From memories so sublime, yet so close at hand, had the narrative descended in which these acts of worship centered; though again the names of some more recently dead were mingled in it.

And it seemed as if the very dead were aware; to be stirring beneath the slabs of the sepulchres which lay so near, that they might associate themselves to this enthusiasm--to this exalted worship of Jesus.
One by one, at last, the faithful approach to receive from the chief minister morsels of the great, white, wheaten cake, he had taken into his hands--Perducat vos ad vitam aeternam! he prays, half-silently, as they depart again, after [140] discreet embraces.

The Eucharist of those early days was, even more entirely than at any later or happier time, an act of thanksgiving; and while the remnants of the feast are borne away for the reception of the sick, the sustained gladness of the rite reaches its highest point in the singing of a hymn: a hymn like the spontaneous product of two opposed militant companies, contending accordantly together, heightening, accumulating, their witness, provoking one another's worship, in a kind of sacred rivalry.
Ite! Missa est!--cried the young deacons: and Marius departed from that strange scene along with the rest.

What was it ?--Was it this made the way of Cornelius so pleasant through the world?
As for Marius himself,--the natural soul of worship in him had at last been satisfied as never before.

He felt, as he left that place, that he must hereafter experience often a longing memory, a kind of thirst, for all this, over again.