They dress themselves with all the
sacerdotal ornaments, but torn to rags, or wear them inside out;
they hold in their hands the books reversed or sideways, which they
pretend to read with large spectacles without glasses, and to which
they fix the rinds of scooped oranges . . . ; particularly while
dangling the censers they keep shaking them in derision, and
letting the ashes fly about their heads and faces, one against the
other. In this equipage they neither sing hymns nor psalms nor
masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as shrill and squeaking as a
herd of pigs whipped on to market. The nonsense verses they chant
are singularly barbarous:-
Haec est clara dies, clararum clara dierum,
Haec est festa dies festarum festa dierum.'" {8}
Faith was far more assured in the times when the spiritual
saturnalia were allowed than now. The irreverence which was not
dangerous then, is now intolerable. It is a bad sign for a man's
peace in his own convictions when he cannot stand turning the
canvas of his life occasionally upside down, or reversing it in a
mirror, as painters do with their pictures that they may judge the
better concerning them. I would persuade all Jews, Mohammedans,
Comtists, and freethinkers to turn high Anglicans, or better still,
downright Catholics for a week in every year, and I would send
people like Mr. Gladstone to attend Mr. Bradlaugh's lectures in the
forenoon, and the Grecian pantomime in the evening, two or three
times every winter.
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