It is thus often with domestic life: first goes the affec. tion, and then the courtesies; but if the courtesies only could be maintained as the affection declines, the case for the future would be far less hopeless. As to what is now called loyalty, it is too often little more than the fag-end of chivalry; but when love is gone, men keep up the forms and etiquettes, as relatives preserve a corpse, regarding them as the sign and memento of the past, whose very presence suggests the hope of recovered life. There is no doubt that the demeanour of courtiers towards an Eastern sovereign is outwardly the same as that of gallant knights towards their "ladye-love;" the difference being, that what in the one case are forms, in the other are expressions. Call to mind the sentiment portrayed in Burke's celebrated passage on the murdered Queen of France, and then say whether that sentiment would not take the shape of the most scrupulous punctilio! And thus falls to the ground the objection taken to our ceremonial, simply on the score of minuteness of observance. Anterior to the question of the meaning of our ceremonies, it is at any rate in their favour that they are many, and that they are punctilious. A slip-shod, slapdash way of doing things never in this world betokened any thing but negligence and indifference. But doing many things which evidently have no bearing but upon some known or unknown object of affection, proves that such object is in our mind, or at least our opinion that it ought to be. Now, when I come to explain our ceremonies, I shall try to shew that they compass in detail what they affect in the aggregate, namely, the expression of loyal love. To sum up the argument. Rites and ceremonies have two several uses: one, as securities of respect; the other, as expressions of affection. They are useful in the former way, when they do not serve in the latter (as statesmen know); but they have their perfect use only when they serve both purposes at once. That they should seem absurd to some persons, proves nothing, as far as it goes, but that such persons do not understand the character or appreciate the claims of the Object to which they are directed. If Catholic ceremonial has God for its principal object, it cannot be valued by those who are strangers to the love of God, as Scripture says that worldly men are. Catholic ceremonial has now lasted many centuries; it is neither the creation of barbarous ages, nor has it its place merely in barbarous countries. This proves it to have a substance and an end; and that end cannot be the world's favour, which it fails of obtaining. Suppose it, however, what it claims to be, the rational service of the Creator, and all becomes intelligible. For Catholic ceremonial has at least preserved the reverence of God in the midst of the world; it is proved by experience to be the means, beyond all other instruments and channels, of uniting souls with the Author of their being and the Source of their spiritual life; and it has no objections lying against it but such as arise out of a misconception of its purpose, and are accounted for, if not disposed of, the moment that purpose is understood and kept steadily in view. |