THE conception of Ritualism as a mere freak of clerical fancy, which would soon exhaust itself in millinery and mummery, is now happily yielding to a juster view. The slow eye of the public is gradually opening itself to the truth, that the Ritualism of to-day is only the product of deep-seated and long-cherished principles. It is an attempt to give effective expression to convictions that existed in the English church before the Reformation, and, surviving that convulsive period, have been transmitted without intermission to our day. The attempt has resulted in a movement, so wide-spread and wellordered-a movement that embraces so many of the clergy, and under the countenance or connivance of the higher functionaries of the church has grown to such dimensions, as to have attracted to itself the attention of Christendom.

A variety of circumstances conspire to give importance to the movement and to entitle it to the attention of all thoughtful men. It is regarded with interest and fostering care by many Romanists, if not indeed by the Pope himself,' while in return its love and reverence

1 It has been denied that either the Pope or papists generally are pleased with the movement; but too many Romanists (Archbishop Manning being accredited as one of them) have openly avowed their satisfaction with it for any doubt longer to exist; and the heartiness with which English Ritualists go down on their knees before the Pope at his receptions, and the complacent smile with which he extends to them his hand to be kissed, leave little room for misunderstanding the feelings of his Holiness.

for the Roman church is openly avowed. It has put an effectual check upon conversions from the Anglican church to the Roman, and now demands of the British nation that its right to exist and pursue its own course shall be acknowledged, or it will direct its whole force towards the dissolution of the union of church and state. Curiously coincident with the present stage of its progress, is the manifest revival of self-confidence and aggressiveness in the spirit of Romanism in all Protestant lands, as well as that strange fondness for symbolical forms, alike in worship and church architecture, now showing itself among other sects than the Anglican. Meanwhile the confessionalist party of the Lutheran church, between which and the Anglican there exists neither fellowship nor mutual respect, labors assiduously, under the leadership of Hengstenberg, to establish its Sacramentarianism on a basis of compulsory authority. But that which more than all else gives importance for readers of these pages to the ritualistic agitation is the active sympathy and intimate relationship subsisting between the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in this country. What Ritualism is in the Church of England, it aspires to be, and will speedily become, in the Episcopal Church of America; and whatever novelty shall become the mode in the worship of the Episcopalians of America will be sure to make itself felt on the unthinking and weakly ambitious among the other sects.

Ritualism, as is clearly enough indicated by its name, reveals itself in a special attention to the outward observances and external rites of religion. Nothing pertaining to religious service, whether it be consecration of the elements, the act of communion, the position, shape and dimensions of the altar or the altar's furniture, the dress and attitudes of the priests and choristers, or the attitudes of the laity; and nothing pertaining to church architecture, whether of its style, its orientation, or the symbolism of its ornamentation-nothing is too trivial to escape its microscopic attention. It descends to particulars with a degree of minuteness that is scarcely credible to one who has not looked into its Catechism, and Prayer Books, its Manuals of religious service for the laity, and its Directorium1 for the clergy.

But to confine our attention to Ritualism as a mere system of observances would leave us as ignorant of its real nature, as would the history of a nation or period, which limiting itself to a mere narration of occurrences, should ignore the religious and political philo

1 The Directorium Anglicanum is a closely printed octavo volume of 371 pages, contain. ing abundant notes and sub-notes, a frontispiece exhibiting elaborately dressed priests before à brilliantly lighted altar in the act of elevating the Host, and a variety of plates illustrating elerical vestments and accoutrements. It had reached its third edition in 1866.

sophies that shaped the national character, and directed the public will. Ritualism as phenomenal can be understood only by ant acquaintance with the doctrines it embodies. Tested by the principles of Protestantism, it seems puerile and even absurd. Admit the truth of the principles on which it builds, and it rises at once to the dignity of being natural, philosophical and imposing. To judge intelligently, therefore, of English Ritualism, we must know something of the chief doctrines on which it rests.1

Fundamental among these is its theory of the Sacraments and of the Priesthood. The Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper it regards as mysteries through which, when properly celebrated by the divinely commissioned priesthood of the church, mankind are to be saved. These sacraments convey a supernatural power and accomplish supernatural effects. They are the only divinely instituted vehicles of saving grace.

The baptismal service of the Prayer-book is interpreted in the most rigidly literal sense of its words. The doctrine of baptismal regeneration is avowed with vehemence of emphasis. The Broad Church party of a former generation had interpreted baptism as being to the Church what natural birth is to this world, and that the service of the Prayer-book simply declared the child to be born by baptism into the church, and thus to be brought into relation to the "means of grace" through which it was to be saved; the Broad-Churchism of to-day asserts that the baptismal service is simply the recognition of the fact that the child as such, is the child of God, and not that by baptism it becomes such; Low-Churchism, or the evangelical party, explains the language of the rite as simply declarative of hope that by a fulfilment of the prescribed condition of baptism God may or will regenerate the baptized; but Ritualists affirm that the language of the baptismal service of the Prayer-book, like all its other language, can honestly be interpreted as meaning only just what it says. In this service, the officiating priest, declaring the child to have been "conceived and born in sin," prays that he may be "regenerated and born of water and the Holy Ghost," and that, "coming to holy baptism,

1" Ritual, like painting and architecture, is only the visible expression of Divine truth. Without dogma, without an esoteric meaning, Ritual is an illusion and a delusion, a lay figure, without life and spirit, a vox et preterea nihil." "Ritual is valuable only as the expression of Doctrine, and as a most important means of teaching it, especially to the uneducated and the poor." The Church and the World; Essays on Questions of the day in 1866; by various writers, edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley. Third edition, pp. 214 and 299.

It is because of the importance attached by Ritualists themselves to their dogmas, and the vital relation of these to their practices, that the writer, in what follows, has been at some pains to give to them the benefit of stating their doctrines, so far as his limits would allow, in their own language.

he may receive remission of his sins by spiritual regeneration;" and after baptism the priest, declaring that the child "is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ's church," proceeds to say, "We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit." Can there be any doubt, ask Ritualists, as to what this language was intended to express? "If these things," (words,) exclaim they in the language of one of their leaders, the Bishop of Oxford, "are not literally true, they are blasphemous trifling."

But it is to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper that Ritualism attaches the greatest importance. This sacrament it declares to be, not so much a commemorative act by the communicant, as it is an act of sacrifice by the priest and of worship by the whole assembly. The Lord's Supper, is a "Holy Sacrifice," a "Eucharistic Sacrifice," a "Propitiatory Sacrifice," "the Sacrifice of the Mass," and the Lord's table is an "Altar" on which the adorable propitiatory sacrifice is "offered." By consecration of the elements, Christ becomes in them "Body and Blood," actually present. The elements are not, say they, as the old Romanist theory maintained, transubstantiated, i. e. changed in their substance into the body and blood of Christ; nor is there, as the Lutheran theory maintains, a consubstantiation (commingling) of the supernatural body and blood with the natural and unchanged elements of bread and wine; but, by consecration, a "miracle is wrought by the Holy Ghost"-"a miracle as great as any of those recorded in Scripture"-and the whole person of Christ, in some ineffable manner, becomes supernaturally, but "truly, really and substantially present under the form of bread and wine." There is, to quote from Dr. Pusey, capitals and all, "a Real Objective Presence of Christ's Blessed Body and Blood."

Thus one essential part of the ritualistic theory of the sacrament of the Supper, is the dogma of the Real Presence. "The Eucharistic sacrifice derives its whole character and efficacy from the Real Presence." "For if Christ is not Present as the substance of our offering, we have nothing to present to God but the material things, 'the outward Signs,' which can no more make us acceptable than the legal victims which could never take away sin." How far this differs from the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation, our readers can judge for themselves. That Ritualists are much more disturbed by the opprobrium attaching to the word, than to the thing signified by it, is apparent from their anxiety to show that it was the Schoolmen's meaning of the word against which the English Reformers protested, and that "since the catechism of the Council of Trent" the Roman

and Anglican doctrines of the Real Presence are essentially one. Says Dr. Pusey in his Eirenicon,

I know not what can be included in our term "substance," which the English Church affirms to remain, which is not also included in the Roman term "accidents," which they also affirm to remain. A sacramental or hyperphysical change no English churchman, who believes the Real Presence as his Church teaches, could hesitate to accept. [p. 32.] We say then that, under the Form of Bread and Wine, Christ is Present truly, that is, not in figure or symbol, or by representation, as he may be said to have been in the persons of those who were Types of Him, or under the Symbol of the Lamb. He is Present really, not to the faith which ascends up to heaven to lay hold of Him, as some speak; but objectively in the Sacrament. He is Present substantially, not by any Grace or Virtue emanating from His Sacred Body, or infused into the Bread and Wine; but in the very Substance of His true Body and Blood. It is not a Presence of Power or Virtue, but of Person. The Bread and Wine are not called His Body and Blood because they are virtually, or to all intents and purposes, such to us who may receive them. Neither are they Figures or Symbols of a Person absent, having no influence upon us except to teach or to awaken thought. Under those external Forms there is the true, real, substantial Presence of CHRIST'S Body and Blood, animated by the Living Soul, and both pervaded by the Living DEITY-Whole CHRIST, GOD and MAN."-The Real Presence, Tract No. 5, p. 30.1

In the Little Prayer-Book used at St. Alban's, London, and in other ritualistic Churches, occur the following directions for the Assembly during the celebration of the Eucharist: "At the words 'This is my Body, this is my Blood,' you must believe that the bread and wine become the real Body and Blood, with the soul and Godhead of Jesus Christ; bow down your heart and body in deepest adoration when the priest says these awful words, and worship your Saviour, then verily and indeed Present on His altar." p. 16.

Thus it will readily be seen how from the doctrine of the real presence spring certain other dogmas and practices by which Ritualism is distinguished. Of these, it must here suffice to mention the "Eucharistic Adoration," or the worship of Christ's person under the form of bread and wine; the "Propitiatory Sacrifice," or the conception of the Eucharist as "rendering God favorable to us by presenting before him the meritorious and ever-acceptable oblation of his Son;" the "Sacramental Participation," by which, through partaking of his actual body and blood, we are "united to the life-giving humanity

1 Tracts for the day; Essays on Theological Subjects; by various authors. Edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley, M. A. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1867.