story of Bernadette, with the unforgettable _Aves_ at the end of each
verse, and the _Laudate Mariam_, and the Nicene Creed. _Credo in ...
unam sanctam Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam._ My heart leaped at
that. For where else but in the Catholic Church do such things happen as
these that I had seen? Imagine, if you please, miracles in Manchester!
Certainly they might happen there, if there were sufficient Catholics
gathered in His Name; but put for Manchester, Exeter Hall or St. Paul's
Cathedral! The thought is blindingly absurd. No; the Christianity of
Jesus Christ lives only in the Catholic Church.

There alone in the whole round world do you find that combination of
lofty doctrine, magnificent moral teaching, the frank recognition of the
Cross; sacramentalism logically carried out, yet gripping the heart as
no amateur mysticism can do; and miracles. "Mercy and Truth have met
together." "These signs shall follow them that believe.... Faith can
remove mountains.... All things are possible to him that believes....
Whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My Name.... Where two or three
are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them."
There alone, where souls are built upon Peter, do these things really
happen.

I have been asked lately whether I am "happy" in the Catholic Church.
Happy! What can one say to a question like that? Does one ask a man who
wakes up from a foolish dream to sunshine in his room, and to life and
reality, whether he is happy? Of course many non-Catholics are happy. I
was happy myself as an Anglican; but as a Catholic one does not use the
word; one does not think about it. The whole of life is different; that
is all that can be said. Faith is faith, not hope; God is Light, not
twilight; eternity, heaven, hell, purgatory, sin and its
consequences--these things are facts, not guesses and conjectures and