hood was, under the circumstances of the moment, inevitable. Being however less constructive, and more incidental and controversial in character, than the other chapters had been intended to be, it is added as an appendix rather than as a substantive part of the whole.

Perhaps, under all the circumstances, it is right for me to say in explicit language that I am perfectly conscious of having no claim, through any special learning, to write upon the subject. But valuable beyond words as the special learning of the expert is, I must still believe that in discussions of this kind there is ample room for those who may only hope to deal in an intelligent way with comparatively ordinary data of knowledge, as well as for those who can advance the data of knowledge by exceptional learning of their own. At all events, it is in the former of these two characters, and in the strength of this belief as to its place and value, that I have ventured to speak at all.

I am conscious, however, that this very disclaimer, necessary as it may be in itself, makes it the more incumbent on me to say a few words in explanation of the extent to which I have ventured to criticize others, in some cases even those whose learning is monumental; most of all the late Bishop of Durham, Bishop Lightfoot. Believing, however, as I do that his famous utterance upon the Christian ministry has been upon the whole very misleading, it was impossible for me not to attempt to deal with it directly. Upon the face of it I believe that I am entitled to claim that the essay must be confessed to be ambiguous. For it is quite obvious

that inferences, which the Bishop himself repudiated were on all sides largely drawn from it, alike by those who welcomed and those who criticized it, and it is at all events not equally obvious that the inferences were not, as inferences, legitimately drawn. It can hardly be denied then that the essay failed to express perfectly what the Bishop himself had in mind. But if so, I am entitled to press the question, why? Bishop Lightfoot did not lack the power of lucid exposition. Why did his essay seem to say what he did not mean? The very fact of the ambiguity requires some explanation. Where does the explanation lie?

In the answer to this question I believe will be found the true key to the criticism of the essay itself. The fault is not, of course, in Bishop Lightfoot's learning. If it were, there would be need of a critic singularly unlike the present writer to say so. But the fault lies rather in a sphere which was less distinctively the sphere of Bishop Lightfoot's unrivalled eminence. It lies in the mental presuppositions, the unchallenged assumptions, the hypotheses or postulates with which he approaches the examination of the evidence. There are flaws in these which will, I believe, account both for the superficial ambiguity (which is obvious), and also for what I, at least, must endeavour to represent as the really unsatisfactory character of his argument upon the evidence.

I should like to formulate some half-dozen propositions, several of them of an abstract character, which seem to belong to what I may call the unconscious substructure of the Bishop's essay. Thus :

Ends are greater than means, and means exist for ends; therefore whatever belongs to the category of means can in no case be rightly regarded as essential. Again: The outward represents the inward, and the inward which is represented is far higher than the outward, which represents it; therefore while the inward is essentially necessary for the reality of the outward, the outward is only conventionally necessary for the reality of the inward. Again: The literal and real meaning of the word sacrifice and priesthood is that which they bore in the Old Testament; by this all other applications of the words must be measured and judged. Again: If ministry is representative of the Body as a whole, then the Body as a whole, and every member thereof, must implicitly possess the right to minister. Again: A corporate or universal priesthood and a divinely and exclusively specialized priesthood are mutually incompatible ideas. Again: It will follow as a corollary that if there is for convenience a separated ministry, it cannot be matter of any crucial moment whether the ministerial authority of new ministers grows by a sort of evolution out of the life of the general Church Body, or is devolved ministerially through the action only of those who themselves have been similarly accredited as ministers before. Again: The Church is, in the first instance, a plurality of individual units, and by aggregation of these it becomes, in the second instance, subordinately, and as it were accidentally, an articulated unity.

I do not say that other propositions similar to these might not also be formulated, but these are

what occur to my own mind. Nor of course do I mean that these assumptions are in any way peculiar to Bishop Lightfoot. On the contrary, it is the more important to notice them, just because they are the characteristic assumptions of many minds, both of theological writers and of the general public. Meanwhile, if it would be perhaps too much to say in sweeping fashion that every one of these propositions is absolutely false, at least it may safely be said that even the best and truest among them would require much careful interpretation and guarding before it could be safely accepted as true. And most of them on examination would have to be rejected altogether.

Of course I do not suggest that principles such as these are to be found asserted as principles, totidem verbis, in Bishop Lightfoot's essay on the Ministry. Had they been explicitly asserted they would have been less dangerous. Moreover, in order to be explicitly asserted they would have had to be consciously recognized, and so recognized they would have been cross-examined by the Bishop, and under cross-examination they could not but have been seriously modified. But I do believe that, though without explicit recognition, every one of these principles is--if unconsciously, only so much the more absolutely-taken for granted throughout the essay, as a secure assumption beyond reach of question or argument, as a fundamental hypothesis, as an axiomatic postulate.

At this moment I am not concerned to scrutinize them further. To a considerable extent at least they will be found to be scrutinized in the following

pages. But I should like to suggest that there could hardly be an instance which would justify with more striking completeness the singular wisdom of the method of Hooker's argument in the Ecclesiastical Polity, when he devotes no less than four entire books, before reaching the apparent subjects of dispute, to the preliminary task of scrutinizing the underlying assumptions or mental postulates with which his antagonists approached the handling of the evidence that was before them; and, on the other hand, of slowly building up and explaining and justifying the counter-postulates which he, on his side, desired and claimed the right to use.

To me it seems always a congenial task, and I believe that it is very generally a necessary one, to dwell upon the supreme importance, for the insight of real understanding, of the underlying postulates or principles which ordinarily precede conscious argument. Principles of this kind are indeed indispensable. But though they cannot be dispensed with, it is most desirable that they should be examined— most desirable that they should be criticized. Such criticism, it is to be hoped, will often, not unimportantly, modify them. But the evidence cannot be approached without them. Examination of evidence, without postulates, would be profitless,-if it were possible. It is mere delusion to suppose that, in the absence of constitutive first principles, a study of details will lead to exceptionally unbiassed, or indeed even to intelligent conclusions at all. The cogency of evidence-nay, its whole value, and even meaning-depends absolutely on the mental convictions with which we approach it.