The chasuble, stole and maniple vary in color [pg 337] according to the occasion. Thus, white vestments are used at Christmas, Easter and other festivals of joy, also on feasts of Confessors and Virgins; red are used at Pentecost and on festivals of Apostles and Martyrs; green from Trinity Sunday to Advent, on days having no special feast; purple during Lent and Advent, and black in Masses for the dead.
One more word on this subject. Only a few years ago the whole Protestant world was united in denouncing the use of floral decorations on our altars, incense, sacred vestments, and even the altar itself, as abominations of Popery. But of late a better spirit has taken possession of a respectable portion of the Protestant Episcopal church. After having exhausted their wrath against our vestments, and vilified them as the rags of the wicked woman of Babylon, the members of the Ritualistic church have, with remarkable dexterity, passed from one extreme to the other. They don our vestments, they swing our censer, erect altars in their churches and adorn them with flowers and candle-sticks.
These Ritualists are, however, easily discerned from the true Priest. Should one of them ever appear before the Father of the faithful in these ill-fitting robes the venerable Pontiff would exclaim, with the Patriarch of old: “The voice indeed is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” I feel the garment of the Priest, but I hear the voice of the parson.
God grant that, as our misguided brothers have assumed our sacerdotal garments, they may adopt our faith, that their speech may conform to their dress. Then, having laid aside their earthly stoles, may they deserve, like all faithful Priests, to be seen “standing before the throne, and in [pg 338] sight of the Lamb, with white stoles and palms in their hands, ... saying: ‘Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb.’ ”[434]