by no means follows that Christians may now do any of these things; for the times have changed, and we take example from the normal, not from the exceptional, phases of the lives of our Lord and His Apostles.

This, I think, would be the Protestant answer, and I admit it in all points; and now I put an analogous question :-Why do not Catholics draw a precedent from the humility and poverty in which our Blessed Lord and the first Christians worshipped? I reply, Because their circumstances were transitory and exceptional. They were exceptional as regards the old worship, and they were no less exceptional as regards the worship that was to take its place. If the ancient form of worship was not yet completely abolished, neither was the new form of worship fully inaugurated. If, then, no valid argument can be drawn in favour of a splendid Ritual from the exceptional or transitory circumstances under which our Blessed Lord and His Apostles conformed to the services of the Temple, certainly no valid argument can be drawn against magnificence in external worship from those exceptional and transitory circumstances under which our Blessed Lord and His first disciples worshipped apart from the Temple-circumstances which made splendour naturally impossible.

The mere fact of external simplicity in primitive worship has no force as a lesson, until it is proved to have been the result of free choice, and not of necessity.

The only worship of which we read in the New Testament -apart from the supernatural events which I have related, and apart from the worship of the Jews-was offered up to God in streets and market-places, in private houses (Acts ii. 46), or in upper chambers (Acts xx. 8). The first Christians were poor and persecuted; art and riches were not at their disposal.

Now, when Catholics were hunted into back rooms or mountain caves, or when their poverty could only erect a thatched chapel with a mud floor (as was long the case in Ireland), their worship was as far from being 'gorgeous,' as that of St. Peter and St. John can be supposed to have been.

Would any one conclude that those poor Irish or English Catholics did not approve of a more elaborate and magnificent

Ritual? Would any one who should witness a grander ceremonial in the churches of Dublin or London reproach us with departing from the simplicity of our ancestors?

Well, just as poverty and persecution are the explanation of the meagre external worship of two centuries ago in these countries, so also are poverty and persecution a sufficient explanation of whatever may seem deficient in splendour in the worship mentioned in the New Testament. Protestants may not be willing to accept this explanation, yet they have no right to assume the truth of their own theory without proof. I remarked that it was a pure begging of the question to interpret our Blessed Lord's praise of spirituality as a condemnation of ceremonial. So now I maintain that it is begging the question a second time to interpret the necessary want of splendour of Apostolic worship as a studious choice of simplicity, and a condemnation of Ritual.

It cannot be said that I also am begging the question when I attribute this plainness to necessity; for before doing so I have given, as I conceive, abundant proof that the utmost splendour of worship, the most elaborate use of external means to cause spiritual impressions and emotions, are the very characteristics of the Christian dispensation; and that, far from finding a difficulty in associating the person of our Blessed Lord with pomp and magnificence, we are unable to recall the memory of the most touching scenes of His life apart from those associations. Thus, then, Catholics have the legitimate possession of their interpretation of those phases of our Lord's life which may seem in any way contrary to the principles of Ritualism. They have a right to attribute them to necessity rather than to choice, and the burden of proof lies on Protestants, if they wish to give another interpretation in harmony with their theories.

So, too, in interpreting the acknowledged poverty of Apostolic Ritual to have been the effect of necessity we are not without a good reason. When a man omits an action under circumstances which render it impossible, we may be doubtful whether he does so from choice or from compulsion. But if he is no sooner free than he does what he before omitted, we

then have good reason to judge that he would have done it before had he not been prevented.

This is exactly the case of the Christian Church. All admit that there was little splendour in the Apostolic worship.2 How is this to be accounted for? Was it wanting because of the necessities of the times, or was it deliberately rejected as unspiritual? To determine this question we may consider how the Church acted as soon as she was free to act according to her own desires and instincts. Whatever opinion may be formed of the worship of the Catacombs, it is certain that no sooner was the pressure of persecution removed from the early Church than in every country throughout the world she developed her worship with a splendour identical with that which Catholics approve and Protestants denounce. How was this? Protestants are obliged to explain it by another gratuitous assumption-by maintaining that in days of persecution the worship of the early Christians was less splendid by free choice, and that on the cessation of persecution they were universally unfaithful to the principles of true spiritual worship, for which they had endured so much, and adopted from Paganism the sensuous worship which for three centuries they had loathed. Is this reasonable? Is it not more natural to suppose that this development was the result of principles which they had held from the beginning, but till now had been unable fully to apply?

I cannot forbear quoting here an apposite reflection of the old Anglican Bishop Andrewes: 'Surely,' he says, 'the Israelites in Egypt had their service of God-it may be in a barn, or in some corner of a house. Yet when Moses moved a costly tabernacle, no man was found that once said: Our fathers served God well enough without one: why this waste? ut quid perditio hæc? After that, many Judges and Prophets and righteous men were well when they might worship before the Ark; yet when Solomon moved a stately temple, never was any found that would grudge and say: Why, the Ark is enough: I pray God we serve God no worse than they that knew

2 I do not mean that there was little symbolic Ritual, but of this we are to speak later on.

F

nothing but a tent-ut quid perditio hæc? Only in the days of the Gospel, which of all other least should, there steps up Judas, and dareth to say that against Christ's Church that no man durst ever either against Moses' tent or Solomon's temple. .... God help us! when Judas must reform Mary Magdalen !'

But to return. It should be remembered that the apparent plainness of Apostolic worship is one of the Protestant's main arguments against Ritualism. This is the ground of those appeals to a 'common-sense' reading of the Gospels, to prove that Ritualism has no part in true Christian worship. I can easily believe that the Pharisees urged this very same 'common-sense' reading of the prophets to prove that Jesus Christ could not be the Messiah. The word 'common-sense' means in both cases' superficial.' The Scriptures must be not only read, but searched, before they give up their true character.

The magnificent descriptions of the prophets were fulfilled in a Messiah whose life was humble and persecuted; the humble persecuted Church which He founded, and the beginnings of which we read in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, developed into a kingdom that has filled the earth, and in which that humble and persecuted Messiah is worshipped as the King of glory, with all that earth can offer Him most rich and glorious. There is no more contradiction in the one case than in the other; indeed, whatever apparent contradiction there is in either case is explained and removed by bringing the two together. There is a strange perplexing contrast at first sight between the glorious Christ of prophecy and the humble Christ of the Gospel; and there is a similar contrast between the humble Christ who worships in the Gospel and the glorious Christ who is worshipped in the Catholic Church. The first contrast scandalised the Jews, the second contrast scandalises Protestants. I have endeavoured in the preceding section to remove the scandal by showing that, to an attentive reader of the Gospels, the very same contrast is found there also. There is the Christ persecuted by Herod and the Christ worshipped by the Magi; the Christ of Thabor and the Christ of Calvary; and yet these are not two Christs, but one Christ; and to know that one Christ truly we must know Him in His glories as

well as in His abasements. We must know Him, not only in His voluntary humiliation, but in the splendours of Old Testament prophecy, the splendours of New Testament miracles, and the splendours of Catholic Ritual.

There will be an opportunity to develop these observations when I come to show how Catholic worship is the foreseen reparation of our Divine Redeemer's abasements. For the present I take leave of this subject, and pass on to another difficulty, which, though it is not drawn from the New Testament, and, therefore, not properly within my limits, is too important to be passed over without at least a few words of explanation.

SECTION III. SUPPOSED DANGER OF Abuse.

THERE are many whose heart and whose reason are disposed to admit the fitness and excellence of the use of art and wealth to produce beauty, and even a certain degree of splendour, in the public worship of God, yet they shrink from the danger of abuse.

They are so afraid that the senses, being charmed with beautiful sights and harmonious sounds, may cause the soul of the worshipper to rest in what is merely external, that they think it safer to avoid whatever can be called magnificent or splendid. Hence the charge of excess so often brought against the pomp of some Catholic ceremonies. Hence the boast of decency and sobriety so frequently made in favour of such a modified Ritual as that of the Anglican Church.

Now, it would be uncandid to deny the possibility of the abuse of ceremonial; and were I even disposed to do so, innumerable passages in Catholic writers warning Catholics. against this abuse would at once convict me of insincerity. But admitting readily, as I do, the possibility and the actual occurrence of the misuse of Ritual, I deny that the danger is so urgent or so frequent as to demand more than ordinary safeguards, or such as to justify the abandonment of Ritual itself. Did God fear that the brilliancy of the Star would