have been tailors, tinkers, shoemakers, barbers, but
are now filled with divine light, and may do the signs and wonders done
by the apostles in an earlier day.

With apostolic pretensions, these men are careless of apostolic
simplicity. They must meet, not in an upper room, but in a gorgeous
cathedral; they must array themselves in grotesque garments; they must
have tapers and incense--Roman Catholic forms and ceremonies. One would
have thought that the name of Edward Irving would have been kept free
from such things; that his followers would have been above them; that
they would as much as most realize the spirituality of Him who dwells not
in houses made with hands, and whose temple is the lowly and contrite
heart. Genius like Irving's would have lent grandeur to a barn; and now
the master is gone, and having no more an orator to enchant them, the
church worships in fretted aisles--treads mosaic pavements--rejoices in
fine music and elaborate ceremonial.

Thus always is it: when nature fails, men have recourse to art. We have
no actors now, but, instead, we have a stage splendidly decorated,
regardless of expense. We put Shakspere on the stage in a way that would
astonish Shakspere himself: but we have no Shakspere. Is not this a sign
of weakness? When a beauty betakes herself to jewellery, and invests
herself with borrowed graces, is it not a sign that Time is dealing in
his old-fashioned cruel way with the rose upon her cheek and the lustre
in her eye? and is it not so with the Irvingite Church? Is not its pomp
and splendour a sign that it is not so rich in apostolic gifts as it
claims to be? Paul, I think, would hardly feel himself at home in Gordon
Square.

Since the above was written, the Census Report has appeared. It has a
sketch supplied by a member of the Catholic Apostolic Church. From it we
learn that that Church makes no exclusive claim to its title. It
acknowledges it to be the common title of the one church baptized unto
Christ. The members of that body deny that they are separatists from the
Established Church. They recognise the continuance of the church from
the days of the first apostles, and of the three orders of bishops,
priests, and deacons, by succession from the apostles. They justify
their meeting in separate congregations from the charge of schism, on the
ground of the same being permitted and authorized by an ordinance of
paramount authority, which they believe God has rest