more about this later.

Of course, the Catholic Church understands, and teaches her children, that miraculous favors given by means of relics, or in any other way, are primarily for the glory of God and of His saints, and do not come as a matter of course, or infallibly, by the use of certain external means; and also that they must, as a rule, be

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accompanied or even preceded by good and holy dispositions on the part of those who receive them. But human frailty or wickedness does not always attend to this salutary teaching, and abuses these supernatural gifts, losing the benefit of them, as it does also with the natural gifts and blessings of God; but that is not the fault of God, nor is it that of the Church, which labors to remove and prevent these dangerous and scandalous errors.

But now you have another objection. You say that there is a vast amount of fraud about this business of relics; for example, that there are more relics of the true Cross than would make a great many crosses of that size; and that this fraud is endorsed by the Church.

I will ask you to take the example cited, and make a simple calculation on it. I think you will allow that the cross was probably equal in bulk to a beam of wood 200 inches long, 6 wide, and 4 thick, which makes 4,800 cubic inches. Now, an average relic of the true cross would not exceed a piece I-10th of an inch each way; indeed, this would really much exceed the average. But even at this, you see we would have 4,800,000 such relics, or one to every fifty Catholics. But one to every thousand would come nearer to the proportion of those who actually have them. Indeed, this would be a considerable over-estimate.

Again you will say, "But they have the head of such a saint preserved in several different places. Here is certainly an unblushing and obvious fraud."

You make this objection because you do not understand our way of speaking about these matters. Catholics understand well enough that by the head is meant a portion, perhaps a notable portion, of the head. This is enclosed in a reliquary representing a head, and you imagine that the whole head is supposed to be there; but no one except yourself who sees it thinks of any such thing.

That there should be, however, some mistakes about relics is obviously unavoidable, and the unscrupulous, no doubt, will attempt frauds, and sometimes succeed. But the Church has always taken great care, and takes more and more every year, to prevent this; and does not give certificates of genuineness, or "authentics," as we call them, to any relics without careful examination by competent and learned officials.

I think you will see that there is nothing unreasonable about this devotion; but if any Catholic does not take interest in it, he certainly is not obliged to. Nor is any one required to pray habitually to the saints, as long as he does not object to it on principle; and to fail to ever do so would seem to imply such an