willing and ready to do for His people more than they can ask or think, would they not turn from their dumb idols to the living God?

But what is the devotion to which this noble Scriptural teaching is attached, like a living being to a mouldering corpse, and how is the Sacred Heart dealt with at New Pompei ?

The worship is not the lofty, spiritual love of Christ as set forth in the inspired Scripture; it is a low, material thing, as seen in the hallucinations of a poor sickly creature, neither healthy in body nor in mind.

Marguerite Marie Alacoque, born at Paray-le-Monial, in France, had entered the convent of the Nuns of the Visitation, a Salesian Order, but showed herself so excitable and full of inconvenient fancies that the saner Sisters expressed a strong wish that she should leave the convent before she had made her final profession. A life of her which I obtained tells how she bewailed this threatened exclusion, saying, 'O my Jesus, Thou art the cause of this my shame,' and obtained the reply, 'Do not weep; go to the Superior, say that I make myself responsible for whatever thou mayst do; and if she think Me worthy to be trusted, I give Myself a pledge for thee.' Marguerite, having recounted this visionary promise to the Superior, no more was said about her banishment from the convent. But a severe test was devised to prove the reality

of her vocation.

It may have been thought that a little rough open-air work would be good for the poor hysterical girl. She was put in charge of two donkeys, which she was required to tend but forbidden to fasten up, and the creatures led her a sad life. But she beheld Jesus always at her side ready to aid her, and heard His voice addressing her on this wise: 'Marie, had I not already instituted the Divine Sacrament of Love, I would institute it for thee.' Words follow in the original which we will not transcribe.

The poor visionary declared that Christ constituted her the heir of His heart... for time and for eternity,' permitting

her to do with it whatsoever should most please her.' She heard His voice, saying, 'Thou shalt ever be My loved disciple, the delight of My heart, the holocaust of My love.' These words Marie beheld written in the form of a contract, which she signed with blood drawn from her own breast; afterwards -so says the legend-cutting the word 'Jesus' with a knife on her own flesh.

.

In later ecstasies she fancied that the Saviour, making her lean on His breast, opened the Sacred Heart to her in the most real and sensible manner,' telling her that 'His heart was so full of love to man, and especially to her, that . . . it was necessary to give forth the burning flames of His love by her, and make them manifest to men, that they may be enriched by the treasures held in His heart,' and announcing, 'I have chosen thee to accomplish this My design.'

We might put all this aside with contempt as the unwitting blasphemies of an insane nun gone mad with exaggerated self-esteem. But we can no longer do this, since the hysterical recluse of Paray-le-Monial has been beatified by the Church of Rome, and the devotion based upon her ravings, so full of a mystic sensuality, urgently commended to the world of the faithful as a means whereby the evil world may be brought back to Christ. It is allied to the story of the stigmata conferred on Francis and Catherine, and the legendary marriage of the latter Saint; but it is tainted with a vulgar materialism from which these earlier myths are comparatively free. No wonder that the honest Bonomelli, Bishop of Cremona, has branded all these devotions as offensive to Christian feeling and to natural reason, since they make Virgin and Saint equal to Christ Jesus, adding: 'There are those who make a profit out of these devotions; there are others who permit themselves to be made a profit of through them.'

It is a sign of the times that the Cardinal-Bishops of Verona and of Padua have forbidden in their dioceses the sale of the pastoral of Bonomelli in which these denunciations are to be found.

Indeed, enthusiasts such as Bartolo Longo are not daunted

by the open disapproval of a single Bishop, and he, like Bonomelli, a 'Liberal' Catholic.

'In the year 1899,' says Friend Bartolo, 'I distributed 1,780,000 pictures of the Madonna of Pompei, and ordered 2,380,000. From different houses I have ordered 1,500,000 medals; last year, 2,250,000.'

So much for Bonomelli and his denunciations!

XIV

THE SANCTUARY A CORNUCOPIA OF CURIOSITIES

'What if the o'erturned altar
Lay bare the ancient lie?
What if the dreams and legends
Of the world's childhood die ?

6 Have ye not still My witness
Within yourselves alway?—

My hand that on the keys of life
For bliss or bale I lay ?'

THE WONDERFUL PICTURE.

F course, the wonder of wonders at New Pompei is the wonder-working picture. We have already narrated its curious history, and Signor Longo is never weary of calling attention to the strange contrast in that story, from its journey on the dung-cart to its installation on the throne.

'Who could have believed it possible,' he writes, in his 'History of the Sanctuary,' 'that the old canvas which cost only three lire, and which entered Pompei on the top of a dung-cart, was destined in the order of Providence to be the salvation of innumerable souls, to become so precious as to be adorned with dazzling brilliants and rarest gems, to be erelong exalted on a most costly trofeo in this monumental temple, specially erected for it, and that it would gather to its feet, not only the poor peasants of Pompei reciting their Rosary before it, but a crowd of pilgrim worshippers from foreign nations; that it would become the centre of religion, civilization, and glory; and that it would so attract the

attention and love of the Supreme Pontiff as to move him to take the Sanctuary of Pompei under the shield of his Pontifical protection?'

Thus Bartolo, in an ecstasy of admiring wonder.

He goes on to inform us that, when the extensive repairs and alterations in the picture, already fully described, had been effected, so that it was completely metamorphosed from its original ungainliness into a wonder of beauty, his soul was disturbed by the darkest misgivings. The picture was made new, was another thing altogether-new canvas, new colouring, new personages. But the old picture had possessed undeniable miraculous power. Would that Divine potency still be vouchsafed when a picture essentially new was exalted for veneration?'

Happily, he resolved the tormenting question in an eminently satisfactory way, reasoning thus :

The picture is merely the instrument of God in the wonders wrought. More than ever to-day it is God's will that the most sublime creature ever formed by His hands, the Divine Mother of Jesus, should be honoured in the world; it is His will that she be honoured and adored by all peoples with one voice saying "Ave!"-with one hymn, the Rosary. It is, then, the Rosary which draws down the blessings of Heaven; and the Madonna shows, by the wonders she works, her will that it should be a Church of the Rosary that she would have erected in Pompei.'

Certainly, be the picture the old one or a new one, it is the prime wonder in that cornucopia of curiosities, the Sanctuary of New Pompei. The passage quoted above is the only attempt I can find in the literature of New Pompei to refute the grave charge of idolatry, arising out of all this glorification of a picture. If Signor Longo be sincere in this expression of opinion, he should not continue to act as though his holy picture were possessed of inherent Divine virtue. There is nothing novel in the opinion advanced; for in the ancient pagan world only the most ignorant worshippers believed that any image spoke; the more intelligent held that the god spoke through his statue. This opinion of Signor Longo