and yet have believed,” and my further questioning was checked by the murmur:  “O my child, how undisciplined! how impatient!”.  Truly, he must have found in me—­hot, eager, passionate in my determination to know, resolute not to profess belief while belief was absent—­but very little of that meek, chastened, submissive spirit to which he was accustomed in the penitents wont to seek his counsel as their spiritual guide.  In vain did he bid me pray as though I believed; in vain did he urge the duty of blind submission to the authority of the Church, of yielding, unreasoning faith, which received but questioned not.  He had no conception of the feelings of the sceptical spirit; his own faith was solid as a rock—­ firm, satisfied, unshakeable; he would as soon have committed suicide as have doubted of the infallibility of the “Universal Church”.

“It is not your duty to ascertain the truth,” he told me sternly.  “It is your duty to accept and to believe the truth as laid down by the Church; at your peril you reject it; the responsibility is not yours so long as you dutifully accept that which the Church has laid down for your acceptance.  Did not the Lord promise that the presence of the Spirit should be ever with his Church, to guide her into all truth?”

“But the fact of the promise and its value are the very points on which I am doubtful,” I answered.

He shuddered.  “Pray, pray,” he said.  “Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she says.”

It was in vain I urged that I had everything to gain and nothing to lose by following his directions, but that it seemed to me that fidelity to truth forbade a pretended acceptance of that which was not believed.

“Everything to lose?  Yes, indeed.  You will be lost for time and lost for eternity.”

“Lost or not,” I rejoined, “I must and will try to find out what is true, and I will not believe till I am sure.”

“You have no right to make terms with God,” he answered, “as to what you will believe and what you will not believe.  You are full of intellectual pride.”

I sighed hopelessly.  Little feeling of pride was there in me just then, and I felt that in this rigid unyielding dogmatism there was no comprehension of my difficulties, no help for me in my strugglings.  I rose and, thanking him for his courtesy, said that I would not waste his time further, that I must go home and just face the difficulties out, openly leaving the Church and taking the consequences.  Then for the first time his serenity was ruffled.

“I forbid you to speak of your disbelief,” he cried.  “I forbid you to lead into your own lost state the souls for whom Christ died.”