as good citizens as other people. On the other side there is the fact that the popularising of art has begun to tell upon the minds of all classes, from the lower middle class to nearly the lowest stratum of society. One effect of the Great Exhibitions has been to extend an appreciation of art to classes who knew nothing about it, and to improve the taste of those who possessed some acquaintance with it. The effect is apparent in nearly all the new conventicles that are being set up in towns; and, when a love for music has penetrated into the stronghold of Presbyterianism, we may be sure that no other form of Protestantism will long continue to struggle against the revival of the influence of art

"Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen us que recurret.'

And the love of secular and ecclesiastical art, which has begin to recover after standing in abeyance for nearly three centuries in England, is spreading beyond the confines of the established Church into the dwellings and the meeting-houses of dissenters. We do not then venture upon any prophecy as to the probable amount of popularity of this school. If we were taking upon ourselves its defence, which we are not, we should urge that its adherents are increasing with an astonishing rapidity; that the clergy who adopt these observances are, most of them, zealous and self-denying; that they have penetrated and influenced the lowest grades of society; that they have already attached to them much of the religious feeling amongst the aristocracy and gentry; and that they have made a sensible impression on that portion of the middle class in England represented by the shopkeepers, including within this denomination the small huckster of the country town, on the one side, and on the other, the wealthy tradesmen of cities such as Manchester or Bristol. This party has had an existence of about twenty years, or perhaps somewhat less. It is difficult to say of a party that has sprung out of another party, as the Ritual party has sprung out of what we may call the Church party, at what precise point of time it began to have a substantive existence; but we may at least say that it had begun to attract notice before the spring of 1851, for in the March of that year one of those manifestoes which we have of late seen issuing from the bench of bishops was promulgated. Many of our older readers will recollect the address signed by twenty-four archbishops and bishops, dated March 29th of that year, the Bishop of Exeter's name being conspicuously absent, in which they remonstrate against any change of usages with which the religious feelings of a congregation have become associated, as being likely to do harm, and further give their opinion against introducing such change without the greatest

caution. In this document, which is really very well expressed, they seem wisely to recommend the clergy to avoid what would make it difficult for the congregation at large to join in, to abstain from such changes as would be likely to engender suspicions of further changes, and they add a recommendation of resort to the bishop of the diocese in cases of doubt, how to act with reference to following out the directions of the Prayerbook. Now several of these bishops still survive, and to them we make our appeal to tell us what has been the result of their unfortunate manifesto. They must be the best judges how many cases of doubt have arisen amongst the Ritualistic party, in which reference has been made to themselves as arbiters. That is a question which we have no means of answering; but, if the Ritual practices of 1851 and 1867 be compared, we think it must be admitted that the influence of the manifesto has not been great in stopping those who had already entered upon these innovations, or in preventing others from following in their wake.

It is not to our purpose here to notice how every document that has sprung from the united episcopate has been a signal failure, neither need we enter into the causes of this, which friends and foes alike will admit to be an undoubted fact. Of course, it is not pretended that such a document has any authority in law, and unquestionably neither the Ritualistic clergy, nor any others, would consent to be governed by the opinion of the Upper House of Convocation were it ever so unanimous. The influence which a bishop may exercise in his own diocese, if only he will be considerate and kind, and if he will take the trouble to make himself master of the situation by taking his clergy into his confidence, and consulting them on points where, from whatever cause, whether learning, acuteness, or mere circumstance, they are superior to himself, is immense, and, perhaps, could not easily be overrated. But all this is lost the moment he is merged in the United Episcopate. However, we have nothing here to do with the fact or its reasons. It is another fact that we want to impress upon our readers, viz. this, that the growth of the Ritualistic party has been far greater and more rapid than any one at the date of March 29th, 1851, would have thought conceivable. Debates about floral decorations and candlesticks and crosses, the prayer for the Church Militant, and preaching in the surplice, have been almost lost sight of in in the more comprehensive question of Ritual and ceremonial generally. Ecclesiastical art forms a portion of most modern exhibitions, and the Ecclesiastical Art Exhibition actually dogs the footsteps of the Church Congress, and seems to follow it like its shadow. Church newspapers are full of advertisements about

copes, chasubles, stoles, dalmatics, tunicles, and a hundred other things, the very names of which were unknown, for the most part, in 1851; and the cheap papers which circulate intelligence about these things have penetrated to the remotest corners of the country. The very fear of interference is propagating these observances; the idea of persecution is giving them a positive vantage ground. If the legislature had interfered in 1851, they might easily have laid their prohibition on most of the practices which are now the subject of debate. But 1868 is the earliest date at which parliamentary agitation against the Ritualists can be renewed, and it is certain that it will be even more difficult then to interfere with them than it is now.

There is a certain section in the Church with whom external observances are eminently popular. No one will accuse the writers of this Review of any undue partiality for external ornament, any special admiration for artístic display. It does not fall in our way to give accounts of harvest festivals, or to dilate upon the mode in which divine service is performed in this or that village church. We, so to say, know nothing about banners and processions; we leave to others the discussions about Anglicans and Gregorians: but we have our eyes open, and we see that these things have become too common to be put down. We think he will be a rash statesman who attempts next year to put down the Ritual party, even were that party to stand alone. But, as we have said, they have sprung out of an older, and a more sober, and, to politicians, a more formidable party; and perhaps some might think that the border-line which separates the two parties is somewhat difficult to discover. The party of Lord Shaftesbury may, perhaps, already be exulting in the expectation of a triumph which shall bring the more sober-minded of the Ritualists into the old groove of ceremonial or want of ceremonial, and they may be preparing to sing their Io Paan over the many who will be drawn from the English into the Roman Communion. But graver politicians will, perhaps, pause and inquire into the relations between this supposed insignificant offshoot and that large body of men which, beyond all question, is the dominant party in the Church of England; and the relation in which these two parties, the great one and the little one, stand to each other. Is it possible to detach the Ritualists from the Church party? Is the battle that is being waged a strife in which the little band will easily be overcome by numbers and extinguished? In all probability this is the issue that appears to Lord Shaftesbury and his short-sighted friends. Whereas, on the contrary, the real battle is between the whole of the Church party, including the Ritualists, against those, whoever they

may be, who choose to run their heads against so formidable a body.

There are many people who may perhaps understand that Mr. Bennett of Frome may be taken as a representative of either party, according to the view that may be taken of his position. But it would be ridiculous to say that he, and others like him who might be named, are the persons that bridge over the interval between the two sections. And herein lies the mistake that people who might have been expected to know better are making. Such men are not waverers between the two, but they are the stout adherents of both; and the inference to be drawn from the existence of such men shows, not that the sections are nearly allied, but that they are substantially identical. Mr. Bennett is both the theologian and the parish-priest, and he is carrying out, in the way he considers most practical, the doctrines which he himself learned from the Tracts for the Times.' We are not expressing our approval, nor indeed giving any opinion at all as to the desirableness of this or that form of ceremonial. Indeed we must confess great ignorance as to the particular forms adopted in different churches. But it will be fresh in the recollection of our readers how pointedly Dr. Pusey explained in his speech at the last general meeting of the English Church Union that the Ritualists were carrying out, by their appeal to the sense of sight and other senses, the teaching which he and his friends had been labouring to inculcate by their writings.

Let no one suppose, therefore, that the real issue is as to what amount of Ritual shall be observed. Ritual is only the ground upon which the battle is to be fought. The real thing at stake is the doctrine of the Real Objective Presence, and the concomitant doctrine of the Commemorative Sacrifice,- the doctrine of Thorndike and of the author of 'The Unbloody Sacrifice.' It is not, be it recollected always, whether this is exclusively the doctrine of the Church of England: no one wishes to exclude from the Church those who are unable to accept the whole teaching of Johnson and Thorndike but it is a question whether those who in this day hold with those divines shall be shut out from a Church which has been unable to exclude the teaching of those who deny the regenerating grace of baptism.

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And here we must recur for a moment to the circumstances of 1851. We have said that the name of the venerable Bishop of Exeter was absent from the episcopal manifesto of the spring of that year against Ritual. Neither are we left to conjecture as to the meaning of that absence. In an elaborate Pastoral Letter issued very soon afterwards the Bishop explained, in language

the wisdom of which has been proved by the experience of every subsequent year, that the matters alluded to in the manifesto ought to be dealt with by every bishop in his own diocese; for,' he says, 'they cannot be dealt with justly or effectively without 'looking to the specialities of every particular case.'

The Bishop continues in a strain, to appreciate the exquisite sarcasm of which it is necessary to bear in mind that Sumner and Musgrave were the names of the two archbishops who headed the manifesto: When, therefore, zeal for the faith once ' delivered to the saints was insufficient to draw from us a 'declaration of our adherence to Catholic truth in the great 'article of one baptism for the remission of sins, and of our ' determination to stand by the plain dogmatic teaching of our 'Church, that the inward and spiritual grace of that sacrament is a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness, I ' deemed it little short of mockery to put forth an united address 'to our clergy, praying them to submit to us as doubts these 'small matters, many of which do not seem to them to be 'doubtful at all. Neither could I join in entering a clear and unhesitating protest against the principle, that as the Church of England is the ancient Catholic Church settled in this land 'before the Reformation, and was then reformed only by the casting away of certain strictly-defined corruptions, therefore, 'whatever form or usage existed in the Church before its refor'mation may now be freely introduced and observed, unless 'there can be alleged against it the distinct letter of some formal ' prohibition.'

We wish it were consistent with the limits usually prescribed in such an article as this to transcribe several whole pages of this admirable Pastoral of the Bishop of Exeter's. We fear in these days when events pass so rapidly that the past is almost forgotten in the excitement of the present,-that it is much less remembered than it deserves to be. It is the warning voice of one whose words were disregarded sixteen years ago, and we have seen with what results; and his words will apply with scarcely any alteration to the present crisis of affairs. It goes on to speak of noble earls and gallant officers hounding on Her Majesty's subjects against the undoubted and indisputable doctrines of the Church, amongst which he expressly names the doctrine of the sacrifice, and of the resulting petition to Her Majesty signed by one third of a million of signatures; of which petition he observes, that if it tells us the extent to 'which delusion has been carried, it tells us also the dangers 'which follow from rash and unreflecting innovation.' Now that was a time when the people had been lashed into fury by the so-called Papal Aggression, and a Bill was hastily passed