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and his clear style and interesting manner fixed the attention of all around him . He was lecturing on the miracles of Jesus Christ , as a proo £ of his being the Messiah ; and he afterwards proceeded to discourse on the conversion of the Gentiles , which , he contended , must have been miraculous , for six or seven distinct reasons , all of which I do not remember ; nor , indeed , had he time to enlarge on more than one or two , but I well recollect the
first , which was the character of the apostles . " Who were the apostles ?" said he , turning to a boy on his left hand . The answer I could not catch ; but the preacher himself continued , " They were poor men , without riches , without connexions , without eloquence , without any thing ; ' * and so he proceeded to argue , that they could not have accomplished so mighty a work as the conversion of the Gentiles by their own unaided powers . After this service was over I went into one of the side aisles , and I there found two
other little audiences collected round two priests , one of whom was discoursing , in a most clear and luminous manner , on the immortality of the soul . When this was finished , one of the priests went up into a low , temporary pulpit , and began to preach to the same people who had just before formed two separate audiences ; and another priest was , at the same time , discoursing to a larger audience in the transept , the subject of hi 3 sermon being the duty of humility—and a capital sermon it was . When M this
was finished the people kneeled down before one or other of the different altars , ( of which there are many in the church , ) and when there was not a priest to be found to lead the prayers , this was done by a layman . Nor was this all that was going on in the cathedral . Still further along the same aisle , of which I have already spoken , there was an assemblage of little boys ,
who were learning to repeat the pater naster and the responses ; and on the other side of the church was a space , partitioned off with curtains , where there were a number of girls and women , who appeared to be listening to the same kind of religious instruction as that which I had just heard addressed to the men ; but as this was forbidden ground , I can give no further account of h .
I was much gratified by what I saw * and heard this afternoon . These people , I thought , are Catholics , who repeat their ritual like parrots , and estimate their devotion by the number of their fasts and their ave-marias ; but it wottld be well if we Protestants had any thing to compare to so good , and useful , and practical a service as this . The beauty of it was its perfect ease and familiarity . In seven out of nine of the little services which I sa w
going on , the speaker was not stuck up in a pulptt , and decked oat in the paraphernalia of office , but he was seated on the same bercch with part of his audience , and occasionally put questions to them ; and there was not one , who had either note or book before them to assist his memory , and to riulHfy the effect of what he said . All was perfectly easy and nattfral—a famiHar address , on an important subject , and proceeding from trie taQutr * of a rmtt who knew very well what he was talking about . Would to God that we had something of this kind in England , instead of our afternoon services , which the rich will not attend , and which are not adapted to the poor ! !
1 9 th * Had a delightful excursion tothe Lake of Como , the particulars of which I must omit , oh \ y hoping that my readers may sonite day have Ata opportunity of luxuriating as' I did , on the promontory of Beifoagtd , and 1 itt the gardens and the villa of the Marquis Sommariva . 20 th . Came by the diligence from Milan to Sesto Caleride , at the southern extremity of the Lago Maggiore—the country most rich and fertile ,
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Journal of a Tour on the Continent , ] 75
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1829, page 175, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2570/page/23/
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