all the words in the world compared with a good bodily image!"

"I believe you occasionally quote his words?" said I.

"He! he!" said the man in black; "occasionally."

"For example," said I, "upon this rock I will found my church."

"He! he!" said the man in black; "you must really become one of
us."

"Yet you must have had some difficulty in getting the rock to
Rome?"

"None whatever," said the man in black; "faith can remove
mountains, to say nothing of rocks--ho! ho!"

"But I cannot imagine," said I, "what advantage you could derive
from perverting those words of Scripture in which the Saviour talks
about eating his body."

"I do not know, indeed, why we troubled our heads about the matter
at all," said the man in black; "but when you talk about perverting
the meaning of the text, you speak ignorantly, Mr. Tinker; when he
whom you call the Saviour gave his followers the sop, and bade them
eat it, telling them it was his body, he delicately alluded to what
it was incumbent upon them to do after his death, namely, to eat
his body."

"You do not mean to say that he intended they should actually eat