Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/271

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hope, losing strength! Put away,—put away from you the toys of time!—quench in your soul the thirst for gold, for of this shall come nothing but corruption! Why trifle with the Spirit of holy things? Why let your servants use the Name of the Most High to cover hypocrisy? Why crave for the power of temporal things, which passes away in the dust of destroyed kingdoms? For the Power of the Spirit is greater than all! And so it shall be proved! The Spirit shall work in ways where it has never been found before!—it shall depart from the Churches which are unworthy of its Divine inspiration!—it shall invest the paths of science!—it shall open the doors of the locked stars! It shall display the worlds invisible;—the secrets of men's hearts, and of closed graves!—there will be terror and loss and confusion and shame to mankind,—and this world shall keep nothing of all its treasures but the Cross of Christ! Rome, like Babylon, shall fall!—and the Powers of the Church shall be judged as the Powers of Darkness rather than of Light, because they have rejected the Word of their Master, and 'teach for doctrine the commandments of men'! Disaster shall follow swift upon disaster, and the cup of trembling shall be drained again to its last dregs, as in the olden days, unless,—unless perchance—You will come out with Me!"


This address has such an effect on the Pope that at its conclusion he falls senseless. Bonpré and Manuel, the former now without a friend left at the Vatican, take their departure, and shortly afterwards it is deemed expedient for them to leave Rome for shelter in England, the idea being intimated that the authorities of the Church were