Catholic of any time or country must be alone decisive against all claims which that body may set up to be accounted an integral part of the great Christian Community dispersed throughout the world. Yet hardly less conclusive in the same direction is the fact, that these differences on the fundamentals of the Faith seem to operate less towards the practical disunion of parties than do certain rubrical questions of the most utterly subordinate description, such as whether clergymen shall preach in black or in white, read offertory sentences where there is no offertory, or bow to the communion-table under an express protest against the doctrine which alone gives to such acts of reverence their obvious meaning and true symbolical importance.

We are far indeed from questioning that other subjects are mooted in the Established Church of a kind different from these; more practical on the one hand, less fundamental on the other; such, for example, as the question which has drawn forth these observations, the relative excellence of different styles of church-music. Yet must we not forget our own great happiness and special privilege in having all great controversies closed up once for all to members of the Church by the determinations of an authoritative tribunal; and we will add, all lesser ones of the same class admitting of such decisions as good Christians can have no difficulty in obeying, whether or not their own individual judgment may always go along with them. In the confidence which so healthy a state of things must necessarily inspire, we are enabled to survey lesser differences with composure, and even to take part in them with comfort. Out of the Church, serious men, we should suppose, can never feel sure where they may not be drifted in the discussion of questions, bearing even indirectly upon religion. In the Anglican body this remark appears peculiarly true. For seldom does it happen, as far as we can see, that the parties who differ on the subordinate subjects are thoroughly at one upon the more essential; indeed, one great reason of the incessant occurrence and interminable nature of the disputes which prevail, is plainly the impossibility of finding common ground in first principles. Here then, is our own happy distinction from all sectarian communities. Differ as we may in minor points, we can never stray far from the path of the Church without finding ourselves on rough roads, amid

tangled brakes, and in indifferent company-symptoms of deflexion which must always be enough to put good men upon retracing their steps.

Subject to such limitations as membership in the Church must always impose, animated discussions, such as that now so rife amongst us, upon the relative claims of Plain Chant and Harmony, are evident tokens of healthy vigour and auguries of sure improvement. Active minds will work and wrestle on something; and happy should the Church esteem herself when the spirit of reformation takes so innocent and useful a shape as the desire of abolishing secular strains and innovating upon orchestral abuses! Reformations these, which savour more of Councils than of Diets, of Trent than of Augsburg. Since wars we must have, well is it for us that our high contending parties should range themselves under banners so venerable as those of St. Gregory and Palestrina; and that if those wars must lead to bloodshed or to capture, the sacrifice should be no more costly than that of organists and prima donnas.

But the present controversy on the music of the Church, besides being symptomatic and ominous of good from its own very character, will, as we hope and believe, be in the end productive of more practical advantage than is the case with all controversies. That there are grave abuses still extant in England in this department of the external service of Almighty God, is a fact which may be safely affirmed without any want of regard to the real difficulties which stand in the way of improvement, or of thankfulness for the important steps in the right line which a few years have witnessed; and it is scarcely possible that the whole subject should undergo so thorough a revision as is now in progress without leading to the gradual but sure correction of the evils which are coming to be very extensively deplored. Whatever differences may exist as to styles of music, there seems a considerable and growing consensus, as to the necessity of some radical change in the manner of conducting this portion of divine worship-indeed, in the very essay which we have announced at the head of our article, and in other publications of the same kind, we find the more ancient modes advocated far less as a matter of musical taste, than on account of their tendency to religious edification on the part of singers and hearers. This is a most encouraging circumstance; the more so as

we find no disposition in the chief partisans of harmonized music to overlook the same class of considerations. The question therefore very much reduces itself to one of means; for on the great principle, that all should be done "ad majorem Dei gloriam," we are thankful in believing that there is no difference of opinion. One cause of this happy unanimity is doubtless to be found in the fact, that the contending parties are either clergy, or laymen distinguished even in an age of improvement, like our own, for their devotion to the Church.*

Mr. Formby, whose work forms the text of our article, is one of that zealous little company of recent converts to the Church, from whose enthusiasm in her service, by whatever natural mistakes or misconceptions thwarted, most happy results, we confidently trust, may with good reason be promised to England. Of Mr. Formby's volume a considerable portion was, as he informs us, prepared before his renunciation of the Protestant religionto which, in spirit at least, he has probably never conformed. Like others of the converts, he brings to us qualifications for the task of an observer which no length of connexion with the Church could supply, and which are in themselves no mean compensation to their possessor for the want of that incommunicable and transcendent privilege which they enjoy who "have ever been," like the elder son in the parable, in the bosom of the tenderest and most watchful of parents. For what is it which, under the Divine blessing, has drawn these scattered sheep into the Fold of the Church? What, indeed, but the fruit of long and patient meditation on her true nature

66

While these sheets are passing through the press, we have received permission to announce a forthcoming Catechism of Plain Chant," from the pen of the Rev. Dr. Crookall, of St. Edmund's College. The high musical reputation which this gentleman has brought with him from Rome, added to his experience as director of the choir in a college long distinguished for the cultivation of the genuine ecclesiastical chant, cannot fail to secure to this manual a welcome reception on the part of teachers as well as students, of the sacred science on the elements of which it treats. "The Chorister's Gradual," by Mr. Ambrose Phillipps, a name beloved of all who have a heart to glow at the thought of noble deeds of Christian piety and munificence, also reaches us too late for more than this summary notice.

and office in the world, resulting in a conviction, not to be disregarded without peril, of the essential correspondence of the Roman Communion with that high and cherished type? They come to us, therefore, with ideas of the Church fresh drawn from the purest sources; from her consecutive annals, from the history and writings of her Saints, from the contents and tenour of her own immortal liturgies. This gives a depth and spirit to their views of her character and obligations, which renders their accession to our communion at the present moment a peculiar mark of the Divine goodness towards us; and in this light we are rejoiced to feel that the recent conversions are extensively regarded by the English Catholic body.

The set-off against this advantage on the side of converts would undoubtedly be found, did it exist, or in so far as it exists, in a certain want of pliancy, or of forbearance, not unlikely to befal zealous men coming into a new system with high abstract ideas of perfection, unmodified as yet by the wear and tear of experience. And certainly in the case of any religious system, except the Church, this liability had been quite sure to work consequences perilous alike to the system and to the individuals thus suddenly imported into it. No where else could we have escaped the dangers of so heterogeneous a combination of elements. "Ne mittas viñum novum in utres veteres ; alioquin dirumpit vinum utres et vinum diffunditur." Wonderfully has this saying of Divine Wisdom been illustrated in the case of the communion which has lately yielded us so rich a harvest! But it should excite the thankfulness of Catholics and the marvel of all, to behold how the Church has at once subdued and appropriated these active spirits, of foreign growth, yet not of foreign nature; how they have been, as chemists would say, taken up" into her composition; how their little pardonable eccentricities rectify themselves under the fostering hand of their new Mother, without consciousness on their own part or violence on hers. O marvellous Economy indeed! O gracious Rule, strict without severity, supple without weakness-how constraining, yet how gentle, how transforming, yet how unfelt! A zealous convert from Anglicanism to the Church has no erratic tendencies which the strong centripetal influence to which he becomes at once subjected has not power, in all but extraor

66

dinary and anomalous cases, to counteract and regulate. The dispensation of grace provides no security, any more than the economy of Nature, against the possibility of exceptional cases; there are comets in the heavens; there were rebels in the Angelic choir; shall we wonder that there are also apostates from the Church? Yet, so far liker to the order of the celestial hierarchy than to the course of the natural world, there is in the Divine Economy, no place or provision for eccentric orbits. The Church has a wonderful power of smoothing down inequalities and rounding off edges. A man is here under law, or he is an outlaw. In the Church, all is orderly, equable, and uniform. What has capacities of shining, shines in her sphere, not fitfully but evenly; what tends to protrude finds its place to mount without ballast, its level, to fly off into space, its circle of order, its function of duty, its ministry of obedience.-And now to our more immediate task.

The excellent author of the "Guide to the right use of Christian Psalmody," has long been distinguished, even among his former contemporaries, for bold and original views. His "Travels in the East," published several years back when he was still an attached member of the Anglican Church, were characterized at the time by a Periodical not less remarkable for its fairness of tone than for its brilliant ability, and which, however justly severe against cant, shallowness, and heresy, was always sensitively alive and tenderly considerate towards real merit, and purity of intention-as "original even to eccentricity and to the very verge of paradox and overstatement. Strong language this for the British Critic, when speaking of a writer so religious, and in the main catholicminded, as Mr. Formby. Strong language for so equitable and indulgent a censor; yet mild withal, when it is discovered that the extravagances hinted at, are nothing less than symptoms of that strange infirmity by which other noble minds besides that of our excellent author have been occasionally beset-an admiration of Mahometanism! Now this illustrates what we have just said about the controlling and rectifying power of the Catholic Church. No sooner does Mr. Formby find himself among us, than his

* British Critic for October, 1843.