ht urge that the spices
and frankincense and salt were not in themselves sacred: there was no
consecrating efficacy in their combination, no charm or spell in the
union of these, more than of any other drugs. Why, then, should they be
denied to culture? Why should her resources be thus restricted? Does any
one suppose that such arguments belong peculiarly to the New Testament
spirit, or that the saints of the older dispensation had any
superstitious views about these ingredients? If it was through such
notions that they abstained from vulgarising its use, then they were on
the way to paganism, through a materialised worship.

But in truth they knew as well as we that gums were only gums, just as
they knew that the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.
And yet they were bidden to reverence both the shrine and the apparatus
of His worship, for their own sakes, for the solemnity and sobriety of
their feelings, not because God would be a loser if they did otherwise.
And we may well ask ourselves, in these latter days, whether the
constant proposal to secularise religious buildings, revenues,
endowments and seasons does really indicate greater religious freedom,
or only greater freedom from religious control.

And we may be sure that a light treatment of sacred subjects and sacred
words is a very dangerous symptom: it is not the words and subjects
alone that are being secularised, but also our own souls.

There is in our time a curious tendency among men of letters to use holy
things for a mere perfume, that literature may "smell thereto."

A novelist has chosen for the title of a story "Just as I am." An
innocent and graceful poet has seen a smile,--

"'Twas such a smile,
Aaron's twelve jewels seemed to mix
With the lamps of the golden candlesticks."

Another is bolder, and sings of the war of love,--

"In the great battle when the hosts are met
On Armageddon's plain, with spears beset."

Another thinks of Mazzini as the

"Dear lord and leader, at whose hand
The first days and the last days stand,"

and again as he who

"Said, when all Time's sea was foam,
'Let there be Rome,' and there was Rome."

And Victor Hugo did not shrink from describing, and that with a strange
and scandalous ignorance of the original incidents, the crucifixion by
Louis Napoleon of the Christ of nations.

Now, Scripture is literature, besides being a great deal more; and, as