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Public opinion doubts; the coterie believes; where the general sense seems to waver, the coterie decides, always with confidence, often with ability; frequently, therefore, the coterie obtains the success which is the reward of faith and audacity. All this makes it the more necessary to remind the adherents of the school of modern affectation that their success is not absolute; that their art, like all other art, good or bad, 'must conform to the taste, not the taste to the art.' The durability of their art will depend on the permanence of the taste. There are passions which are universal and lasting it is to these that Homer, Milton, and Shakespeare addressed themselves. There are others which are merely local and transitory to satisfy these is the object of the coterie. Mr. Swinburne has discovered a secret of metrical language, which has pleased the ear and stimulated the taste of an inquisitive and fastidious society. This secret he has tested and explored; he has worked his mine with a scientific precision, till it has yielded him all the wealth which we think it contains. So far he is entitled to the credit due to an original inventor. But when he comes forward as a critic, and claims on behalf of himself or of his friends, who have made similar mechanical discoveries, that their inventions are based on the absolute and immutable laws of art, it is time to point out that he is reckoning without two important conditions-time and change. So long as men think that he is telling them something new, they will listen to him, but when they perceive that he is merely ringing the changes on a technical trick, it wants no spirit of prophecy to perceive that they will leave him, either for some more substantial entertainment, or for some more stimulating, if equally ephemeral, 'sensation.' Every coterie is the product of ennui, and by ennui, in default of any better purge, it will be destroyed.

ART. IX.-1. Before the Table: an Inquiry, Historical and Theological, into the True Meaning of the Consecration Rubric in the Communion-Service of the Church of England. With an Appendix and Supplement, containing Papers by the Right Rev. the Bishop of St. Andrew's and the Rev. R. W. Kennion, M.A. By J. S. Howson, D.D., Dean of Chester. London, 1875. 2. Worship in the Church of England. By A. J. B. Beresford Hope, M.P. Second edition. London, 1875.

SOON

OON after the delivery of one of the judgments of the Privy Council on the ceremonies which have convulsed the Church now for a whole generation, we were worshipping

in a church well known for high ritualistic practices. The most sacred festival, the first dawn of whose springtide light calls us to rejoice in the great event which crowned Our Lord's redeeming work, and gave us the assurance of immortal lifethat day of days,' on which, if ever, all Christians should be joined together with one heart and mind in joyful thanksgiving for the climax of their faith, hope, and love, seemed to the minister of that church a fit opportunity for lamenting that this may be the last time that we may be permitted to celebrate our holy and beautiful service.' The lapse of nine years since that Easter-day has proved how groundless was the fear; and we have still the same kind of service, with incense and lights and vestments, genuflections and restless change of postures, processions with banners, those of the Virgin being (as we have more than once seen) more numerous than those of Christ, pictures of the 'Stations of the Cross,' and music arranged as if purposely to conceal the words of our Liturgy. All these phenomena have become too familiar to need any description. The aesthetic 'beauty' of such worship is a matter of taste, as to which we would only appeal to those who find pleasure in such things to consider whether the gratification of their own senses is worth purchasing at the cost of forcing feelings of disgust and contempt into the minds of their brethren at the sacred season of common prayer, and making the aids to worship stumblingblocks in the way of devotion. 'Beauty' that produces such an effect is the very opposite of holiness; nor can we refrain from reminding those who are so fond of appropriating the phrase to their own forms of worship, that it was when Jehoshaphat 'had consulted with the people' that he appointed singers unto the Lord who should praise the beauty of holiness.*

The public worship of the Church ought to be kept free from all that can excite controversy and division, even in matters of taste and feeling. Our common worship is the one stronghold of our unity, and the more conscious we are of the differences of doctrine and opinion that divide us from brethren beside whom we stand and kneel in praise and prayer, the more deeply do we feel that, here at least, we are one in Christ. It matters comparatively little whether the sermon is or is not in perfect accordance with our views of truth; we can dispose of that question in our own silent thoughts; all other lips throughout the congregation are closed to controversial bitterness and mutual provocation, but they open with one accord, and in the same words, to lift up the voice of confes

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sion, prayer, and praise to the throne of our common Lord and Father. Whatever breaks in upon this unity, by any change in the expected and customary words and acts, jars at once upon the solemnity and tranquillity which are most characteristic of the worship of the Church of England. Our Liturgy is a 'Book of Common Prayer;' and we cherish its forms not only for their intrinsic excellence, but because they exclude the disturbing element of individual caprice-the surprise which mars our tranquillity, and may even rouse the unholy emotion of anger against the leader of the service, the unwelcome doubts and mental discussion of the propriety of each new phrase or usage. How much worse is the effect on the true holiness' and 'beauty' of our service, when it is tricked out with novelties and overlaid with ornaments which, while a scandal to at least a large proportion of worshippers, have the attraction of mere excitement and curiosity to an irreverent multitude! It would be well if the disorders caused by innovations in worship were confined to scandal, irreverent curiosity, and excitement, stopping short of greater dangers. Proverbial as is the odium theologicum, the passions roused by outward forms are more intense and move a far greater mass, and naturally so, for these things appeal to the senses and the multitude. The riots and outrages which marked the long Iconoclast disputes in the Greek Church give a warning the more impressive from some premonitory signs of the disorders provoked by Ritualism among ourselves.

It is for such high ends of peace and unity, order and tranquillity, in the solemn exercise of our common worship, that the Church of England has always insisted on that uniformity, of which some sacrifice of individual liberty is the necessary condition. In so doing, we might almost say-to take the lowest ground-she is obeying a simple social instinct. Our daily lives are full of acts and habits which might be ordered in many different ways, and often perhaps in a better way than the one actually chosen; but we agree to that one as the only means of avoiding incessant friction, jars, and irritation, nay, often the violation of much more than good taste, and injuries graver than to mere feeling. The famous saying- In things necessary unity, in things doubtful liberty, in all things charity'-betrays the difficulty of constructing a perfect triad of proverbial wisdom. It is often in things doubtful and non-essential that we find the sacrifice of 'liberty' the very condition essential to 'charity;' and it is just because they are doubtful and non-essential that we can with a safe conscience submit to uniformity. In this sense uniformity becomes the

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very safeguard of true liberty, for it restrains one man from imposing on another the yoke forged in the name of his own freedom. We should be almost ashamed to insist on so obvious a truth, did we not see it violated by demands made in the name of liberty, and urged with a sincere zeal and eloquence that inspire our respect and admiration, as the panacea for our present ills and the concession by which we are to show that we esteem the Church of England worth preserving.' The principle involved was long since adjudged with a wisdom equal to its high authority :- Take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak' (1 Cor. viii. 9). That, however, was a caution against the use of individual liberty in the way of example. The case now at issue is much stronger. When a ceremonial is introduced into public worship, all the congregation are made parties to it, and that not only collectively but individually, unless the worshipper whose taste or conscience is offended—and we shall see in a moment that the main question before us is one of conscience-feels himself driven to the scandal of open remonstrance, a case which has, indeed, happened more than once when no small part of a congregation has left a church in the midst of service. The case is totally different from that of disagreement from opinions expressed by the preacher, who is avowedly speaking only for himself, and whose words require and admit of no response, either asserting or protesting. But as the officiating minister or priest,--and the more so the higher the view taken of his functions-is the organ of the whole congregation; the service performed by him is rightly called a Liturgy, a service for the people, and all his acts as well as words are theirs. This is true, not only of each congregation, but of all the congregations forming a united church, especially if that church be national, with an order of service prescribed by distinct laws, and only varied by that long and uniform custom which having become a second law-Mos pro Lege-forms a bond of union no less strong. And such was the actual state of things in the Church of England till within the last thirty or forty years. But now we cross the threshold of each church that we may visit, wondering what kind of service we are to join in, from а 'minimum' which we can perhaps endure to a 'maximum' which makes it hard to be angry and sin not.'

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The time has come for plain speaking, even at the risk of giving offence. Is the Church to be (as the 19th Article defines it) 'a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments duly ministered,' or virtually a hierarchy under whom the laity are reduced to insignificance ?

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Are the Sacraments to be ministered and received as 'signs of grace and God's good will towards us, by which He doth work invisibly in us . . . and confirm our faith in Him,' or are they to be mysteries performed by a 'celebrant' and acting on the recipient with a sort of magic efficacy? Is the minister of religion to be the servant of Him who came not to be ministered unto but to minister,' and who was among His disciples 'as one that serveth,' or a sacrificing priest, standing between Him and His people, usurping His own functions as the one Priest and only Mediator, and invested with supernatural powers implying a sacred spiritual authority? Is the worship of our Church to be the united utterance and action of a congregation, as every rubric of the Liturgy aims to make it, or is it to be transformed into a priestly service with the whole multitude of the people praying without at the time of incense'? Above all, is the most impressive and touching commemorative rite of the Lord's Supper-a name now not seldom treated with scorn-the Eucharist of our thanksgiving for redemption, to be ministered in sight of the people, and to the people, with a simple ritual, adapted only for the more solemn and orderly reception of the symbols of Christ's body and blood 'shown forth' upon His Table, or is it to be brought back to the Romish ceremony of a mass, in which the officiating priest offers upon the Altar a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead?

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This plain statement of the issue may shock some who-they must pardon the plain truth-have been playing with Ritualism to gratify æsthetic tastes or a mere excitement of novelty, spiced perhaps with a sense of daring disregard of old convictions and popular feelings, or from the more respectable but more insidiously dangerous motive of maintaining a 'maximum' of ritual, in opposition to what they have felt to be a degrading ' minimum,' flattering themselves that they could enjoy the form without admitting the sense for which alone it is valued by its thorough advocates, as if (to use Mr. Kennion's happy illustration) they could march under the White Flag and repudiate the principles of absolutism. The proposal to admit no doctrinal significance in a ritual, which its advocates loudly tell us they value for its doctrinal significance alone, is an impossible compromise which could only excite derision, but from respect for the advocate whose zeal and authority do but make it doubly dangerous:

'Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if ATTICUS were he ?'

Had the suggestion emanated from a statesman of a different order

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