_Fifthly_, the supremely reverential, including the very best of the laymen and divines; men whose lofty reason is drowned in a yet deeper faith, as mountain-peaks high as the highest in air are said to be submerged in the abysses of the Atlantic. In many cases these might be ranked in the preceding class; for it is a general rule that the more reverence, the more subtlety. They see—how clearly!—the flaws and imperfections of their Church, they even realise the danger of its total fall; but they cannot tear themselves away from the venerable building wherein all their forefathers worshipped, in whose consecrated precincts all their forefathers were buried in hopes of a happy resurrection; whose chants were the rapturous music and whose windows were the heavenly glories of their pure childhood; whose prayers they repeated night after night and morning after morning at their mother’s knee. Can they leave this, with all its treasured holiness of antiquity for some new bold glaring erection, wherein men certainly congregate ta talk about God, but which might just as well be used as a warehouse or a manufactory? No; rather than leave it they will believe, they will force themselves to believe, that some miraculous renovation is at hand, or that (as the structure was certainly raised by God) God will uphold it in spite of the law of gravitation. These are the men who keep the Church from falling into insignificance, but they are not essentially hers. It is not she alone whom they could thus worship. Had they been brought up idolators, idolatry must have retained almost the same influence over spirits so reverentially humble, so loving and pure.