"
"So far as it consists of the language of Scripture, rightly applied,
it is divine," said L'Isle. "But it is an error to say that our
liturgy, or any other worthy to be named, was made by a man, or the
men of any one age. It has a more catholic origin than that. The
spiritual experience of devout men of many centuries of Christianity,
realizing the needs of sinful humanity in its intercourse with its
Maker and Redeemer, and the comforting Spirit, have helped to build it
up, and thus adapted it, in its parts of general application, to the
spiritual wants, at all times, of every child of Adam."
"You speak up finely for your formal service, sir," said Moodie; "and
I may not be scholar enough to answer you. But every spiritual minded
man knows that it only fetters the spirit in prayer."
"Yet we might infer," said L'Isle, "from a passage in the Revelations
of St. John, that a liturgy is used by the four and twenty elders who
stand before the throne."
"You and Moodie do not seem to get any nearer to each other," said
Mrs. Shortridge, "in your rambles through the mazes of controversy."
"We only need here a well-trained son of Rome," answered L'Isle, "to
make confusion worse confounded.
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