that they could not have bishops liable to a call for ordaining services without forbidding them the exercise of their manhood and conscience. Had that been the spirit of Iona she would hardly have evangelized northern and middle England. Even the Jesuit rule, however it may be applied in practice, expressly reserves to every brother the right to refuse to sin. In brief, neither Bede nor his Roman Catholic readers, believing as they did that Aidan and Finan were true bishops, can have supposed anything but that the ordaining monks called in the ministrations of a bishop.

Certain it is that bishops more or less subject in their functions to superiors have existed in the Church ever since Augustine was consecrated bishop at Hippo as helper to Valerius, and that the number has gone on increasing until it is now greater than ever. At present more than one fourth of the Roman Catholic episcopate is made up of titular bishops, who, except when vicars apostolic, can only act episcopally at the request of friends or at the direction of superiors, which last are often simple presbyters. Yet these titular bishops are not regarded, either by themselves or by other Catholics, as either "puppets" or "scullions," which last vulgarly abusive epithet, however, is not Dr. Killen's. He does not use such phrases. Bishop Hurst quotes it, with the just remark that it may be vituperation but is not argument. There is no argument in it. These titular bishops are reverenced as holding an august and sacred function, though, of course, unequal in rank to that of actual diocesans. Nor, being far from unfamiliar with Roman Catholicism, have we any reason to believe that a vicar-general, or vicar-capitular, or administrator, being only a presbyter, is accustomed to view an auxiliar bishop as a mere animated implement, not warranted to make any use, if required to ordain, of a possible better knowledge of his own. The very superiority of his degree, notwithstanding inferiority of jurisdiction, can never have failed of its effect on a member of the second order.

As to the case of Aidus and Findchan, which our author cites to prove that a Hebridean abbot could ordain, it proves that he could not. The bishop summoned, believing the prince and monk, Aidus, to be grossly unworthy, refused to ordain him, unless the abbot, Findchan, a man worse than the prince,

would first put his right hand on the head of the candidate, pro confirmatione. Notwithstanding this express distinction of the imposition of hands pro confirmatione from one ad ordinationem, Dr. Killen will have it that the abbot thereby ordained the young villain. Yet he says that thereupon the bishop "completed the ceremony." In other words, the bishop declared he would not ordain Aidus a priest unless the abbot ordained him first! The author thus represents the bishop as having merely consented to perform some supplementary ceremonies over the already ordained presbyter. If Dr. Killen will not admit this his interpretation is unintelligible. We would inform the author-what he does not appear to know that to this day no bishop can ordain a monk a priest without the previous authorization of his superior. Whether this is given in writing, orally, or by significant gesture, is merely a matter of present use. In a worse than doubtful case like this the bishop might well require all three. The significant gesture, expressly declared to be pro confirmatione, must, of course, precede the ordination. That Columba's indignation descended chiefly on the head of the scandalous abbot is of course. would be so to-day in any Roman Catholic abbey in a similar case. A vigilant pope would deal with the abbot, not the bishop. And if, as might easily be by ancient use, the abbot's confirmatio had consisted in an antecedent imposition of hands, a thundering rebuke of this act would certainly never be taken as confusing it with the entirely different meaning of the subsequent episcopal act.*

It

Dr. Killen's supreme and concluding argument, however, is yet to come. In his Ecclesiastical History of Ireland he writes as follows: "In A. D. 574 he, Columbkille,† performed a ceremony which the Churches of Rome and England have always reserved for their highest functionaries. He ordained Aidan king of the Scottish Dalriada. The minister who ventured to ordain a king would not, surely, have scrupled to ordain a deacon or a bishop." Now, what are we to think of the ingenuousness of this? The author knows that in English ears "or

Dr. Killen shows that, during the Irish penal laws, the bishop and his priests used to impose their hands so confusedly on the head of the candidate that he could not swear which had been the bishop.

+ Columba of the cell, so called to distinguish him from his great namesake, who is usually called Columban.

dain "irresistibly suggests admission to an ecclesiastical ministry. He knows that it is no more requisite, nor indeed admissible, to translate ordinare regem "ordain a king" than to translate ordinare consulem "ordain a consul." Yet he thus mistranslates, evidently of set purpose, in order to avail himself of the unconscious effect of the word "ordain" upon English imaginations. And as the rank of king is supreme, he knows that by the same unconscious necessity, to those that are not on the watch, the supremacy of the regal rank will communicate itself to the supposed ordination, and minds will shape themselves in this way: "If the abbot of Iona could administer the highest of all ordinations, how much more easily that of a mere bishop!" And yet all this is a transparent sophism. A rex ordinatus, an inaugurated king, is admitted to not even the lowest ecclesiastical order. He remains absolutely a layınan as before. A regina ordinata, an inaugurated queen, is incapable of order. Yet Dr. Killen, a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, which is indissolubly associated in doctrine and testimony with her mother, the thrice illustrious Church of Scotland, has dared, for the sake of bringing in a mere controversial fallacy of the grossest kind, to abrogate the steadfast testimony of Presbyterianism against all confusion of the temporal and the spiritual order. How unworthy of a fellowpresbyter of Knox, of the Melvilles, of the royally descended and more than royally minded Robert Bruce! Who was it that said to a usurping monarch: "Sir, there are in Scotland two kingdoms and two kings. Of one kingdom James VI is the head. Of the other Jesus Christ is the head, and James VI is not the head, no, nor yet an office-bearer, but a simple member?" And yet, for the sake of setting a wretched trap of mere words, the author is content to turn his back on the august and steadfast testimony of his own great Church! In the eyes of all Churches, from Rome to Edinburgh, the right of instituting to the supreme temporal dignity is a matter of purely variable and human use, not implying the right to admit to even the humblest office of the spiritual order. Even in the days-long past-when the regal unction was accounted sacramental it was expressly likened to confirmation, which, even in the Latin Church, is often deputed to a simple presbyter. Let a priest be chosen pope, and he would instantly be competent,

by virtue of his supreme dignity, to hallow any king or emperor in the Catholic world.* Yet he would not, until himself made bishop, have power to ordain even a subdeacon. Even the Church of England, so submissive to the regal authority, expressly declares that she does not attribute to the monarch the ministration of the word and sacraments. At a communion the queen receives after all the bishops, all the priests, all the deacons present. The youngest boy, just admitted to the lowest ministry, here precedes his sovereign. And with good right. Though highest in the temporal order, her majesty is, as a lay person, only fourth in the spiritual order. Nor is it otherwise in the nonsacerdotal Church of Scotland. When the queen joins in the communion at Balmoral, who receives the sacred elements first? The parish minister of Crathie. Who second? His assistant. Who third Her majesty. The highest sovereignty on earth, in the eyes of every true Anglo-Celt and Anglo-Saxon, is hers. Yet in the spiritual order this daughter of a hundred kings has, even among these Puritan haters of Hildebrand, only the third place. So utterly unsubstantial is this author's supreme and conclusive argument, so utterly treacherous to the noblest traditions of the land of Knox.

In conclusion, the present writer wishes to remark that, as the Moravian Brethren say of themselves, the question of episcopal succession has for him not a doctrinal, but simply an historical, significance. Had Rome in the twelfth century really received a presbyterian ministry into the body of her priesthood, it would have indicated a great amount of spiritual enlightenment. This, however, appears to him to be strongly against historical probability and against multitudes of plain facts. If it is ever proved, it will have to be in some other way than through such a course of confused and confusing argument as that which Dr. Killen has not disdained to use.

* Usage commonly requires previous consecration; but usage only, not doctrinal necessity.

Charles b. Starbuck в

ART. IV. THE HUMAN BODY IN THE LIGHT OF CHRISTIANITY.

THE revival of the Olympic games during the last year in the city of Athens, and the award to the victors, made by the King of Greece, of the olive branch from historic Olympia, emphasize in the public mind the great esteem in which the human body was held by the ancient Greeks. All wars among the Greeks must cease while these famous games brought together in peaceful contests for physical supremacy those of pure Hellenic blood who, too frequently, were engaged in civil war. It was believed that the victories of Greece were really won in the Olympic, the Pythian, the Nemean, and Isthmian games, as Wellington declared that Waterloo was won at Eton and Rugby. But while the Greeks established these games in the name of religion and dedicated them to Jove and Apollo and Neptune, and prided themselves upon the perfection of the human form which was secured, the bodies of the victors were subject at death to cremation as really as the bodies of the peasants. In fact, cremation was accounted an honor which only suicides, unteethed children, and persons struck by lightning were denied. Grecian regard for the human body after death was less than what was common among the Egyptians, who embalmed their dead, the Jews, who buried them in sepulchers, and the Chinese, who buried them in the earth. Aside from these three nations cremation was universal until Christianity taught such reverence for the human body that some form of burial was generally introduced, the very catacombs in Rome being used, if they were not excavated, for that purpose.

However much esteemed in life, the human body had no future to those who knew nothing of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. Nor was it until the incarnation of our Lord that an adequate idea of the sacredness of the human body and of its glorious destiny ever entered the mind of man. Christ brought life and immortality to light, and made clear and unmistakable what had been before dimly conceived. But it needed his own resurrection to make this possible. After that, those who had doubted were so fully convinced that they boldly proclaimed the resurrection of Christ," whom God raised