“In what can our religion differ,” she asked, “if we are both Christians?  Americans or Italians, it is all the same.”

“That comes of knowing nothing about Ameriky,” said Ithuel, filled with the conceit of his own opinion of himself and of the part of the world from which he came.  “In the first place, you have a Pope and cardinals and bishops and all such things in your religion, while we have none.”

“Certainly, there is the Holy Father, and there are cardinals; but they are not my religion,” answered Ghita, looking surprised.  “Bishops, it is true, are appointed of God and form part of his church; and the bishop of Rome is the head of the church on earth, but nothing more!”

“Nothing more!  Don’t you worship images, and take off and put on garments at your prayers, and kneel down in a make-believe, profane way:  and don’t you turn everything into vain ceremonies?”

Had Ithuel been engaged, body and soul, in maintaining one of the propositions of the Oxford Tracts’ controversy, he could not have uttered these words with greater zeal or with a more self-righteous emotion.  His mind was stored with the most vulgar accusations of an exceedingly vulgar set of sectarian distinctions; and he fancied it a high proof of Protestant perfection to hold all the discarded usages in abhorrence.  On the other hand, Ghita listened with surprise; for, to her, the estimation in which the rites of the Roman church are held by the great bulk of Protestants was a profound secret.  The idea of worshipping an image never crossed her innocent mind; and although she often knelt before her own little ivory crucifix, she had never supposed any could be so ignorant as to confound the mere material representation of the sacrifice it was meant to portray with the divine expiation itself.

“It is decent to use proper vestments at the altar,” she replied; “and its servants ought not to be clad like other men.  We know it is the heart, the soul, that must be touched, to find favor with God; but this does not make the outward semblance of respect that we show even to each other the less necessary.  As to worshipping images—­that would be idolatry; and as bad as the poor heathens themselves.”

Ithuel looked mystified; for he never doubted in the least that the worshipping of images was a material part of Catholic devotion; and, as for the Pope and the cardinals, he deemed them all as indispensable to the creed of this church, as he fancied it important in his own that the priests should not wear gowns, and that the edifices in which they worshipped should have square-topped windows.  Absurd as all this may seem to-day, and wicked as it will probably appear a century hence, it formed, and forms, no small part of sectarian belief, and entered into the animosities and jealousies of those who seem to think it necessary to quarrel for the love of God.  Could we but look back at our own changes of opinion, it would render us less confident of the justice of our sentiments; and, most of all, one would think that the American who has lived long enough to witness the somersets that have been thrown in the practices and creeds of most of the more modern sects of his own country, within the last quarter of a century, would come to have something like a suitable respect for the more stable and venerable divisions of the Christian world.