and problems
in the light of the Sermon on the Mount. This attitude is partly the
result of a close acquaintance with the sufferings of the urban
proletariat, which moves the priests who minister among them to a
generous sympathy with their lot; and, partly, it may be, to an unavowed
calculation that an alliance with the most rapidly growing political
party may in time to come be useful to the Church. Their methods of
teaching are also more democratic, though many of them make the fatal
mistake of despising preaching. They rely partly on what they call
'definite Catholic teaching,' including frequent exhortations to the
practice of confession; and partly on appeals to the eye, by symbolic
ritual and elaborate ceremonial. Their more ornate services are often
admirably performed from a spectacular point of view, and are far
superior to most Roman Catholic functions in reverence, beauty, and good
taste. The extreme section of the party is contemptuously lawless, not
only repudiating the authority of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council, but flouting the bishops with studied insolence. A glaring
instance is to be found in the correspondence between Mr. Athelstan
Riley and the Bishop of Oxford, which followed the Report of the Royal
Commission on ritual practices.

Doctrinally, the modern Ritualist is prepared to surrender the old
theory of inspiration. He takes, indeed, but little interest in the
Bible; his oracle is not the Book, but 'the Church.' What he means by
the Church it is not easy to say. The old Anglican theory of the
infallible undivided Church is not repudiated by him, but does not
appeal to minds which look forward much more than backward; he is not
yet, except in a few instances, disposed to accept the modern Roman
Church as the arbiter of doctrine; and the English Church has no living
voice to which he pays the slightest respect. The 'tradition of Western
Catholicism' is a phrase which has a meaning for him, and he probably
hopes for a reunion, at some distant date, of the Anglican Church with a
reformed Rome. It is therefore essential, in his opinion, that no
alteration shall take place in the formularies which we share with Rome;
the Bible may be thrown to the critics, but the Creeds are inviolable.
The Thirty-nine Articles he passes by with silent disdain. They are, he
thinks not unjustly, a document to which no one, High, Low, or Broad,
can now subscribe without mental reservations.

The theory