who were to come after him, to restore the losses in the offices. The Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis had been left out, the Benedictus had been abbreviated. The Nicene Creed was practically bracketed, and the recitation of the clause in the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into hell," was made optional. All of these blemishes have now been done away. Seabury's words have become true, and our grand canon in our Communion service will ever be a monument to his wisdom and piety.

Early in the nineteenth century the Church's doctrines were extended by the administration of the great Bishop Hobart, who boldly declared that he was a high churchman. He founded a society for the distribution of the Book of Common Prayer. He was greatly attacked by the existing Bible Society for doing this, but he declared that he held that the Bible and the Prayer Book ought to be side by side in every house. His motto was, evidently, that the Church teaches, while the Bible proves.

It is thus interesting to note how the great Church revival of the nineteenth century began quite independently in America. Before Keble had preached his great Assize Sermon in 1833, which is usually given as the date of the beginning of the Tractarian Movement, Seabury, Hobart, and others had laid, here in America, its foundations. But, as is well known, the Church revival met in England with fierce opposition. The low church, or Evangelical, party had lost much of its early fervor, and gained large political influence. The Bishops appointed

were mostly from this school. They regarded the "Tracts for the Times" as full of dangerous errors, and violently denounced them. The theological system, which taught that grace was given through the Sacraments, was taken to be in opposition to the received doctrine that man was justified by faith or, simply, trust in Christ's merits. The two ideas, rightly understood, were not really contradictory, but supplementary of each other. Christianity has its objective and its subjective side. While the Sacraments are means through which Christ acts and bestows His gifts, faith and repentance are the subjective and necessary conditions for their profitable reception.

The controversy in England and America began to be very fierce. Each party appealed to the Scriptures, the Prayer Book, and the Articles. The contest at first raged about the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession, and the remission of sins in Baptism.

In the American edition of the Prayer Book the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession was clearly stated in its Collect in the Institution office. It declared that God had "promised to be with the Ministers of Apostolic Succession to the end of the world."

The doctrine of baptismal regeneration was also clearly stated, for after every baptism the minister gives thanks to God that "this person is regenerate." The Articles were shown by the Tractarians, and especially by "Tract 90," to be patient, in their true literal and historical meaning, of a Catholic interpretation.

In Holy Scripture, in the sixth chapter of St. John, fairly interpreted, there could be little doubt as to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist; and the new birth from above was ever associated, in Holy Scripture, with the one act of water and the Spirit.

There was connected with these teachings a slight improvement in the arrangement of our churches and some details of our worship. The ordinary arrangement, as is now seen in some survivals of the old church, was to have a high pulpit, beneath it a desk for the clergyman, sometimes a lower one for the clerk who made the responses, and beneath this three-decker arrangement there was a plain table for the Communion. The prayers were said by the minister in a surplice, though this was never adopted in Virginia by some of the clergy. The minister went out at the end of the prayers and changed it for a black academical gown to preach in: Any innovation of this order was visited by riots in England, and the denunciation of the Bishops.

Bishop Eastburn of Massachusetts, an earnest but narrow Calvinist, would not go to the Advent because there was a cross on the wall over the altar, flowers were at times placed on the altar, and the prayers were said stall-wise. Good old Dr. Edson of Lowell told me that when he began to say the prayers in that way, Dr. Eastburn being present, the Bishop rose up, came to him, took him by the shoulders, and forced him to turn around with his face to the people. The great Bishop McIlvaine of Ohio forbade any altar with a solid or closed front. It

must be, he said, an honest table, with four legs. But a growing knowledge of architecture led to some improvement in the Church's appointments, and recessed chancels took the place of the old threedecker arrangement.

The low church opposition took, next, the form of personal attack, and the ordination of young Carey, a student at the General Theological Seminary, who held Catholic views, was publicly protested against. Attacks were made on Bishop Onderdonk of New York, and Bishop Doane of New Jersey, which were instigated by the low church party spirit. One proof of this is seen in the fact that in the judgment of the court in Onderdonk's case, the low churchmen voted for condemnation and high churchmen for acquittal.

These contests, so full of human bigotry and uncharitableness, greatly checked the growth of the Church. The Church herself, by her internal strife, has been her own greatest enemy.

In 1844 the General Convention was stirred up to take action, and endeavor to deal with the Tractarian Movement. But you could as little check its onward career by resolution, as you could, by addressing a series of them to an advancing locomotive, stop its progress. In spite of the desertion of Newman of England and of Bishop Ives of North Carolina, the work continued to grow. It was of God and could not be stopped. It was a promulgation of the truths in the Prayer Book. It was an assertion of the Church's right to her ancient heritage of worship.

Early in the fifties Bishop Eastburn, urged on by the low element, brought the Rev. Oliver S. Prescott, an assistant at the Advent, to trial. The writer, who was at that time a law student at Harvard, attended the three trials to which he was subjected, and took notes. The Hon. Richard H. Dana, a noted lawyer and staunch churchman, was Father Prescott's counsel. It was proved that Father Prescott had offered to hear confessions privately, and to give absolution. He had also, in a sermon, spoken of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the sinless mother of a sinless Child. The trials lasted some years, the first having failed for want of particularity concerning time and place in the indictment. At length a conclusion was reached. It was evident that the phrase "a sinless mother of a sinless Child" might be differently construed, and did not necessarily involve the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. But in respect to confession the judgment was different. It was that "though the charge was not proven" as to Father Prescott's having heard confessions privately, nevertheless he must "agree that he would not preach it, and until he so agreed he should be suspended from the ministry."

So far as the Church at large was concerned, the brave stand taken, and the fulness of the Anglican authority cited in favor of sacramental confession were such, that a new impulse was given to the Church's doctrine and principles. The effect on the Church at large was contrary to what low churchmen supposed it would be. Dr. Whittingham, the