FOOTNOTES
1: It is curious and instructive to observe how history repeats itself, and how much sameness there is in the human heart in every age. Even in the Primitive Church, says Canon Robertson, "Many persons were found at church for the great Christian ceremonies, and at the theatres, or even at the temples, for the heathen spectacles. The ritual of the Church was viewed as a theatrical spectacle. The sermons were listened to as the display of rhetoricians; and eloquent preachers were cheered, with clapping of hands, stamping of feet, waving of handkerchiefs, cries of 'Orthodox,' 'Thirteenth Apostle,' and such like demonstrations, which such teachers as Chrysostom and Augustine tried to restrain, that they might persuade their flocks to a more profitable manner of hearing. Some went to Church for the sermon only, alleging that they could pray at home. And when the more attractive parts of the service were over, the great mass of the people departed without remaining for the eucharist."—Robertson's "Church History," b. II., ch. vi., p. 356.
2: If any one fancies that St. Paul's words to the Hebrews, "We have an altar," are a proof that the Lord's table is an altar, I advise him to read what Waterland, no mean theologian, says on the subject:—"Christians have an altar whereof they partake. That altar is Christ our Lord, who is Altar, Priest, and Sacrifice, all in One."—Waterland's Works, Vol. V., 268. Oxford edition.
3: See Proctor on the Common Prayer, p. 320.
4: In the Greek language one and the same word only is used for "love" and "charity." In our English version our translators have sometimes rendered this word one way and sometimes another.
5: To prevent mistakes, I think it well to say that the man I refer to is Patrick Henry, an American Statesman of the last century.
6: The following weighty passage, from the pen of the judicious Hooker, is commended to the attention of all in the present day. It is the opening passage of the first book of his "Ecclesiastical Polity."
"He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers, because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regiment or government is subject; but the secret lets and difficulties, which in public proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider. And because such as openly reprove disorders of States are taken for principal friends to the common benefit of all, and for men that carry singular freedom of mind, under this fair and plausible colour whatsoever they utter passeth for good and current. That which is wanting in the weight of their speech is supplied by the aptness of men's minds to accept and believe it. Whereas, on the other side, if we maintain things that are established, we have not only to strive with a number of heavy prejudices, deeply rooted in the breasts of men, who think that herein we serve the times, and speak in favour of the present state, because we either hold or seek preferment; but also to bear such reception as minds so averted beforehand usually take against that which they are loth should be poured into them."
7: Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, at a time when all Spain was laughing at his humorous work, was overwhelmed with a deep cloud of melancholy.
Molière, the first of French comic writers, carried into his domestic circle a sadness which the greatest worldly prosperity could never dispel.
Samuel Foote, the noted wit of the last century, died of a broken heart.