advocate for chairs or open seats in churches, and with that shrewdness of common sense which marked all his opinions, and all his information, he perceived even on this subject the exact residence of those unfortunate prejudices which retain the pew system. He attributed the evil not to the aristocracy or to the poor, but the middle classes. This view is stated to have been expressed in a letter to a clergyman who asked for his assistance, which was given on condition that open seats were to be the system of the church. May this cause then have the weight of that sound common sense, which is universally attributed to the opinions of the Duke of Wellington, on whatever subject he thought it worth while to express himself. We wish the letter were printed, or that the Duke's remarks were given in some authentic form, with the name of the hearer or correspondent to attest them.

From a career of more than fourscore years, it is but a few months that we have been reviewing; and in the tributes of praise to his memory, it is but one particular demonstration that we have noticed. But it is a result attaching to a great character, that we may learn the whole by a proper study of a part.

29

ART. II.-1. A Form of Family Prayer, with Special Offices for the Seasons. (With a Preface signed NELSON.') London: Masters.

1852.

2. Bishop Andrews' Devotions.

3. Lessons for the Days of the Week. London: Masters.

4. Derotions in the antient way of Offices, for every Day in the Week, &c. By GEORGE HICKES, D.D. 1717.

5. Prayers for a Christian Household. By Rev. T. BOWDLER. London: Pickering. 1848.

6. Family Offices. By W. PERCEVAL WARD, M.A. London: Masters.

1848.

7. Daily Office for the Use of Families. London: J. H. Parker.

1851.

8. Holiness in the Priest's Household, &c. &c. (By late Rev. R. A. SUCKLING.) London: Masters. 1852.

9. Family Devotions for a Fortnight; adapted from Andrewes, Ken, &c. London: Masters. 1850.

10. A Broad-sheet of Family Prayers for the Labouring Classes. Chichester: Mason. 1853.

THE subject of this article is one upon which we should enter with the utmost diffidence and misgiving, were it our purpose to attempt to lay down any very full or precise rules, or to endeavour to satisfy all classes of minds with respect to it. Our aim is far simpler; and it may conduce to clearness if we state it at the outset. It is, then, to inquire whether there be not some definite epyov, some work or function proper to itself, to be discharged by what is variously called Family,'' Household,' or 'Domestic''Worship,' Service,' or ' Prayer;' and how far we may, out of that distinctive idea, approximate to some general canons or principles in the matter.

We believe that the absence of such distinctive idea is the principal source of the unsatisfactoriness which belongs, by pretty general consent, to household offices, after what pattern soever conceived. Of course there must be unsatisfactoriness, so long as this is the case; and that of the most fundamental kind. When a machinery is devised and set going with only a dim general idea of doing good, it would be a wonder indeed if it performed to our satisfaction, or if it did not trench upon other and better and more accredited ways of doing the same work. There is no test or standard whereby to measure our satisfaction or dissatisfaction with such a piece of machinery; and the apparent well-working of it may be only comparative after all; it may still be that we had better have left the matter alone. Now this is just the case of household services. A general idea that

we ought to be religious, and that we ought to meet together for religious purposes, is the basis of the practice now pretty generally prevailing among us, where religion is thought of at all. We ought, it is felt, to acknowledge God, as a household; and accordingly some form of family worship is devised or adopted. And at first sight all seems plain sailing. But it cannot be long before the question forces itself upon us,-What place is this ordinance, if so we may call it, to take in our estimation, and in the spiritual system under which our souls are living? Some place it must have; what is it? To those, indeed, who live at random in spiritual things, and get good,' as the phrase is, whenever and wherever they can, this question will not appear worth the answering. But we are supposing the case of churchmen, who may be imagined, as churchmen, to have realized to themselves that many things which are absolutely and in themselves good, are not therefore relatively such; and that, given the postulate that we are churchmen, acknowledging to some kind of rules in spiritual things, it is a question worth askingWhat is the effect of such and such an ordinance, superadded to those which the Church provides, or which the personal needs of the soul suggest? Are we sure we can so superadd it, as not to injure those acknowledged departments of spiritual things? as not to act on the one hand in the conventicle spirit which sets aside the Church, nor on the other to abate in ourselves or others the sense of single personal responsibility before God? And we know that, in point of fact, the household rite is in many quarters avowedly substituted for that which the Church prescribes. We shall not stop to prove that this, at any rate, cannot be right. Whatever household service is, church service it is not, nor has any claim to be used as a substitute for it.

But an attempt has been made, to which Dr. Hook's name gave considerable currency some years since, to adapt the church services to household purposes, by the simple process of paring them down to the requirements, in point of length, of the household. But this, too, is surely most unsatisfactory. It proceeds upon total ignorance, or disregard, of the structure of our Daily Office as a whole. It pays a very ill-conceived, however well-meant, homage to the Church; snatching a few of her tools at random to build up some sort of spiritual edifice or other,—what, it appears not. All that it can claim to do, is to imitate, in a mechanical sort of way, the gestures of our spiritual Mother. Surely a distinct service, having some aim of its own, and not feebly aping hers, were more desirable; more really dutiful, though with less appearance of it. But more than this may justly be said of this plan; it is not a poor imitation, merely, of the Church services, but an unfilial mutilation of them. Moreover, it cedes the whole position of churchmanship,

as far as regards the Daily Office. It systematically abandons, on behalf of all the members of a whole household, all allegiance to the Church's earnest desire for her children, that they should hold communion with her, and with her Divine Head, through her proper forms and symbols. It says-what no other household service, whatever it may intend, does say,- We of this 'household give up the Church service, in its totality, as imprac'ticable or undesirable.' In a priest's house especially, an humiliating confession is hereby made, that his clerical vow is not kept. But the particular point of our complaint just now is that, after all, nothing definite in the way of a result is obtained. After thus imitating, or mutilating, and in reality obstructing the Church's proper action, what have you gained? You have not performed any such act of communion with the Church as is involved in the use of the entire office; for a mere cento from it cannot claim to be any true representation of its spirit: and yet you have added nothing to her spiritual work, dealt with no department of the soul's needs which is less cared for in her services; for you have but taken her words out of her mouth. We cannot, then, bestow any commendation on this expedient, nor do otherwise than heartily wish that it might be given up, wherever it has been adopted. Let those who, happily, have enough of a dutiful spirit towards the Church to desire her offices, and yet have not the opportunity of attending them in public, use them entire, and as a distinct thing from household worship. If (which we are unwilling to suppose) they are not prepared for the effort and sacrifice of time which this would involve, then we would earnestly counsel their ceasing, at any rate, to apply a mutilation of the Church's service to a purpose which it was never intended to answer. Far better, in our humble judgment, let the Church work out her own high aims in her own more excellent way,' and themselves adopt a humbler and less pretentious, but more appropriate line of service.

To what quarter they are to look for forms for this purpose, we acknowledge to be a difficulty. Yet thus much we will say for the forms which have prevailed among us from Archbishop Cranmer to Archbishop Sumner, and from Becon to Bean and Blomfield, that, with all their defects, of which we shall say somewhat presently, they have yet got hold of a true notion, however ill carried out-viz. that household prayers should have a character of their own, distinguishing them from the Church's prayers. The misfortune is, that they are not merely thus distinguished from hers in character, for this none will deny, but also divergent and diverse from them in temper and tone, in the type after which they are cast, and also, too frequently, in doctrine. Prolix and Presbyterian in outward garb, rejecting all those gentle devices which the Church makes

use of to catch and occupy the wandering thought;—the alternation of responses, the recurrence of amens, the joint occupation of psalms, the warmth of hymns, the posture varying with the matter, be it of praise or penitence, of profession or confession,-rejecting all these, the sleepy stream of service, if service it can be called, rambles on, without order or notice, from topic to topic: and being besides regardless alike of days and doctrines, it tends to induce, we fear with too fatal effect, a most Lethean six days' oblivion of the Church's temper and ways, not to say of her existence. And with all this there is a want of purpose in the whole; the more part know not wherefore they are come together.' The more earnest parts of these prayers, it must often strike observant persons, are such as would better befit private devotion; and we have our suspicions that family prayer' not unfrequently serves as a substitute for this, and as a pretext for neglecting it.

Others, again, justly conceiving that the traditions of our own branch of the Western Church have in many things been unduly disregarded, have adapted parts of the Hour Services to household worship: thus making it supplemental to the public daily offices of the Church. This plan, or suggestion, is deserving of respectful consideration. But plausible and pleasing as is the idea, at first sight, of the household's supplying, as well as it can, such gaps as we may conceive the Church to have left in the perfect round of praise, yet it must be borne in mind that the real question is not so much what a household or a household service may be set doing, as what it has a capacity and a commission to do. And this scheme has, it must be confessed, more the appearance of having invented a quoi-à-faire for the household, than of having found out what its real business is. No one will pretend that this is a satisfactory mode of enlarging the Church's ritual scheme: it is confessedly but a make-shift for that purpose at the best. Were it not better, then, to await an authoritative reorganization, if such be needed, of this department of the Church's ritual function? We hope to show, too, as we proceed, that even on mediæval and traditionary principles, it is more reasonable to look to another quarter than the ancient public Hour Services for the supply of the need now under our consideration.

We thankfully acknowledge, however, that manuals for household use have lately appeared, which are free from most of the positive objections which lie against such forms as we have as yet noticed. In these there is no want of carefulness to adopt church-like ways; there is variety of contents; use of responsive forms, and of change of posture; well ordered provision for the various departments of worship; some regard to the more prominent differences of days; and the like: while at the same