sound armour, sharp weapons, and, above all, firm ground to stand on--
a good footing for his faith--and these he is apt to fancy he can get
from Rome alone.

No doubt he has to pay for them, but the charm of the Church of Rome
is this: when you have paid her price you get your goods--a neat
assortment of coherent, interdependent, logical opinions.

It is not much use, under such circumstances, to call the convert a
coward, and facetiously to inquire of him what he really thinks about
St. Januarius. Nobody ever began with Januarius. I have no doubt a
good many Romanists would be glad to be quit of him. He is part of the
price they have to pay in order that their title to the possession of
other miracles may be quieted. If you can convince the convert that he
can disbelieve Januarius of Naples without losing his grip of Paul of
Tarsus, you will be well employed; but if you begin with merry gibes,
and end with contemptuously demanding that he should have done with
such nonsense and fling the rubbish overboard, he will draw in his
horns and perhaps, if he knows his Browning, murmur to himself:--

'To such a process, I discern no end.
Cutting off one excrescence to see two;
There is ever a next in size, now grown as big,
That meets the knife. I cut and cut again;
First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last
But Fichte's clever cut at God Himself?'

To suppose that no person is logically entitled to fear God and to
ridicule Januarius at the same time, is doubtless extravagant, but to
do so requires care. There is an 'order in thinking. We must consider