The wealth
spent on these churches is a sublime and beautiful protest against
materialism--against that use of money which merely brings supply to
the coarse animal wants of life, and which makes of God's house only a
bare pen, in which a man sits to be instructed in his duties.
Yet a moment after I had the other side of the question brought
forcibly to my mind. In an obscure corner was a coarse wooden shrine,
painted red, in which was a doll dressed up in spangles and tinsel, to
represent the Virgin, and hung round with little waxen effigies of
arms, hands, feet, and legs, to represent, I suppose, some favor which
had been accorded to these members of her several votaries through her
intercessions. Before this shrine several poor people were kneeling,
with clasped hands and bowed heads, praying with an earnestness which
was sorrowful to see. "They have taken away their Lord, and they know
not where they have laid him." Such is the end of this superb idolatry
in the illiterate and the poor.
Yet if we _could_, would we efface from the world such cathedrals
as Strasbourg and Cologne? I discussed the question of outward pomp
and ritual with myself while I was walking deliberately round a stone
balustrade on the roof of the church, and looking out through the
flying buttresses, upon the broad sweep of the Rhine, and the queer,
old-times houses and spires of the city.
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