Volume Two 16/16 In a generous eclecticism, within the bounds of her liberty, and as by some providential power within her, [127] she gathers and serviceably adopts, as in other matters so in ritual, one thing here, another there, from various sources--Gnostic, Jewish, Pagan--to adorn and beautify the greatest act of worship the world has seen. It was thus the liturgy of the church came to be--full of consolations for the human soul, and destined, surely! one day, under the sanction of so many ages of human experience, to take exclusive possession of the religious consciousness. |