Why, unless relics and pseudo-sacred clothes were to be prophetically humbled into their own mere dust and nothing-worthiness, why should the rude Roman soldiery have been suffered to cast lots for that vestment, which, if ever spiritual holiness could have been infused into mere matter, must indeed have remained a relic worthy of undoubted worship?  It was warm with the Animal heat of the Man inhabited by God:  it was half worn out in the service of His humble travels, and had even, on many occasions, been the road by which virtue had gone out; not of it, but of Him.  What! was this wonderful robe to work no miracles? was it not to be regarded as a sort of outpost of the being who was Human-God?  Had it no essential sacredness, no noli-me-tangere quality of shining away the gambler’s covetous glance, of withering his rude and venturous hand, or of poisoning, like some Nessus’ shirt, the lewd ruffian who might soon thereafter wear it?  Not in the least.  This woven web, to which a corrupted state of feeling on religion would have raised cathedrals as its palaces, with singing men and singing women, and singing eunuchs too, to celebrate its virtues; this coarse cloth of some poor weaver’s, working down by the sea of Galilee or in some lane of Zion, was still to remain, and be a mere unglorified, economical, useful garment.  Far from testifying to its own internal mightiness, it probably was soon sold by the fortunate Roman die-thrower to a second-hand shop of the Jewish metropolis; and so descended from beggar to beggar till it was clean worn out.  We never hear that, however easy of access so inestimable relic might then have been considered, any one of the numerous disciples, in the fervour of their earliest zeal, threw away one thought for its redemption.  Is it not strange that no St. Helena was at hand to conserve such a desirable invention?  Why is there no St. Vestment to keep in countenance a St. Sepulchre and a St. Cross?  The poor cloth, in primitive times, really was despised.  We know well enough what happened afterwards about handkerchiefs imbued with miraculous properties from holy Paul’s body for the nonce:  but this is an inferior question, and the matter was temporary; the superior case is proved, and besides the rule omne majus continet in se minus there are differences quite intelligible between the cases, whereabout our time would be less profitably employed than in passing on and leaving them unquestioned.  Suffice it to say, that “God worked those special miracles,” and not the unconscious “handkerchiefs or aprons.”  “Te Deum laudamus!” is Protestantism’s cry; “Sudaria laudemus!” would swell the Papal choirs.