learning, or genius which he brings to his high office, or which his high office evokes. But in matters of discipline, if in anything, he has a claim to be heard. In no other profession would the wishes of a commanding officer be disregarded by his inferiors in matters of mere external observance; and where, as in the cases supposed, the disobedience threatens the peace and safety of a parish, it deserves severe reprobation. Its sacer dotal ten III. But, in fact, this insubordination against bishops-this contempt of the rights of parish and congregation (where it exists) is in itself part of the still larger peril, of which Ritualism is but a very superficial developdencies. ment, which may exist equally without cope or chasuble, and which throws these lesser follies wholly into the shade. In entering here on the real danger of the ecclesiastical movement of our day, we would call attention once more to the fact that, whilst it might be possible to restrain the mere ceremonial extravagances by additional legal penalties, this vaster mischief is one which legal enactments can hardly reach, or reach only through remedies which would be worse than the evils. It is our hope that by clearly stating what those evils are we may render some service in awakening the more moderate adherents of this system to the perils of the course to which they give their sanction, and which, by the pressure of more astute politicians above them, and of more vehement partisans behind them, hurries them on, in spite of themselves, to excesses which in heart they deprecate, whilst in act they encourage. There are many who would regard the conscious imitation of anything that belongs to the Church of Rome as one of the foremost offences of the Ritualist party. The fact is undoubted. The coloured vestments are evidently adopted, not because of their antiquity-for their first origin, as we have seen, is significant of no doctrine whatever-but simply because they are Roman. It would appear that the XXXIX. Articles are repudiated, the title of Protestant rejected, and the great name of Luther disparaged, not so much from any fixed conviction on the subjects themselves, as because these stand as bulwarks or barriers between the mass of Englishmen and Western Catholic Christendom. But it is not on this account that the attitude of this party is open to grave objection. Approximation to Rome, or to any other Church than our own, is not of itself an evil. The doctrine that the Pope is Antichrist is indeed held by some Protestant fanatics to be the article of a falling or a standing Church, but this is not the position either of the Church of England or of any large number of educated men. The letter of the XXXIX. Articles has broken down on so many other points, that no stone can be thrown on this account at those who thus cast off at least one-third of the doctrines which the Articles were supposed to enforce. They claim a latitude for themselves which they constantly refuse to others. Let them have it. What, however, offends common sense, and must probably be trying even to themselves, is the painful striving after a system which they have not, and which they endeavour to grasp by seizing the shadow when they know that they cannot enjoy the substance. To Roman Catholics the attempt appears ludicrous. The walls of the Vatican resound with laughter at the reports which penetrate thither of the mimicry of rites which are natural to them, but which they feel must be artificial to others. There is no doubt a strain on every reasonable mind in bearing the immense weight of the traditional hereditary system of the Roman Catholic Church; but the strain is far greater when this weight is self-imposed-when some of the most startling forms of its worship are not merely accepted as parts of an ancient whole, but are dragged out into disproportionate prominence by the fancy of individual minds. Its theatrical character. is It is one of the maxims of the Ritualist school that 'no 'public worship is really deserving of the name unless it be ' histrionic.' 4 No doubt in every religious ceremonial there 5 a dramatic element, which in early times avowedly occupied a conspicuous place. But surely the most eager Ritualists would acknowledge that in worship, as in other parts of the religious life, some deference is due to the contrary maxim, 'Beware of hypocrisy' (vπéкρiσis), that is, if we take the word in its literal sense, 6 Beware of 'acting a part as on a stage.' And this histrionic' element becomes doubly questionable in proportion as the part enacted is remote from ourselves. We do not deny that in every kind of ritual a divergence must often exist between the earthly feelings of the worshipper and the unearthly language in which all our devotion must be expressed. But this divergence between form and reality is increased beyond all proportion Church and World, p. 37. This is a volume composed on the principle of Essays and Reviews; that is, a collection of essays on kindred subjects, 'written 'independently of one another,' and 'by "authors responsible only for the statements 'contained in their own contributions.' 5 It is interesting to observe that 'cari'monia' (from the city of Cære) and 'histrio' are both Etruscan words. The real founders of European ritualism are the Pontiffs of Etruria. when the minister is not only assuming gestures, dresses, and words which are in themselves more or less theatrical, and when those forms and frames of thought are consciously borrowed from another society to which he does not belong. Sir Walter Scott used to tell with much zest a story of a man who tried to frighten his friend by encountering him at midnight on a lonely spot which was supposed to be the resort of a ghostly visitant. He took his seat on the haunted stone wrapped in a long white sheet. Presently, to his horror, the real ghost appeared, and sat down beside him, with the ominous ejaculation, 'You are a ghost, and I am a ghost; let 'us come closer and closer together.' And closer and closer the ghost pressed, till the sham ghost, overcome with terror, fainted away. This, we fear, is the fate which awaits the Ritualist imitators of the Church of Rome. That mighty ghost 'the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire '-the ghost of the dead middle ages-will press closer and closer to our poor dressed-up ghost, till the greater absorbs the lesser or deprives it, by mere juxtaposition, of any true spiritual life. We would, in all sincerity, submit to those who adopt this histrionic worship and theology, that there is, in the very attitude which they assume, a fantastic show of religion, extremely difficult to combine with its inward reality. If one out of twenty is able to unite it with devotional fervour and practical activity, there must be nineteen out of twenty who are in danger of losing all sense of the great things of life in the punctilious and religious observance of practices which, not being natural, can only be retained in the mind by an effort, to say the least, exceedingly unwholesome. IV. Connected with this part of the development is the view of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which is made by the Ritualists the centre of their new practices. It is Exaggerated views of the possible that, since the lucid judgment of the Judicial Eucharist. Committee of the Privy Council in 1857,6 both they and their opponents may have learned to attach less importance than they then did to the shape and materials of the Communion-table. Its oldest form, we now clearly know, was, as its name implies, that of a wooden table and nothing more. Such it still is in the churches of the East, and in the most venerable basilica of Rome. The stone structure which centuries afterwards took its place had even then no connexion with a Pagan or Jewish altar, but was a reproduction of the rock-hewn grave or marble tomb, in which • Brodrick and Fremantle, Judgments of the Privy Council, p. 117. the relics of martyrs were supposed to be enshrined. The Credence-table, which used to be attacked and defended as a bulwark of high sacramental views, may now have come to be judged in its true light as an adjunct rather of a table than of an altar, being in fact the sideboard from which the Credentiarius, or accredited taster, in the barbarous times when the name and thing were invented, ascertained if the food was poisoned, whether at a common meal or in the consecrated elements. But there still remain some points which especially connect it with the present controversy. When we remember what the original ordinance was when we call to mind the upper chamber, with the evening feast and the recumbent guestswhen we recollect its primitive connexion with all the incidents of a common banquet-when we reflect on its undoubted intention, as a pledge of love between Christians and Christians, as an offering of grateful hearts, as a self-dedication to the Master who had dedicated Himself for them-it is with difficulty that we can track our way through the long descent of centuries, during which it has become the Dreadful Sacrifice,' the Miracle of Bolsena, the centre of strange fables and still stranger discords, the battlefield of scholastic theologians, of warring nations, of conflicting sects, of the fierce struggles of Abelard and Bernard, of John Ziska and the Emperor Sigismond, of the Reformed and Lutheran Churches against each other and against Rome. Hard logic, wild rhetoric, prosaic want of imagination, and imagination run riot, bad metaphysics, and misguided politics, have done their worst on that simple and sacred rite, till the true miracle seems to be that it survived at all. We must not be surprised, therefore, if in the fluctuations of the English Reformation, in the perplexities which beset the mind first of Cranmer and then of Elizabeth on this very subject, the ambiguity and contradiction of their doctrine should have left its traces throughout the English formularies, and even in the very words of the administration of the sacred elements. The two conflicting views would thus be sure to meet in the communion of the Anglican Church even if nowhere else. We would not disturb either of them. So far as through the mist of words we can discern the meaning of the leaders of this school, they are in this respect neither more nor less than Lutherans, and it is no reproach to the English Church that Luther and Zwingle should under its auspices close their ceaseless struggle against each other. It may be true, as Mr. Hallam observes, that, logically speaking, there can be nothing predicated concerning a body in its relation to a given space but presence and absence. But the perversity of human fancy, the ambiguity of human language, the complexity of human parties, we may add, the sincere devotion of unreflecting minds, have hitherto rendered a simple statement of the case wellnigh impossible. Even the Canon of the Roman Mass 'can 'only by the most violent artifices of interpretation be recon'ciled with the dogma of transubstantiation which was defined 'many centuries after the Canon was fixed.' Still, without embarking on a theological discussion which would far outrun our limits, there are two points on which we would firmly, and we would even hope with the concurrence of the better spirits of the High Church school itself, protest against the direction in which their favourite doctrine is now pushed. Material Eucharist. One is the disposition shown in the minute machinery and casuistry of the 'Directorium Anglicanum,' and like views of the works of the Ritualist party, to bring out the material and local elements of the Sacrament into the most startling prominence. To this chiefly, if not alone, must be referred the contorted attitudes and changes of dress and physical precautions which, though intended to be reverent, provoke, in those who do not approve them, impressions either most painful or most profane. Now, whatever view be taken of the Eucharist, it is evident to a reasonable mind that the spiritual ought to preponderate over the carnal. Were our Saviour actually present, He Himself would tell us that His bodily form profited nothing, that His words and His spirit only were the source of life and strength. Even if we are to admit the unhappy posthumous correction of the vexed stanza in the Chris'tian Year,' and read that He is 'present in the heart as in the ( hands,' we must all hold that the presence in the heart is infinitely more important than the presence in the hands. This, we believe, would be the thought of the more spiritually minded even of devout Roman Catholics. The reverse of this, we regret to think, is the almost inevitable inference from such practices as those to which we refer. Sacerdotal 6 The other accompaniment of this doctrine runs out into a larger field. It is the exaltation of the minister into views of the a priest and the exaltation of a priest into an indisEucharist. pensable channel of communication between God and man. This, again, is not, of necessity, the result of the |