INLESS the sacraments of the Christian Church are sacrifices, its Ministry is not a Priesthood; for by a priest is meant, in theological controversy, one whose office it is to prepare and offer up a sacrifice. If, then, there are no sacrifices in the Church of Christ, of necessity there can exist no sacrificing priest.

This is no idle dispute, which aims at nothing higher than the rejection of an obnoxious word. The word indeed is harmless, and does not properly convey the meaning which is now connected with it. The question at issue is in reality, whether the Christian ministry in fact originated with Christ and His Apostles, or was it a mere revival of a branch of the Jewish polity, accommodated to the circumstances of the Christian Church? Does the minister of Christ succeed to the office of the Levite, or is the institution one which owes all its authority to the sanction of Christ, and traces all its duties to His commands?

The Reformers thus understood the question. They saw that the notion of a Priesthood had its origin in a profound ignorance of the meaning of the Old Testament; they justly maintained that when Moses was read, the veil was still upon the heart of the disciples of the Papacy. And having dismissed for ever the superstition of mediators and sacrifices applying the merit of Christ both to the quick and dead, the notion of a Priesthood fell together

* Mr. Marsden has permitted us to quote this paper from "The Churchmanship of the New Testament." (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co.) The value of this work will be best estimated from our extract. As a popular yet thoroughly learned hand-book on "The Origin and Progress of certain Opinions which now agitate the Church of Christ," it has our strongest recommendation.-ED. O. O. F.

+ Priest, a corruption of the Norman prêtre, as this of the Latin presbyter, and this again of the Greck peoßúrepos, an elder. It is remarkable enough that our language, rich as it is in synonyms, contains no word to correspond with iepevs, or sacerdos. From sheer penury of language, we term this officer a priest; that is, we render iepeus and #peσßúrepos by the same word, although they have nothing in common; for the priest is not necessarily an elder, nor the elder a priest, either in Jewish or Pagan literature. It seems to be a fair and reasonable inference, that in the Anglo-Saxon Church there was no priest, no iepeus. It will be admitted, by those who are competent to judge, that if the office had existed, an appropriate name for it would have existed also: nor is it credible that a word of such importance, once naturalized, should have been ever lost.

with it. Priest and altar perished in one overthrow. They remarked again upon “the accuracy with which the various ministers of the primitive Church were reckoned up in Scripture; prophets, apostles, evangelista, pastors, teachers, and the like; but in this rehearsal they found no mention made of priests. And yet (they said) it is most im probable they should have been omitted, if either Christ had appointed them, or if they had been necessary for the Church, or even useful."

Again; they remarked this difference be tween the priesthood and the ministry. "All those who believe in Christ are priests (in the spiritual or figurative sense),-not in regard of their ministry, but because all the faithful, as kings and priests, may through Christ offer up spiritual sacrifices unto God. The ministry, then, and the priesthood, are things far different the one from the other; for the priesthood is common to all Christians, the ministry to but a few."

To the men who reverenced the Scriptures those reasons were sufficient. They renounced the Romish priesthood; they retained the Christian ministry. Their justification is thus summed up by one of the Continental Churches, and we venture to affirm it is, though brief, triumphant and complete: "We have not taken away the ministry of the Church, because we have thrust the Popish priesthood out of the Church of Christ. For surely in the new covenant of Christ there is no longer any such priesthood as was in the ancient Church of the Jews; which had an external anointing, holy garments, and very many ceremonies which were figures and types of Christ who, by His coming, fulfilled and abolished them (Heb. ix. 10, 11). And He Himself remaineth the only Priest for ever; we do not communicate the name of priest to any of the ministers, lest we should detract any. thing from Christ."

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If the Protestant doctrine be correct, it has been a daring and impious thing ever since the death of Christ to assume the priesthood;

Hall's "Harmony of Confessions," p. 247.

since He himself abideth a Priest continually -the only Priest in earth or Heaven whom the Church confesses. It was not to be expected that an assumption so offensive to God should be innocent in its consequences to man. And certainly no corruption of the Papacy has been more pregnant with mischievous results; none has been more pernicious, whether to the laity, or to the so-called priest himself. It reduced the one to the most wretched and degrading thraldom; in the other it became a systematic scheme of almost blasphemous impiety.

The Confessional, with all its horrors, belongs to this false notion of a Priesthood. The subject is one on which we are not disposed to dwell. The delicacy of English minds revolts; and the purity of the Gospel forbids. But we shall not be deterred from calmly asserting the Inquisition itself is, in comparison with the Confessional, a mild and gentle instrument of spiritual despotism. That torments the body; this racks the soul. The inquisitor, having slain the body, has lost his power; he has no more that he can do, and we defy him; the more he refines his tortures, the sooner his victim is released. But the confessing priest works upon more enduring materials, and upon a subject more keenly suffering,-he tortures an enduring soul!

That men should have recently been found, wearing the garb of Christian ministers, and bearing upon their souls the vows of a Reformed Church, who have endeavoured to revive this practice, is a circumstance from the shame of which our Church will not soon recover. That the discovery (however insignificant the names of those who have attempted to revive it) has not roused the Church and nation with a burst of indignant and insulted feeling, seems to be a melancholy presage for the future; an evidence indeed not to be mistaken of our deep infatuation.

In the Confessional the priest is more than man, and the penitent is less. It is the perfect consummation of arrogance on the one side, and blasphemous assumption of the prerogative of God; and on the other, of prostrate imbecility, of cringing weakness, of the folly which, distrusting God and all His promises of grace, has confidence in the mumbled spell of an impostor.

The monastic life is another consequence of this false notion of a Priesthood. Short of a profession of open vice, nothing can well be conceived more perfectly degrading than the profession of a monastic life. At the best it is

the valour of a soldier who escapes without a wound, because he hides himself from danger as the fray comes on. It is an inglorious retreat, and not a manly struggle; and of all the incantations of the papal sorceress, the monastic vow is beyond compare the most effective, if it do not aggravate the storm it pretends to set at rest, and provoke the conflict it professes to avoid. The act itself is sin; sin of no ordinary cast; it is a daring defiance of the God of nature, an insult to the God of grace.

Yet the monastic life, with its enormous train of evils, arises from the notion of a Priesthood, and it is chiefly defended on this ground. If the Eucharist be indeed a sacrifice, shall it be consecrated by hands unclean? Ceremonial washings, and the purification of the flesh, were required from the Jewish priest before he sacrificed. He lived apart; for the Levites had cities of their own. Shall the priest of the Christian Church be less precise? The analogy is suited to his purpose; and thus he becomes a mimic of the ancient law: a mimic, and not an imitator; for mimicry is unreasoning imitation; a servile copying of the actions of other men, without the power of comprehending to what they lead, or why they were at first performed.

The Priesthood is an office in every point inferior to the Christian ministry; as the Law is in every point inferior to the Gospel. The priest was a mere functionary; his duties were professional. Learning and wisdom and exalted piety might all be wanting, yet he was an efficient priest. A blemish in his flesh excluded him from the sacred office, but not a blemish in his understanding or his heart. To slay the sacrifice, to enter the most holy place, to return blood-sprinkled, and even to bless the people, were official acts in which the question of character or fitness was not involved. Added years contributed little to the usefulness of the priest as such, or yet to his authority. He who was anointed yesterday was in perhaps every sense as effective as the veteran who had served in the courts of the Lord's house for years. Nay, at the age of fifty, in the full prime of life, if life be measured by ripeness of intelligence and mental power, the Levites were dismissed (with the exception of the high priest) from their laborious service; a service the more laborious because it was chiefly mechanical.

The spiritual instruction of the people was not committed to the Priesthood. Their office

was to administer the symbolic service, of which the meaning and the end was Christ. They were, in a judicial sense, the keepers of the Law, and their expositions of it were those, so to speak, of the bench rather than the pulpit; expositions of its meaning in the letter, not of its spiritual application to the conscience. We by no means contend that a holy priest would not instruct the people in a much higher sense, and endeavour to reach the conscience and the heart with spiritual lessons. But when he did so he rose above his office and its legal requisitions; for the time he was a prophet rather than a priest. It was by a succession of prophets that the work of instruction was carried on. The prophets, rather than the priests, were the spiritual teachers of the people; and the chief of the prophets were not of the tribe of Levi.

Granting, then, that the Christian ministry were a Priesthood, the admission would be degrading. It stands already upon much higher grounds, and has a nobler office. What if it were true that "the clergy are entrusted with the awful privilege of making the body and blood of Christ" (a phrase with which of late years we have become so painfully familiar), the youngest of their body and the most unworthy could perform this awful mystery. He would then, in fact, be entrusted, equally with the wisest and the best, with the power of working miracles. But the power of working miracles is by no means the highest that Christ confers upon His ministers. Laymen frequently possessed it as well as ministers; and St. Paul taught even laymen to regard it as by no means their highest gift, or one to be greatly coveted. Granting, we say, that the ministry were a Priesthood, the concession would add nothing to their true dignity. Already they are "ambassadors for Christ," and 'fellowworkers with God;" shall they forsake this high distinction to encumber and degrade themselves again beneath a yoke of Jewish bondage?

If we take the New Testament for our guide, and are content to submit to its decisions, we shall at once reject the imposture (for we must call it so) of a sacrificing priesthood in the church of Christ. St. Paul writes largely on the subject of the Christian ministry. His charge to the Ephesian elders, his letters to Timothy and Titus, dwell almost exclusively upon it. But we cannot gather from them that Christian ministers are priests; or that the celebration of the Sacraments is their highest function.

We would speak with caution here; or rather we would speak with truth. Far from us be the levity which would even seem to disparage the two sacred ordinances of Christ, though we combat deadly superstitions arising from the sinful exaltation of them. Christ sent forth His first disciples to baptize and to preach; these men set apart others for the same work, -the ministry of the Word and Sacraments. But if the reader should search for any indica tions of the superior dignity of the Sacraments compared with the preaching of the Word, he will search in vain. St. Paul made his boast at Corinth that Christ sent him not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel; he rejoiced that, with a very few exceptions, he had baptized none of them; and, on the other hand, he thanked God that he spake with tongues more than they all—that is, he preached the Gospel not only in Greek and Hebrew, with which he was familiar, but, through miraculous aid, in other languages; and in this he gloried. Does this agree with that disparagement of preaching, of which we hear so much? The great business of the ministry was, then, the preaching of the Word; not in the restricted sense in which we sometimes use the term; for it was to be done in public and in private, in the weekly assembly and from house to house. It included reproof, and counsel, and exhortation. It was to be practised in season and out of season; with the wayside passenger, as when Philip the deacon preached Christ to the Ethiopian eunuch; at midnight in the houses of the faithful, as when Paul preached in the upper chamber, and Eutychus was restored to life. Such duties, interrupted by laborious study, intermixed with prayer and praise, relieved by meditation, stimulated by success, and freshened up even by persecution, were the life of a Christian minister. They are so still. But the man who would attain to such a life must be a man of God. He must be sustained by higher considerations than those of his priestly office or his apostolic descent. He must have more than an official sanctity, or he will not be an able minister of the New Testament, but a hireling, and perchance a drudge.

These principles were common once in England, and its Church was built upon them. The preaching of the Word was honoured as, no less than the Sacraments, an ordinance of Christ Himself. Our very definition of a Church is this: "A congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the

Sacraments be duly administered" (Art. 19). They ought to be our glory as hitherto, through God's infinite mercy, they have been for nearly three hundred years our safeguard and defence. Unhappily, it is once more necessary to state them with caution, and to fence them round with proofs. They are received with suspicion, or rejected with disdain. Yet they stand on record. God's Word still sheds its clear stream

of light across a troubled sea: and the formularies of our Church are faithful still: they distribute and reflect the light of Scripture. Alas, they are beacons that have served of late to show how swiftly and how far the tide has carried us from that Protestant truth which made England great, and her Church the glory of Christendom, and the joy of the whole earth.

UFFER me, then, my fair hearers, to recommend this exchange,-this preference of decoration. Like 'the king's daughter, be all glorious within.' Let the Bible be the mirror at which you dress; and while others are weightily engaged in catching a fashion, or adjusting a curl, let the object of your cultivation be the understanding, the memory, the will, the affections, the conscience. Let no part of this internal creation be unadorned: let it sparkle with the diamonds of wisdom, of prudence, of humility, of gentleness. These ornaments alone will confer dignity, and prepare for usefulness. If destitute of these, can you imagine it possible to obtain real durable regard? Need you be told that these skin-deep perfections, these exterior senseless appendages, imply no excellency in the wearer, and are only admired by the weak or the worthless? Aro you ignorant that men often despise a soul lodged in a form they adore, and admire nonsense because it is poured from handsome lips? Are you designed for toys, or rational beings, the playthings of the senses, or improving companions? Would you in company keep your husbands on thorns, while they wish you to be seen, and hope you will not be heard; know how much more likely you are to strike by the quality and pattern of your robes, than by the insipidity and inanity of your discourse?

"Adorn yourselves in the newest mode, in the richest attire, plait your hair, deck yourselves with pearls,-will these render you valuable? Will these qualify you to manage the concerns of a family, 'to give a portion to your maidens,' to train up your children

in wisdom and virtue, to be a help-meet for your husband? What are you endued with reason and immortality, only to be enamoured with a piece of embroidery, or to pay your devotions to the colour of silk? Are you sublimely resolved never, never to leave the world of fans, and enter the region of intelligence and of mind?

"These decorations are not CORRUPTIBLE.' All other ornaments 'perish in the using.' All other attire gives place to the shroud. Beauty consumes away like a moth'-the sparkling eye is closed in darkness'-the body is laid in the grave; death shall feed upon it.' The charmer, looking in vain for admirers, says 'to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister.'

"Accidents disfigure, and diseases corrode. How quickly time changes the countenance! How transient the empire of colours and of tints! How soon wrinkles and gaudy attire disagree! Having laid in no stock of mental influence and sober entertainment against the evil day, what becomes of these delightful creatures? A few years reduce them to insignificance, leaving them only the humiliating claims of pity, or the uncertain returns of gratitude.

"But an accomplished pious woman can never be the object of neglect; she will attract notice and confer happiness even when descending into the vale of years. The ravages of time cannot reach the soul: death cannot strip off the habits of immortality: it will only change her 'from glory to glory:' only remove her from earth, unworthy of her continuance, and place her among the innumerable company of angels.""-W. JAY.

CHAPTER V.

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"Though many other books are comparable to cloth, in which, by a small pattern, we may safely judge of the whole piece, yet the Bible is like a fair suit of arras, of which, though a shred may assure you of the fineness of the colours and richness of the stuff, yet the hangings never appear to their true advantage but when they are displayed to their full dimensions and are seen together."-BOYLE.

B

UT abundantly evident as is the Divine character of the Bible, from the history of its unique preservation and the spectacle of its unparalleled effects, it is not less so from an examination of its structure and the nature of its contents. And although, from the number and magnitude of the subjects to be comprised within the narrow limits of these chapters, our treatment of this topic must necessarily be very brief, to omit it altogether would be unpardonable. In enumerating, then, a few of the more prominent particulars in which the Bible, viewed with regard to its contents, stands alone, we give precedence to

I. Its Object.

The Bible is a revelation. "Canst thou by searching find out God?" The question is one which involves its own answer. To the sophists of our own day, alternating between the Atheism which does its best and bitterest to banish Him from the universe, and the Pantheism which pretends to identify Him with the dust beneath our feet, it is not less full of rebuke than it was three thousand years ago to the patriarch of Uz. "No man hath seen God at any time;" and, apart from the revelation of Him who is "in the bosom of the Father," no man "hath declared Him." Diogenes Laertius tells us that Pythagoras saw the soul of Homer in Hades, hanging on a tree and surrounded by serpents, as a punishment for what he had said of the gods. Yet if Homer had lived in another land, he might have learned the lesson taught by the wonders of the Exodus five hundred years before, "The gods of the heathen are no gods," as he heard the creed of Jethro reiterated by the congregated thousands on the top of Carmel: "Jehovah, He is the God! Jehovah, He is the God!"

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"Know thyself!" cries the sage: but he cries in vain. For "the heart is deceitful above all things. . . who can know it?" "Such knowledge is too high for us, it is wonderful; we cannot attain to it." Who shall teach us? Plutarch, who tells us that the human soul is a subtle air"? Aristotle, who maintains it to be "an active fire"? Hipponius, who makes it "an ethereal fluid"? Anaximander, who describes it as "a composition of earth and water"? Or Empedocles, who affirms it to be "a mixture of all the elements"? Shall we believe Epicurus, who places it in the stomach? or Descartes, who says it is in the pineal gland?

'If a man die, shall he live again?" And even before he dies, is he at the mercy of the Three Sisters ? Are we left to the tender mercies of unpitying Fate? or abandoned to the mockery of Chance? Moral character, moral capacity, moral conduct-are they not all imaginary? Above all, is there an actual Moral Governor-and a future Moral Retri bution? or is Promasdes helpless against Arimanes? Nor is our perplexity at an end when we descend from the moral to the material. What about the world itself? whence came it? and why? A concourse of atomscauses, in an eternal succession without any precession, precession, can any suppositions be more transparently ridiculous than these? and yet are not these the best of the best masters? Is matter eternal? the thing is simply inconceivable and yet-" ex nihilo nihil fit!"

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Ah, how true those words, "Vain man would be wise!" But "where shall wisdom be found?" "Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me! and the sea saith, It is not with me! . . . GOD understandeth the way thereof, and HE knoweth the place thereof." "O Earth, Earth, Earth, hear the word of THE LORD!"

That matter is not eternal, but "created;" that (notwithstanding Lord Monboddo and Professor Huxley) "there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth him understanding;" that though a man die, he shall live again, for "the earth shall cast out the dead;" that "verily there is a God that