connected with the Holy Family always lived in grottoes--in Nazareth, in

Bethlehem, in imperial Ephesus--and yet nobody else in their day and

generation thought of doing any thing of the kind. If they ever did,

their grottoes are all gone, and I suppose we ought to wonder at the

peculiar marvel of the preservation of these I speak of. When the Virgin

fled from Herod's wrath, she hid in a grotto in Bethlehem, and the same

is there to this day. The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was

done in a grotto; the Saviour was born in a grotto--both are shown to

pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly strange that these tremendous events all

happened in grottoes--and exceedingly fortunate, likewise, because the

strongest houses must crumble to ruin in time, but a grotto in the living

rock will last forever. It is an imposture--this grotto stuff--but it is

one that all men ought to thank the Catholics for. Wherever they ferret

out a lost locality made holy by some Scriptural event, they straightway

build a massive--almost imperishable--church there, and preserve the

memory of that locality for the gratification of future generations. If

it had been left to Protestants to do this most worthy work, we would not

even know where Jerusalem is to-day, and the man who could go and put

his

finger on Nazareth would be too wise for this world. The world owes the

Catholics its good will even for the happy rascality of hewing out these

bogus grottoes in the rock; for it is infinitely more satisfactory to

look at a grotto, where people have faithfully believed for centuries

that the Virgin once lived, than to have to imagine a dwelling-place for

her somewhere, any where, nowhere, loose and at large all over this town

of Nazareth. There is too large a scope of country. The imagination can

599

The Innocents Abroad