will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all
the nations" (Isa. lxi. II).




VI

_PAGEANTRY AND PATRIOTISM_

Long years ago, when religious people excited themselves almost
to frenzy about Ritualism, Mr. Gladstone surveyed the tumult with
philosophic calm. He recommended his countrymen to look below the
surface of controversy, and to regard the underlying principle.
"In all the more solemn and stated public acts of man," he wrote,
"we find employed that investiture of the acts themselves with
an appropriate exterior, which is the essential idea of Ritual.
The subject-matter is different, but the principle is the same:
it is the use and adaptation of the outward for the expression
of the inward." The word "ritual" is by common usage restricted
to the ecclesiastical sphere, but in reality it has a far wider
significance. It gives us the august rite of the Convocation, the
ceremonial of Courts, the splendour of regiments, the formal usages
of battleships, the silent but expressive language of heraldry and
symbol; and, in its humbler developments, the paraphernalia of
Masonry and Benefit Societies, and the pretty pageantry of Flag-days
and Rose-days. Why should these things be? "Human nature itself,
with a thousand tongues, utters the reply. The marriage of the
outward and the inward pervades the universe."