Julius Firmicus, who relates this, exclaims: "Why do you exhort those unfortunate to rejoice? Why do you deceive them with false promises? The death of your god is known; but his new life is not proved. There is no oracle that ascertains his resurrection; he has not appeared to men after his resurrection to prove his divinity. An idol you bury; upon an idol you mourn; an idol you lift up from the tomb, and having expressed your grief you rejoice," etc. The Church of Rome practices alike ceremonies in celebrating the anniversary day of the death of Jesus Christ. All the ornaments of each church, the statues and images of saints, etc., are clothed in black. In one of the chapels of the church a tomb is prepared, in which, on the Holy Thursday morning, Jesus Christ--namely, a wafer which has been consecrated--is laid, shut up, not in the ostensorium, but in a ciborium, as a sign of mourning. The priests perform this ceremony. During the whole day the church is thronged with people, who come to express to Jesus Christ their sympathy in his sufferings. At about eight o'clock in the evening, a gloomy procession, composed of the priests and the people, march along the streets in the dark (this procession takes place only in Catholic countries,) now and then reciting in a low and dismal tone a verse of the psalm, _Miserere mei Deus_, [translation,] Lord have mercy on me. When this procession has taken place, hymns of suffering and of death are sung in the church, around the tomb in which Jesus Christ lays. At eleven o'clock a priest goes to the pulpit, and in an affecting manner relates to the sobbing and weeping multitude the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ. This address is called Passion's sermon. The people spend the whole night in the church to keep company to Jesus Christ in his sufferings, they say, and to relieve him by their sympathy. In the morning of the Holy Friday the church is yet filled with mourners. The priests, processionally, but in silence, go to the tomb where Jesus Christ lays, take him out, and carry him into the tabernacle, where they shut him up, but without leaving any taper burning in the whole church. In the evening, after the recitation of the _Officium Tenebrarum_, [translation,] Office of Darkness, boys, men, women and all, fill the church with their yells, with the sharp sound of rattles, with the blows they strike on boards with small and large sticks, and with sounding, sonorous instruments, such as horns, etc. A few days after they eat the wafer, which they pretend to be the raw flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.