Thus much we say on the supposition that it might be possible or desirable to restore the ancient constitution of the Church. But we make such a supposition only for the sake of meeting the views of those who, feeling that the ecclesiastical establishments of the present day are unchristian, would fain substitute for them the simple institutions of the primitive Church. Believing as we do, that all such institutions must be classed among the non-essentials of Christianity, we would have them modified according to the circumstances of the age and country in which they are to be used. It is not possible that some of the original Christian ordinances can be advantageously employed in every country and through every age. The first Christians belonged, for the most part, to the middling and lower classes of society, and consequently had few possessions. These possessions, with whatever was voluntarily offered by the few rich men among them, were gathered into a common stock, in order that all might be so far freed from secular cares as to be able to devote their minds and hearts to the furtherance of the cause of the Gospel. It is obvious that the same reasons for establishing a community of goods do not exist in a Christian country, where the faith has no longer to maintain a struggle with the powers which opposed its first promulgation. Nor could such a community of goods answer the same purposes in a wealthy commercial state and among the cantons of Switzerland, among the nobles and boors of Russia, and the back-woodsmen of America; in states where civilization is most advanced, and in regions where the rights of property are almost unrecognized. The same may be said of the external modes of worship. Granting that the complex ceremonies of Roman Catholic worship, so nearly resembling the rites of Paganism, might, by possibility, admit of a connexion with pure Christian faith, it cannot be supposed that the cross, wax lights, and incense can ever form a ritual appropriate to the customs of Arabs or Indians, or that they will help the devotion of the fiftieth generation from the present. Primitive modes of worship have, by a singular ordering of circumstances, been preserved among the Vaudois, and are still consonant with their secular state: but men who dwell amidst ravines and mountain forests think and feel differently, and therefore worship differently from those who inhabit the cities of the plain; while the faith of all is essentially the same. It is, therefore, unreasonable of the Catholic Church to require of all her members, dwell where they may, in the north or in the south, in the metropolis or the wilderness, the vow, 'I also receive and admit the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, received and approved in the solemn administration of all the seven sacraments.'