ever, and Mine eyes and Mine heart shall be there perpetually." Again, when the apathy of Israel had allowed the house of God to be neglected, and the service to be lightly esteemed-in much the same way as the Church of England since the Restoration,-the LORD thus speaks by the mouth of Haggai :-"Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified." And this very neglect of and indifference to God's due honour and worship is assigned as the cause of their national declension :-"Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of Mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands." And when the people obeyed and feared it was promised "that the glory of this latter house should exceed the glory of the former." Thus far the Old Testament revelation, which is, I think, sufficient to convince every candid inquirer that the service required by God of His creatures, and acceptable to Him, is one that is magnificent, elaborate, and costly,-in other words, the best that man can offer. The proof can easily be extended, but I have purposely omitted many smaller links3-as the case of David in augmenting and arranging the singers; of Jehoshaphat, of Josiah, and Hezekiah, in keeping up the temple worship and the spiritual life of the people-in order that the stronger points may be more clearly discerned.

To come to the New. The old dispensation is passed away. We live under a new. The fathers lived under a covenant of works, we under one of grace; to them it was said, "Do this, and live; to us, "Believe, and thou shalt be saved." Granted that the letter is done away. Doth grace make void the law? God forbid. The spirit is the same, though the letter of the ceremonial is altered. It is the same God which has given both covenants. With Him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. The spirit of that which was pleasing or displeasing to Him in one age cannot fail to be acceptable or the reverse in another. And further, the Mosaic ceremonial itself was not an earthly invention, but a pattern of things in the heavens (Heb. viii. 5). The spirit of the temple service was not done away by the coming of the Messiah, though certain parts of it as sacrifices, which were but types and shadows, undoubtedly were. The temple worship consisted of a great deal besides mere sacrifice. The whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense (Luke i. 10). Peter and John went up into the temple to pray. Christ continually attended the services (Matt. xxi. 12; Mark xi. 27; xii. 35; Luke ii. 46; John vii. 19), and so did the apostles, even after the

day of Pentecost, and the small company of early believers (Acts v. 20, 42; xxi. 26).

Christian worship, besides, was founded upon the temple rather than upon the synagogue service; and though there may be a slight admixture of the latter, it is not, as some would have us believe, a distinguishing feature of it. To the Jew the synagogue was only a makeshift, a convenience, never a complete substitute for the temple. It was not legally recognised as such, nor would any pious Jew fail to attend the three great festivals of the law held at the temple. The Christian dispensation is not a very different thing from the Jewish one, but is the same magnified and adorned. "It the ministration of condemnation be glory, how much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory?" (2 Cor. iii. 9). If God chose to be served formerly with a costly, ornate, and ceremonial worship, He cannot mean to be served now in a bare, cold, and careless manner.

Enough has been said to show that Ritualism is at any rate consistent with true Christianity. Is it necessary to it? What is the object of Christian worship? To glorify God, not to please ourselves. And this is done when we "render thanks for the great benefits we have received at His hands, set forth His most worthy praise, hear His most holy word, and ask those things which are requisite and necessary for our bodies as well as our souls." Is it not necessary, then, to devote all our energies to the accomplishment of this duty? We pray that God's will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. How is He served in heaven? By ten thousand times ten thousand angelic spirits who are ever before the throne, clothed in white with palms in their hands, and singing, "Worthy is the Lamb to receive honour and glory and power; Alleluia, Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." See Rev. viii. 3; v. 9; xiv. 3; xix. 4. Nowhere throughout the Bible is there the least intimation that anything but what people would now-a-days call excessive ritual was prescribed or practised, none that any other kind of public worship was certainly used by Christ and His apostles, none in church history that any other was used in preReformation times, and none that the reformers ever meant any other to be practised in the Church of England; while the testimony from their acts and words in favour of Ritualism is as clear, strong, and decisive as any testimony can well be.

It is necessary, lastly, as it is the only form of worship which gives to the laity their full share in the worship of almighty God. The less ritual, the less is done by the people, and the less heartilyas any one can prove if he but trouble himself to attend once or twice the services of a ritual and of a non-ritual church,-until we come down to the Dissenting chapel, where the minister has both prayers and preaching to himself, and the people do comparatively nothing. Ritual is Romish or Romanizing, say some; this is the head and front of the offending. But is it catholic? is it scriptural? We are not to condemn everything simply because it is Romish.

There are very many good things in the Church of Rome, as there are also many bad ones; let us make use of the good and throw the bad away. We have, as professing to be a part of the church catholic, no right to abandon any primitive practice in accordance with or not repugnant to Scripture. To do so is to proclaim ourselves at once as schismatics, and as those who by their divisions rend and tear the Lord's body. In judging the Ritualists let us remember that it is the evangelical party which has departed from primitive practice, catholic teaching, and Reformation ordinance, and that it is so-called Ritualists who are endeavouring to restore this, and to give unto the Lord the honour due unto His name by worshipping Him with a holy worship. We are to worship God in spirit and in truth, it is true, and formalism and ceremonial are useless without the spirit; but where we can get-and who will say the Ritualists do not give us both?-shall we not by all means take them?

In conclusion, let us bear in mind that Ritualism has awakened the spiritual life of the people, filled our churches with those most needed there-and what if a few have left the Anglican for the Romish Church? many more have been retained in it than driven out, and besides the number of perverts to Romanism is getting less and less every year. R. S.

NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-II.

"The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."-John iv. 23, 24.

Or all things hateful to man, formal politeness is perhaps the most disliked. Though there may be prescribed forms and prearranged ceremonials according to which business should be conducted and interviews carried on, it is certain that nothing gives more pain to an honest and hearty spirit than an over-attention to the minutia and punctilios of etiquette; and nothing is more galling than the interception of civilities and friendly greetings by the mere usages of society. Why is it that the unrestrained interchange of thought, feeling, and fancy, are so much prized above the courteous phrase, the measured tone, the formal finicalness of company manners, as it is called? Is it not because there is no room left in such formal intercourse for any manifestations of the feelings of the heart, and of the pure affections of life?

Now if we lift this experience of our own in our minds up to the throne and majesty of the Most High, we shall find it probable that formal etiquette, perfumed prayers, and intercessions graced with changed raiment and measured marchings, genuflexions and intonations, dictated more by art than heart, cannot be acceptable to Him who is no respecter of persons (personal, outward appearances), but who judgeth of the heart. Formalism is the very poison. of death to earnestness, enthusiasm, and heartfelt devotedness; it

is not the outgrowth of true worshipfulness, it is the mere veneer of social intercourse, the mere outward trappings of religious worship. Ritualism, as an endeavour to symbolize devotion, does, just in as much as it succeeds in its symbolic perfection, destroy the heartiness, spirituality, and spontaneousness of earnest prayer, praise, or service. Ritualism is the etiquette with which men attempt to regulate the ceremonies of admission to the court of the kingdom of heaven, though its Sovereign has declared, “Whosoever cometh unto Me I shall in no wise cast out." Ritual ceremonial is inimical to the hearty and absorbing love and reverence which we ought to feel towards God in the homage we pay to Him. When we come to pour out our soul in thanks and praise to the God of mercy, can it be that we shall only approach Him with acceptance amid incense, with theatrical gesturings and the vesturings of the costumier? Did Jesus on the lone hill-sides of Galilee, and on the mountains round about Jerusalem, change His vesture and indulge in posturing? What incense perfumed the prayer which He offered in blessing the bread with which he five thousand were fed? What gesturings and genuflexions, vesturings and incense-burning, accompanied the institution of the holy Supper? Surely the life of Christ, which was given for our example that we should follow His steps, was not one of mocking monkery, of aping priestliness, of formularies and of show. It is to Him, as we thought, that we owe the most earnest deprecation of any endeavour to appear unto men to worship and to put on the outward raiment of eyeservice, or the seeming of godliness by the wearing of phylacteries.

Jesus dissuaded men from putting their trust in the outward ceremonials of worship-of the saying unto Him, Lord! Lord!—of considering anything as acceptable to our Father in heaven as of so much importance as repentance. What did the prodigal son do to propitiate his father, but obey the holy injunction to change our hearts and not our garments, and to return to the Lord our God? The Canaanitish woman took no formal means of extracting grace from the Saviour's heart; nor was the ruler notably punctilious in his manner of asking the grace he sought for his daughter,-his earnestness, not his courtesy, we should think, won the Lord's commiseration. Blind Bartimæus cast aside his beggar's garb, it'is true, when beseeching Jesus to restore his sight, but we do not find that he put on robe, stole, or chasuble; that he lighted candles to symbolize that Jesus was the Light of the world; or burned incense that he might be gratified by the delicate hint thereby conveyed that He is the Saviour of life unto life of all those who believe, and only the savour of death to those who are faithless.

The only ritualism which Scripture legitimates is loving earnestness; if we have that, all will be well with us in our intercessions with the Almighty, for we have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come

boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in time of need" (Heb. iv. 15, 16), without caring for the robes we wear, the intonings of the voice in which we utter our prayers and praises; they will assuredly be perfumed with the much incense of the Redeemer's righteousness, and if they have that they shall need no other censing. All Christian devotion, as every Christian duty, is to be performed, "not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men," Ephes. vi. 6, 7. Formalism, which is the root of Ritualism, destroys earnestness, by taking away the serious concern of the soul from the thing to be done, and directing the chief attention to the manner of doing it. He who knew the infirmities of our frame, our constant tendency to get into bypaths and be lost, could not surely have insisted on a code of ceremonies, such as was only the shadow of good things to the ancient Church, for the Church of the fulness of time! "Come unto Me"-only on bended knee, after due censing, while candles are lit on the altars, and prostrations such as are My right have been offered to me by those who are dressed properly according to the divine though unrevealed rubric of a becoming Ritualism,-"all ye who labour, and I will give you rest," contains a terrible interpolation; but it is only an interpolation in words, which Ritualism insists on introducing in acts, and it does not at all seem to be in harmony with the invitation of Him whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light.

Indeed, if there be anything zealously and rigorously proscribed by the Divine Being, it is the resting in forms and trusting in rites, which is so strangely the tendency of unredeemed humanity. Listen to the solemn denunciation of the ritualism of ancient times. It is the voice of Him who saith, "I am the Lord: I change not:"

"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread My courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hateth: they are a trouble unto Me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow (Isa. i. 11-17). This is emphatic; and similar testimonies against sacerdotalism occur throughout the whole word of God. The single priesthood of Jesus; the absurdity of any priestliness after His sacrifice; the completeness of the priestly functions of Christ, and