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The place is large enough to contain about thirty or forty individuals, and on that annual solemnity it is usually crowded to the door. The spirit in which these commemorations are sometimes performed is by no means honourable to the Christian character.
With his religious societies for the Church, with his committees, boards, and platforms instead of Bishops, his Record and Patriot newspapers instead of Councils, his concerts for prayer instead of anathemas on heresy and schism, his spoutings at public meetings for exorcisms, his fourths of October for festivals of the Martyrs, his glorious memories for commemorations of the dead, his niggard vestry allowances for gold and silver vessels, his gas and stoves for wax and oil, his denunciations of self-righteousness for fasting and celibacy, and his exercise of private judgment for submission to authority would he have a chance of finding himself at home in a Christianity such as this? is it his own Christianity?
Another phase of the same natural religion is seen in frequent festivals, in the consecration of buildings, ships, fields, labours, and seasons; in intercessions by the greater dead for the living and by the living for the lesser dead a perfect survival of heroes and penates on the one hand and of pagan funeral rites and commemorations on the other.
It is to be hoped that, at this moment, and specifically for this offence, some scores of Exchequer men, chancellors and other rubbish, are in purgatory, and perhaps working, with shirt-sleeves tucked up, in purgatorial glass-houses, with very small allowances of beer, to defray the cost of perspiration. But why trouble a festal remembrance with commemorations of crimes or criminals?
We have long had festal celebrations and joyous commemorations of the natal day and deeds of the minister "the darling of fame" but the above is the most lasting memorial. Its bronze will in all probability outlast the mettle of party. The resemblance is considered striking, and the effect of the statue is bold and dignified.
The feast of the Redeemer the great popular feast of the year is a wonderful Venetian Vauxhall. All Venice on this occasion takes to the boats for the night and loads them with lamps and provisions. Wedged together in a mass it sups and sings; every boat is a floating arbour, a private <i>cafe-concert</i>. Of all Christian commemorations it is the most ingenuously and harmlessly pagan.
Holding all those truths in which the clear voice of God's word is joined by the accordant confession of God's people in all ages; holding all the means of grace of which she was designed to be the steward her common prayers, her pure preaching, her uncorrupted sacraments, her free and living society, her wise and searching discipline, her commemorations and memorials of God's mercy and grace, whether shown in her Lord himself, or in his and her members; looking lovingly upon her elder sisters, the ancient churches, and delighting to be in communion with them, as she hopes that her younger sisters, the churches of later days, will delight to be in communion with her; what has she not, that Christ's bride should have? what has she not, that Mr.
It was hoped that a new arrangement of the year, and a different nomenclature of the months, so as to banish all the commemorations of Christianity, might prepare the way for abolishing religion itself, and, if it were possible to impose the use of the new calendar so far as to exclude the old one, this might certainly assist their more serious atheistical operations; but as the success of such an introduction might depend on the will of the people, and is not within the competence of the bayonet, the old year will maintain its ground, and these pedantic triflers find that they have laboured to no more extensive a purpose, than to furnish a date to the newspapers, or to their own decrees, which no one will take the pains to understand.
But the following is the cruel manner in which, in the English Preface cited as authority, the "embellishments" and "wonderful variety" are characterized: But these many years past, this godly and ancient order of the ancient fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories and legends, with multitudes of responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals, that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, after three or four chapters were read out, all the rest were unread.
He needs general ideas and the daily experiences flowing out of them; he needs some theory explaining the origin and nature of things, one which assigns him his place and the part he has to play in the world, which teaches him his duties, which regulates his life, which fixes the days he shall work and the days he shall rest, which stamps itself on his mind through commemorations, festivals and ceremonies, through a catechism and a calendar.
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