than his master.

He does, under the auspices of divine mercy, all that Jesus Christ did under the weight of the divine wrath. By word, by works, and by obedience, he perpetuates Jesus Christ.

HYMN.

King of glory and man of sorrows! whoever has loved thee has suffered, whoever loves thee consents to suffer. He commits himself at once to glory and to sorrow.

On thy account he suffers even in dreams; so suffered, without knowing thee, the wife of the judge who delivered thee up. Whoever feebly loves thee, or whoever laments thee, can not but find himself on thy road. Like Simon of Cyrene, he becomes a partaker of the heavy burden of thy

cross.

Men curse those who bless thee; humanity excludes them from its universal communion; and in that place of exile from the human family, they are themselves twice in exile.

All those who have loved thee have suffered; but all those who have suffered on thy account have loved thee the more. Grief unites us to thee, as joy does to the world.

Like a generous wine, grief intoxicates those whom thou invitest to thy mysterious banquet, and from their contrite heart it draws hymns of adoration and love.

Happy he who, like the Cyrenean, has abased himself to take his part of the cross which thou bearest! Happy he who would endure in his body that which remains that which will remain till the end of the world, to be borne of thy sufferings for the Church, thy body!

Happy the faithful pastor, who, in his flesh, partakes of thy sacrifice and thy conflict! While he struggles and groans, I see him, in my visions, hidden in thy bosom, as on the day of the funereal banquet, him whom thou lovedst.

While love bears him, bruised and bloody, from place to place, and from suffering to suffering, he himself, unknown

to the world, reposes upon thy bosom in an august retreat, and tastes in silence the sweetness of thy words.

Happy the faithful pastor! His love multiplies his sacrifices, and his sacrifices multiply his love. Love, which is the soul of his labors, is also his exceeding great reward.

Happy the faithful pastor! That which every Christian would be, he has been. That cross, which each one endures in his turn, he bears without ceasing. That Jesus, with whom the world incessantly divides our regards, is himself his world, and the object of his assiduous contemplation.

Happy, thrice happy, if all his desire is to add some voices to the concert of the blessed, and to remain concealed in the universal joy, only keeping in his heart the invisible regard and the everlasting Well done! of the Master and the Father!

§ 2. Necessity of the Evangelical Ministry.

It concerns candidates for the holy ministry to know whether this office be necessary.

At the first glance this inquiry appears very superfluous. Facts precede proofs: we are convinced by instinct. Still, we may ask (and a whole Christian community, that of the Quakers, has replied to the question in the negative), Whether a particular class of persons, consecrated to the administration of worship, and to instruction in religion, is necessary.

The almost universality of the institution would be, in the eyes of many persons, a sufficient proof of its necessity. It is, however, only a very strong presumption, after which there remains an open question.

We make two kinds of replies: one, applicable to all the analogies of the ministry; the other, to the ministry immediately.

I. 1. Every important office, relating to one of the chief

* With Quakers, even, some persons from the whole are invested with a kind of ministry.

ernment.

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necessities of society, to one of the essential elements of life, requires special men exclusively devoted to that office.* 2. Every community requires and supposes officers, a govThat government may be composed of only one class of persons, or of many; may be more or less rational, more or less perfect. It matters not, the principle remains : and a society without government, a society having rules, and no one to maintain or represent them, is perhaps more inconceivable than a government without a rule which limits and directs its own action.

II.-1. The office of the ministry can not, in general, be carried to its true perfection except by men who are exclusively devoted to it; and, in general, many things can only be accomplished by such men.

2. In times when religion, cultivated scientifically, has become itself a science-when, having formed a multitude of relations to private and public life, it is charged with a mass of details and applications, it is difficult for the ministry to be well and completely discharged by a man who is not exclusively a minister.

3. There is, in the work of the ministry, a limit at which each one, or the greater number, will stop, if positive duty does not oblige them to proceed; each one will take only what is convenient to him, and many even will think that they have done too much in going so far.

When a single person has to decide a thing, he will bring all his conscience to it; when forty persons, each one will bring the fortieth part of his conscience. When one does not consider his responsibility as entire, it is to be feared he will do little, if any thing at all. It would then be in a superfi

The jury is not an exception. It does not exclude the office of Judge. It is only the indication of an idea (which religion reproduces in other forms), that a society commits to special men only that which all can not do, and that the commission ceases when those who give it can act for themselves.

cial, irregular, and intermittent manner that the work would be done, if we could not always rely upon certain men.

Zeal for the advancement of the kingdom of God, and faith in a universal priesthood, were certainly not less, than they are now, at the time when the Holy Spirit said, in Antioch, to a college of prophets and teachers, already separated and called by him, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work unto which I have called them."-Acts, xiii., 2.

It may, perhaps, be said that one can not judge by what is now done as to what would be done if believers would not cast upon ministers the burden of a ministry which belongs to all. We believe that what they would first do would be to make ministers. For if it be said that general zeal would be greater in the absence of these special men, that zeal, even at its greatest height, not meeting precisely all the wants for which the minister is appointed, would lead Christians to do that which, we think, indifference and idleness might make them do; that is to say, to make sure, by the creation of a special office, the satisfaction of those wants for which they themselves would no longer suffice. The more the zeal, the less would they be disposed to leave great interests to suffer, for the want of special men to take care of them.

Hüffell* regards ministers of the Gospel as depositaries and guardians of the principle of life deposited in the Gospel. Christianity is essentially a life which transmits itself; but if chosen men do not transmit it,† if that transmission of life is abandoned to the life itself, it will soon cease. Without the

* HÜFFELL: Wesen und Beruf des Evangelisch-christlichen Geistlichen, t. i., p. 28, third edition.

+ Vitai lampada.-These words, which we throw into a note, and which, in M. Vinet's manuscript, are in the text, between parentheses, are probably transferred from this verse of Lucretius :

Et, quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt.

-De Rerum Natura, lib. ii., v. 78.-Ed.

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ministry, according to Hüffell, Christianity would not last two

centuries.

This is, perhaps, too positive and too absolute; but it can not be said that it would, in general, be doubting the truth and power of a work to make its duration depend on certain means. Nothing is done without means; and when it is the institution itself which creates its own means, when it draws them from itself, and chooses them conformably to its nature, we can not say that it must be precarious because it employs means. We should rather think it precarious if it did not employ them. If it employed in the ministry its own best elements, the best part of its substance, to propagate itself, would it not grow?

No one doubts but that the life of the Church supposes and requires a perpetual testimony, an uninterrupted tradition; and it is necessary that this testimony, this tradition, should be sure. A Church would be wanting to itself if it did not make sure not only the perpetuity, but the just perfection of this testimony, this tradition.-Rom., x., 14, 15.

Herder* defends the institution, but thinks it may not be always necessary. We shall not pursue this inquiry; let us keep it as long as it shall be necessary, and not abandon it until it shall be no longer needed. We are convinced that this time will never come.

§ 3. Institution of the Evangelical Ministry.

Besides the necessity resulting from the nature of things, is there not a necessity of another kind, a positive duty; in other words, is not the ministry a divine, or a canonical institution?

Did Jesus Christ himself, or the apostles in his name, ordain that the Church should, in all ages, have special men

* HERDER: Provincialblætter, iii., tome x., des Euvres Théologiques, p. 334-341.