With the other, the minister must be a priest, the communion, Mass, and the Catholic service restored. This comes of inventing a religion in a hurry, patching up a provisional government by rebels who have disowned a time-honored throne. This comes of arraying one's self in the shreds of what one's self has rent from the seamless garment. So much for aiming at what a prelate of that communion has recently called "a satisfying amount of ritual," which is to clothe no idea, stand for nothing beyond itself, and soothe the senses without appealing to the faith. So much for the arrogance of deciding that the "godly and decent order of the ancient fathers had been altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories and legends, with a multitude of responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals;" not to speak of the "hardness of the rules called the _Pie_, and the manifold changings of the service." We shall wait to see the result of that "satisfying amount of ritual" in which it is proposed to invest a service purely Protestant; whereabout on the scale the satisfaction is to be placed, and so, whom it is intended to satisfy. One ritual system alone has a gift from heaven to answer and fulfil the yearnings of the soul. {187} One act of uniformity alone is worthy of a thought to the worshipper. The creed rehearses it: "I profess that there are truly and properly seven sacraments of the new law instituted by our Lord, and necessary for the salvation of mankind." Then, "I also receive and admit the received and approved ceremonies of the Catholic Church in the solemn administration of the aforesaid sacraments." It is to express the invisible, and to fence round what is all sacred, and to respond by the tribute of man to the gift of God, that the church has ordained these details of beauty and solemnity. It is essentially as an homage and a reverence to her Lord. This does not contradict what has been said above either of the variety or of the adaptive character of Catholic devotions. For we are here speaking not of devotions as voices of human expression toward God, but of sacraments, the channels of his communications with man. Let me now only mention two other chief instances of the subjectivity of the church's dealings with her children. The whole theory, then, of intentions in prayer is a proof of the adaptive character of Catholic devotion. The _Pater, Ave, Gloria, Credo, the Veni Creator, Miserere, Memorare_, these are, as it were, so many notes in the church's scale. Let me here adopt, though I should also modify, the words of a great writer on a kindred subject. They apply, partly at least, to that on which our thoughts are turned: