a sectarian objector, who is so uncharitable as to assert that a love for Episcopacy and an experience of spirituality are incompatible in the same person,-we hope he will read the following death-scene of Hooker, as described by his exquisite biographer. Here at least is one proof how a man can maintain the scriptural IDEAL of Office in the Church, and yet lie in humble and heavenly self-renunciation at the foot of the Cross.

"The doctor left him at night, with a promise to return early the day following, which he did, and then found him better in appearance, deep in contemplation, and not inclinable to discourse, which gave the doctor occasion to inquire his present thoughts; to which he replied, “That he was meditating the number and nature of angels, and their blessed obedience and order, without which, peace could not be in heaven; and, oh! that it might be so on earth!" After which words he said, "I have lived to see this world is made up of perturbations, and I have been long preparing to leave it, and gathering comfort for the dreadful hour of making my account with God, which I now apprehend to be near; and though I have, by His grace, loved Him from my youth, and feared Him in my age, and laboured to have a conscience void of offence to Him and to all men; yet, if thou, oh! Lord, be extreme to mark what I have done amiss, who can abide it? And, therefore, where I have failed, Lord, show mercy to me: for I plead not my righteousness, but the forgiveness of my unrighteousness, for His merits who died to purchase a pardon for penitent sinners. And since I owe thee a death, Lord, let it not be terrible, and then take thine own time! I submit to it! Let not mine, O Lord, but let thy will be done."

III.

ON THE IDEAL OF THE CHURCH AS TO RITUAL FORMS

AND CEREMONIAL EMBLEMS.

In the religion of Jesus Christ there is a body of visible Forms and a soul of invisible Principles, which respond to the twofold attributes which compose our human nature, even that of material flesh, and immaterial spirit And in what does the perfection of practical devotion consist, but in maintaining an harmonious counterbalance between these parts of our religion, and these properties of our nature? When is the life of faith more fruitful, and the science of our worshipping souls more heavenly and complete,-than when it yields to our SENSES such a proportion of outward rite as they require, and to our SOULS such an amount of inward doctrines as they need? The entire man is redeemed by Christ, and therefore the entire man must worship Christ. But how can the Saviour be adored by our human entireness, and a religion commensurate with our entireness be put into action? Consequently a liturgy exclusively spiritual, would be altogether unsuited to man in his earthly condition as an embodied soul. Were it all viewless spirit, what would become of his sensible faculties? Were it all visible form, what would become of his spiritual faculties? But let him be provided with a religious apparatus responsively adapted to meet the distinct requirements of his compound nature, and the whole humanity is then supplied with a sacred nourishment suitable to its weaknesses and wants.

In theory, of course, few will deny these observations to be grounded on a correct interpretation of Christ's

religion and man's need. But, alas! in practice, how often have the Church and her children violated the harmony which the Redeemer hath established between His faith and our faculties.

In every age a bias of disturbing prejudice hath dislocated the proportion which He designed ever to be preserved between the body and soul of Christianity, and the body and soul of the Christian. Sometimes this bias has tended to a religion exclusively ad extra, or one of embodied rites; and again in another period the bias has inclined to a religion exclusively ad intra, or one of internal experiences. Thus, more or less, there has ever been (especially since the Reformation) a great contention where there ought to have been a glorious concord. One class of theologians have unwisely separated the means too far from the end in reference to salvation, and the result has been-ritual formalism. Again, another species of theologians have separated the end too far from the means, and the consequence has been—spiritual fanaticism. In either case this is indeed to be sorely lamented, as tending not more to dishonour the wondrous perfections of the Redeemer's economy, than to disturb the proportions of man's being. Would that the VIA MEDIA, along which apostles, saints, and martyrs walked in fraternal unity and loving concord, towards their common heaven, had been reverently kept! This indeed is at once the primitive, sincere, and catholic way. This is a path which verges neither to the right hand nor to the left; which tends not to one extreme or to another; but leads man by a direct line straight towards his final home. "What GOD hath JOINED together let not MAN put asunder." (Matt. xix. 26.) Here is a due regard for the use of means as connected with an end; and what

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GOD" hath put asunder let "not man" " join together;" here is also a right esteem for the end as distinct

from the means.

Extremes on this point, as in most others connected with our relative acts, are to be avoided. External forms, sacramental ceremonies, and symbolic observances can never be despised by a soundly spiritual mind. The decent pomp, the ordered rite, and all the expressive adjuncts of public worship, will ever assume a holy importance in the hearts of those who, while they remember" God is a Spirit," recollect man hath a body likewise. Convinced on the one hand that the mere excitement of the senses is not religion, they are equally assured on the other, that to enlist them on the side of religion, is both wise and necessary. No thinking person therefore, who has really studied the constitutional requirements of human nature, will presume to ridicule those auxiliary influences of religious forms and rites, which the Divine Architect of that nature intended for the Church's visible edification and uniting bond.

But when the exterior functions of religious worship are lauded to an extravagant height, and all the complex minutiæ of a most fatiguing ritual are enforced upon worshippers, as if the seeds of the soul's eternity were enclosed within them-or when that which is but an instrumental means is magnified into a final aim,-then it is that the instinctive pharisaism of our fallen nature is unwisely and unsafely flattered. Nothing, we venture with sacred confidence to assert, but the popish bigotry of a petty mind will dispute this opinion. When the sensible is allowed to overwhelm the spiritual in Christian worship, the Almighty seems to retire behind the thick veilings of rites, and sensual drapery of forms; the fer

vour of a God-realizing devotion begins to evaporate, and the rational worshipper of a spiritual Jehovah is in danger of being transmuted into a kind of liturgical machine, who blindly worships " he knows not what."

But perhaps the true and only rectifier of our conceptions touching the principles and proportions of sacred worship, as offered by the whole man, is this sublime fact that,-CHRIST is "IN ALL" the ordinances of true religion. When we say this, our meaning is, that He is in them one and all, as their supreme End and Object; so that if ceremonial institutes and religious acts be followed and performed without a distinct reference unto the Redeemer as the soul and substance of their significance and effect-they are ritual mockeries and nought beside. To render this more plain, let us in theory imagine Christ to be extracted out of our religious forms; or let us suppose something else to be substituted in His holy place, and then, what description shall we give of symbolic worship and liturgical rites? For instance, let us consider SACRAMENTS, SERMONS, and PRAYERS, and if Christ be divorced from them, what have we left but an emblematic skeleton, an intellectual homily, and a fruitless supplication? For what are Christian sacraments but signs and seals of our incorporation into CHRIST and His Church? What are Christian sermons but exhortations to bring us into the love and likeness of Christ? And what are Christian prayers but adorations to the Trinity, offered by the faithful that CHRIST may become theirs and they become CHRIST's, for ever? Thus too with all the subordinate rites and subsidiary ceremonies of the Church, CHRIST is at once both their Alpha and Omega, their first principle and their last end. Indeed even as the ritual of ancient Judaism would be a libel on the