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come formally systems, which have had to give account of their foundations, discovered perhaps too late.

Those who admit that the ministry is an order look to the past as their support; the others rest on speculation. At the Reformation they did not systematize; they felt that they lived, and method and form were neglected. Afterward came a season of repose; the clergy in certain places formed an order. Now we have to choose; Catholicism urges us; we ought to be openly Protestants. We have kept many Catholic rags; we should now decidedly dress ourselves anew.

Among the more eminent defenders of the second system, in these later times, we should distinguish Neander.

Neander* notices the tendency, which discovered itself early in the Church, to make pastors a caste. He notices the resistance of Clement (i., 217) and of Tertullian (i., 245) to this return toward Judaism. These fathers valued (and Neander did after them) the idea of a universal priesthood, according to 1 Peter, ii., 9, and Apoc., i., 6. Neander and his authorities did not admit the institution of priests, except in the sense of a useful division of labor.† See Acts, vi., 4, the institution of deacons.

Harms replied to Neandert that the language of St. Peter is figurative, and that the Hebrew people were denominated priests: "Ye shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."-Exod., xix., 6.

But this is passing from side to side with arguments, of which one destroys nothing, and the other constructs nothing. For the idea of universal priesthood does not contradict that of special priesthood; and Harms has reason to allege on * NEANDER: Denkwürdegkeiten, i., 64-69, et 179. Geschichte der Apostel, i., 162. See also SCHWARZ, Katechetik, p. 11. Notes C and D, of the Appendix, give the translation of these passages.

† NEANDER: Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche, i., 277. Note E, of Appendix, gives the translation of this passage. See also RETTIG, Die freie protestantische Kirche, p. 87.

Pastoraltheologie, ii., p. 11.

the subject Exod., xix., 6; and, on the other side, a special would not be inconsistent with a universal priesthood.

It appears to me useful to remark, for the advantage of both these truths, that those who spoke in the Bible of a universal priesthood were themselves clothed with a special priesthood, and maintained that character in opposition to those to whom they addressed themselves: In their idea the two priesthoods, or the two ministries, were not inconsistent.

Besides, in the new economy, it is certain that, in one respect, the universal ministry is the only real one; not that it excludes the other, but because in this new economy the other ministry, I mean to say the priesthood properly so called, no longer exists: No one is specially a priest, and each is one in proportion to his union to the Head, Jesus Christ. There only remains the ministry of the word, which is, at the same time, special and universal. And here we repeat our observation: inspired men who received this ministry as universal did not cease to exercise it in a special manner; they did not dream of annulling either the one or the other.

They also acknowledged that the believer is directly taught of God, and that consequently he has his sovereign pastor in heaven: They insisted much on the immediate relation of every believer to Him who is at the same time the object and the author (the beginner and the finisher) of his faith. This is, in effect, the essence of true religion; the spirit of the true worshipers of the Father, the character of worship when God is revealed as Father. Even in the Old Testament we find vivid traces of this idea.-Jer., xxxi., 31, 34. But these same men who preached the immediate intercession of the believer with God, and who gave mediators no place or part with the Holy Mediator, did not less exercise the ministry of the word, which has precisely for its object and its last end to produce that immediate intercourse. Are they inconsistent with themselves? Not in the least. We must not, then, oppose either the universal ministry to

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the special ministry, or the special ministry to the universal ministry; but as they are of the same nature, as in no one of their elements are they different; as the one has no efficacy or light which has been refused to the other, we must truly acknowledge, with Neander, that the special ministry exists only by virtue of a division of labor, and for divers reasons which we have indicated above. To inquire for the reason of an institution, the idea which gave it birth is not to nullify the institution, nor to overthrow the authority of Him who founded it.

The truth on this question finds its limit on one side (that is to say, on the side which tends to a strict distinction of ministers), in the words already cited (1 Peter, ii., 9: "Ye are a royal priesthood," and Apoc., i., 6); on the other side (that is to say, on the side opposed to the distinction), in the words of St. Paul: "Paul, separated to the Gospel of God." -Rom., i., 1.

There is, then, an order only in the sense of a class of men indispensable in the Church, co-ordinate and set over each Church, the living centre of each Church, "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edification of the body of Christ."-Ephesians, iv., 12.

This order can be a caste* only in the following cases:

1. In the case where it is hereditary, as in the Mosaic institution; or transmitted, as in the Romish Church. Now the first does not exist; and, as Protestants, we deny the second. Transmission in the Romish Church has sense and reason only by virtue of the mystery of the real presence, and infallible interpretation; take away these two dogmas, make the pastor to be a simple administrator of worship, without mystery, and a simple preacher of the word, which the Holy Spirit may explain to any other as well as to him, and what

*Caste is a term applied to certain classes of persons, to distinguish them from the rest of the nation to which they belong.-Dic tionnaire de l'Academie.

C

rational, psychological foundation remains for succession? And reciprocally, if you admit the dogma of succession, you are constrained to find for it a reason, a ground, in one or the other of the two forecited dogmas, or else in both. The historic, or legal foundation, never suffices to preserve an institution which does not subsist, except by interior reasons, founded in human nature. Reduce the transmission of ecclesiastical powers to a historic base, and you take away from them, whatever may be the solidity of that base, all sufficient reason of existence, all means of perpetuating them. In our national Protestant churches our ministers are consecrated by ministers, and this is well; but still it may be, that, in ascending from consecration to consecration, we may arrive at men who consecrated themselves: The right is then acquired by all others to do the same thing.

2. In the case where the minister is not a citizen in the full extent of the term. Now it may be that here and there civil institutions may restrain his quality of citizen; but that restriction is not of his doing, and is not required by any of the elements of the institution. It is otherwise with respect to the Romish priest, who can not be a citizen and retain his character as priest. As to constitutional power, which, in certain countries, may appertain to his order, it is a very different thing from civic individual fitness: It is the intrusion of the Church, or of the clergy, into the department of civil affairs.

3. In the case where his functions are exclusive. Now a society may very well agree to recur, as a society, to this man or this order; but, apart from this, the functions of the ministry may be exercised by simple believers.

The ministry, then, does not form a caste. It does not even form a body, except accidentally. The accident is certainly frequent, but still it remains an accident. Existence as a body is not essential to the ministry.

To conclude in a word: the ecclesiastical ministry is a con

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secration, made under certain conditions, of particular members of a Christian flock to be occupied specially, but not to the exclusion of others, in the administration of worship and the care of souls. A religious society may, moreover, direct that the solemnities which bring it together shall be presided over exclusively by those special men whom it calls ministers or pastors.

It seems easy to hold a position between the two limits now indicated. If either should absorb us, it would be at the expense of evangelical truth. But it is certain that we could not lose one of these things without losing the other also. There is no choice left to us. We must preserve or lose both at once.

This discussion is not idle. It is true that the attack and defense pass from side to side without an encounter, each part maintaining that which the other does not reject, and rejecting what the other does not care to defend. But this discussion, which would have been out of place at another time, indicates a disposition of mind which should not be unobserved, and, moreover, it leads us to determine well our position in the Church and in society.

The disposition of mind is singular. It implies a contradiction. We do every thing that we may become a caste, and yet we are afraid that we shall be a caste. It is not considered that it is in the nature of a body in exile to make itself an empire, and that it will not even recognize equals, when it has no opportunity of comparing itself with others. We create, or, at least, strengthen the esprit de corps by this fear of the esprit de corps.

The clergy itself is undecided between the remembrance of its ancient authority and the sense of its actual situation.

Religious interest revived, not yet in the masses but in a certain number of individuals, tends to give importance to the clergy; this same interest approximates the laity to the functions of the clergy, and more or less effaces the distinction.