If there were nothing in this ritualistic revival but an attempt to borrow the rich robes of faith and dress up in them the shrunken form of heresy, it would hardly be worth our attention. It is little to us whether the human laws of the realm of England permit the ministers of the Established Church to stand with their backs to the congregation or not; whether they may legally burn candles in daylight, or swing censers, or chant their prayers instead of saying them, or wear colored and embroidered vestments instead of the plain surplice and the black gown. Since they have taken the liberty to discard faith and obedience, one would think it of little matter that they should discard ceremonies also. After they have lost the substance, why should they care for the form? If they could abolish, for instance, the celibacy of the clergy, they had surely as good a right to abolish a red or green chasuble. Indeed, to be logical, they ought to ordain, alter, and abolish just what they please. But it is impossible not to see that there is a great deal more in this movement than a mere striving after beautiful and impressive forms. There is first a reawakening of the Catholic idea of public worship, and a rejection of the common Protestant theory. It is the Protestant principle, not always expressly acknowledged, but practically acted upon, that the primary object of a religious service is the edification of the people; it is the Catholic idea that the chief purpose of that service is the worship of Almighty God. The Englishman, Thomas Sampson, whose complaint to Peter Martyr touching lights and crucifixes, we quoted just now, says in the same letter: "What hope is there of any good when our friends are disposed to look for religion in those dumb remnants of idolatry, and not in the _preaching_ of the lively word of God?" And what is it but a recognition of this principle which causes most of the Protestant sects to lay such stress upon sermons as to make them the predominating feature of every service, and often gives their public prayers such a doctrinal and exhortatory character that they can hardly be distinguished from sermons except by the substitution of the phrase "Almighty God" for "Beloved brethren"? Now, the ritualists, whatever their shortcomings, are at any rate free from this absurdity. Sermon-hearing or meditation, says one of their late writers, may be salutary enough in its proper time and place, but it is not worship. Here, no doubt, is a great advance in the right direction. But this is not all. {64} An essay "On the Eucharistic Sacrifice" in The Church and the World gives the Catholic doctrine still more explicitly, and acknowledges "that Christian worship is really the earthly exhibition of Christ's perpetual intercession as the sole high priest of his church, the sole acceptable presenter of the one worship of his one body in heaven and in earth, and that as such it culminates in his own mysterious presence, in and by the