selves? and those who have the gift of speech, might they not speak in order to gain power? The danger would be greater than with us; for these preachers, not being prepared by special study, would have less security against it.

It has been said that there can not exist a ministry, because there is no Church; that a Church is not possible in this world. This is true, if one speaks of the ideal of a Church. This ideal has never been realized, not even in the time of the apostles; but now, as then, Christians meet to hear the word preached; to be consoled, to be confirmed; they need to pray together, to give thanks together; and for this a minister is necessary, a servant of God who puts the word within their reach, and who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, comes to the aid of their weakness.

At least missionaries will be needed: For in our day we may say with St. Paul, "How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, unless they be sent?"-Rom., x., 14, 15.

But all the ministers Jesus Christ gave to the primitive Church were not missionaries, in the special sense we attach to the word. Many were pastors, and provided as such for wants that exist to-day, and always will exist: And, after all, are not all pastors half missionaries? Are there not in the bosom of their churches, and all around them, souls which must be sought after, as one seeks after pagans and idolaters a thousand leagues distant? Does the work of conversion ever cease? Must we not always throw the net far and near? The circumstances, then, which in the beginning led to the institution of the ministry, are they not the same today, and do they not require the same measures? And would it not be disavowing Jesus Christ himself, not to do in his name to-day what he himself would do if he were in the midst of us?

Let us also observe, that whatever may be said to-day in favor of the abolition of the ministry might have been said at that time against its institution. One might have said then that every faithful person is a minister, which is true; that no believer should be exempt from the duty of "showing forth the praises of Him who called him out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter, ii., 9), which is also true; that the Christian life is a system of preaching; that faith begets faith, etc. All these things are true; but with them there are others not less true, which make the ministry as necessary to-day as it ever has been.

Let us observe, finally, that the apostles have never spoken of the ministry as an accidental, transitory thing, or as a temporary institution. In short, on this subject we think, that to strike out the word institution would scarcely be more than taking away a word; since, if Jesus Christ has not formally, and in some way by letters patent, instituted the ministry, we can not doubt as to His will in respect to it? It is no departure from truth-no exaggeration to say that the ministry is a divine institution.

4. Does the Ministry constitute an Order in the

Church?

A discussion has been raised on the question, Is the ministry an order?*

This may appear idle, after the solution of the former question, from which it can hardly be distinguished. Theologians, however, who agree as to the divine institution of the ministry, are divided on this point. It is, then, worth while to examine it.

If the ministry, that is to say, the consecration of certain special men to the management of the Church, has been instituted, these men, distinguished among all others, form nec

* In German, Stand.

essarily an order, at least in one sense. If there is controversy, it is without doubt on the greater or less latitude of meaning, of which the word order is susceptible; for the disputants are agreed to acknowledge the institution.

It is certain that the word order may awaken in different minds very different ideas. Some incline to the notion of a Levitical tribe, of a sacerdotal caste, separated into a relig ious society, exercising exclusive functions, proceeding less from the community than the community proceeds from it, existing by itself, imposed upon the flocks by an authentic divine institution, or by Providence; legitimate, in a word, in the sense which political parties have given to that expression.

Others, who, in a certain sense, would be disposed to accept the ministry as an order, having received it as an institution, refuse to see in the clergy an order, if that word necessarily imports all the ideas which we have just expressed. With these the ministry constitutes, indeed, a particular class of persons, a kind of functionaries of which Jesus Christ would have his Church never deprived; but, in their view, the similarity of their functions no more raises them to an order, than the grade of captain or officer makes an order of all the captains or all the officers of an army, who are nothing, in fact, but soldiers of a more elevated rank. Ministers are, in their view, only officers of the Christian army, with this important difference that each may become an officer of his chief, as soon as he shall find soldiers prepared to accept him as such, and to march under his direction.

Each of these opinions has, again, degrees and shades. With the greater part of the defenders of the one and the other, there is less a reasonable conviction than a habitude or tendency: As to their origin, they are less two systems than two different spirits. But when circumstances have induced lively manifestations of these two spirits, and have brought them together, it has been necessary to explain them; and habit on one part, and tendency on another, have be

come formally systems, which have had to give account of their foundations, discovered perhaps too late.

Those who admit that the ministry is an order look to the past as their support; the others rest on speculation. At the Reformation they did not systematize; they felt that they lived, and method and form were neglected. Afterward came a season of repose; the clergy in certain places formed an order. Now we have to choose; Catholicism urges us; we ought to be openly Protestants. We have kept many Catholic rags; we should now decidedly dress ourselves anew.

Among the more eminent defenders of the second system, in these later times, we should distinguish Neander.

Neander* notices the tendency, which discovered itself early in the Church, to make pastors a caste. He notices the resistance of Clement (†., 217) and of Tertullian (†., 245) to this return toward Judaism. These fathers valued (and Neander did after them) the idea of a universal priesthood, according to 1 Peter, ii., 9, and Apoc., i., 6. Neander and his authorities did not admit the institution of priests, except in the sense of a useful division of labor.t See Acts, vi., 4, the institution of deacons.

Harms replied to Neander‡ that the language of St. Peter is figurative, and that the Hebrew people were denominated priests: "Ye shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy. nation."-Exod., xix., 6.

But this is passing from side to side with arguments, of which one destroys nothing, and the other constructs nothing. For the idea of universal priesthood does not contradict that of special priesthood; and Harms has reason to allege on

* NEANDER: Denkwürdegkeiten, i., 64-69, et 179. Geschichte der Apostel, i., 162. See also SCHWARZ, Katechetik, p. 11. Notes C and D, of the Appendix, give the translation of these passages.

NEANDER: Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion unu Kirche, i., 277. Note E, of Appendix, gives the translation of this passage. See also RETTIG, Die freie protestantische Kirche, p. 87, + Pastoraltheologie, ii., p. 11.

the subject Exod., xix., 6; and, on the other side, a special would not be inconsistent with a universal priesthood.

It appears to me useful to remark, for the advantage of both these truths, that those who spoke in the Bible of a universal priesthood were themselves clothed with a special priesthood, and maintained that character in opposition to those to whom they addressed themselves: In their idea the two priesthoods, or the two ministries, were not inconsistent.

Besides, in the new economy, it is certain that, in one respect, the universal ministry is the only real one; not that it excludes the other, but because in this new economy the other ministry, I mean to say the priesthood properly so called, no longer exists: No one is specially a priest, and each is one in proportion to his union to the Head, Jesus Christ. There only remains the ministry of the word, which is, at the same time, special and universal. And here we repeat our observation inspired men who received this ministry as universal did not cease to exercise it in a special manner; they did not dream of annulling either the one or the other.

They also acknowledged that the believer is directly taught of God, and that consequently he has his sovereign pastor in heaven They insisted much on the immediate relation of every believer to Him who is at the same time the object and the author (the beginner and the finisher) of his faith. This is, in effect, the essence of true religion; the spirit of the true worshipers of the Father, the character of worship when God is revealed as Father. Even in the Old Testament we find vivid traces of this idea.-Jer., xxxi., 31, 34. But these same men who preached the immediate intercession of the believer with God, and who gave mediators no place or part with the Holy Mediator, did not less exercise the ministry of the word, which has precisely for its object and its last end to produce that immediate intercourse. Are they inconsistent with themselves? Not in the least. We must not, then, oppose either the universal ministry to