What then, are the facts which meet us at the very outset of this most remarkable period? Are they not favourable to our principle? What is the first recorded act of the patriarch upon his egress from the ark? It is that "Noah builded an altar unto the Lord and took of every clean beast and of every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings upon the altar. Now here, Noah is found discharging purely sacerdotal functions. He had already appeared as the evangelist of the old world,+ and now is become the hierarch of the new. Henceforth he figures as the high-priest of the post-diluvian dispensation. Here too there occurs a remarkable and unexpected resemblance between the Noachian and the Judaic rituals. In his priestly character the patriarch seems not to have done anything arbitrarily. On the contrary the Levitical ceremonial was already substantially in existence. Noah, for example, is narrated to have made a difference between the unclean and the clean.-We read that he offered "of every clean beast and every clean fowl." In brief, the patriarch scrupulously observed the existing ritual. As a priest, he was punctilious. He carefully followed the

ceremonial canons which had been handed down from the

* Gen. viii., 20.

+ Cf. 2 Pet. ii.,5. Clemens Romanus declares not only that he preached but that those who heard submissively were delivered. —Νῶς ἐκήρυξεν μετάνοιαν καὶ ὁι ὑπακούσαντες ἐσώθεν Epist. ad Cor. inter SS. Patres Apostol. § 7.

"Noachum prædicâsse, sacrificâsse, munda et immunda discriminatum esse.-Epistolæ Dux, auctore Thoma Burnetio S.T.P., Lond. 1726. Cf. Lev. xi., 47.; Gen. viii., 20,

days of the world's protomartyr.

It

For the ante-diluvian was not a rustic age. It was rather the era of an advanced civilization. It had its refinements, its inventions. boasted its poets,—its musicians,-its prophets, and its preachers. Nor was its church-system a bald, crude, haphazard formation. On the contrary it had the parts of its structure disposed in admirable fitness. Its ritual was evidently circumstantial and minute in its provisions. It would appear that nothing was left to individual arbritration or caprice. All was definite,—all prescribed,—all predetermined. In such a church-organization the priesthood would be a reality, the distinction between the sacerdotal and the laic classes must have been clearly defined. Of such a class of sacred officers, Noah was now, however, the one remaining representative. He was, therefore, the natural ȧpxiepeùs of the new constitution. He its chief spiritual pastor.

But he was something more.

He was its paternal

ruler, its secular sovereign. And as such he was the embodiment of the state-church principle. For in him were vested the supreme authority whether in matters civil or religious ;-an authority, which it may be added he continued to wield for three-and-a-half centuries subsequently to the event of the deluge.* So that however unimportant this combination of offices may have been in the first instance, it must have developed into something very like Church and State long ere the lapse of so protracted a

* Gen. ix., 28.

period, In a word, had the illustrious patriarch been a Japanese Mikaddo, or a Dalai Lama, he could not more really, nor more practically have represented the particular principle, which in these pages, is sought to be established.

Nor was this union in the same person of princely and priestly functions a merely transient phenomenon. On the contrary it continued up to the time of the Israelitish exodus. This is in fact, remarkably illustrated in the instance of Melchizedek, who added to the regal the sacerdotal office. For in the sacred narrative he is described as "King of Salem,"* and "priest of the most high God." Nay even, the patriarch Abram did not dispute his claim to being the priest of Jehovah, for on his return from his victory over the kings with the spoils of war, it is recorded that "he gave him tithes of all."+ Indeed Melchizedek claimed this as his inalienable right for St. Paul distinctly declares that "he tithed-dedekάTwкe-Abraham." And yet this very Melchizedek-this very kingpriest is selected as the type of the Messiah. "The Lord hath sworn and will not repent," saith the Psalmist, "Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." Here then two things are certain. First that the Melchizedecan priesthood was an established priesthood; and secondly, that the Christian priesthood was its normal antitype.

*Afterwards named Jeru-salem.

✦ “Văyyittěn-lô măăsér mikkol”—Gen. xiv. 20.

Heb. vii. 6.

But the Josephian policy is equally conclusive in the same direction. Sacerdotalism, as is well known, had impressed its peculiar character upon the learning, the legislation, and the civilization of ancient Egypt. Its church was established. Its hierarchy was baronial. Its priests sat with the legislature. In a word, Joseph was called upon, in the order of the divine providence, to administer the affairs of a great empire, which incorporated into its structure the principle of church and state. Nor was this state-church under any kind of theocratic supervision so that, if this were the sole condition, without which every state-religion is "a hoax" and "an abomination," the state-religion of the Pharaohs unquestionably fell within the comprehension of this so severe and so unqualified a censure. It also was 66 a hoax" and "an abomination "-a "life-destroying upas." But, if so-if in the first instance the state-church principle was mischievous and injurious except under the conditions already specified, and if consequences necessarily flowed from its adoption inimical to national progress and destructive of liberty-if, in fine, "homage, the most indirect, paid to a state church is, in essence, the recognition of falsehood, and the worship of a lie "t-then surely it becomes of the utmost importance to know what was the attitude taken up by the illustrious and pious Hebrew, towards this African establishment. As the Psalmist informs us, his especial mission in Egypt was that "he might inform his (Pharaoh's) princes after his

And what was What, in a word,

will, and teach his senators wisdom."* "the wisdom" which he taught them? was his policy? Was it adverse to the hierarchy ? Did he, like a wily "Liberationist," seek to inflict a deadly blow upon the union? Did his legislation contemplate its dissolution? Emphatically, no! Emphatically, no! On the contrary, when the famine had reached its climax, and the Egyptians had been reduced to exchange their movables for supplies of corn, there followed, with but one exception, a universal transfer of the landed property. The free proprietors were destroyed. Pharaoh became lord paramount of the soil. All the Egyptians, however exalted their political rank, were reduced to hold their lands at a fixed annual rental, as tenants of the crown.-one class of the King's subjects, and but one, enjoying exemption from this otherwise universal transfer. And who were they, in whose favour the illustrious Egyptian financier made so marked and signal an exception? Strange to say-strange we mean on the theory of his favouring anti-state-churchism-they were the priests the very class of men whom, upon such a theory, he should fearlessly and boldly have denounced. -the very upholders of an establishment, which, had he not been a state-churchman himself, he must rather have sought to shatter, demolish, and destroy. Most certainly, therefore, the administration of the patriarch. Joseph, who was at once a prophet, an interpreter of dreams, and a prescient and an astute statesman, must

* Psalm cv. 22. Prayer Book Version.

Gen. xlix. 19-26.