great, and to this century a new power, both in relation to the spiritual life, and also to the public actions of members of the national Church. "When we had occasion five, and again, three years ago, to review the condition of Church matters, we expressed our strong conviction that what was once known as the Church party, had been broken up, and that the Church was all the same widening and strengthening itself. We make the same assertion to-day in respect to the one compact Church party which seemed at one moment ready to have marshalled itself in opposition to the well-disciplined ranks of Puritanism. It has been broken up through many causes. But while this one Church party has disappeared, there has been a signal revival lately of the spirit of partizanship within the Church of England in respect of different matters, some of a temporal, some of a spiritual, and others of a mixed character; while the accidents of this complex condition lead to strange permutations and combinations of men whom it was once easy to find, either on a right or on a wrong side, but who are now perpetually changing positions like the performers in an old-fashioned country-dance. We are not making this statement either in praise or in blame, but as it is a fact, it may as well be acknowledged. The old lines were necessarily broken up as soon as that vague appellation, 'Broad Church,' had slipped into current vogue, and had been accepted by men of the most different temperaments and systems of belief, simply as an escape from the difficulties of partizanship. Undoubtedly it has, at the same time, its good side, when it results in the unostentatious adoption, by those who have hitherto been classed as Low Churchmen, of a distinctively Church platform, from which to work any one question, as, for instance, the extension of the Episcopate.
We may generally sum up the different Church questions of the day which lead to these diversities of attitude under three heads. First, comes the practical and political side, for those two phases of Churchmanship have, by force of circumstances, been oddly amalgamated; next, we may reckon the doctrinal one, in reference, chiefly, to recent outbursts of scepticism from dignified quarters;—and finally the ritual side, running in some cases into sensational excess. In arranging these topics in this order, we have no idea of hinting any opinion as to their relative importance. We have simply arranged them as they best suit the tenour of the present article.
The co-operation for several forms of practical work, as well as for the maintenance of the Church in its corporate privileges as a portion of the body politic, of moderate members of the different parties, admits, in the first instance, of an easy solution. They felt, in one view of the matter, that it was their
