“If mental excitement, attended with the most thrilling and sublime sensations, the effect of deception, could be indulged without injury to our noblest faculties--if life could be made a long dream without the painful startings produced by the din and collision of the world--if the opium of delusion could be largely administered without a complete enervation of our rational energies--the lot of a man of feeling, brought up in the undisturbed belief of the Catholic doctrines, and raised to be a dispenser of its mysteries; would be enviable above all others. No abstract belief, if I am to trust my experience, can either soothe our fears or feed our hopes, independently of the imagination; and I am strongly inclined to assert, that no genuine persuasion exists upon unearthly subjects, without the co-operation of the imaginative faculty. Hence the powerful effects of the splendid and striking system of worship adopted by the Roman church. A foreigner may be inclined to laugh at the strange ceremonies performed in a Spanish cathedral, because these ceremonies are a conventional language to which he attaches no ideas. But he that from the cradle has been accustomed to kiss the hand of the priest, and receive his blessing--that has associated the name and attributes of the Deity with the consecrated bread--that has observed the awe with which it is handled--how none but annointed hands dare touch it--what clouds of incense, what brilliancy of gems surround it when exposed to the view--with what heartfelt anxiety the glare of lights, the sound of music, and the uninterrupted adoration of the priests in waiting, are made to evince the overpowering feeling of a God dwelling among men--such a man alone can conceive the state of a warm-hearted youth, who, for the first time approaches the altar, not as a mere attendant, but as the sole worker of the greatest of miracles.