y himself offer you at God's throne as his own."
It is impossible to measure the influence which a
personal reality of this kind must have exercised on the
mind, thus daily and hourly impressed upon it through
a life; there is nothing vague any more, no abstract
excellences to strain after; all is distinct, personal,
palpable. It is no dream. The saint's bones are
under the altar; nay, perhaps, his very form and features
undissolved. Under some late abbot the coffin may have
been opened and the body seen without mark or taint
of decay. Such things have been, and the emaciation
of a saint will account for it without a miracle. Daily
some incident of his story is read aloud, or spoken of,
or preached upon. In quaint beautiful forms it lives in
light in the long chapel windows; and in the summer
matins his figure, lighted up in splendour, gleams down
on them as they pray, or streams in mysterious shadowy
tints along the pavement, clad, as it seems, in soft
celestial glory, and shining as he shines in heaven.
Alas, alas, where is it all gone?

We are going to venture a few thoughts on the wide
question, what possibly may have been the meaning of
so large a portion of the human race and so many
centuries of Christianity having been surrendered and
seemingly sacrificed to the working out this dreary
asceticism. If right once, then it is right now; if now
worthless, then it could never have been more than
worthless; and the energies which spent themselves on
it were like corn sown upon the rock, or substance given
for that which is not bread. We supposed ourselves
challenged recently for our facts. Here is an enormous
fact which there is no evading. It is not to be slurred
over with indolent generalities, with unmeaning talk of
superstition, of the twilight of the understanding, of
barbarism, and of nursery credulity; it is matter for the
philosophy of history, if the philosophy has yet been
born which can deal with it; one of the solid,
experienced facts in the story of mankind which must be
accepted and considered with that respectful deference
which all facts claim of their several sciences, and
which will certainly not disclose its meaning (supposing
it to have a meaning) except to reverence, to sympathy,
to love. We must remember that the men who wrote
these stories, and who practised these austerities, were
the same men who composed our liturgies, who built
our churches and our cathedrals--and the gothic cathedr