Let me take the worship of the Blessed Virgin, which has of late assumed such terrible dimensions. A modern Roman preacher rarely misses an opportunity of inculcating devotion to Mary. But it was not so with the old preachers. They do use language which cannot always be justified, but, more often, language which ought to be frankly accepted by us, considering that the tone of English reverence is unwarrantably low with regard to the blessed ever-virgin Mother. Often when there is a natural opening for some words of deification of Mary, the preachers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries turn from it to make a moral application to their hearers. I will only instance De Barzia, a bishop of Cadiz. He gives three sermons for the Purification. The first is on the care which a Christian man should take not to scandalize his neighbours by any act which though innocent might give offence, or by the neglect of any duty. The second is on the great danger of setting an evil example. The third is on the funeral taper, by the light of which those truths, which man saw not in the day of his life, are then most evidently discerned. For the Annunciation he gives three sermons. The first on the modesty of Mary, which all should imitate. The second is on the general confession of sin made in Lent. The third is on the promptitude with which man should act on Divine impulses. It is true that De Barzia uses strong language from which we should dissent, on the feasts of the Assumption and the Nativity of Mary; but the fact of letting two of her festivals pass without pointing her out as a prominent object of worship is what, I should suppose, no modern Ultramontane would do. I must now turn to a bright and pleasant feature in these preachers—their keen appreciation of the beauty of nature. This indeed had been a distinguishing characteristic of the Middle Ages. In architecture, in painting, and in poetry, even in preaching, the great book of nature had been studied, and its details reproduced. As the sculptor delighted to represent in stone beast, and bird, and plant; as the painter rejoiced to transfer to canvas, with laborious minuteness, the tender meadow flowers; so did the preacher pluck illustration from the book of nature, or refer his hearers to it, for examples of life.