“Church members at all!” I echoed.

“Yes,” said she.  “We are not members of the Broadway Tabernacle any more—­except in name.  What is a foot or an arm fifty miles away from the body?  Can they keep loving watch and care over us; or we over them?  It is not a question between one church-home and another, John; it is a question between this church-home and none at all.”

“But, Jennie,” said I, “the finances here are in a fearful state.  They are always coming down on the church for contributions, and holding fairs in summer, and tableaux and what not, in winter, and generally waiting for something to turn up.  If I had the naming of this church I would call it St. Micawber’s church.”

Jennie laughed.  “Well, John,” said she, “I think you are ready enough with your money.” (I am not so sure of that.  I am inclined to think that is Jennie’s way of making me so.) “And I have nothing to say about the finances.”

“Besides, Jennie,” said I—­for I really had no faith in the financial argument—­“this is a Presbyterian church and we are Congregationalists.”

“It is a church of Christ, John,” said Jennie soberly, “and we, I hope, are Christians more than Congregationalists.”

That was the last that was said.  But the next morning I carried down with me, to New York, a letter addressed to the clerk of the Broadway Tabernacle, asking for letters of dismission and recommendation to the Calvary Presbyterian church at Wheathedge.  And so commenced our parish life.

CHAPTER IV.

The Real Presence.

“Jennie,” said I, “I don’t believe in Mr. Work’s sermon this morning, do you?”

“I don’t think I do, John; but to be candid I did not hear a great deal of it.”

It was Sunday evening.  Harry was asleep in his room.  The baby, sung to her sweet slumbers pressed against her mother’s heart, had been lain down at last in her little cradle.  Jennie, her evening work finished, had come down into the library and was sitting on the lounge beside me.

“I was not so fortunate,” said I.  “Blessed are those who having ears hear not—­sometimes.  I listened, and took the other side.  My church was converted into a court-room, I into an advocate.  If I believed Mr. Work’s doctrine was sound Protestantism I should turn Roman Catholic.  Its teaching is the warmer, cheerier, more helpful of the two.”

Then I took up the open book that lay on my library table and read from Father Hyacinthe’s discourses the following paragraph—­from an address delivered on the first communion of a converted Protestant to the Roman Catholic Church: 

“Where (in Protestantism) is that real Presence which flows from the sacrament as from a hidden spring, like a river of peace, upon the true Catholic, all the day long, gladdening and fertilizing all his life?  This Immanuel—­God with us—­awaited you in our Church, and in that sacrament which so powerfully attracted you, even when you but half believed it.  In your own worship, as in the ancient synagogue, you found naught but types and shadows; they spoke to you of reality, but did not contain it; they awakened your thirst, but did not quench it; weak and empty rudiments which have no longer the right to rest, since the veil of the temple has been rent asunder and eternal realities been revealed.”