Is it too much to say that, on view of these things--these vast deflections on the right hand and on the left, in defect and in excess, from Apostolic ways--it would not much grieve or move such an one as I am supposing, whether the "vestment" in which the Service was offered was merely of "fine linen, pure and white," or "a vesture of gold, wrought about with divers colours;" and that all other ritual arrangements, in like manner, would be as nothing in his eyes, in comparison of the truths obscured or imperilled, and of the errors involved, on either hand? And what therefore I would earnestly desire that the Church of God in this land might draw forth from the present excitement and anxiety about ritual is, a faithful comparison of herself, in point of doctrine and practice, with the Apostolic and Primitive model. There are greater things than these; "The life is more than meat, and the body than raiment." And while we are anxiously discussing whether the life of eucharistic devotion is best fed through the eye or the ear, or how its outward form should be arrayed, it is only too sadly true, that that life and that body are a prey to divers diseases, and need medicine and restoratives, ere they are likely to exhibit much real vigour, nourish and clothe them as we will. For the second time within our memory, a "vestment" or "ritual" controversy has arisen among us. The last time it was about "the surplice" in preaching, as against the gown; and the "Prayer for the Church Militant," as against the disuse of it. This time it is about the more distinctive eucharistic vestments, as against the surplice; and about a fuller ritual as against a scantier one. Now the last contest was simply a miserable one. I venture to call it so, 1st, because, handled as it was, there was no sort of principle at stake in it, beyond that of assigning to the sermon more nearly its due position and estimate in the rite; and that of adding one more prayer--a touching and valuable one, it is true--to the ordinary Office;--and next, because it utterly misconceived and missed the Church's real mind, in allowing such a thing at all as prayers, or a service at the Altar or Holy Table, when there was to be no Offering and no Communion. To restore the Prayer for the Church Militant, and be content with that, was indeed "to keep the word of promise to her ear, and break it to her hopes." Only as a protest, only as a badge of her rejection--ay, and of CHRIST'S rejection by the world--had she ever condescended to such a Lord's Day Service as that at all.