here the
voice of preaching and invitation was sent forth to sinners to enter the
temple and join in the _worship_ of _praise_ and _prayer_ of the _church
within_.

Why are all these too often as cold and empty outlines of a nothing to
our senses? is it not that their life is gone? But should we therefore
cast away the fragments that remain? should we not rather desire that the
spirit may breathe upon the dry bones, that they may live again, and form
a new and living temple for the most High to dwell in; the outer edifice
of wood and stone, being the _model_ or _statue_ of that spiritual
church, of which every pillar, every window, every beam, and curtain,
should be formed of living members, with Christ for the foundation and
chief corner stone, to be built up and fashioned by the hand of God;
every sand or ash of truth that lies scattered over the surface of the
earthy being cemented together by bonds of love and charity, to form the
masonry of the one great Catholic Church.

Such thoughts may be misunderstood, and bring down upon us, in these days
of Papal Aggression, anathemas from many a zealous reformationist, or
member of the heterogeneous Protestant Alliance, nay, perhaps every shade
of Protestant dissenter, evangelical churchman, and Puseyite, may shake
his head at us in pity, and wonder what we mean; we would say to the
last, beware of the _shadow_ without the _substance_, the _symbol_
without the _truth_, the _emblem_ without the _reality_; and of the
others we would ask forbearance. Popery does not necessarily lurk
beneath the advocacy of _forms_.

With such formidable prejudices as we may possibly have raised by these
suggestive hints, dare we hope to find companions in our visit to the
venerable pile of building, whose spire still rears itself from the
valley, where some eight hundred years ago, the foundations were laid of
one of those huge monastic institutions, combining secular with spiritual
power, once so common, and plentifully scattered over our country, and
even then grown into strange jumbling masses of error and truth, beauty
and deformity? the sole trace of whose grandeur is now to be found in the
church and cloister of a Protestant cathedral, and the palace of a
Protestant bishop.

We must not, however, lose sight of the fact, that this edifice, in
common with most others, among which we have to seek the past history of
the church either at home or abroad, did not spring into existence un