either no longer support the girl as they now do, or remove her entirely out of her reach. Her means are such that she is unable to support both if thrown on her hands; could she hope that the boy would be placed in any charitable institution, she would undertake the support of the others, and would immediately remove both from those influences, which she now feels deeply will prove destructive to their eternal welfare.

The Committee of the British Reformation Society having heard read to them the account given by Lady Ducie of the conversion of Mrs. Ma widow, from the Romish religion to Protestant Christianity, and her anxious desire to take her children-the boy from a Romish school, and the girl from a convent on the Continent, and educate them in Scriptural truth, and also having received Lady Ducie's generous promise to aid in their education in the knowledge of the truth, the Committee resolve to give 3s 6d a week for twelve months, expressly for the education of the children, it being a condition that they be instructed in Protestant religious principles, and by a teacher thoroughly acquainted with Protestant and evangelical religion; and that the case of Mrs. M— and this resolution be inserted in the "British Protestant."

THE PROGRESS OF ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE.

(Continued from page 140, No. XLV.)

THE Christian edifices for centuries possessed but one communion table, and the erection of side chapels to saints was a thing wholly unknown in them; it was not indeed till the 10th or 11th centuries that churches were generally erected with side chapels for saints, and the buildings of early date possessing side chapels have had the old walls cut through to admit of their insertion. It is quite clear therefore, that this worship of saints did not form part of

the tenets or the practices of the primitive Christians; and if the practice in question was a right one, how is it that this honour was not for centuries paid to the Apostles or the martyrs, their contemporaries; and if the Christians for these centuries could do without the intercession of these saints, how is it that that intercession could become an essential thing afterwards? Besides, as Christianity was for all men in all time, it was very unfair thus to monopolize all the best places in heaven, or the calendar for the saints of the first few centuries in the existence of the Church, as good, or better men might come after them without the opportunity of getting into the calendar even edgewise, and a great practical injustice would thus be perpetrated, if there was any real value in the honour or the position conferred on their predecessors.

These two things, saint-worship and transubstantiation, have impressed their mark on all the structures erected in this country, in France, or in Germany, from the 9th to the 15th centuries: less in Italy, because there the ancient architectural precedents always exerted a counter influence, and prevented that complete departure from the primitive models which obtained elsewhere-a departure which was the more marked as the corruptions became more gross and fixed in the Church.

The leading facts and arguments of the preceding essay may be thus briefly recapitulated. That all architectural styles came from one source, and owe their progress and development to the influence of climate, nature of materials, and principles of construction on which the decoration was founded; and that Creeds, whether true or false, have had nothing whatever to do with styles, which, like languages, are of races, nations, and countries: that it is, consequently, as absurd to speak of a church being in the Pagan style, when Roman or Grecian architecture is employed, as to call a Bible Pagan when in the Roman or Grecian tongue; and that it is as rational to denominate Christmas plum-puddings, Christian ones,

as to designate the style of architecture developed in the middle ages by the appellation of "the Christian art."

The plans or arrangements of ecclesiastical structures are totally distinct from the style in which they may be executed, and in these plans we may clearly trace the influence of Creeds or superstitions; the buildings in their various transformations thus affording significant illustrations to ecclesiastial history. For the first five or six centuries churches were exclusively built in the Roman or Byzantine styles, and in some parts of Christendom have continued up to this time to be erected in modifications of those styles. The gradual change effected by the introduction of the arch led to important variations, which were only carried out to their legitimate results in those countries which derived their knowledge of the arts from the Romans, but where the ancient precedents in the classic styles were not in sufficient number to check the tendency to a different method of construction, and thus arose the Gothic, in elucidating which it would be difficult to say which had the greater or the more important share, Pagans, Mahomedans, or Christians; each most unquestionably contributing very important ingredients in the composition.

For the first eight or nine centuries the plans of ecclesiastical structures continued closely to resemble the models respectively adopted by the Eastern and Western Churches; those models evincing the knowledge of all Christendom of those great Christian verities, that the typical temple architecture, its rites and its ceremonies, its priests and its sacrifices, were fulfilled and abrogated by the coming of Christ, and that the Christian community was a family, and its places of public worship meeting-houses, where that family, with its elected heads, might assemble together for prayer and praise.

The ambition of many of the leading pastors of the flocks led to the assertion and assumption of sacerdotal claims, to the gradual invention of the doctrine of transubstantiation, in order to justify the change

from pastors into priests, by providing a visible sacrifice, without which a priesthood was but a barren mockery.

To prop the spiritual tyranny thus set up, all views of Christian doctrine were favoured that tended to magnify and justify the priestly office, to increase the power and swell the revenues of those filling that office; the various orders of the priesthood_each striving to rise above the other, till at last the Patriarch in the Eastern, and the Pope in the Western Churches became, each in their respective localities, paramount over all. The doctrine of transubstantiation, absurd and idolatrous as it is, was the very corner-stone of this erection of priestcraft, and the priests, who claimed the power of making a bit of bread into God, became naturally anxious to procure for this creation of theirs all the veneration they could induce the people to bestow, because homage to it was the safest way to procure homage to the priestly power; thus the places in churches where the original wooden table most usually stood, were gradually invested with the consideration of sacred spots; curtains being first used to keep the laity from gazing too freely on them, and when the people had been gradually brought to the proper degree of submission and oblivion of their ancient privileges, the use of the wine was forbidden to them as too great an honour, being one which the priests alone deserved and after this same idolatrous and blasphemous doctrine of transubstantiation had, at the Council of Trent, been definitively adopted by the Church-the Church then meaning the priests in questions of government, the laity in questions of payment-additional veneration was paid to the consecrated elements, additional importance was attached to the places in the churches where the ceremonies in question were performed, and the substitution of stone altars for the wooden table gave an additional air of vrai-semblance to the idea that a visible sacrifice was offered

up.

The form of the old churches, however, was not at all a convenient one for the embodiment of such an idea as this; open halls, with a shallow recess at one

end for the seats of the presiding bishops and ministers, were inconvenient things to transform into holy of holies; the original use of the recess was, therefore, changed into a place for the "holy altar," screens being stuck up to insure its privacy, and the "priests" came between it and the people who were thrust lower down the church. In the new churches now erecting in countries of newer converts, full swing was allowed to the prevailing superstition; the chancel in successive ages became more and more elongated, changed, in fact, into a TRANSUBSTANTIATION, and the roodscreen to shut the people out of it, eventually formed part of the construction, instead of being, as in all the old churches, a mere after-thought.

The other gross superstitions which crept into and deformed the Church, in like manner also impressed their mark on the buildings. Saint-worship and Maryworship were unknown to the Apostolical Christians, and no churches erected in the first ages ofChristianity possessed any altar, or more than one table; there was not a saint chapel or Virgin Mary niche in them; the churches of the Constantine age now possessing those features having had them added by alterations in after ages. In this respect also, the new churches the further removed from the influence of the old Roman architectural precedents in forms of churches, the more completely embody or accommodate the gross corruptions of Christian doctrine of which Rome was the seat and centre; and thus we find the ecclesiastical structures of the middle ages, such Talmuds in stone, such complete petrifactions of the gross errors that have so long deformed the Church; and thus we find those desirous of again establishing a spiritual tyranny, leaning to the errors which originally accompanied the manifestation of a similar spirit, and zealously endeavouring to restore the deep chancels or transubstantiations, the rood-screens and the stone altars, the unmistakeable symbols of idolatry and priesteraft; and this is why one of the organs of this party assails with such bitter invectives, such libellous criticisms, and such deliberate mistatements, the works of those architects who follow antiquity in their