before him Jesus lying in the manger, equal in squalid poverty with the
lowest of mankind.

The majesty and glory of the courts of Heaven are symbolized in the Roman
Church. _There_ is gathered the wealth of the world! All that is yet
attained in the representation of the grand, the beautiful, the majestic,
the sublime, and the devotional, is collected in the Mother of Churches.

What earthly king, in his noble palace, with its costly architecture, its
ornaments of silver and gold, its rare paintings and statuary, the wealth
and accumulation of many sovereigns, would admit into its sacred
precincts the poor and the lowly, the beggar and the thief, the Magdalen
and the Lazarus to sully with their presence his royal abode?

But we erect palaces to the King of Heaven! regal in architecture, and
adorned with beauty surpassing in magnificence earthly royalty, in which
the lowliest may enter on an equality with the prince; his untutored
mind, his uncultivated senses may listen to music of the highest order.
The pealing tones of the organ resound under the touch of the highest
masters of art for his simple ear. Listening to those strains, his mind
forms a conception of the harmony and beatitude of Heaven!

Even death is not looked upon with horror by the Catholic. If he lose a
friend in this life, unlike the Protestant, he does not abandon him in
oblivion, but his sympathies still extend to him by offering masses for
his soul. And it is because it is so adapted to man's spiritual nature
that the Catholic religion has withstood the shock and surge of ages!

The restless, heaving billows of time have washed against the
seven-hilled Church in vain.