Letters to the Rt Rev John Hughes Author:Nicholas Murray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Jews, burned their genealogies and records, that his false pretences might not be confuted by them. la it for a similar reason that your church withholds the Bib... more »le from the people ? The Bible lays the axe at the root of the Upas tree of Popery; is this the reason why it is withheld ? Another of the reasons which prevent me from returning to your church is the way and the manner of your public worship of God. On reading the New Testament, I find that Jesus Christ embraced every opportunity of declaring the will of God. After his ascension and the descent ot the Spirit, the Apostles went every where preaching the gospel of the Kingdom. The worship of God as taught us in the New Testament, consisls in prayer, praise, and the preaching of his word for the instruction and edification of his people. To the instruction and edification of the saints every thing in the church of Christ is made subservient. Is it so in the church of Rome ? Do your Masses convey any instruction to the common or the uncommon mind ? Do they.ever give, have they ever given, one true idea of God. or of religion, to a human soul ? If so 1 should like to know it. May not individuals attend upon them from youth to gray hairs, and yet know not the first principles of the doctrines of Christ ? I have attended recently, sir, a High Mass at one of your Cathedrals. It was on the last Christ. mas day. I bore the unmeaning pageant for threenours together. There was the bishcp in his robes, with his cap, his crook and his crosier—there were priests, in numbers, moving about, making their crosses, obeisances and genuflexions—when the bishop rose, the cross and crosier moved before him, and the priests, as waiters, went behind him—the book was shifted from side to side, and was read and chanted in ways that no mortal hear...« less