"I quite acknowledge the justness of what you say on these points, and shall gladly avail myself of your further counsel; specially I shall be grateful for your advice respecting the construction of the _altar_, and providing its proper furniture: but I have now already trespassed so long on your time, that I must only ask you to explain one thing more, and that is the meaning of the two little hollow square places in the north wall of our chancel." "They formerly were closets, and had doors, no doubt, of carved oak. They are commonly called _almeries_, and are to be found in all old churches, their use in the chancel being to hold the sacred vessels used at the altar; even where they can no longer be utilized, they ought to be preserved as objects of interest[147]." Illustration: Llanfaenor Church _CHAPTER XXIV_ THE ALTAR "We have an altar." Heb. xiii. 10. "Whene'er I seek the holy altar's rail, And kneel to take the grace there offer'd me, It is no time to task my reason frail, To try Christ's words, and search how they may be. Enough, I eat His flesh, and drink His blood; More is not told--to ask it is not good. "I will not say with these, that bread and wine Have vanish'd at the consecration prayer; Far less, with those, deny that aught Divine, And of immortal seed, is hidden there. Hence, disputants! The din which ye admire Keeps but ill measure with the church's choir." _Lyra Apostolica._ Illustration: St. Alban's Church, Holborn THE ALTAR It was late in the evening before the other guests had left the Hall, and our four friends sat down together in the library, without fear of interruption, to continue the conversation of the afternoon. "I should like you to tell me, Mr. Ambrose," said Sir John, "whether you consider that the word _altar_ is properly applied to a table made of wood." "Oh, most certainly it is. The term is equally applicable, whether the altar be made of wood or stone. No doubt stone was the material first used[148], yet at so early a period as the building of the tabernacle, we read that God commanded Moses to make an altar of _wood_[149]. In the earliest days of the Christian Church the altars were, probably without exception, made of wood; but afterwards it became the practice to erect them of stone, and from the sixth[150] to the sixteenth century this rule was all but universal." "How is the change to be accounted for?"