Perhaps some Dissenter will be whispering, after the manner of Mr. Roebuck, the three words, Gorham, Liddell, Denison; but the _tu quoque_ wholly fails. In the first place, it is the surprising peculiarity of the present Church controversies that the noisiest, if not the weightiest, disputants are not Churchmen at all. In the next place, those who are Churchmen, and enter with any bitterness into the strife, are remarkable neither for their number nor their influence. The great party in the Church of England is, after all, the middle party; and however fierce the cannonade which the extreme left, and its allies outside the pale, may direct against the extreme right, their missiles fly harmlessly over the vast body which lies between. The truth is, the recent outburst of controversy, so far as the Church herself is responsible for it, is nothing but the natural recoil of that conservative sentiment which must always be a powerful feeling in a religious community, from doctrines and usages which had become unfamiliar. As the unfamiliarity passes away, the controversy will also gradually cease. Already the doctrines and usages in question have been unconsciously adopted by many of those who fancy themselves most opposed to them; and, indeed, if our doughtiest combatants would only take pains to understand what it is their antagonists really hold, they would often find that they are fighting against mere shadows. The recent suits in the ecclesiastical courts cannot but open the eyes of Churchmen to the extreme tenuity of the points in dispute. Take the S. Barnabas case. Everybody will remember the language which was applied to the “practices” revived by Mr. Bennett. “Popish,” “histrionic,” “mummery,” were the mildest terms in the repertory of that gentleman’s assailants. Those “practices” remain to this day—if anything, they have been elaborated rather than subjected to any mitigating process. Messrs. Westerton and Beal bring the matter before the proper tribunal; but what are the only issues they can find to raise? Such notable questions as whether the cross, which glitters on the crown, the orb, and sceptre of the Sovereign, which glows on the national banner, which crowns almost every church gable in the land, with which every Churchman is marked at his baptism, which the very Socinians place upon their buildings, is, forsooth, a lawful ornament?—whether a table ceases to be a table by being made of stone?—whether the altar which has never been moved these two hundred years, and which nobody wants to move, must nevertheless be movable?—whether the altar vestments and the “fair linen cloths” used during Communion time, may have fringes, or must be plain-hemmed? Even if Dr. Lushington’s judgment should eventually be confirmed, if in this age of schools of design, Mr. Westerton’s crusade against art should prove successful, the alterations that would be made at S. Barnabas would