penitent, or the bread of the strong and perfect; the sacred anthems heard there are the groanings of a contrite heart, or the sighs of a chaste and believing soul. And on this account it is that the church takes care to purify even every thing that is to appear on the altar; she consecrates with prayers even the stones of these holy buildings, as if to render them worthy of sustaining the presence and the looks of the God who dwelleth in them: she exposes at the doors of our temples a water sanctified by prayers, and recommends to believers to sprinkle it over their heads before they enter into the holy place, as if to complete their purification from any slight stains which might still remain; lest the sanctity of the God before whom they come to appear should be injured by them.
Formerly, the church permitted not, within the circle of her sacred walls, even tombs to the bodies of believers; she received not into that holy spot the spoils of their mortality; she did not believe that the temple of God, that new heaven filled with his presence and glory, should serve as an asylum to the ashes of those whom she numbered not as yet among the blessed.
The public penitents themselves were for a long time excluded from assisting at the holy mysteries. Prostrated at the doors of the temple, covered with hair-cloth and ashes, even the assembly of believers was denied to them equally as to the anathematized: their tears and their mortifications alone could at length open to them these sacred gates. And what delight, when, after having groaned for, and supplicated their reconciliation, they found themselves in the temple among their brethren; they once more beheld those altars, that sanctuary, those ministers so deeply engaged in the awful mysteries; they heard their names pronounced at the altar with those of the believers, and sung with them hymns and holy songs! What tears of rapture and of religion were then not shed! What regret for having so long deprived themselves of so sweet a consolation! A single day, O my God, passed in thy holy house, cried they, no doubt, with the prophet, is more consoling to the heart than whole years spent in pleasure and in the tents of the wicked! Such were formerly the temples of Christians. Far from these sacred walls, said then the minister with a loud voice to all the assembly of believers, — far from these sacred walls be the unclean, the impure, the worshippers of idols, and whosoever loveth or maketh a lie.
The church, it is true, no longer makes this rigorous discrimination. The multitude of believers, and the depravation of manners, having rendered it impossible, she opens the gates of our temples indifferently to the righteous and to sinners: she draws the veil of her sanctuary in presence even of the profane; and, in order to begin the awful mysteries, her ministers no longer wait the departure of the sinful and unclean. But the church supposes that, if you be not righteous in coming here to appear before the majesty of a God so holy, you bring with you at least desires of righteousness and of penitence: she supposes, that, if not yet altogether
