they testify, checking, by their tacit protest against novelties, all possibility of a prescription in their favour.

Protestants, in discarding the Solemnities of the Church do but more completely exhibit the vast interval that separates them from her. To hear their language one would suppose her ritual system to be an innovation of later ages; so resolutely do they close their eyes to the fact that all the Fathers downwards contain innumerable references to the same ceremonies now in use, as observed in their own and preceding times.

Sometimes their argument takes another turn. "They cannot discover," they maintain, "in these ceremonies anything but a medley of superstitions. Is not God a pure spirit? and can He delight then in a worship that appeals to the senses?" Most certainly, I reply, God is a pure Spirit; and none hold this truth more firmly than Catholics. But those who serve Him here on earth are not pure spirits. They have bodies; they have senses which need to be addressed in relation to the unseen God; and which need to address Him in turn in their own fashion, and to bear their part with the soul, if we would worship Him in spirit and in truth.

"But the Gospel," they allege again, "says nothing of ceremonies." If so, I rejoin, it assuredly cannot forbid them. But I will go further. It authorises them. Does it not, for example, describe our Lord as employing on occasion, certain exterior observances? His stretching forth His

hands to bless-His kneeling down-prostrating Himself-touching with spittle the eyes and ears -what are all these but so many rites? In the Acts we find the Apostles following His example, all which, surely, is proof sufficient that outward observances in themselves do not necessarily imply superstition. And if, as must be admitted, the Church in her infancy did not exhibit all the external pomp that now adorns her worship, the reason is evident. Persecuted-hunted from place to place-buried in the dim recesses of the Catacombs that early Church had no opportunity of setting forth the glories of the new Sion. She could but sing her songs in an under-tone amidst tears and blood. No sooner, however, did she enjoy comparative liberty than she made use of her altered circumstances, to indulge the full feelings of her heart.

Again, the heretics renew their charge. We "have borrowed," they declare, "our ceremonies from the pagans." I reply-Supposing this to be so, what command exists against applying the treasures of Egypt to the ornamentation of God's tabernacle? We have borrowed the pagan temples, purified them, transformed them into Churches, and made them subservient to the worship of the true God. What harm, if it were so, in turning to a similar account the lights, incense, processions, chants, and other usages of paganism? But, in point of fact, it is not paganism that furnished the Church with these rites. Rather, it borrowed them from her. The majority of them were in use in the Jewish Church long before Christ's

coming; and there is every reason to believe that the pagan world obtained them from this source, or from the Church in her still earlier stage. And if our adversaries must carry their opposition so far as to condemn the Catholic Church for turning to her profit the ceremonies of Judaism, let them be consistent, and condemn in like manner, her appropriation of the ten commandments. No! If the Church of the Apostles has adopted a ceremonial, it was not, let us be assured, from a desire simply to copy the Jews or any other nation; but because, in that knowledge of the human heart communicated to her by her Almighty founder who "knew what was in man," she intimately perceived our need of exterior sensible signs in order to lift us up to God; and that apart from them religion can hardly subsist. So true is that saying of St. Augustine's, that religious ceremonies "were to the Jews a type of good things to come; to the pagans a sacrilegious counterfeit invented by the spirit of lies; while to the Christian they are the robe of honour which commends and beautifies the truth of God."

And here among the observances of the Church, let me, in conclusion, specify one class, distinct of its kind, which has a peculiar claim on the love and veneration of Catholics-that of Sacramentals, as certain religious usages are termed from their resemblance to Sacraments, although they are, in fact, of simply ecclesiastical institution. Oh, what countless blessings is the great Catholic people continually deriving from the use of Holy Water, of the Sign of the Cross, of the Agnus

Dei-of blessed rosaries, medals, scapulars-and from other similar practices! Let an unbelieving world ridicule such observances as vain and superstitious. The true Catholic has learnt by experience of himself and others how profitable they are to the soul; and is well persuaded that nothing can be superstitious on which Holy Church has set her seal.

FIFTH MEDITATION.

The Church as preserving the Holy state of
Virginity.

The abnegation of sensual enjoyments as facilitating a closer union with God, was not unknown or unpractised under the Old Law. Elias, and others of the prophets led a virgin life. God declares by Isaias that to such as observe it, He will give "in his house and within his walls, a place and a name better than sons and daughters."* The Book of Wisdom sets forth the blessedness of continence. "She shall have fruit in the visitation of holy souls; the precious gift of faith shall be given her, and a most acceptable lot in the Temple of the Lord."+ Virginity, then is no invention of the Catholic Church. It is an inheritance which she has received, which

she preserves, and which she appreciates even more highly than the Church of old.

How, indeed, can she avoid estimating it at the very highest, when she sees Mary rejecting the august dignity of a divine maternity, if thereby she must cease to be a virgin-when she sees her adorable Founder, Himself a virgin, surrounding Himself with virgins, and giving to virginity His manifest predilection-and when in words of profound import she hears Him declare that there are undoubtedly those whom God calls to this eminent state:* or, again, when she hears St. Paul announcing with apostolic authority that virginity, the state of his own choice, is to him so great a treasure, that he would wish all to resemble him in this respect, did he not know that " every man has his proper gift from God, one after this manner, another after that?"

No sooner had Christianity commenced its career, than we see holy Virginity extending with it side by side. There is nothing more touching to the Catholic heart, than to observe the ardour displayed from the first by the Pastors of the Church in behalf of this cherished portion of Christ's flock. Witness the zeal of St. Cyprian in its defence. Witness the preaching of St. Ambrose, which was such, that mothers would hide their daughters away, for fear of their being attracted by him to this sublime vocation. Both St. Augustine and St. Jerome wrote in praise of holy virginity, and have left behind valuable