The magazine indulges in the old cant about the contrast between the poverty and humility of Peter and the wealth and grandeur of his successors; the simplicity of the primitive worship, and the pomp and splendor of the Roman service. {96} There is no need of answering this. When the Messrs. Harper Brothers started the printing business in this city, we presume their establishment was in striking contrast to their present magnificent establishment in Cliff street. When the world was converted to the church, and the supreme pontiff had to sustain relations with sovereign princes, to receive their ambassadors, and send his legates to every court in Christendom to look after the interests of religion--the chief interest of both society and individuals--larger accommodations than were afforded by that "upper room" in Jerusalem were needed, and a more imposing establishment than St. Peter may have had was a necessity of the altered state of things. Even our Methodist friends, we notice, find it inconvenient to observe the plainness and simplicity in dress and manners prescribed by John Wesley their founder. He forbids, we believe, splendid churches, with steeples and bells; and the earliest houses for Methodist meetings, even we remember, were very different from the elegant structures they are now erecting. We heard a waggish minister say of one of them, "Call you this the Lord's house? you should rather call it the Lord's barn." The Catholic Church continues and fulfils the synagogue, and her service is, to a great extent, modelled after the Jewish, which was prescribed by God himself. The dress of the pontiff, when he celebrates the Holy Sacrifice, is less gorgeous than that of the Jewish high-priest. St. Peter's is larger than was Solomon's temple, but it is not more gorgeous; and the Catholic service, except in the infinite superiority of the victim immolated upon the altar, is not more splendid, grand, or imposing than was the divinely prescribed temple service of the Hebrews. The magazine appears to think with Judas Iscariot, that the costly ointment with which a woman that had been a sinner anointed the feet of Jesus, after she had washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair, was a great waste, and might have been put to a better use. But our Lord did not think so, and Judas Iscariot did not become the prince of the apostles. We owe all we have to God, and it is but fitting that we should employ the best we have in his service.