ye walk not as also the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding obscured with darkness."

As we are not giving a mere school refutation of rationalism or individualism, the reader will not expect us to give him a long paraphrase of the Angelic Doctor's masterly arguments on the subject. If it is necessary for the great majority of mankind that even simple truths should be revealed to them by teaching, and that after such revelation many of them still remain hopelessly ignorant, it must follow a fortiori that revelation is necessary in the case of the more sublime and abstruse truths, some of which, as we know by experience, are above the natural grasp of even such minds as that of Plato and Socrates in the past, and transcend the genius of discordant American transcendentalists in the present. A rationalist who must admit that he never saw a substance, and that he does not understand its nature; that he cannot comprehend the relation between cause and effect; between the laying of the egg and the hatching of the bird; the planting of the seed and the uprising of the stalk, or the action of his own will upon the nerves and muscles of his body, should learn to be humble in the investigation of higher truths and higher forms of being and of life, such as the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, and the sacramental system of the Christian Church. Scrutator majestatis apprimetur gloria.

Rem acu tetigisti. The lesson of humility, and there is such a thing as even natural humility, is what rationalists need to learn. The refutation of their system from the moral standpoint is most striking. If they were but honest they would admit that there is nothing in their system of the all-sufficiency of human reason, that will make the individual curb his evil passions; and that in their own case the system of natural ethics is an ethical failure. That they may not be public rogues or malefactors we are willing to admit. Few men are, even among the fetish worshippers of Africa. But are there no vices but these atrocious ones? Let us take up the "Examination of Conscience" as we find it in any Catholic prayerbook, and ask the respectable gentlemen who form the clientèle of Dr. Frothingham to study the list of sins in it. We pass by, through courtesy, the grosser offences and sins of act.

But how

is it with regard to all those internal imperfections of the mind, sins of envy, jealousy, vanity, rash judgment; interior sins against charity and purity? Will reason alone suffice to conquer them? What remedy will the "Society for Ethical Culture," with its "kindergarten," apply to them? It tells us to be respectable and refined; to be gentlemen of culture, to admire works of art and the beauties of nature; to be good, honest, honorable and truthful; but

1 Ephes., iv. 17.

what means does it give us to enable us to be all that it desires? None but nature and reason. But experience, the honest experience of every man, shows that they are not sufficient, and experience is more powerful than all the syllogisms of the school in this case. Do these gentlemen rationalists expect us to make an act of faith in their sanctity while the hermits, anchorites, confessors, and martyrs of the Catholic Church, who had besides the advantages of nature all the auxiliaries of grace, who did violence to their appetites, and who practiced every species of mortification, attest that they found it wellnigh impossible to conquer their passions? The Society of Ethical Culture may preach morality, but experience, the best teacher, shows that in the end its morality will be Spartan, its only crime discovery. The most intellectual rationalism by the Darwinian theory of evolution will not terminate in a holy asceticism, but degenerate into individual sans culottism.

T

ANGLICAN DEVELOPMENT.

HERE is a plentiful supply of Protestant sects in the United

States, but there is little of what in England is called Ritualism. The explanation is easy to be given. There is not in America, what there is in England,-the development of an ecclesiastical system, which, while possessing many of the watchwords of Catholicity, has but little of its spirit or its life. English Churchism, which has been on trial for three centuries, must be said to have reached its final stage; and, having reached it, is now necessarily on the wane, and must gradually become extinct or broken up. Ritualism was the last forlorn hope-the attempt to build up a national "catholic" church out of the wreck of three centuries of Protestantism. "Puseyism" had suggested the necessity of Catholicity, in the sense of a real priesthood and real dogma; but it did not dare, from its sheer novelty, to introduce the outward robe of magnificent ritual or expression. Ritualism, being developed out of Puseyism, has gained courage or a wild desperation; and, putting on the robe, has appeared before Englishmen in the full dress, Catholic toilet of the Church. After ten years of trial it has proved itself a sham, and is now regarded simply as a sect. Unable to catch the intellect of reasoning men, it has caught only the enthusiasm of the "æsthetic;" but sound thinkers reject it as sheer Protestantism plus pretension-a mock church, without authority,

without law. Had it been content with pretty services, pretty vestments, it might have ranked among the phases of Anglicanism; but professing to discard Protestantism, while not possessing Catholic powers, it has come to the ground "between two stools." Earnestness it still has, much industry, frequent services; but since no bishop professes it, and no synod supports it, the whole country regards it as a failure.

At the first it was the policy, the natural instinct of the Ritualists to unite themselves in profession with real Catholics, to affirm that they desired Catholic unity, and were prepared to make sacrifices to obtain it. Real Catholics were spoken of with fraternal affection; the Ritualist newspapers praised "Rome;" even the Pope was profoundly venerated as the head of the Western Church, or perhaps as the First Bishop in Christendom. All this has been changed. When it was found that "coquetting" with the Catholic Church produced no sympathetic concessions, but rather led the Holy See to state frankly and unreservedly the impossibility of yielding one point, the Ritualists, so to speak, lost their temper; they veered round to a policy of independence; and they commenced to disesteem, even to revile that authority, of which hitherto they had spoken with deep love. They would henceforth have a church of their own. "Rome" became an enemy, and was "heretical." Rome was both corrupt and tyrannical. The old-fashioned Protestantism broke out in the new Ritualism, and the Ritualists were henceforth rank Protestants. Nay, it would not be too much to say that in no Anglican sect is there such deliberate Protestantism as among the Ritualists. The solution of the anomaly is quite obvious. The Ritualists have "thought out the whole thing;" they have experimented on fictitious theories of Catholicity; they have played at priesthood, and dogma, and even authority; and having lived in two atmospheres, so far as theories are concerned, they have conceived a Protestantism which is not a sentiment but a will. This is a very bad phase. To read some of the Ritualist journals (within the last four or five years) is to read both the impeachment of Catholicity and the profession of wilful disobedience. In the place of the first humility there is disdain; instead of searching for truth there is complacency; for the love of unity there is contentment with isolation; for fear of judgment there is judicial contempt. This is the last development of Ritualism. And Englishmen perceiving it, say that Ritualism began well, but has ended in the darkest sectarianism.

Nor can such an attitude admit of amendment. The Anglican bishops, especially the primate, treat the Ritualists as if they were proud children, and the Ritualists retort by writing savagely or contemptuously of the nominees of a Gladstone or a Disraeli. A

Ritualist would no more obey his own bishop, if he could help it, than he would obey the Baptist preacher of the Surrey Tabernacle. He would resist him in the law courts and in his pulpit. He would not sacrifice one jot of his own opinions-not so much as one equivocal practice-at the bidding of his lawful diocesan. If the bishop could be transformed into a "Catholic"-as the Ritualist so fantastically calls himself-then it might become possible to obey him; but to obey a bishop who does not submit himself to him, but has the presumption to order him to "put out his candles," would be a timorous and culpable unfaithfulness, enough to brand him (in his own eyes) as a heretic. So that between disobedience to bishops, isolation from his own Church, contempt for his brother Protestants, and irritation towards the Holy See, the Ritualist stands. alone in superb misery, "Ritualisticus contra mundum," i. e., unique. He owns no communion with anybody. His own Church looks upon him as a wild dreamer; even his favorite Greek Church rejects his Orders; the Colonial, "British Branches," do not approve of him; and "Rome" simply orders him to obey. Poor Ritualist! To be an old-fashioned Protestant was to be consistent, because it meant, "I interpret the Bible for myself;" but to be a new-fashioned Ritualist is to profess obedience to authority, that authority being throned in Number One.

There cannot be, as we have suggested, any further development of a Protestantism which has reached this last stage. What is there to be developed? Even the imagination cannot supply any further excesses in the direction of theoretical inconsistency. We had witnessed, in bygone days, the rabid hatred of all authority, as demonstrated by ultra-Protestant clergymen; we had witnessed the tempered praise of some authority, as demonstrated by moderate High Churchmen; and we have now seen the assumption of Catholic powers negatived by personal schism and revolt. What additional strange Protestantism can there be? Unless the Ritualists were to invent a private pope of their own, and endow him with Ritualistic infallibility, it is scarcely possible that a new phase of wild anomaly should dawn on the used-up English changes. But the assembling of an ecumenical council, which should consist of five-and-twenty Ritualistic clergymen, assisted by the Church Times and the Church Review as theological advisers or assessors, and which should infallibly decree that the Archbishop of Canterbury must be made infallible in faith and in morals, though it is possible that his Grace would object to this, and which should confer on him that mysterious grace d'état which would sublimate him into the exact opposite of what he is, it is not easy to picture any future development of Anglican or Ritualistic phenomena. There must therefore be necessarily a going back. That

movement has, in truth, long begun. Ritualism now covers as much misgiving or skepticism as any other of the Anglican sects. Its outer robe, its mise en scène, is still decorous, and it charms with pretty music, pretty gestures; but to suppose that it holds the intellect or the conscience, that it does more than fill a gap in public cravings, is to suppose that the English mind has lost its ballast. Still, one thing the new idealism has certainly effected, it has pulled up the standard of church services. "Estheticism" has become the fashion throughout England. Even where Ritualist doctrines are repudiated Ritualist decorum is imitated. For an example, take St. Paul's Cathedral, in London,— which used to be as unseemly in regard to its services as any other Protestant church in the land,-there is now a mise en scène, which, though it is not Ritualistic, shows a sense of obligation to be stately. But, let it be asked, what is the reach of this innovation? what is the real compass of its gain? The answer we must assume to be this, it means "we should like to be somebody, but we know that we are only nobody, dressed up." Propriety, not priesthood, is demonstrated. The singing, and the robing, and the posturing, and the processioning are all expository of fitness and seemliness; but the congregation has no more to do with the services than they have to do with the pealing of the bells. The sermon, too, is all platitudes or proprieties. The preacher has to steer between rocks. He reads a sermon which, but for traditional gravity, may be read or extemporized in a conventicle. There is no touch of divine authority in his teaching. How should there be? since the bishop, or the dean, or the canons, or the choir might correct the preacher's "views" on every doctrine. The whole display is like homage to the national conscience, more than like the homage of divine faith. It is suggestive of the earnest desire to be religious, but not of the full knowledge of religion. It is an effort, an inspirationnot a possession. Whereas, in a Catholic church, we feel that " God is;" the question suggested by Anglican churches is "Where ?"

Now it would be interesting to go back into the long story of Church of Englandism, and search for the original elements of Ritualism. It is perfectly true that Ritualism is not Church of Englandism, but it is a natural, an inevitable outcome of it. Let us be pardoned, for the sake of the interest of the subject, if we devote a few minutes to a search back. The point we would consider is, how has Ritualism been developed out of a system which was its contrary in everything?

And we would say, first, that every development of Anglicanism has been the most natural thing in the world. Let us briefly run through its whole story. Of Anglicanism, in the reign of Henry VIII., it would be absurd to say more than that it was a royal