perstition, and outward devotions, and into the pure and seeking heart introduced a living sense of the intimate presence of God. Christianity is the only Religion the world has ever known, that has appointed no Altar, no Priest, no Sacrifice. Its altar is the humble and filial heart; its sacrifices are the passions; its oblations, the desires of a pure, merciful spirit; and its priest, the soul that devoutly communes with God. This is a remarkable fact, and running counter, as it does, to the strongest tendencies of unspiritual man, to the still unsubdued disposition to repose upon symbols, and approach God through ecclesiastical proxies, it augments the love and veneration with which we place ourselves at the feet of our divine Messiah.

The lower tendencies of human nature, however, have withstood the Gospel, and taken their own course, and still a Priesthood makes pretensions to be indispensable mediators to the Church of God. Nor would it be just to say, that these superstitions originate in the designing policy of a few hierarchs: they have their roots in human nature; they are accommodated to the indolence, the weakness, the selfish fears, and unspiritual distrusts of man. It is altogether unphilosophical to call this state of things the craft of priests. It is priestcraft; but it is the priestcraft of the laity, to the full as much as the priestcraft of the clergy;—it is the low and mechanical religion of the one, that calls into existence the low and mechanical functions of the other. Priestcraft is not a business that Priests can carry on by themselves; the people must be abetting and

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consenting parties; - and when we look into the present condition of the religious world, and witness the ostentatious profession of attachment to Symbols, on the part of men not remarkable for purity of sentiment or nobleness of life, to the Bible, the Church, the Creed, the Priest, we must confess that the laity are often the tempting parties. The clergy are but made in the same mould; they have not the Christian elevation to refuse such functions as degrading, and to disown such allies as scandalous, and they partake, themselves, of the material tendency to rest on Symbols, and to employ mechanical means of allaying the fears of superstition. Everywhere do we discern some traces of this the lowest tendency of the religious nature, the desire for an official Person, on the part of those who are dimly conscious that their own souls are not in spiritual communication with God. I have witnessed it on many a death-bed, and, in moments when it is impossible to be unyielding, have felt conscious of the only degradation, in my own eyes, that the Christian ministry has ever exposed me to. I have known dying men ask assurances of security, and attach a painful importance to the prayer in which a fellowman asked for them the blessing of God; — I have seen the Lord's Supper eagerly craved by those who never thought of it before; I have been constrained to administer it in the last moments of trembling life, — not, I trust, without fidelity to the spiritual Lord of the soul; — and I have witnessed the bitterest lamentations of survivors because death had taken place, ere the rite had been partaken. Now

if such things have fallen under my experience, what, I ask, must be the temptations which, in other churches, the laity throw in the path of the clergy? And is there not some trace of the disposition for an official Person in the very general feeling, from which perhaps no church is free, that what is entirely innocent and allowable in another man may be scandalous, or at least indecorous and unsafe, in a minister of religion? — and has not this impression its roots in the sacerdotal tendency, - in the belief which is natural to the lower religious states, that there is a professional sacredness, separable from personal sanctity, in which the community may have an interest? Now we readily admit that the ministers of religion deserve a deeper condemnation, if they scandalously fall away from the one standard of Christian duty, because there are peculiar motives and influences acting upon them, and because they have voluntarily assumed a peculiar office. To the strictness of judgment, therefore, we do not object, but we do object to the sacerdotal principle, that there are different standards for different men, or for different classes of men, that guilt or innocence, however affected by knowledge and opportunity, has any relation to office or profession,

that there is a sacred say rather a desecrated caste, set apart as a compensation for the laxities of others, and who are denied any portion of the liberty that can safely, or righteously, belong to any Christian man.

It was the claim of Priesthood - the attempt by official and sacerdotal means to shut out the individ

ual soul from God- that awoke the indignation of our own Wickliffe, who left the work of separation to be completed two centuries after, in more favorable times, by the more fiery strength, but perhaps inferior spirit, of Luther. It was the same claim, on the part of the Reformers themselves, a claim if not to sacerdotal efficacy, to doctrinal infallibility, that introduced Sectarianism, that unhappy offspring of Protestantism, into the bosom of Christianity. And now, in this freer day, it is the perception, openly avowed, that the doctrinal teaching of the Anglican Church cannot be sustained on the old Protestant grounds of the sufficiency of the Bible and the rights of Private Judgment, that has driven a large proportion of her clergy back upon the bosom of Authority, and forced them, if they would retain their Faith, to seek for it elsewhere. Such, in every age, has been the discord produced by official substitutes, and by an unspiritual disregard of the free priesthood of the Soul.

And in these days of Ecclesiastical pretensions, and of the wonderful assumption of Apostolical Succession, it is worth while to ask how an Apostle did deal with such difficulties when they came before himself, what claim he set up when a Church, planted by himself, was split into factions, what authority he claimed over rival teachers, when, in the very height and glory of his Apostleship, they broke the Christian unity which he had labored to establish, and sought to bring himself into contempt. He seeks to restore peace, simply by abolishing the pretensions of individuals, his own included, and

by awakening in each man the priesthood of his own spirit, the sense of his accountability to God alone. Such is the great spiritual lesson of this fourth chapter as to the claims of Individuals in the Church; and as it contained no material difficulties that required lengthened interpretation, and is much required at the present time, I have used it for this purpose alone.

I shall now simply present this Apostolic view of Apostolic Authority, intended by St. Paul as a lesson in the wisdom of peace and humility to the other Teachers of the Church:

"Account us as nothing in ourselves,

being

but servants of Christ, and stewards of the revelations of God. And as stewards we can deserve no praise but that of fidelity, for a steward is but a dispenser of his master's bounty. And whether we Apostles are faithful or not in our stewardship of the Gospel, God alone must judge. With me it is a small thing to have the judgment of man, nay, I dare not judge myself; for though I am conscious of no unfaithfulness [this clause is made completely unintelligible in our version by the translation, 'for I know nothing by myself'] in myself, yet am I not therefore clear; for he that judgeth me is the spiritsearching God. Therefore, ye leaders of parties, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden motives of men, and make manifest the counsels of the heart; and then shall each have his due praise from God.

"And these things, brethren, I have applied to