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It is not our province to speak of the corresponding depreciation of a Holy Sacrament, which has ever been found to accompany contempt for and neglect of the visible instruments of its administration. We would rather dwell lightly on the faults of a most uncatholic and perverted spirit, which turned out of the churches in hundreds their beautiful ancient Fonts, and profanely converted them into water-troughs to catch the rain from the roof or supply the animals of the field with drink. But at the same time, we must endeavor to amend the many abuses in this respect which are yet to be lamented in our own times. The number of desecrated Fonts which has come to our knowledge in the course of the present publication is a startling proof how very far we are yet removed from a return to those Catholic practices, which the bitterest hatred and the strongest puritanical influence could not abolish from the Church of the seventeenth century, but which we have lived to see rendered obsolete by mere apathy and idle content. But it may be hoped that interest in the things themselves is ever intimately connected in a right mind with interest in their use; and that we shall yet see the profanations which exist in the Church vanish before the revival of a neglected ritual and with it of a more rigorous superintendence over ecclesiastical matters. 32