Time, then, is grandfather of the noblest
of the human family; and we must respect the aged sire whom we see on
the frontispiece of the almanacs, and believe his scythe was meant to
mow down harvests ripened for an immortal use.
Yet the best provision made by the mind of society at large for these
admonitions soon loses its efficacy, and requires that individual
earnestness, individual piety, should continually reinforce the most
beautiful form. The world has never seen arrangements which might more
naturally offer good suggestions than those of the Church of Rome. The
founders of that church stood very near a history radiant at every
page with divine light. All their rites and ceremonial days illustrate
facts of an universal interest. But the life with which piety first,
and afterwards the genius of great artists, invested these symbols,
waned at last, except to a thoughtful few. Reverence was forgotten in
the multitude of genuflexions; the rosary became a string of beads
rather than a series of religious meditations; and the "glorious
company of saints and martyrs" were not regarded so much as the
teachers of heavenly truth, as intercessors to obtain for their
votaries the temporal gifts they craved.
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