CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 39

and apathetically habitual-things on whose common appliance hang whole trades, to which there never yet belonged the blessing of giving one ray of real pleasure, or becoming of the remotest or most contemptible use-things which cause half the expense of life, and destroy more than half its comfort, manliness, respectability, freshness, and facility. I speak from experience: I know what it is to live in a cottage with a deal floor and roof,¹ and a hearth of mica slate; and I know it to be in many respects healthier and happier than living between a Turkey carpet and gilded ceiling, beside a steel grate and polished fender. I do not say that such things have not their place and propriety; but I say this, emphatically, that the tenth part of the expense which is sacrificed in domestic vanities, if not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in domestic discomforts and incumbrances, would, if collectively offered and wisely employed, build a marble church for every town in England; such a church as it should be a joy and a blessing even to pass near in our daily ways and walks, and as it would bring the light into the eyes to see from afar, lifting its fair height above the purple crowd of humble roofs.

§ 8. I have said for every town: I do not want a marble church for every village; nay, I do not want marble churches at all for their own sake, but for the sake of the spirit that would build them. The church has no need of any visible splendours; her power is independent of them, her purity is in some degree opposed to them. The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary is lovelier than the majesty of an urban temple; and it may be more than questioned whether, to the people, such majesty has ever been the source of any increase of effective piety;* but to the builders it has been, and must ever be. It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the

* Yes, it may be more than questioned; it may be angrily-or sorrowfully-denied: but never by entirely humble and thoughtful persons. The subject was first placed by me, without any remains of Presbyterian prejudice, in the aspect which it must take on purely rational grounds, in my second Oxford inaugural lecture.2 [1880.]

¹ [As, e.g., in the little inn at Macugnaga in 1845; see Pręterita, ii. ch. vii.]

² [See Lectures on Art, ch. ii. §§ 60-65.]

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