heaven in which Calvary is vitally contained. Through this symbolic enactment, rightly understood, an enactment founded on and intrinsically implying as well as recalling Calvary,—she in her Eucharistic worship on earth is identified with His sacrificial self-oblation to the Father; she is transfigured up into the scene of the unceasing commemoration of His sacrifice in heaven; or the scene of His eternal offering in heaven is translated down to, and presented, and realised in the worship on earth. Of course the outward ceremonial, as merely outward, is valueless. But its use is solemn and responsible, just in proportion as those who use it do, or might, enter into what it means. This is her identification through outward ceremonial enactment.

The correlative identification in inwardness of spirit will require no doubt, first of all, an intelligence of spiritual apprehension reverently to apprehend the meaning of what is outwardly done, and to adore and love what it apprehends. But I should not at all like to express the meaning of the inward identification only in terms of intelligent apprehension of the outward ceremonial. Or if so, then intelligent apprehension means much more than it seems to mean. For this identification of the Church on earth with the eternal presentation of the sacrifice in heaven, and with Him who presents the sacrifice, means the reproduction in her of the Spirit of Him who sacrificially offered Himself. It is Christ Himself who is being formed in her. 1 It means therefore in her, as in Him, the Spirit of Love which itself, in its outward expression on earth, is selfdevoting sacrifice; or conversely, the spirit of sacrifice, self-devotion, self-expenditure, which is, in the sphere of human life and duty, the spontaneous and inevitable utterance of the Spirit of Love, or of God.

The two aspects are inseparable aspects of one life. The Church is priestly because from her proceeds the aroma of perpetual offering towards God. The Church is

1 Gal. iv. 19.

priestly because her arms are spread out perpetually to succour and intercede for those who need the sacrifice of love. Both aspects are brought into relief when we think of the Church as a small kernel or focus of brightness in the midst of the world. Then the Church is God's priest in the world and for the world, alike as presenting to God on the world's behalf that homage which the world has not learned to present for itself, and as spending and suffering for God's sake in service to the world. I say that the thought of the Church as a spot of light in the midst of surrounding darkness illustrates the conception of her priestliness. But I would not so speak as though the priestliness of the Church depended upon the surrounding presence of the world. If all were baptized and included as members within the Church, still the mutual service of Christians one towards another-each for all, and all for each-would be, both to Godward and to manward, a real corporate priesthood; a priesthood stiil, in the full sense of sacrifice and suffering, as long as failure and sin, sorrow and death remained; a priesthood still, even when these were gone, only transformed into that pure joy of love which had been the underlying reality of priesthood all through.

The priestliness may be spoken of as essentially towards God only then this offering to God involves and contains a manward devotion also. Or quâ priesthood, it may be thought of as immediately to and for man; only, then this manward devotion means the presentation of humanity as an offering to God. The offering to God is an offering of humanity. The service 'for others' is ipso facto to Godward. It is this intense to Godwardness' which makes the Church in the world-whether surrounded by external contradiction or no—a perpetual aspiration, and offering to the Father; and therefore also, by inherent necessity, a perpetual reflection of what He is, as revealed to the world in the Person of Jesus Christ. It is this intense. 'for-other-ness,' this marvellous spirit which—Calvary apart-finds its highest expression historically in the

'Blot me I pray Thee out of Thy book which Thou hast written' of Moses, or the 'I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ' of St. Paul, this spirit meanwhile that has been, and still is being, so wonderfully, yet so characteristically exemplified, all the world over, in great things and in small, in the selfsacrificing ministrations of Bishops and Pastors, in the tender, self-devotion of fathers or mothers, comrades or brothers, wives or sisters, or teachers, or nurses, or neighbours, or strangers, yes or even, with a certain reflected fidelity, in outsiders, Samaritans, enemies,—it is this, as well as reverent intelligence of Eucharistic worship-this which in its highest perfectness is itself the corollary and outcome of spiritually intelligent Eucharistic worship-it is this which is the expression in ordinary terms of human life of the true inwardness of the priesthood of the Church. This is sacrifice taking practical form in the protectiveness of pastoral love: and there is no true pastoral love without sacrifice. It is no unique fact only, but an eternal principle which is recorded in the words: 'The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.' And where is this not, in greater degree or in less, continually going on? Truly it is Christians as such, it is the members of the Body—the partakers of the Spirit-of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who are the real high priestly family on earth 1.

All this is the inherent privilege of the members of the body of Christ. What, then, is the priesthood of Christ's ordained ministers ? The priesthood of the ministry follows as corollary from the priesthood of the Church. What the one is, the other is. If the priesthood of the Church consists ceremonially in her capacity of self

1 It is not unfair to apply to this thought the expression of Justin Martyr, οὕτως ἡμεῖς ἀρχιερατικὸν τὸ ἀληθινὸν γένος ἐσμὲν τοῦ Θεοῦ. But it is, far more exactly, the very thought which Clement of Alexandria is upon in the passages quoted by Bp. Lightfoot; see above, ch. iii. p. 83. It is the echo of this thought which, in spite of all its disproportions and negations, gives so much of nobleness to the effort of Dr. Hatch's fifth Bampton Lecture.

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identification, through Eucharistic worship, with the eternal presentation of Christ's atoning sacrifice, and spiritually in her identification of inner life with the spirit of sacrifice which is the spirit of love uttering itself in devoted ministry to others, so it is by necessary consequence with the priesthood of the ministry. For the priesthood of the ministry is nothing distinct in kind from the priesthood of the Church. The ordained priests are priestly only because it is the Church's prerogative to be priestly; and because they are, by ordination, specialized and empowered to exercise ministerially and organically the prerogatives which are the prerogatives of the body as a whole. They have no greater right in the Sacraments than the laity: only they, and not the laity, have been authorized to stand before the congregation, and to represent the congregation in the ministerial enactment of the Sacraments which are the Sacraments-and the life of both alike. I need not go over the argument of the third chapter again. Any one who cares to read that will understand that it is no part of the present object to draw an essential contrast between the priesthood of the Church and of the ministry. The powers, the privileges, the capacities, are the powers and privileges and capacities of the body as a whole. Only here, as there, we utterly protest against the unauthorized sequitur which would conclude that therefore the powers of the whole can be ministerially exercised by any, or by all. It is not given to the eye to hear, nor to the ear to see. Those who actually celebrate do but organically represent, and act for, the whole. But the executive right, the power to represent, and act for, and wield ministerially the capacities of the whole, is not indiscriminate. Those who stand before the congregation, either as its representative organs to Godward, or as the accredited ministers of God to it, must be authorized and empowered so to do. We shall I believe approach the truth in this matter, neither on the one hand by exalting the ministry at the expense of the laity, nor on the other—and even less-by dropping

the distinctive words priestly and priesthood; but by insisting, in no metaphorical sense, upon the sacred character and the solemn responsibility of the priesthood of the Christian Church as a whole, and (apart from its ministerial and executive sense) of every individual laymember of the Church 1.

But to return to the priesthood of the ministry. They are Priests because they are personally consecrated to be the representatives and active organs of the priesthood of the Church. And they represent it emphatically in both of its directions. In the ceremonial direction they represent it as divinely empowered to be themselves its leaders and instruments. And from this representative leadership in all external enactment of worship and sacrament itself no mean privilege and responsibility — I apprehend that it follows also, on the inward and spiritual side, that those who outwardly represent the priesthood of the Church must no less specially represent it in its true. inwardness. The priest is not a priest in the act of divine worship only. His personal relation to the priestliness

1 Cp. the Tridentine Catechismus ad Parochos, P. II. cap. vii. qu. 23: 'Sed quoniam duplex sacerdotium in sacris literis describitur, alterum interius, alterum externum; utrumque distinguendum est, ut, de quo hoc loco intelligatur, a pastoribus explicari possit. Quod igitur ad interius sacerdotium attinet, omnes fideles, postquam salutari aqua abluti sunt, sacerdotes dicuntur ; praecipue vero iusti, qui spiritum Dei habent, et divinae gratiae beneficio Iesu Christi summi sacerdotis viva membra effecti sunt; hi enim fide, quae caritate inflammatur, in altari mentis suae spirituales Deo hostias immolant; quo in genere bonae omnes et honestae actiones, quas ad Dei gloriam referunt numerandae sunt. [Then follow quotations from Rev. i. 5, 6; 1 Pet. ii. 5; Rom. xii. 1; Ps. li. 17.] Quae omnia ad interius sacerdotium spectare, facile intelligitur. Externum vero sacerdotium non omnium fidelium multitudini, sed certis hominibus convenit. . . . Hoc sacerdotii discrimen in veteri etiam lege observari potest; nam de interiori Davidem locutum esse paulo ante demonstratum est; [sc. Ps. li. 17] externi vero nemo ignorare potest, quam multa Dominus Moysi et Aaroni praecepta dederit. . . . Quia igitur eandem sacerdotii distinctionem in lege evangelica licet animadvertere; docendi erunt fideles, nunc de sacerdotio externa agi, quod certis hominibus attributum est; hoc enim tantummodo ad ordinis sacramentum pertinet.' It is only fair to bear this passage in mind; but it may be doubted whether it gives us all that we ought to ask, so long as the priesthood of the layman is interpreted without reference to any thought of care, or responsibility, for others.