heavy load of his big octavo, he appears in 'The Church and the World' as the author of a long paper on the 'Reasonable Limits of Lawful Ritualism;' in Messrs. Rivington's 'Annotated Prayer-book,'* as discussing Ecclesiastical Vestments,' and 'The Accessories of Divine Service;' and lastly, as editor (and apparently author too) of the Case' to which we have just referred. It is, no doubt, a great thing to be at the head of one's department, whatever that department may be; but Mr. Perry's success is a convincing proof that the highest eminence may be attained in the line of ecclesiastical furniture and dresses with a wonderfully small amount of knowledge and an utter want of common sense. In the same year with the heavy treatise on 'Lawful Church Ornaments' appeared the 'Directorium Anglicanum,' edited by the Rev. J. Purchas. The second edition, under the care of Dr. Lee, was not published until 1865, but Directorianism' has lately attracted so much of general interest that a third edition has already been called for. The illustrations of the first and second editions (for each has a set of prints different from the other) are significant as to the development which Ritualism had undergone during the interval of seven or eight years. Thus, whereas the original frontispiece represents some early stage in the celebration of the Eucharist, the frontispiece of the second edition displays the elevation of the chalice,' which in the mean time had been added to the stock of ceremonies. In the first edition, there are two candles on the altar and two at the sides; but in the second edition there are eight additional candles and four pots of flowers on what (we think) is called the super-altar. There are also some variations of dress between these frontispieces, which we have not enough of Mr. Perry's science to appreciate or describe. But, on a general comparison of the two sets of plates, no one can help being struck by the fact that the clergy of the party in 1865, while more richly adorned by the tailor than those of 1857, are decidedly much worse-looking both in features and in expression. The acolyte,' from a tall young man carrying a flagon, has dwindled down to a little boy with a girdle round his waist and armed with a censer. In a second view of a chancel, the candles have become far more alarming in the later edition, so as to suggest the likelihood of a conflagration; and whereas in 1857 the altar was surmounted by an ornamental cross, this has in 1865 been superseded by a *Edited by the Rev. J. H. Blunt, London, 1866. There is a great deal of valuable information in this handsome and comprehensive volume, but we regret to say that the book is throughout marred by the spirit of the party, and cannot be recommended as a trustworthy guide. crucifix. crucifix. In these respects generally the third edition, which is of a smaller size, and with cuts on a reduced scale, agrees with the second. The Dean of Ely, in defending the report of the Committee of Convocation against a charge of undue gentleness towards the Ritualists, is reported to have said :— 'We might have taken that absurd work the Directorium Anglicanum, we might have tied it to Ritualism, as a kettle is tied to a dog's tail; then we might have shouted "Mad dog!" and run it to death. 1 confess, however, that that is not the sort of treatment which it would have been proper or Christian to apply to the Ritualists.' But as the Directorium' has never been disavowed-as it numbers among its contributors some of the most shining lights of the party, and appears to be in fact the rule of their performances-we must think that this forbearance showed more of tenderness than of justice. Assuredly the Directorium' deserves to the fullest degree the epithet which Dean Goodwin applied to it. There is in it a general tone of fatuous solemnity which is at once ludicrous and provoking; and perhaps the most comical of the effects are produced by the affectation of assuming that the ideal of the Ritualists is actually and ordinarily realised in the practice of English clergymen. Here, for instance, is the beginning of the directions for the ordination of deacons : The bishop will enter the cathedral church vested in purple cassock, rochet, chimere, episcopal ring, zucchetto, and birretta. If he do not vest in the sacristy, he will receive his vestments from the altar. . . . On reaching the faldstool, the bishop will remove his birretta, and deliver it to the deacon, who will hand it to the subdeacon, who in his turn will deliver it to an acolyte. He will wear the zucchetto till the assumption of the mitre. The gloves will be carried on a salver. ... The bishop, on being vested with the dalmatic, sits down, and the deacon removes the episcopal ring, and hands it to the sub-deacon to place on a salver held by an acolyte for that function. The gloves are then presented on a salver, and should be so arranged that the right may lie at the side of the deacon, and the left at that of the sub-deacon. In putting on the gloves, the deacon assists at the right and the sub-deacon at the left.'-(pp. 223-4.) And so on. Many of the clergy, it is to be feared, will find themselves convicted by this book of a multitude of offences which they never dreamt of. How many of them, for instance, are aware that 'no shirt-collars, no gloves, nor rings should be worn, the hair should be short, and the face shaven' (p. 23)? How many of those who are chaplains have worn their scarves of the * * the right colour, viz. the colour of the nobleman's livery to whom the cleric is chaplain' (p. 359)? How many know a birrelta from a zucchetto, or have worn either of these outlandish articles as we are assured by the Directorium' that it was their duty to do? How many are aware that the opening sentences of Morning and Evening Prayer, and the sentences of the Offertory, 'not exhortations but antiphons,' and are therefore to be chanted by the priest with his back turned towards the people? How many have duly observed the precept that in entering the choir, the epistoler, gospeller, and celebrant' should walk with bodies erect and eyes turned to the ground' (p. 45)? How many have known and acted on the golden rule that the hands of all the ministers should be joined before the breast, with the fingers extended, and the right thumb placed over the left in the form of a cross, when kneeling. . . The feet are put close together. In sitting, the legs should not be crossed, and the hands should be placed in the lap (pp. 45, 146)?' How many of them know how to exorcise and to bless the water and the salt, in order to the manufacture of 'holy water'? (pp. 300-1). Nay, how many would know even what to do with the precious compound, if they had got it? We might go on long enough quoting this sort of nonsense, even although we should feel ourselves debarred from a great part of the book by the painful contrast between the wretched pettiness of the directions and the seriousness of the subject to which they relate. Mr. Medd indeed tells us, reverent care about the minutest accessories is but the natural and spontaneous expression of the full believer's faith and love, the unstudied outflow of an affection which truly believes and thoroughly realises.'† But to any one except a ritualist it must seem strange that this 'unstudied outflow' should take the form of a rabbinical minuteness,' (as it has been termed by the Bishop of St. David's, p. 90), which seems hardly compatible with any real sense of the belief which these complicated antics encumber. The latest work of considerable size which the Ritualists have as yet put forth is the volume of Essays, by eighteen writers, edited by Mr. Shipley. In this we have the principles of the party enunciated more clearly than elsewhere. The papers are of various merit and demerit; some of them do not exhibit any peculiarities of the school, and it appears, from an unpleasant correspondence which has been published, that the editor and one of his contributors, Canon Trevor, were mistaken in suppos * Directorium,' p. 145; The Church and the World,' p. 541. ing themselves to be nearly alike in opinions. There are also considerable differences of style and manner between the various writers. Some are especially distinguished by audacity of assertion and flippancy of tone, some carry to a greater extent than others the assumption which is a general characteristic of the party; some affect a mouthy, quasi-prophetic oracularity, while others seem eager to show that they can deliver their message like men of this world.' Mr. Shipley himself is chiefly noticeable for a sort of superfine affectation, of which the following passage may serve as a specimen : 'Bearing in mind, then, the sequence and terminology of the Caroline Liturgy, the details of the office which was gradually arranged and deliberately accepted by the English Church, when she decided to use an order in a language understanded of the people (and which, it cannot be too often repeated, has the authority of past generations), now require consideration. I restrict myself to details, because the two organic divisions of the several offices into the ordinary and canon, are the same in both; although, as will be seen, the relative positions of the subordinate portions have been very considerably altered.'-(p. 512.) Again : 'For if a flaw in the Church authority for any document at a certain date be at all comparable to an error in an early stage of a mathematical problem, the accuracy of every subsequent process can no more rectify the original mistake in the calculation than the later sanction of the Church, I apprehend, can legitimately dispense with the absence of Convocational authority for the document in the first stage of its history.'-(p. 507.) Here it will be seen that, besides the palpable want of correspondence between the illustration and the thing to be illustrated, the two are actually made to change places with each other. But Mr. Shipley's style appears to indicate fairly the quality of his mind, and to give us the measure of his powers as a reasoner. Nothing is more striking in the writings of the Ritualists, than the contrast between the complacency with which they speak of themselves, and the contempt which they loudly express for all other sections of the English Church. As a specimen of this tone, which continually recurs throughout their pages, we may quote the following passage from Dr. Littledale, who seems to be a personage of great authority among them :— 'If the argumentum ad verecundiam were one of much weight in the present day, it would be sufficient to point out that [as to the construction of a certain rubric] on the one side are ranged all those persons persons who accept in its fulness the language of the primitive Liturgies and the ancient Fathers touching the Holy Eucharist, who are competent, after long study, to pronounce with some degree of authority on the meaning of Rubrics, and who have shown themselves, by diligent use, the most faithful adherents of the Book of Common Prayer. On the other side are found ranked together all those whose Eucharistic teaching is, to say no more, entirely modern, and all those who agitate for more or less sweeping alterations in the Anglican formularies, while possessing a most imperfect acquaintance with liturgiology, and exhibiting a very modified respect for rubrics or canons.'* 'On the one side are ranked the Puritan, the Broad Church, the Establishmentarian, and the "High and Dry" sections. On the other, the smaller but far more vigorous and active school which still pushes on the great Catholic Revival.'† This same writer tells us that 'Tractarians are the only Anglicans who so much as profess to be guided by primitive Christian precedent on the one hand, and by English canon and rubrical law on the other.' He cannot quote the Bishop of London's testimony that 'the Ritualist clergy of his diocese are, he believes, in many instances, severely injuring their health by their sedulous ministrations amongst the poor in some of the worst parts of London,' without adding that his lordship has not hitherto expressed any similar opinion as to the members of the other sections, nor is it metaphysically certain that he would be justified in doing so.'§ As to the offer of religious privileges, Dr. Littledale tells us that while the Tractarian" compels men to come in" to the spiritual banquet, the Puritan is content with distributing some broken fragments of the repast to loiterers in the highways, and the Latitudinarian neither feasts himself nor invites a guest, but tells the police to make Lazarus move on.'|| The failures of all other parties to evangelise thoroughly either our home population or the heathen in foreign lands are dwelt on by one writer after another with malicious exaggeration, and even with an appearance of exultation. To Dr. Littledale it seems to be matter of satisfaction that, through the mismanagement of High and Dry and Puritan ecclesiastics,' the shopkeepers and artisans have gone to dissent, and the labourers have gone to the devil;'¶ and, as it is the practice of quack-doctors to begin their operations by throwing discredit on all regular practitioners, and by making the most of all symptoms of disease, so these gentlemen delight to draw fearful pictures of irreligion and § Ibid., p. 28. *The North Side of the Altar,' pp. 4, 5. 'The Church and the World,' p. 27. Ibid., p. 40. Compare Baring-Gould On the Revival of Religious Confra ternities,' passim. + Ibid., p. 3. immorality |