478 PRÆTERITA-III

the summit of the isolated peak of lava at Le Puy, in Auvergne, in 1840. The hostess-sister who showed my father and me what it was permitted to see of chapel or interior buildings, was a cheerful, simple creature, pleased with us at once for our courtesy to her, and admiration of her mountain home, and belief in her sacred life. Protestant visitors being then rare in Auvergne, and still more, reverent and gentle ones, she gave her pretty curiosity free sway; and inquired earnestly of us, what sort of creatures we were,-how far we believed in God, or tried to be good, or hoped to go to heaven? And our responses under this catechism being in their sum more pleasing to her than she had expected, and manifesting, to her extreme joy and wonder, a Christian spirit, so far as she could judge, in harmony with all she had been herself taught, she proceeded to cross-examine us on closer points of Divinity, to find out, if she could, why we were, or unnecessarily called ourselves, anything else than Catholic? The one flaw in our faith which at last her charity fastened on, was that we were not sure of our salvation in Christ, but only hoped to get into heaven,-and were not at all, by that dim hope, relieved from terror of death, when at any time it should come. Whereupon she launched involuntarily into an eager and beautiful little sermon, to every word of which her own perfectly happy and innocent face gave vivid power, and assurance of sincerity,-how “we needed to be sure of our safety in Christ, and that every one might be so who came to Him and prayed to Him; and that all good Catholics were as sure of heaven as if they were already there;” and so dismissed us at the gate with true pity, and beseeching that we would prove the goodness of God, and be in peace. Which exhortation of hers I have never forgotten; only it has always seemed to me that there was no entering into that rest of hers but by living on the top of some St. Michael’s rock too, which it did not seem to me I was meant to do, by any means.

But in here recording the impression made on my

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