its heralds if they did not bring together the most copious resources within their power and consecrate them all to religion, so that they might thus perhaps exhibit it in its appropriate greatness and dignity.  Hence it is impossible, without the aid of poetry, to give utterance to the religious sentiment in any other than an oratorical manner, with all the skill and energy of language, and freely using, in addition, the service of all the arts which can contribute to flowing and impassioned discourse.  He, therefore, whose heart is overflowing with religion, can open his mouth only before an auditory, where that which is presented, with such a wealth of preparation, can produce the most extended and manifold effects.

Would that I could present before you an image of the rich and luxurious life in this city of God, when its inhabitants come together each in the fulness of his own inspiration, which is ready to stream forth without constraint, but, at the same time, each is filled with a holy desire to receive and to appropriate to himself everything which others wish to bring before him.  If one comes forward before the rest, it is not because he is entitled to this distinction, in virtue of an office or of a previous agreement, nor because pride and conceitedness have given him presumption; it is rather a free impulse of the spirit, a sense of the most heartfelt unity of each with all, a consciousness of entire equality, a mutual renunciation of all First and Last, of all the arrangements of earthly order.  He comes forward in order to communicate to others, as an object of sympathizing contemplation, the deepest feelings of his soul while under the influence of God; to lead them to the domain of religion in which he breathes his native air; and to infect them with the contagion of his own holy emotions.  He speaks forth the Divine which stirs his bosom, and in holy silence the assembly follows the inspiration of his words.  Whether he unveils a secret mystery, or with prophetic confidence connects the future with the present; whether he strengthens old impressions by new examples, or is led by the lofty visions of his burning imagination into other regions of the world and into another order of things, the practised sense of his audience everywhere accompanies his own; and when he returns into himself from his wanderings through the kingdom of God, his own heart and that of each of his hearers are the common dwelling-place of the same emotion.

If, now, the agreement of his sentiments with that which they feel be announced to him, whether loudly or low, then are holy mysteries—­not merely significant emblems, but, justly regarded, natural indications of a peculiar consciousness and peculiar feelings—­invented and celebrated, a higher choir, as it were, which in its own lofty language answers to the appealing voice.  But not only, so to speak; for as such a discourse is music without tune or measure, so there is also a music among the