AMERICAN EDITOR.
11
to:—"To make an arbitrary selection among these parts—to adopt some and exclude others—to mutilate or in any way to modify, the portions thus selected—even to disturb their order or arrangement—is to destroy the harmony as well as the fitness of the general design. A stranger, reading an occasional hymn of the Roman Breviary, may, no doubt, be struck by the many beauties and excellencies which he will discover therein. But, to those who are familiar with that most wonderful work of piety, we need to say that much, at the same time, will escape him, unless he knows the antecedents and the consequents. The offices of Advent lose half their significance, unless they be read with relation to the great festival which they introduce. The offices of Lent have a necessary reference to the Passion and to the Paschal mysteries; and yet, although each of these classes thus differs from the other in its object and tendency, it would be easy to show, nevertheless, that they have such a common relation to one another, that neither is in itself complete and perfect, even as a part of the great annual circle. The offices of Apostles, or of martyrs, or of bishops, receive their complement in those of confessors, of virgins, or widows, and vice versa; and the common offices of
