Page:Alerielorvoyaget00lach.djvu/157

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The Ocean Capital.
135

imperfect. I have been at S. Paul's and Canterbury, and York, and Ely, and your best churches. I have seen the worship of nearly all the Protestant sects—still more imperfect in beauty, still more didactic, but further still from ours in want of reverence and love, and beauty. I have even seen the most defective and darkened of the heathen rites—some of mingled causes, evidently of the earth most earthy; the temples of India, the mosques of Stamboul and Mecca.

But all these were unlike this new spectacle of the adoration of the creature to the Creator. It was as splendid as ours, but its splendour was gorgeousness, not repose; its spirit was passion, not peace; its aim was enthusiasm, not simple reverent love. Let me try to describe it, though I feel how defective earthly words are in describing any except earthly thoughts.

The Temple was vast and magnificent. A hundred thousand of the Martians were there in state robes of worship (for they specially vest for religious worship), the males on one side, the females on the other—two vast armies. The immense domes, to which your S. Paul's, and S. Peter's at Home, were mere molehills, rose in exalted elevations over the heads of the hosts. All the walls, the pillars, the