The Master-Christian | Page 9

untaught barbarians.
Were these to perish utterly? Had THEY no immortal souls to save?
Had the churches been at work for eighteen hundred years and more, to
bring about no better results than this,--namely that there were only "A
FEW NAMES IN SARDIS"? If so, were not the churches criminally to

blame? Yea, even holy Mother-Church, whose foundation rested on the
memory of the Lying Apostle? Rapidly, and as if suggested by some
tormenting devil, these thoughts possessed the Cardinal's brain, burning
into it and teasing and agonising the tender fibres of his conscience and
his soul. Could God, the great loving Creator of countless universes, be
so cruel as to wantonly destroy millions of helpless creatures in one
small planet, because through ignorance or want of proper teaching
they had failed to find Christ?--was it possible that he could only
extend his mercy and forgiveness to the "few names in Sardis"?
"Yet our world is but a pin's point in the eternal immensities," argued
the Cardinal almost wistfully--"Only a few can expect to be saved."
Nevertheless, this reasoning did not satisfy him. Again, what of these
millions? Were they to be forever lost? Then why so much waste of life?
Waste of life! There is no such thing as waste of life-- this much
modern science the venerable Felix knew. Nothing can be wasted,--not
a breath, not a scene, not a sound. All is treasured up in Nature's
store-house and can be eternally reproduced at Nature's will. Then what
was to become of the myriads of human beings and immortal souls
whom the Church had failed to rescue? THE CHURCH HAD FAILED!
Why had it failed? Whose the fault?--whose the weakness?-- for fault
and weakness were existent somewhere.
"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL
FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"
"No!" whispered the Cardinal, suddenly forced, as it were in his own
despite, to contradict his former assertion--"No!" He paused, and
mechanically making his way towards the door of the Cathedral, he
dipped his fingers into the holy water that glistened dimly in its marble
basin near the black oak portal, and made the sign of the cross on brow
and breast;--"He will not find faith where faith should be pre-eminent.
It must be openly confessed--repentingly admitted,--He will NOT find
faith even in the Church He founded,--I say it to our shame!"
His head drooped, as though his own words had wounded him, and
with an air of deep dejection he slowly passed out. The huge

iron-bound door swung noiselessly to and fro behind him,--the
grave-toned bell in the tower struck seven. Outside, a tender twilight
mellowed the atmosphere and gave brightness to approaching evening;
inside, the long shadows, gathering heavily in the aisles and richly
sculptured hollows of the side-chapels, brought night before its time.
The last votive candle at the Virgin's shrine flickered down and
disappeared like a firefly in dense blackness,--the last echo of the bell
died in a tremulous vibration up among the high-springing roof-arches,
and away into the solemn corners where the nameless dead reposed,--
the last impression of life and feeling vanished with the retreating
figure of the Cardinal--and the great Cathedral, the Sanctuary and
House of God, took upon itself the semblance of a funeral vault,--a
dark, Void, wherein but one red star, the lamp before the Altar, burned.

II.
Lovely to a poet or an artist's eye is the unevenly-built and picturesque
square of Rouen in which the Cathedral stands,--lovely, and suggestive
of historical romance in all its remote corners, its oddly-shaped houses,
its by-ways and crooked little flights of steps leading to nowhere, its
gables and slanting roofs, and its utter absence of all structural
proportion. A shrine here, a broken statue there,--a half-obliterated
coat-of-arms over an old gateway,--a rusty sconce fitted fast into the
wall to support a lantern no longer needed in these days of gas and
electricity,--an ancient fountain overgrown with weed, or a projecting
vessel of stone for holy water, in which small birds bathe and disport
themselves after a shower of rain,--those are but a few of the curious
fragments of a past time which make the old place interesting to the
student, and more than fascinating to the thinker and dreamer. The
wonderful "Hotel Bourgtheroulde," dating from the time of Francis the
First, and bearing on its sculptured walls the story of the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, in company with the strangely-contrasting "Allegories",
from Petrarch's "Triumphs", is enough in itself to keep the mind
engrossed with fanciful musings for an hour. How did Petrarch and the
Field of the Cloth of Gold come together in the brain of the sculptor
who long ago worked at these ancient bas- reliefs? One wonders, but

the wonder is in vain,--there is no explanation;--and the
"Bourgtheroulde"