We shall
ever bless God, that we have learnt in another school not to condemn
the customs and manners of other countries and other people, merely
because they differ from our own; and that we are disposed to
attribute to signs the meaning attached to them by those who adopt
them, and not that of our own fancies. Men of warmer climates than our
own convey to others their sentiments and feelings by action as easily
as by the tongue. Italians, as well as Greeks and Orientals, have
inherited from their fathers a language of gesture more powerful and
expressive than that of words. The Hebrew prophets, Isaiah, Ezechiel,
and others, nay Christ himself, spoke by action as well by the tongue.
God appointed in the old law innumerable ceremonies: Christ in the new
law of spirit and truth instituted sacred rites, or sanctified those
which previously existed: the early church imitated His blessed
example: and they have been faithfully preserved as a precious
inheritance till the present time. The very objection, that some of
them were borrowed from Jews or Pagans, is a proof of their primitive
antiquity: Christ or the church removed from them all profaneness or
superstition, and then adopted and sanctified them. (See Wiseman's
Letters to Poynder). If all parties unite in approbation of the
illumination of the cupola of S. Peter's, and of the fireworks of S.
Angelo, considered as outward demonstrations of the exultation of the
church at the resurrection of her Divine Spouse; we shall ever admire
also the expressions of christian feeling exhibited in the interior
of her temples, whether they consist in ceremonies or words; and on
this day emulating the transports of joy of the fervent and eloquent
pilgrim to Jerusalem and Mount Sinai, when shall unite our voices with
those of the angelic spirits in singing, _Alleluja_; "because Jesus
Christ, our Lord, who was delivered up for our sins, rose again for
our justification".
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