d instructions, and the
highest enjoyments that the arts could afford."

"You believe then in the efficacy of forms and ceremonies?"

"What you call forms and ceremonies represent the divinest instincts of
our nature. Push your aversion to forms and ceremonies to a legitimate
conclusion, and you would prefer kneeling in a barn rather than in a
cathedral. Your tenets would strike at the very existence of all art,
which is essentially spiritual."

"I am not speaking abstractedly," said Egremont, "but rather with
reference to the indirect connection of these forms and ceremonies
with another church. The people of this country associate them with an
enthralling superstition and a foreign dominion."

"With Rome," said Mr St Lys; "yet forms and ceremonies existed before
Rome."

"But practically," said Egremont, "has not their revival in our service
at the present day a tendency to restore the Romish system in this
country?"

"It is difficult to ascertain what may be the practical effect of
certain circumstances among the uninformed," said Mr St Lys. "The church
of Rome is to be respected as the only Hebraeo-christian church extant;
all other churches established by the Hebrew apostles have disappeared,
but Rome remains; and we must never permit the exaggerated position
which it assumed in the middle centuries to make us forget its early and
apostolical character, when it was fresh from Palestine and as it were
fragrant from Paradise. The church of Rome is sustained by apostolical
succession; but apostolical succession is not an institution complete in
itself; it is a part of a whole; if it be not part of a whole it has no
foundation. The apostles succeeded the prophets. Our Master announced
himself as the last of the prophets. They in their turn were the heirs
of the patriarchs: men who were in direct communication with the Most
High. To men not less favoured than the apostles, the revelation of the
priestly character was made, and those forms and ceremonies ordained,
which the church of Rome has never relinquished. But Rome did not invent
them: upon their practice, the duty of all congregations, we cannot
consent to her founding a claim to supremacy. For would you maintain
then that the church did not exist in the time of the prophets? Was
Moses then not a churchman? And Aaron, was he not a high priest? Ay!
greater than any pope or prelate, whether he be at Rome or at Lambeth.

"In all these church discussions, we ar