and she may stumble at noonday. But the light
is as pure as in the days of the apostles; and, if we have eyes to
profit by it, we may "understand more than the ancients." The art of
printing has supplied us with facilities for the study of the Scriptures
which were denied to the fathers of the second century; and the
ecclesiastical documents, relative to that age, which have been
transmitted to us from antiquity, contain, perhaps, the greater part of
even the traditionary information which was preserved in the Church. If
we are only "taught of God," we are in as good a position for acquiring
a correct acquaintance with the way of salvation as was Polycarp or
Justin Martyr. What an encouragement for every one to pray--"Open thou
mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. I am a
stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me!" [461:11]

SECTION III.

THE WORSHIP AND CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.

CHAPTER I.

THE WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH.

The religion of the primitive Christians must have appeared exceedingly
strange to their pagan contemporaries. The heathen worship was little
better than a solemn show. Its victims adorned with garlands, its
incense and music and lustral water, its priests arrayed in white robes,
and its marble temples with gilded roofs, were fitted, rather to
fascinate the senses, than to improve the heart or expand the intellect.
Even the Jewish ritual, in the days of its glory, must have had a
powerful effect on the imagination. As the Israelites assembled from all
quarters at their great festivals--as they poured in thousands and tens
of thousands into the courts of their ancient sanctuary--as they
surveyed the various parts of a structure which was one of the wonders
of the world--as they beheld the priests in their holy garments--and as
they gazed on the high priest himself, whose forehead glittered with
gold whilst his breastplate sparkled with precious stones--they must
have felt that they mingled in a scene of extraordinary splendour. But,
when Christianity made its appearance in the world, it presented none of
these attractions. Its adherents were stigmatized as atheists, [463:1]
because they had no altars, no temples, and no sacrifices. They held
their meetings in private dwellings; their ministers wore no peculiar
dress; and, by all who sought merely the gratification of the eye or of
the ear, the simple service in which they engaged must