And as regards other ceremonies, while she expects not, nor desires, a rigid uniformity in minor actions, nor has laid down any such code for the observance of her ministers; she will on the one hand seek to realise a higher standard, in point of care and reverence, than has hitherto, perhaps, prevailed among us: but, on the other, she will continue her 300 years' protest against multitudinous and operose ceremonies, as being full surely destructive, in the long run, of the life of devotion. I have now accomplished, though in a very imperfect manner, my self-imposed task: dwelling, in all humility and anxiety, on our shortcomings and excesses, as well in the matter of Rites and Doctrine, as in that of Ritual. And if it be asked, in conclusion, What then is to be done? what _action_ does a view of the whole circumstances prompt? or how are we to win our way back, under God, to a more perfect model? my answer and my humble counsel would be as follows:-- Let me first be permitted to remind the reader of the present aspect of our Church, such as it was presented to view in an earlier page. Let it be remembered and taken home as an anxious and alarming truth, that were an Apostle, or a Christian of early days, to "pass through" the land and "behold our devotions," on our high day of Service, during three-fourths of the year, he could arrive at no other conclusion, from what he saw with his eyes, than that he was _not in a Christian land at all_. For he would miss, Sunday after Sunday, in more than eleven thousand of our churches, the one badge, and symbol, and bond of membership in Christ, the Holy Eucharist. Such a one could not possibly understand our Christianity; the land would be in his eyes an absolute desolation. And if among these thousands of altars without a sacrifice, and of Christian congregations failing to offer the one supremely ordained Christian worship, he chanced here and there to light upon a happy exception, how would his eyes still be grieved, and his heart pained at the fewness of communicants! He could only conclude that Christianity had very recently been established here, and that the number of the unbaptized and catechumens was still tenfold that of the faithful. But there would be yet one other novel sight that would here and there present itself to him. He would perceive with astonishment that, in some instances, the eucharistic worship was offered not to "Our Father which is in Heaven," or to Christ, as seated with His Father on His Throne of Glory; but as contained in the Elements. But his astonishment would reach its height when he observed, further, that not much account was made, at this Service, of the _reception_ of the life-giving Sacrament, as the crowning and supreme circumstance of the offering; but that it was rather discouraged, in proportion as the Service was designed to be of a loftier strain, and a superior acceptableness.