ing at
prayer."

"Therein you are mistaken, Templemore," answered Paul; "for this
country, to say nothing of one sect which holds it in utter
abomination, is filled with them. Our pious ancestors, like
neophytes, ran into extremes, on the subject of forms, as well as in
other matters. When you go to Philadelphia, Miss Effingham, you will
see an instance of a most ludicrous nature--ludicrous, if there were
not something painfully revolting mingled with it--of the manner in
which men can strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; and which, I am
sorry to say, is immediately connected with our own church."

It was music to Eve's ears, to hear Paul Powis speak of his pious
ancestors, as being American, and to find him so thoroughly
identifying himself with her own native land; for, while condemning
so many of its practices, and so much alive to its absurdities and
contradictions, our heroine had seen too much of other countries, not
to take an honest pride in the real excellencies of her own. There
was, also, a soothing pleasure in hearing him openly own that he
belonged to the same church as herself.

"And what is there ridiculous in Philadelphia, in particular, and in
connection with our own church?" she asked. "I am not so easily
disposed to find fault where the venerable church is concerned."

"You know that the Protestants, in their horror of idolatry,
discontinued, in a great degree, the use of the cross, as an outward
religious symbol; and that there was probably a time when there was
not a single cross to be seen in the whole of a country that was
settled by those who made a profession of love for Christ, and a
dependence on his expiation, the great business of their lives?"

"Certainly. We all know our predecessors were a little over-rigid and
scrupulous on all the points connected with outward appearances."

"They certainly contrived to render the religious rites as little
pleasing to the senses as possible, by aiming at a sublimation that
peculiarly favours spiritual pride and a pious conceit. I do not know
whether travelling has had the same effect on you, as it has produced
on me; but I find all my inherited antipathies to the mere visible
representation of the cross, superseded by a sort of solemn affection
for it, as a symbol, when it is plain, and unaccompanied by any of
those bloody and minute accessories that are so often seen around it
in Catholic countries. The German Protestants, who usually ornament