The writer of the essay above quoted favors not only a return to the old Edwardian liturgy, but a revival of various other usages to which we need not more particularly refer than by saying that they all have a genuine Catholic flavor. He sees no reason, apart from prejudice, why Anglicans should not call their communion service by "the old English word Mass'," and he deprecates the Protestant custom of consuming at once all the bread and wine which are blessed for the Lord's Supper, without reserving any for the visitation of the sick. "Those who minister among the lowest poor in missionary work," he says, "can bear witness how distressing oftentimes are celebrations in the crowded and sick rooms of a town population." And he quotes an instance in which the Eucharist had to be consecrated for a dying man who occupied one corner of a crowded room tenanted by several other families. In another corner crouched a woman of the vilest class, and during the consecration unclean insects were crawling over the "fair white linen cloth" upon which the elements were laid. Can we wonder that to a minister who believes in the Real Presence, and in his own power to consecrate, a celebration such as this must seem like profanation?

If there were nothing in this ritualistic revival but an attempt to borrow the rich robes of faith and dress up in them the shrunken form of heresy, it would hardly be worth our attention. It is little to us whether the human laws of the realm of England permit the ministers of the Established Church to stand with their backs to the congregation or not; whether they may legally burn candles in daylight, or swing censers, or chant their prayers instead of saying them, or wear colored and embroidered vestments instead of the plain surplice and the black gown. Since they have taken the liberty to discard faith and obedience, one would think it of little matter that they should discard ceremo

nies also. After they have lost the substance, why should they care for the form? If they could abolish, for instance, the celibacy of the clergy, they had surely as good a right to abolish a red or green chasuble. Indeed, to be logical, they ought to ordain, alter, and abolish just what they please. But it is impossible not to see that there is a great deal more in this movement than a mere striving after beautiful and impressive forms. There is first a reawakening of the Catholic idea of pub-. lic worship, and a rejection of the common Protestant theory. It is the Protestant principle, not always expressly acknowledged, but practically acted upon, that the primary object of a religious service is the edification of the people; it is the Catholic idea that the chief purpose of that service is the worship of Almighty God. The Englishman, Thomas Sampson, whose complaint to Peter Martyr touching lights and crucifixes, we quoted just now, says in the same letter: "What hope is there of any good when our friends are disposed to look for religion in those dumb remnants of idolatry, and not in the preaching of the lively word of God?" And what is it but a recognition of this principle which causes most of the Protestant sects to lay such stress upon sermons as to make them the predominating feature of every service, and often gives their public prayers such a doctrinal and exhortatory character that they can hardly be distinguished from sermons except by the substitution of the phrase "Almighty God" for "Beloved brethren"? Now, the ritualists, whatever their shortcomings, are at any rate free from this absurdity. Sermon-hearing or meditation, says one of their late writers, may be salutary enough in its proper time and place, but it is not worship. Here, no doubt, is a great advance in the right direc tion. But this is not all. An essay "On the Eucharistic Sacrifice" in The Church and the World gives the Catholic doctrine still more explicitly, and

acknowledges "that Christian worship is really the earthly exhibition of Christ's perpetual intercession as the sole high priest of his church, the sole acceptable presenter of the one worship of his one body in heaven and in earth, and that as such it culminates in his own mysterious presence, in and by the sacrament of his most precious body and blood."

In this recognition of the true functions of the Christian ministry, the true character of the worship which ought to be offered in God's holy temple, we may suppose the ritualists to be pretty well agreed. But doctrinally, they may be divided into two classes. With the one class, a gorgeous ritual is merely the gratification of an æsthetic or antiquarian taste; with the other it is the logical development of an advance in doctrine. The one class would bring back the practice of the Anglican Church to what it used to be in old days; the other would imitate the rites and ceremonies which were followed in the Catholic Church ages before Anglicanism was heard of.

The second class is, we believe, the more numerous, as it certainly is by far the more important of the two. Its views are set forth with frankness and decided ability in the volume which we have already quoted; and we are certain that no one can read these essays without feeling that the ritualists are legitimate successors of the tractarians of thirty years ago, and that there is promise of as much good from the agitation which they are leading as came from the great movement of Dr. Newman and Dr. Pusey. "Ritualism," says one of the essayists, "is not employed as a side-wind, by which to bring in certain tenets surreptitiously, but as the natural complement of those tenets after they have been long and sedulously inculcated." The burning of candles and incense is of very little moment, considered as a mere form, but it is of great moment when it is done as the ritualists do it for the sake of rendering honor to the real presence of our Lord. It is of no consequence

mass.

what order of words or what gestures or what dress the Anglican minister uses in reading the communion office, because he has not the priestly charac ter, and if he followed literally the missal itself, he could not celebrate a valid But if he comes as close to the missal as he can, by way of testifying that he believes in the doctrines stated and symbolized in the missal; if he imitates the ceremonies of the daily Christian sacrifice, in order to show his belief in the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, that fact becomes of serious importance, and indicates a genuine progress toward truth, at which every good Catholic ought to rejoice. The practice of auricular confession is not new in the Anglican Church; but it acquires additional significance when it is spoken of, as it is in the Church and the Word, by the name of "the sacrament of penance," for the Church of England recognizes no sacraments except baptism and the supper of the Lord.

If there is any name which a genuine ritualist really hates it is that of Protestant. The avowed purpose of the advanced school is to unprotestantize the Church of England; and the writer just quoted speaks of having found comfort at a time of spiritual doubt and trial, in the belief that the English Church was still a part of the Catholic Church, "unless she sinned sufficiently at the reformation to justify Rome in cutting her off." "Our place is appointed us," says the same essayist, "among Protestants and in a communion deeply tainted in its practical system by Protestant heresy; but our duty is the expulsion of the evil, and not flight from it, any more than it is a duty for those to leave the Roman Church who become conscious also of abuses within her system." The Church of England indeed, has but a weak hold upon the faith or affection of the ritualists of this school. We find the XXXIX. Articles spoken of as "those Protestant articles tacked on to a Catholic liturgy, those forty stripes save one, as some have called them,

laid on the back of the Anglican priesthood;" and in the same book we are told that "the universal church, and not the Church of England, is becoming the standard to which doctrine and practice must be conformed, and the advantages in many respects of other divisions of it over our own are becoming recognized." Prepared as many of these men are to accept the doctrines of the church in every particular except the supremacy of the Pope and the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, and to follow her discipline even to clerical celibacy, religious vows, and sacramental confession, can we doubt that there is hope of their overcoming the remaining obstacles to their conversion, and that the London Weekly Register is right when it calls this "the most important religious crisis that England has witnessed since the so-called Refor

mation."

bringing back their errant sect to the honest life of old, when they copy the forms and ceremonies, the lights and vestures, the incense and the chants of the primitive liturgy, without conforming to the doctrines which these observances are intended to symbolize; who set up as their standard of conformity not the universal church as she has been through all ages, but the Anglican establishment as it was in its infancy, before it had quite forgotten Catholic truth and propriety; even in the hollow ritualism of this school, we say, there is cause for gratification. Unlike the builders of material temples, who must work up from base to summit, these ecclesiastical architects can sometimes construct their foundation after the superstructure is finished. The mere copying of sacred forms is apt to lead them to the sacred faith and spirit; and, any way, it is something gained to know that one can bend before a crucifix without breaking the commandments, and that frankincense is not an abomination in the sight of