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themselves, were it not that these arguments, by their very weakness, prove the necessity of religion. In a series of religious chats with a young gentleman, lately, I found his first great difficulty was that religion was an old story, something belonging to a bygone age. Old! most assuredly it is old! As old as the human race, for it is the relation of man to God. I trace it back through the Christian era; back to Calvary and the cross of Christ; back to Moses and Aaron; back to the caves of the prophets and the tents of the patriarchs; back to the cradle of humanity, and thence back to heaven, whence it comes. Is age her shame, or is it not rather like an old lady's gray hairs, her crown of glory? A crisp bank-note or a brilliant coin is suspected as counterfeit by reason of its very newness. So, too, the various non-Catholic sects are discredited by their own modernity; whereas one instinctively turns for the genuine article to that religion, and that alone, which with its God can say of itself: " Before Abraham was, I am;" of which the Psalmist says: " Thou art ever the selfsame and thy years shall not fail." " Oh, but," my friend replies, " religion has changed and does change!" Change, yes, as Christ changed from a babe to a youth and full-grown man. True, she was, in times of persecution, often changed, as was Christ by His Passion from the most beautiful of the sons of men to a mangled felon on the cross with no beauty in Him. Change! yes, as the tree changes its girth and the spread of its branches; changes in her ceremonies as the tree