And what has been so well tried through the whole life, is now to show forth all its healing power with tenfold activity at the gate of Death.  According to a trustful custom, inculcated from youth upwards, the dying man receives with fervor those symbolical, significant assurances; and there, where every earthly warranty fails, he is assured, by a heavenly one, of a blessed existence for all eternity.  He feels perfectly convinced that neither a hostile element nor a malignant spirit can hinder him from clothing himself with a glorified body, so that, in immediate relation with the Godhead, he may partake of the boundless happiness which flows forth from him.

Then, in conclusion, that the whole may be made holy, the feet also are anointed and blessed.  They are to feel, even in the event of possible recovery, a repugnance to touching this earthly, hard, impenetrable soil.  A wonderful elasticity is to be imparted to them, by which they spurn from under them the clod of earth which hitherto attracted them.  And so, through a brilliant cycle of equally holy acts, the beauty of which we have only briefly hinted at, the cradle and the grave, however far asunder they may chance to be, are joined in one continuous circle.

But all these spiritual wonders spring not, like other fruits, from the natural soil, where they can neither be sown nor planted nor cherished.  We must supplicate for them from another region,—­a thing which cannot be done by all persons nor at all times.  Here we meet the highest of these symbols, derived from pious tradition.  We are told that one man may be more favored, blessed, and sanctified from above than another.  But, that this may not appear as a natural gift, this great boon, bound up with a heavy duty, must be communicated to others by one authorized person to another; and the greatest good that a man can attain, without his having to obtain it by his own wrestling or grasping, must be preserved and perpetuated on earth by spiritual inheritance.  In the very ordination of the priest is comprehended all that is necessary for the effectual solemnizing of those holy acts by which the multitude receive grace, without any other activity being needful on their part than that of faith and implicit confidence.  And thus the priest joins the line of his predecessors and successors, in the circle of those anointed with him, representing the highest source of blessings, so much the more gloriously, as it is not he, the priest, whom we reverence, but his office:  it is not his nod to which we bow the knee, but the blessing which he imparts, and which seems the more holy, and to come the more immediately from heaven, because the earthly instrument cannot at all weaken or invalidate it by its own sinful, nay, wicked, nature.

How is this truly spiritual connection shattered to pieces in Protestantism, by part of the above-mentioned symbols being declared apocryphal, and only a few canonical!—­and how, by their indifference to one of these, will they prepare us for the high dignity of the others?