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THE CHRISTIAN GUARDIAN,

AND

CHURCHMAN'S MAGAZINE.

MARCH, 1851.

THE POLICY AND POSSIBILITY OF RITUAL REFORM.

İr is difficult to bring some persons to allow even the mooting of questions, on which they themselves are either satisfied, indifferent, or indisposed to exert an independent course of inquiry and action. It is strange to notice the way that some people have of coolly setting aside such questions, and of putting down the questioners as troublers of the peace of whatever body, or community, they may not in all things see eye to eye with. Even bring them to listen to your case, to hear your arguments, and to bear patiently with the most palpable illustrations in its favour, and you have gained but little. They may possibly admit the existence of your case, the cogency of your arguments, and the truth of your illustrations; but they just refuse their assent and consent to any movement to obtain a remedy.

We imagine this to be greatly true of the conduct of the Evangelical body at large, in this crisis of the history of the Church of England. They stand in a false position, and arising, as we think, from having taken a false stand, upon what is termed the fixed and definite condition bequeathed to us by the fathers of the Reformation. We have ascertained from the history of bygone years, and with our own eyes of later years have but too sadly seen, that the Church has suffered from colliMARCH-1851.

sions, and shocks of varied intensity, not only from contact with positively antagonistic forces, but from fierce and bitter internal contentions and animosities. If these jarring circumstances occurred only with the world, and with the men of the world, it would be no marvel; we should know and understand that all these naturally seek their own interests, maintain their own opinions, and are careless of the consciences of others; we could not expect peace, love, or harmony, where the heaven-born element was wanting. But to find perpetual discord and disagreement, and unyielding tempers, in the body of the Christian Church, perplexes the world, hinders its conversion; while such a state of things reflects dishonour upon the Church itself, and keeps back a rich revenue of glory from its Divine Head.

As an engine for the evangelization of the country, the Church of England presents the noblest spectacle in the world; yet the working of her ma chinery is much impeded by certain difficulties which her best friends have been continually pointing out, but which every one has shrunk from removing.

The question of the revision of the Ritual, is one in which the Evangelical party have not taken that honest and consistent course, to which their

views and position would seem naturally to bind them; and it cannot be wondered at, that ever and anon circumstances arise which bring their views and their course of action into unfortunate and indefensible collision. It were idle to recapitulate those portions of the Liturgy which the experience of almost every year, since it was given to us in its present form, have been found to work most prejudiciously to the truest interests of the Church itself, and the comfort of the consciences of the most godly ministers and laity, as well within as without her pale. To the writer, the conduct of most of the Evangelical party in this matter has been always inexplicable. Sincerely attached to their own views by the deepest inmost conviction, he has most painfully felt how the maintenance and extension of those views was endangered and hindered by the tortuous course of unsatisfactory explanation, by which they satisfied their own consciences in the retention and use of words which wound the scripturally tender consciences of others who are unable to adopt the same course; and he has lamented that many are content to allow the existence of the evils, while they persevere in a timid and temporizing opposition to every attempt to effect a reformation.

There is nothing in all this of that candour and consistency which should pre-eminently mark the conduct of those who hold and teach the doctrines which are distinguished by the name of Evangelical; and it is more than probable, that on this, as well as on other accounts, God hath visited our Church with the dread pestilence of Tractarianism, and the now threatening scourge of Papal aggression.

In parts of our Ritual, we have been content to leave untouched those fibrous roots of Popery which our Reformers were either unable or unwilling utterly to extirpate from the precious boon they were privileged to bequeath to us, and they have sprung up and yielded fearful fruits, in the distraction and ultimate perversion of many of our brethren. Other parts of the Ritual, built upon the same unsafe foundation, have not a little misled the ignorant, divided brethren who might otherwise have been one, and have in various ways been the cause of much discussion and perplexity in the Church.

Tractarians and High Churchmen are satisfied with the ipsissima verba of the baptismal services; the absolution in the visitation of the sick; and other expressions in the Liturgy which give the idea of some exclusive and inherent power in the priesthood, and the offices which they perform; and they can and do establish a very fair case for their doctrines and pretensions, from what we have before remarked as being very aptly termed the naked verbality of the Prayer-book.

The Evangelical body accept the language of the Ritual, and harmonize, or labour to harmonize, those parts which,-taken alone and apart from the Articles, the Homilies, and the known intentions of the Reformers,-do appear to contradict the general tenor and effect of the doctrines they wish to propagate. Equally unsatisfactory are the views of many in the latter class, who can satisfy themselves with the language of the baptismal and the burial services, on the ground that they can use and appropriate the strong language of faith and hope in which they are couched; they argue that the ser

THE POLICY AND POSSIBILITY OF RITUAL REFORM.

vice is for believers; and they deprecate the consideration of them in any other light, and especially with reference to their constant and indiscriminate administration in the circumstances of a national Church.

It is not wise to delay or stave off the question of ritual reform, by the various pretexts or catalogue of fears, with which the efforts of calm and temperate advocates of reform are too often discouraged. Nothing that the advocates of things as they are have advanced has shaken the conviction of the writer, that a work which was, as a whole, nobly carried through at the Reformation, under difficulties and dangers of incalculable weight and variety, may not safely be submitted to revision in times which, although they may be critical, yet offer far greater facilities for getting rid of some few clogs and blemishes, than those in which the entire worship of a nation had to be changed from one purely Romish, and almost altogether erroneous and superstitious, into a worship purely Protestant, and of comparatively a scriptural and perfect character. Let us try to arrive at some accurate, definite idea of the policy and necessity of revision, and it then becomes a positive duty to consider, calmly and without prejudice, the possibility of attempt ing it. Had our Reformers struggled against acting upon the light they had received upon the subject of Romish error, on the ground of the existing state of things rendering its removal almost hopelessly distant, our clergy might now be chanting hymns to the Virgin, and our whole population might be still in Papal darkness, worshipping at the shrines of St. Thomas of Canterbury.

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published, drives the question of revision home to the conviction of all who will see the connexion between cause and effect. The following portion deserves attentive perusal.

"Itis, unfortunately, in the Liturgy itself that we discover the real origin of that moral malady which now afflicts the Church —the primary and prolific source of all the evils we have so much reason to deplore. It is but too clear that Anglicanism, if tested simply by the Prayer-Book as it now stands, must always find in its rubrics, and, what is of far greater importance, in some even of its MOST SOLEMN services, a defensible position upon which to maintain its ground. This, indeed, was demonstrated by the Gorham case itself. And if the.Church had been true to her principles, as set forth in her Articles, and actuated by the spirit of her illustrious founders; she would already have set about the good work of Refor

mation.

"Now, however, the time has certainly arrived, when such a work ought no longer to be deferred. To remove from our admirable Liturgy, whatever may afford even a pretext for Romanizing tenets and practices, ought to be henceforward the chief endeavour of all truly Protestant Churchmen. Without this, the suppression of Tractarian observances, however necessary in itself, can ultimately avail nothing. It is sometimes urged, indeed, that men's minds are in too

excited a state, for the work of revision to be prudently attempted at the present time. Such is, in fact, the objection,and the only one-alleged by the Primate himself. But when, it may be askedwith all deference to the opinion of one so eminent-when, except in seasons of excitement, has any such work been here

tofore accomplished; or, indeed, any signal blessing whatever been obtained for the Church and the world? Quiet times are always seasons of listless, uninquiring, and unprofitable apathy; unfitted for any grand and comprehensive undertaking. Those were not such times and substituted for the Romish Mass-book, which gave us the blessed Reformation, the Reformed Liturgy of Edward VI."

If I am permitted space, I hope to recur to this subject in the next number.

C. A.

By a Member of the Inner Temple, 8vo, A letter to Lord John Russell, lately Groombridge.

Divinity.

THE THINGS UNSEEN.

WHATEVER assists us in obtaining an accurate and minute account of the true christian character, is very valuable. It is valuable to those who are in earnest, both that they may know what they are to seek after and wherein they fail; and it is valuable to those who are yet indifferent to the subject, as a means of exhibiting to them the wide and extraordinary difference existing between them and the sincere disciples of the Saviour. One of these important notices we find in the passage of Scripture,— "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen." It describes an essential point of the Christian's character; it speaks specially of the habit of mind of the Apostle and his fellow labour

ers; but it is so only inasmuch as they are believers in Christ, members of His mystical body, and acting under the influence of "the truth as it is in Jesus." The habit of which St. Paul speaks is not ascribed to them peculiarly as Apostles or ministers, but simply as believers; and experience in all after ages shews that the language used is as truly applicable to the real Christian at any time. He looks "not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. His habit is in this respect the contrary of that of other men. They are occupied with the cares, the business, or the pleasures; with the hopes, possessions, and disappointments of this present world. In these things is their greatest interest; these are their realities; these call out their affections, their energies, their pas

sions; these fill the expanse of their contemplation and to turn from them to invisible things, to future things, to indefinitely future things, seems to them a sacrifice of that which is certain, for that which, at the best, is wildly speculative, obscure, and conjectural. In fact, the conclusion to which an unprejudiced visitor from some other sphere must come to on the conduct of men in general, would be this, that manifestly the present world is the substance, the valued possession; and the future existence, a chimera, a shadow; or, like a comet, an eccentric intrusion upon the system, that may or may not come, and, that if looked for, may be looked for in vain. Here, then, we have a marked distinction between the real Christian and the man of this world; and it is a distinction into which we proceed to inquire. We will consider,—

First. The objects of the Christian's regard, "the things which are not

seen.

Secondly. The nature of that regard, "we look at the things which are not seen."

The objects of the Christian's regard. They are called "the things which are not seen." And they are called "eternal :". -"The things which are not seen are eternal." The things, then, at which the Christian looks, so as to constitute them the great and characteristic subject of his contemplation, are invisible, eternal things. They are things which have an existence beyond the range of the natural sight, and whose duration will

THE THINGS UNSEEN.

continue in perpetuity when the system, and the order, and the individualities, of this temporary existence, shall have sunk into decay. What these eternal and invisible realities are, we gather from Scripture, and from christian experience. They are, the invisible GOD, and the invisible world in which He reigns. A certain connexion has been established between them and the spirit of the man, as an expectant heir of that eternity; by which connexion he realizes the existence of such things, and finds a greater interest in them, than in the material objects which are spread daily before his natural sight. What that connexion is, we shall endeavour subsequently to consider. Our object now is, in the first place, to notice successively the unseen objects of the Christian's regard.

1. The invisible GOD. The existence of the Deity spreads before the true Christian's mind, as a reality, with all the importance and interest worthy of the fact; with a reality, and an importance, and an interest, which once he did not feel. It is to him a new view, a new experience; but it is as certain to him as the broad expanse of the ocean, or the dark mountainous mass which throws its giant frame across the sky. There is nothing on which his mind rests with more certainty, as an actual existence, than the existence of God.

The believer sees the character of God.

The essence of the Divine nature he cannot discover or comprehend; with that he has nothing to do; but with His moral character he has much to do; because it must be the regulating standard of his own. He derives from it as a source; if he is to continue, he must flow on in conformity with it, exhibiting as a stream

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the moral properties of the fountain. And if he has received from extraneous sources any turbid or polluting addition, he must be purged of them by a fresh accession from the pure fountain, or be cut off from the source, and dried up, and wasted. Now the character of God, as it appears before the believer's mind, is that of a just God and a Saviour. It is the extraordinary union of perfect, inexorable justice, with abounding grace and mercy. And this estimate of the character of God is one of the most powerful tests of the real possession of the religion of Christ. The self-taught religionist, who speculates upon the character of God, and who frames to himself a philosophical notion, rather than obtains a realizing perception of the Divine Being, will adhere either to the bare idea of justice in God, as the rewarder of His creatures according to His knowledge of their circumstances, and will cherish a proud estimate of his own services; or he will lean the other way, and take up the idea of indiscriminate mercy in the Divine mind; and, seeing so much moral evil in the world on every side, he will please himself with the idea that the delight of God is to pass by transgression. But he whose eyes have been opened on unseen things, discerns in the Divine character the actual union of perfect justice, in an inflexible adherence to the law of right, and free remission of sin, in the eternal happiness of the once guilty transgressor. He sees among the unseen things an ample provision for the establishment of this wonderful truth. It has been exhibited in the dispensation of the incarnation, in the entrance of God's eternal Son upon this world, as the propitiatory victim of God's justice, and

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