gious worship, as having
been handled by great saints years ago, as having been used in
pestilences, as having wrought miracles, as having moved their eyes or
bowed their heads; or, at least, as having been blessed by the priest,
and been brought into connection with invisible grace. This is
superstitious, but it is real."

Charles was not satisfied. "An image is a mode of teaching," he said;
"do you mean to say that a person is a sham merely because he mistakes
the particular mode of teaching best suited to his own country?"

"I did not say that Dr. Gloucester was a sham," answered Sheffield; "but
that mode of teaching of his was among Protestants a sham and a humbug."

"But this principle will carry you too far, and destroy itself," said
Charles. "Don't you recollect what Thompson quoted the other day out of
Aristotle, which he had lately begun in lecture with Vincent, and which
we thought so acute--that habits are created by those very acts in which
they manifest themselves when created? We learn to swim well by trying
to swim. Now Bateman, doubtless, wishes to _introduce_ piscinae and
tabernacles; and to wait, before beginning, _till_ they are received, is
like not going into the water till you can swim."

"Well, but what is Bateman the better when his piscinae are universal?"
asked Sheffield; "what does it _mean_? In the Romish Church it has a
use, I know--I don't know what--but it comes into the Mass. But if
Bateman makes piscinae universal among us, what has he achieved but the
reign of a universal humbug?"

"But, my dear Sheffield," answered Reding, "consider how many things
there are which, in the course of time, have altered their original
meaning, and yet have a meaning, though a changed one, still. The
judge's wig is no sham, yet it has a history. The Queen, at her
coronation, is said to wear a Roman Catholic vestment, is that a sham?
Does it not still typify and impress upon us the 'divinity that doth
hedge a king,' though it has lost the very meaning which the Church of
Rome gave it? Or are you of the number of those, who, according to the
witticism, think majesty, when deprived of its externals, a jest?"

"Then you defend the introduction of unmeaning piscinae and
candlesticks?"

"I think," answered Charles, "that there's a great difference between
reviving and retaining; it may be natural to retain, even while the use
fails, unnatural to revive when it has failed; but this is a question of
discre