Of course, there is nothing to prevent an individual from making religion a mask of hypocrisy.  If in using these practices, he does not mean what they imply, he lies as plainly as if he used words without regard for their signification.  These practices, too, may become absurd, ridiculous and even abominable.  When this occurs, it is easily explained by the fact that the mind and heart of man are never proof against imbecility and depravity.  There are as many fools and cranks in the world as there are villains and degenerates.

The Church of God regulates divine worship for us with the wisdom and experience of centuries.  Her sacrifice is the first great act of worship.  Then there are her ceremonies, rites, and observances; the use of holy water, blessed candles, ashes, incense, vestments; her chants, and fasts and feasts, the symbolism of her sacraments.  This is the language in which, as a Church, and in union with her children, she speaks to God her adoration, praise and thanksgiving.  This is her religion, and we practice it by availing ourselves of these things and by respecting them as pertaining to God.

We are sometimes branded as idolaters, that is, as people who adore another or others than God.  We offer our homage of adoration to God who is in heaven, and to that same God whom we believe to be on our altars.  Looking through Protestant spectacles, we certainly are idolaters, for we adore what they consider as simple bread.  In this light we plead guilty; but is it simple bread?  That is the question.  The homage we offer to everything and everybody else is relative, that is, it refers to God, and therefore is not idolatry.

As to whether or not we are superstitious in our practices, that depends on what is the proper homage to offer God and in what does excess consist.  It is not a little astonishing to see the no-creed, dogma-hating, private-judgment sycophants sitting in judgment against us and telling us what is and what is not correct in our religious practices.  We thought that sort of a thing—­dogmatism—­was excluded from Protestant ethics; that every one should be allowed to choose his own mode of worship, that the right and proper way is the way one thinks right and proper.  If the private-interpreter claims this freedom for himself, why not allow it to us!  We thought they objected to this kind of interference in us some few hundred years ago; is it too much if we object most strenuously to it in them in these days!  It is strange how easily some people forget first principles, and what a rare article on the market is consistency.

The persons, places and things that pertain to the exterior worship of God we are bound to respect, not for themselves, but by reason of the usage for which they are chosen and set aside, thereby becoming consecrated, religious.  We should respect them in a spiritual way as we respect in a human way all that belongs to those whom we hold dear.  Irreverence or disrespect is a profanation, a sacrilege.