ns
out before you like a vast plain or strath, and gives you a colossal
standard of measurement, which you apply unconsciously to every
object,--the pillars, the statues, the roof; and though these are all
colossal too, yet so nicely are they proportioned to all around them,
that you take no note of their bulk. You pass on, and the grandeur of
the edifice opens upon you. Beneath you are rows of dead popes; on
either side rise gigantic statues and monuments which genius has raised
to their memory; and in front is the high altar of the Roman world,
towering to the height of a three-story house, yet looking, beneath that
sublime roof, of only ordinary size. You are near the reputed tombs of
Peter and Paul, before which an hundred golden lamps burn day and night.
And now the mighty dome opens upon you, like the vault of heaven itself.
You begin to feel the wondrous magnificence of the edifice in which you
stand, and you give way to the admiration and awe with which it inspires
you. But next moment comes the saddening thought, that this pile,
unrivalled as it is among temples made with hands, is literally useless.
There is no worship in it. Here the sinner hears no tidings of a free
salvation. This temple but enshrines a wafer, and serves once or twice
a-year as the scene of an idle pageant on the part of a few old men.

Nay, not only is it useless,--it is one of the strongholds which
superstition has thrown up for perpetuating its sway over the world. You
see these few poor people kneeling before these burning lamps. Their
prayer is directed, not upwards through that dome to the heavens above
it, but downwards into that vault where sleep, as they believe, the
ashes of Peter and Paul. Rome has ever discouraged family worship, and
taught men to pray in churches. Why? To increase the power of the Church
and the priesthood. A country covered with households in which family
worship is kept is like a country covered with fortresses;--it is
impregnable. Every house is a citadel, and every family is a little
army. Or mark yonder female who kneels before the perforated brazen
lattice of yonder confessional-box. She is whispering her sins into the
ear of a shaven priest, who receives them into his own black heart. It
is but a reeking cess-pool, not a fountain of cleansing, to which she
has come. Such are the uses of St Peter's,--a temple where the _Church_
is glorified at the expense of _religion_. Its high altar stops the way
to the