Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

112 The Difficulties of He-union.
Now this alone seems to me to have been ;>,
most marked Providence. Sunk as the world
then was in sensuality, dead as the Church
was, had the first revival been to outward forms
and Creeds, even had it been to a high Sacra
mental teaching, we may well believe that it
would have been for the mass of the people
form alone; that life would have been wanting.
But when that life had been infused, and the
religious part of the nation spiritualized, as it
were, then was the body restored to it ; but
gradually ; at first, again, the teaching
came in
the more spiritual form of high intellectual
training, emanating from and carried on at the
fountain head of ethical education in this
countrv. Then when the heart of the nation
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had been thus warmed, and the intellect of her
more choice sons enlightened, the beauty and
O / \J
the glory of the body began to be restored to
her in her Church. Poetry first clothed the
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holy thoughts
of the Christian Year with
melodies that will ever live, as does the blessed
spirit that breathed them. Then Architecture,
the Queen of Arts, followed soon with her
handmaids of Painting and Sculpture. And
now Music carries captive the dullest hearts.
A noble Eitual alone is needed to crown the
work. And can we doubt that we shall have
it? Is this divine work to be stopped now,
just as it touches at its ? completion The