Live Lights or Dead Lights; Altar or Table? (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1873 Excerpt: ... to capital--or even to "hat." The cardinal's red-hat is emblematical. The chapter-house is the citadel of the mysterious Christian verities, or the domus sapientice--typical of the awful, (in its circumstances, ) Pardon of the World. The Latins make use of four nails in their representative rendering of the Crucifixion. The Greek Christians emblem the mystic sacrificial Christian verity by only three nails. And the proper place of the third nail of this mysterious "three" in the plan of a Cathedral-church, is the spot where the font is placed; which is towards the lower end of the nave. The name of font is borrowed from that of fons, fountain;--the living water or fountain from the "Rock" or the Lord's Crucified Body. This is the water that cleanses from "original sin,"--it is the water of life flowing from about the feet of the Saviour. For from this lower transfixing deadly nail, which last affixed the blessed body of the Lord upon the Cross of Agonies (constituting the Tree of Life, )--from this last metaphorical nail, springs the saving efflux of the waters--blessed, baptising, healing waters. We are now in the nave, (be it remembered, ) which is derived from navis, a ship; and also from the navel, or umbo, or centre of the sensitives or of the elementary. Here are the flowing, mystical waters--the influx of the holy magic spirit--God's spirit, which pours into the earth;--the cleansing waters in which those who "come-up to Galilee"--the western-end or "sundown" of the Church on earth--or to the west door, are to be baptised for regeneration. From this emblemmed point at the west-end of the world in the large sense--at the west-end of the Church in the small sense--the Church being taken as the whole Christian World in miniature, with its poles and its eq...