There is just now a great agitation throughout the land about what is called “The Ritual Movement.” After many years of sluggish indifference to the Apostle’s precept—it would hardly exceed the truth to say of perverse opposition to it, in doing all things indecently and against order—men on all sides are waking up to a sense of their neglect, and to a desire to repair it; and, by consequence, those who have not gone with the movement have found themselves surrounded by what wears the appearance of strange and even dangerous innovation, and those who have gone with it—both teachers and disciples—have in some cases been hurried along without due care to consider, perhaps without time to consider, whither they were tending. To both these parties—the standers still and the hurriers along—how wisely speaks the precept, “Let all things be done decently and in order”! And first to the first—the standers still—the “old-fashioned,” the contented with things as they were. Consider, my brethren, what mean ye by the service of God in the sanctuary, the assembling of yourselves in Church from time to time. Why do you come? Who bade you come? what to do? You come to worship God in a building set apart for His worship; a place in which He may meet you by appointment. And who is God? The great and glorious Jehovah, in Whose sight the very Heavens are not clean; Who asks, asserting His dignity, “What place will ye build Me” (that is worthy of Me)? My brethren, if you duly regarded His Majesty, if you, in any adequate degree, appreciated His amazing condescension, would you consider any edifice too grand for His localised presence, any expenditure on its furniture and ornament too lavish, any care for its arrangement and for the reverent honour of its All Holy Tenant too elaborate, too scrupulously particular? You know what provision you would make, what anxious care would possess you to fit your house, to array and order your household, for the due entertaining of an expected guest _only just a little_ above yourselves in dignity and in claim to be respected. You can hardly imagine _what_ you would do if your Queen condescended to be for a while your guest; but you know that at least you would not err on the side of niggardliness, slovenliness, and indifference; that your provision would be as magnificent as possible, your service particular and constant, your reverence profound. This being the case—and you know it is the case—a lively belief that God does wondrously vouchsafe to dwell with you, that the Church is indeed His local habitation, that when you enter within its walls, you are in His available, His very tangible presence; that what you do or neglect there, is done or neglected to Him, would spontaneously beget in you the desire, and quicken the effort, to make the edifice worthy of Him, according to your natural notions of worthiness, to provide due accessories of worship, to order yourselves as real and most reverential worshippers.