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it was out of keeping with the religious habits of the rest of the year. This then the weekly Fast and solemn recollection recommended by the Church are calculated to remedy; as indeed, had they been observed, these feelings would never have found place. In whatever degree its advice is adhered to, Good Friday becomes a day of more chastened, and yet, probably, of intenser feeling; it is connected with a train of the like emotions, affections, and resolves; insulated no longer, but the holiest only among the holy. "Neither in moral or religious, more than in physical and civil matters," says a very acute observer of human nature, "do people willingly do any thing suddenly or upon the instant; they need a succession of the like actions, whereby a habit may be formed; the things which they are to love, or to perform, they cannot conceive as insulated and detached: whatever we are to repeat with satisfaction, must not have become foreign to us."^[1] The prin-

↑ Goethe aus meinem Leben, tom. ii. p. 179. The author is there lamenting "the nakedness which, Jeremy Taylor says, the excellent men of our sister Churches complained to be among themselves," and which our own happily avoided. In the contrast there drawn, it is not a little remarkable to see, that the doctrine of Apostolical Succession which has of late been by some regarded as cold and unpractical, is put forward as that which gives to the Romish Sacraments a warmth, which the Lutheran Church does not possess. He sums up thus; "All these spiritual miracles spring not, like other fruits, from the natural soil; there can they neither be sown, nor planted, nor nurtured. One must obtain them by prayer from another country; and this cannot every one do, nor at all times. Here then we are met by the highest of these symbols derived from an old venerable tradition. We hear that one man can be favoured, blessed, consecrated from above more than others. Yet, in order that this may appear no mere natural gift, this high favour, united as it is with a weight of duty, must be transmitted from one commissioned individual to another; and the greatest good which man can attain, and yet cannot possess himself of by any exertions or power of his own, must be preserved and perpetuated upon earth by a spiritual inheritance. Nay, in the consecration of the Priest, every thing is united, which is necessary for effectually joining in those other holy ordinances, whereby the mass of Believers is benefitted, without their having any other active share therein, than that of Faith and unconditional confidence. And thus the Priest is enrolled in the succession of those who have preceded or shall come after him, and in the circle of those anointed to the same office, to represent Him, from whom all blessings flow; and that the more gloriously, because it is not Himself whom we respect, but His office; it is not before His bidding that we bow the knee, but before the benediction which he imparts, and which seems the more sacred, the more immediately derived from Heaven, because the earthly instrument cannot, by any sinfulness or viciousness of his own, weaken it, or render it powerless." The author manifestly speaks of the value of the Sacraments, with the feelings with which a spectator might be inspired, but still as one, in whom great powers of observation could supply every thing but the warmth of actual experience.

[1] Goethe aus meinem Leben, tom. ii. p. 179. The author is there lamenting "the nakedness which, Jeremy Taylor says, the excellent men of our sister Churches complained to be among themselves," and which our own happily avoided. In the contrast there drawn, it is not a little remarkable to see, that the doctrine of Apostolical Succession which has of late been by some regarded as cold and unpractical, is put forward as that which gives to the Romish Sacraments a warmth, which the Lutheran Church does not possess. He sums up thus; "All these spiritual miracles spring not, like other fruits, from the natural soil; there can they neither be sown, nor planted, nor nurtured. One must obtain them by prayer from another country; and this cannot every one do, nor at all times. Here then we are met by the highest of these symbols derived from an old venerable tradition. We hear that one man can be favoured, blessed, consecrated from above more than others. Yet, in order that this may appear no mere natural gift, this high favour, united as it is with a weight of duty, must be transmitted from one commissioned individual to another; and the greatest good which man can attain, and yet cannot possess himself of by any exertions or power of his own, must be preserved and perpetuated upon earth by a spiritual inheritance. Nay, in the consecration of the Priest, every thing is united, which is necessary for effectually joining in those other holy ordinances, whereby the mass of Believers is benefitted, without their having any other active share therein, than that of Faith and unconditional confidence. And thus the Priest is enrolled in the succession of those who have preceded or shall come after him, and in the circle of those anointed to the same office, to represent Him, from whom all blessings flow; and that the more gloriously, because it is not Himself whom we respect, but His office; it is not before His bidding that we bow the knee, but before the benediction which he imparts, and which seems the more sacred, the more immediately derived from Heaven, because the earthly instrument cannot, by any sinfulness or viciousness of his own, weaken it, or render it powerless." The author manifestly speaks of the value of the Sacraments, with the feelings with which a spectator might be inspired, but still as one, in whom great powers of observation could supply every thing but the warmth of actual experience.

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