How is it, they ask, that though Christ came to save the
poor and the humble, it is on them that life presses most heavily after
eighteen hundred years of His rule? All cannot be well in a world where
such contradictions exist, and what if some of the worst abuses of the
age have found lodgment in the very ramparts that faith has built
against them?"
Don Gervaso's face grew stern and his eyes rested sadly on Odo. "You
speak," said he, "of bringing light into dark places; but what light is
there on earth save that which is shed by the Cross, and where shall
they find guidance who close their eyes to that divine illumination?"
"But is there not," Odo rejoined, "a divine illumination within each of
us, the light of truth which we must follow at any cost--or have the
worst evils and abuses only to take refuge in the Church to find
sanctuary there, as malefactors find it?"
The chaplain shook his head. "It is as I feared," he said, "and Satan
has spread his subtlest snare for you; for if he tempts some in the
guise of sensual pleasure, or of dark fears and spiritual abandonment,
it is said that to those he most thirsts to destroy he appears in the
likeness of their Saviour. You tell me it is to right the wrongs of the
poor and the humble that your new friends, the philosophers, have
assailed the authority of Christ. I have only one answer to make:
Christ, as you said just now, died for the poor--how many of your
philosophers would do as much? Because men hunger and thirst, is that a
sign that He has forsaken them? And since when have earthly privileges
been the token of His favour? May He not rather have designed that, by
continual sufferings and privations, they shall lay up for themselves
treasures in Heaven such as your eyes and mine shall never see or our
ears hear? And how dare you assume that any temporal advantages could
atone for that of which your teachings must deprive them--the heavenly
consolations of the love of Christ?"
Odo listened with a sense of deepening discouragement.
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