rth age, on the use of
lights in churches, as well as on the shrines of the martyrs, and the
energetic refutation of St Jerome of the charge of superstition preferred
against such a pious usage by that apostate, may be noticed as an
irrefragable argument, in the nineteenth century, to establish the remote
antiquity of this religious custom. After mentioning as a fact of public
notoriety, and in a manner which defied contradiction, that the
Christians, at the time when he was actually writing, which was about the
year 376,(94) were accustomed to illumine their churches during mid-day
with a profusion of wax tapers, Vigilantius proceeds to turn such a
devotion into ridicule. But he met with a learned and victorious opponent,
who, while he vindicated this practice of the church against the objection
of her enemy, took occasion to assign those reasons which induced her to
adopt it. That holy father observes:--'Throughout all the churches of the
East, whenever the Gospel is to be recited, they bring forth lights,
though it be at noon-day; not certainly to shine among darkness, but to
manifest some sign of joy, that under the type of corporeal light may be
indicated that light of which we read in the Psalms, "Thy word is a lamp
to my feet, and a light to my path." ' "--(_Hierurgia_, p. 298.)

Now, I would observe to the learned doctor, that St Jerome, in answering
Vigilantius, maintained, as I have shown above, p. 74, that it was calumny
to say that the Christians burnt candles in the daylight, and that it was
done only by some people, _whose zeal was without knowledge_.
Consequently, the church which has adopted this practice shows, according
to the authority of that "holy and learned father," that _her zeal is
without knowledge_. With regard to the argument in support of the
abovementioned practices given by St Jerome, and reproduced by our author,
that the Eastern churches make use of lights, I admit that it is
unanswerable, because it is an undoubted fact that the Graeco-Russian
Church makes an immense consumption of wax candles, chiefly burnt before
the images, and it remains for me only to congratulate the advocates of
this practice on the support which they derive from such an imperative
authority as that of the Graeco-Russian Church.

It remains for me now only to say a few words about the _incense_, which
forms a constituent part of the service of the Roman Catholic and
Graeco-Russian Churches, as much as the holy wa