under its direction in matters of faith and morals, as the crowned
heads of Spain or Austria, or as the Archbishops of Paris or Malines.
Certainly _Digitus Dei est hic_: the finger of God is here. The simple
fact is, there is always something about the works of God which
clearly differentiate them from the products of man, however close may
be the mere external and surface resemblance. A thousand artists may
carve a thousand acorns, so cunningly coloured, and so admirably
contrived as to be practically indistinguishable from the genuine
fruit of the oak. Each of these thousand artists may present me with
his manufactured acorn, and may assure me of its genuineness. And,
alas! I may be quite deceived and taken in; yes, but only _for a
time_. When I plant them in the soil, together with the genuine acorn,
and give them time to develop, the fraud is detected, and the truth
revealed. For the real seed proves its worth. How? In the simplest way
possible, that is to say, by actually doing what it was destined and
created to do. That is, by growing and developing into a majestic oak,
while the false and human imitations fall to pieces, belie all one's
hopes, and are found to produce neither branch nor leaf nor fruit.

This is but an illustration of what may be observed equally in the
spiritual order, although there it is attended by more disastrous
consequences. Thus we find hundreds of Churches proclaiming themselves
to be foundations of God, which Time, the old Justice who tries all
such offenders, soon proves, most unmistakably, to be nothing but the
contrivances of man. They may bear a certain external resemblance to
the true Church, planted by the Divine Husbandman, but like the
man-made acorns, they deceive all our expectations, and are wholly
unable to redeem their promises, or to live up to their pretensions.

For, while one and all declare with their lips that they possess the