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The clergy preached in a black gown and Genevan bands, using the surplice only in the liturgy; we see no lace or millinery. The churches were stripped of images, the pulpits became high and prominent, the altars were changed to communion-tables without candles and symbols. There was not much account made of singing, for the lyric version of the Psalms was execrable.

Should all pulpits and communion-tables have thenceforth a stain upon them, and the guilty one go unrebuked for it? So I spoke to the unhappy man as I never thought myself warranted in speaking to any other mortal, hitting him hard, doing my utmost to find out his vulnerable part, and prick him into the depths of it. And not without more effect than I had dreamed of, or desired!

Communion-tables became imposing altars typical of Jewish sacrifices, and the relics of martyrs were preserved as sacred amulets. Monastic life ripened also into a grand system of penance, and expiatory rites, such as characterized oriental asceticism.

At the theater enormously expensive nosegays and huge baskets of forced flowers are handed to the favorite performers from the front of the house, till the ceremony becomes embarrassing, and almost ridiculous for the object of the demonstration. The churches at certain festivals are hung with draperies of costly hot-house flowers; the communion-tables heaped with them.

But certainly the Germans do not appear so vivacious, nor the Turks so energetic, as to afford triumphant demonstrations in behalf of the sacred weed. Moreover, the Eastern tobacco is as much milder than ours as are the Continental wines than even those semi-alcoholic mixtures which prevail at scrupulous communion-tables. And as for German health, Dr.

Perhaps it most nearly touched my heart to see among these devoted relics fragments of the humble communion-tables and undecorated pulpits which I recognized as having been torn from the meeting-houses of New England. Those simple edifices might have been permitted to retain all of sacred embellishment that their Puritan founders had bestowed, even though the mighty structure of St.

But they wished they had kept some of the things, like the Provost, says Master Taylor, because they were much put to it when her Grace came down for stuffs to cover the communion-tables and for surplices, for Cecil said she would be displeased if all was bare and poor.

They have not been able to make it up for two or three days. There are four or five pillows lying around, because they have been trying to make you as easy as they could. On the one side of your bed are all the past years of your life the Bibles, the sermons, the communion-tables, the offers of mercy. You say: "Take them away." Your mother thinks you are delirious.

The order to bow at the holy Name was revoked, the communion-tables were replaced in the middle of the churches, and from being called altars were renamed tables. The altar rails were abolished, and the people communicated after the Calvinist manner. A quantity of Catholic books were ostentatiously burned in a public square, and the state of affairs looked less like reunion with Rome than ever.