MR. MAURICE AND RITUALISM. TO THO EDITOR OF TEM “SPEOTATOR.")
Sin,—Ail in the parable which teaches school-boys their first lesson at once in largeness of heart and in the laws of evidence, your correspondents, in discussing this question, have looked some on the silver, some on the golden side of the shield. It was in the nature of Mr. Maurice, more than in that of most men, so to speak and act as to enable men of very different schools to claim him as sympathising with them.
It is perfectly true, as Mr. Littledale states, that Mr. Maurice never refused to preach in a Ritualistic church because it was Ritualistic. And when he was there, if coloured stoles were part of the order of the church, he would wear them, green or crimson, as the case might be, without hesitation. I am not aware that he was ever tried by theroffer of a chasuble, but except on the ground of illegality, I do not think he would have objected to it. I would add that he had a profound respect for the labours and self-devotion of many clergy known as Ritualists, an equally profound scorn for the cheap religion which consists in denouncing and prosecuting Ritualism. On the other hand, he was tolerant of Ritualism simply because it was to him tolerable, and no more. I have heard him quote with approval Dr. Newman's description of it as being, after all, a thing of "gilt gingerbread" and tinsel. Those who remember Vere-Street Chapel in his time will know how little value he attached to ritual as a channel for conveying truth. I am free to confess that he seemed to me sometimes to take even too low an estimate of the sesthetic element of worship.
I do not claim to represent Mr. Maurice in this or any other matter, but my recollections of what he thought and felt are likely, I think, to be not altogether untrustworthy. Mr. Mausias own words, however, will, I am sure, be more welcome to your readers than any recollections, and therefore I ask your permis- sion to lay before them a passage from his "Dialogues on Family Worship," which your correspondents on both sides have strangely overlooked. It is true, he speaks primarily of Romish ritual, but it will be admitted, I think, that what he says applies, mat ails mutandis—and the mutanda are not many—to the ritual whose chief merit or chief offence is that it reproduces that of Rome. I need not say that the "Clergyman" in the dialogue can be none other than Mr. Maurice himself :— " Layman : 13ut sacrifice, you have admitted, lies at the ground of Christian life and devotion ?
" Clergyman : I have admitted it ; and I would say further, that when Protestants cry out against the coldness of their own worship, the barrenness of their own lives, what they miss most is the principle and fact of sacrifice. The trappings and shows of the Mass have in general little attraction for Northern natures, or only for those who have determined by a violent effort to make themselves Southerns. The mass itself, as the representation of an actual sacrifice, carries, I be- lieve, a message to thousands of hearts, to Northerns quite as much as to Southerns. They feel as if there was something set forth in it which ought to bind them in one,—to overcome all diversities of habits, all barriers of place and time.
" Layman : I feel, when I am present at the Mass, as if I were pro- sent at the picture—it may be a work of art, it may be a daub—of a mighty act which has been done, or has been supposed to be done, upon our earth. The picture has at times interested me, has oven over- powered me. Mom commonly, I hate it, because it is not real.
" Clergyman: You express very nearly the feelings with which the Mass, as well as the -whole Romish system of which it is the symbol, inspires me. I find the picture of something which has been done for me and for the human raco,—of something infinitely desirable and neces- sary for me and for the human race. I look at it, I admire it ; I detest it because it is a picture, and because the semblance keeps the sub- stance from me, offers itself to the world in change for the substance." —(Family Worship, p. 144.) It will be seen that the shield still presents both the silver and the golden side. I trust your correspondents and your readers will have the courage to look on both.—I am, Sir, &e.,
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