L I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVERSITY 
 
 or 1 LLl NOIS
 
 PRIMITIVE CHURCH PRINCIPLES 
 
 NOT INCONSISTENT WITH 
 
 Universal Christian Sympathy, 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED AT THE 
 
 Visitation of the united Dioceses of Derry and Raphoe, 
 
 ON THURSDA Y, SEPTEMBER 22, 1842. 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 REV. W. ARCHEE BUTLER, M.A., 
 
 Professor of Moral Philosophy in Ihe University of Dublin. 
 
 (Be})rinted hy kind consent of Messrs. Macmillan d: Co. ) 
 
 3Eontion : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY W. WELLS GARDNER, 
 3, Pateknoster Buildings. 
 
 1884.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CHARLES COLL AND SON, PRINTERS, 
 
 HOUGHTON STREET, W. C.
 
 PRIMITIVE CHURCH PRINCIPLES NOT INCONSISTENT 
 WITH UNIVERSAL CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY.* 
 
 2 Corinthians, hi, 6. 
 
 " TFho also hath made us able 'ministers of the New Testament ; not of the letter, 
 but of tJie spirit." 
 
 In these words, my brethren, the great Apostle affirms two most 
 important truths. Vindicating his own position, but including, 
 doubtless, with himself, all who share his ministry, he asserts at 
 once its authority and its object ; the commission by which it is 
 empowered to act, and the essential quality of the religion it is 
 constituted to diffuse. " God hath made us able ministers," — such 
 is the source of our qualification ; " ministers not of the letter, but 
 of the spirit," — such is the nature of the doctrine we have to 
 declare. 
 
 S. Paul did not perceive any inconsistency between this humble 
 confidence in divine help guaranteed to a divinely-appointed 
 ministry, and the purely spiritual character of the religion for 
 which alone that ministry existed. On the contrary, he often 
 seems to consider the constitution of such an office to have been 
 itself the master-work of the Spirit, f But others have been 
 unable to connect these things. It has been conceived, that every 
 argument which dares to deduce the authority of the minister 
 directly from his Master tends inevitably to ecclesiastical despotism; 
 or at least, that the only form in Avhich such views can be safely 
 held is that which permits all who at their own pleasure or that 
 of others assume the name, to stand upon the same level of com- 
 missioned power and privilege. And, unfortunately, the just 
 claims of the primitive ministry of the Church, when defended at 
 all, have been too often defended with a harshness and rigour of 
 
 * Preached at tlie Visitation of tlic united Dioceses of Derry and Eaphoe, 
 on Thursday, September 22, 1842 ; aud published at the request of the Bishop 
 and Clergy. 
 
 + Actsxiii, 2 ; xx, 28. Rom. xii, 6,7. 1 Cor. xii, 11,28. Eph iv, 7,8,11,
 
 unqualified assumption, wliich, while it may have attached more 
 closely a few resolute adherents, has certainly alarmed and 
 repelled a far greater numbei\ 
 
 Gladly would I, my reverend brethren, were I to follow my 
 own preferences in selecting a subject for our common considera- 
 tion, turn from these troubled themes to those jioints of ordinary 
 practical importance upon which no doubt or disagreement could 
 be anticipated. But I am well aware that, on an occasion like the 
 present, it is not the preferences of the preacher, but the circum- 
 stances of the times and the immediate interests of his auditory, 
 that must determine his subject.- The great lines of practical 
 duty are manifest; for the most part, whatever our God in His 
 righteousness has made most necessary, in His mercy He has 
 made most unambiguous. You will justly expect to be addressed, 
 not so much upon that which engages us equally at all times, as 
 upon that which engages us peculiarly at the present time ; 
 not so much upon the points of greatest general importance 
 in the ministerial life, as upon some of those pressing questions 
 of immediate perplexity, which we feel it not easy to solve upon 
 our ordinary principles of action, and which make even the 
 humblest and feeblest light valuable, because, emerging unex- 
 pectedly upon the Church, they find us without the guidance of 
 habitual rules and settled experience. 
 
 I need scarcely observe that the subject to which I have alluded 
 has, of late years, assumed this distressing aspect. Our local 
 position in this part of the empire has given it peculiar importance 
 and difficulty. Situated as we are, in the midst of large bodies 
 of excellent and able men, who reject indeed our ministrations, 
 yet whom we are bound to conciliate to the very last degree that 
 involves no surrender of principle ; the public mind around us 
 agitated by unwarrantable representations of the Church's belief 
 as to her ministry : and those whom we have undertaken to 
 guide anxiously inquiring of us our real claims ; — Eomanists with 
 some, if we do not rank everything else above our office ; Puritans 
 with others, if we do not rank our office above everything else ; — 
 it is surely fitting that we should furnish ourselves with some 
 definite principles on the question, capable of direct and jpractical
 
 application. When each of two hostile divisions makes a separate 
 clause of our text its watchword, and the spirituality of our 
 religion is marshalled against its authorized polity, — the polity 
 asserted in a form that too often obscures or overlooks the 
 spirituality, — it may be well to try if we cannot, with S. Paul, 
 rejoice to see and to welcome both. 
 
 Did we not know by experience how men can in practice 
 unconsciously harmonize differences, which their theories pro- 
 claim absolutely irreconcilable, we might indeed well wonder 
 how the supporters of views so opposed as those to which 1 have 
 referred could continue members of the same ecclesiastical body. 
 By one party it is openly professed that the polity of the Church 
 and ministry of Christ is entirely a matter of temporary, occa- 
 sional, variable expediency; that all bodies and all individuals 
 who believe in the name of Jesus are equally contemplated in 
 His original charter, and equally realize his original design. By 
 the other it is usually maintained with as resolute a conviction, 
 that the one constitution of the Church and her ministry, being 
 in every element essentially divine, forms the sole exclusive 
 machinery of human salvation ; that to it alone the sanctifying 
 graces of the Gospel are promised ; and that there exists no 
 ground in the New Testament for anticipating that they can ever 
 travel out of the channel it affords for their transmission. The 
 eager advocates of each of these views are so possessed with the 
 absolute truth of the main principle for which they struggle, as to 
 overlook the enormous difficulties that challenge them when they 
 descend to the simple facts of the case ; when the bold theory of 
 the latitudinarian is met not only by the internal improbability of 
 his supposition, but by the clear evidence of Scripture and apos- 
 tolic antiquity ; when the rigorous scheme of his opponent is 
 encountered by the overwhelming evidence of daily experience, 
 establishing by the most decisive attestations, by proofs which, if 
 we reject, we must reject all human reasoning on religion, that 
 the purifying and saving graces of the Gospel are not limited as 
 he would affirm, but extend through almost every community, in 
 which the leading doctrines of the faith of Christ are preached. 
 
 When views thus contradictory and thus extreme are put
 
 6 
 
 forth ; when it is certain they cannot both be strictly true ; when 
 both may be made in their degree plausible ; and yet facts exist 
 that seem inconsistent with either ; — the most valuable service 
 that can be rendered to the public mind is the work of limitation ; 
 — the attempt to show under what qualifications principles true 
 in themselves ought to be accepted, so as to make them con- 
 sistent with others of equal certainty. This is an humble task 
 apparently; but the whole history of human knowledge has 
 shown that it is far from being an easy one in reality. The most 
 important steps in every part of moral science have consisted in 
 this very adjustment of rival truths ; it is much less difficult to 
 see the force of a great principle than to see its limits. 
 
 My object, then, is to establish that just and strict views of the 
 original polity of the Church of Christ, and of our obligation to 
 preserve and transmit that polity, are theoretically consistent with 
 a full recognition of the fact of great and genuine piety existing 
 in irregular and less happily constructed communities ; of the 
 consequent possibility and propriety of our ■practicalhj sympa- 
 thising with many of their projects of benevolence, and of our 
 cherishing a Christian and charitable affection for their godly 
 members. And therefore, that the obligation of this latter duty, 
 and the reality of the blessed and delightful fact on which it is 
 founded (the existence of many of God's richest graces among 
 them) furnish no legitimate argument against the exclusive claims 
 of the primitive polity, or against the duty on us incumbent of 
 steadfastly upholding it as alone representing the full design of 
 the inspired Apostles of Jesus Christ. My wish is, to evince that 
 hoth these things are sci'ipturally consistent ; and that their con- 
 sistency is perfectly parallel with the ordinary operations of God 
 in His kingdoms of providence and grace. And hence, to tran- 
 quillize the fears of those who conceive, either, that if they accept 
 as obligatory the primitive system of the Church, they must avoid 
 every form and degree of spiritual recognition towards those who 
 have lost it ; or, that since they cannot accept the extravagant 
 theory which places the pious Presbyterian and Congregationalist 
 on a level with the heathen, they must of necessity surrender all 
 the exclusive claims of the ancient episcopal ministry.
 
 I. The positions, then, which 1 consider that we, as the duly 
 commissioned ministers of this Church, are justified in main 
 taining, are such as these : — 
 
 First, — the great general principle, that the apostleship of 
 Jesus Christ is still, and for ever, in the world ; as really in all 
 the substance of the office, as when it was held, under circum- 
 stantial differences of miraculous attestation, by Peter, and James, 
 and John. That as, " breathing the breath" of natural life into 
 the first man. He gave him, by a single act, a power thence- 
 forward physically transmissive through the whole immense 
 series of the human race ; so (with evident allusion to that act) 
 " breathing on them" the Holy Ghost, He conferred, once for all, 
 a spiritual power analogously transmissive to innumerable spiritual 
 successors. That when He to Whom "all power is given in heaven 
 and earth" promised to be " always, unto the end of the world," 
 present with His eleven mortal commissaries, He spake not to 
 the men but to the office, or to the men as the temporary sym- 
 bols, rejDresentatives, and occupants of the office. That it, there- 
 fore, becomes the same violation of His appointed order, — though 
 not, from the absence of miraculous evidences, so visibly such, — 
 to separate, under any pretext of sanctity, from this succession, 
 without a palpable corruption of doctrine (which S. Paul has 
 pronounced adequate to justify separation from himself (Gal. i. 8) ), 
 — as it would have been for holy men, during the actual ministry 
 of the Apostles, to have neglected all visible communion with 
 them, under the pretext, however true and sincere, of sufficiently 
 understanding the doctrine they taught, and practising the life 
 they recommended. 
 
 Secondly, — that this general conception of a perpetual Apos- 
 tolate, intimated as it clearly is in Scripture, and against which 
 all the vulgar objections apply with precisely equal force to any 
 ministerial transmission of the ministry, is manifestly confirmed 
 hj the fact oi the organization of the apostolic Churches^ both 
 laity and ministers, under individual governors, exercising exclu- 
 sive powers of ordination and spiritual superintendence even 
 within the limits of the New Testament ; by the universal admis- 
 sion in antiquity of the claims of this high stewardship to have
 
 8 
 
 been the direct appointment of Him who " holdeth in His right 
 hand the stars " which " are the angels of the Churches " 
 (Eev. i. 20; ii. 1); and by the very strong presumption, far 
 more than sufficient to constitute a clear practical obligation, 
 that any form of polity universally constituted at such a time was 
 meant to be perpetual ; it being obviously improbable, not to go 
 into any more direct evidence, that the Apostles, everywhere 
 insisting on the propriety of due obedience to spiritual directors, 
 and themselves having habituated the Church to find in definite 
 authority the main external bond of that unity they so urgently 
 impressed, should yet, as they passed away, leave the Church of 
 Christ without any permanent constitution ; that is, should pro- 
 vide no fixed remedy against the dissolution of the polity of every 
 Church in the world, every month of its existence, at the caprice 
 of a majority. 
 
 To these points 1 merely allude ; my immediate object assumes 
 them as proved upon their proper evidence, and concerns only 
 their consequences. I therefore proceed to observe, — 
 
 Thirdly, — that the divine and exclusive authority of this con- 
 stitution is consistent with the strong frohaUlity that, where it 
 should be lost, the mercy of God would not suflfer that unhappy 
 error to prevent the gift of His graces to those who sincerely 
 sought them. This point contains the real essence of the whole 
 controversy ; and, therefore, to this I must request your special 
 attention. I will not apologize for taxing that attention by some- 
 thing of a severe and systematic argument ; for I am addressing 
 an auditory which I should insult by supposing that it could 
 desire anything else on such a subject. 
 
 II. 1. It is always dangerous to undertake to say what are means 
 alone, and what are ends alone, in the ordinances of Providence ; 
 yet if we may in any case venture to do this, it is in the case of 
 the Christian ministry, which is everywhere represented, as 
 indeed the name itself implies, in the subordinate or instrumental 
 character of a means instituted for certain divine purposes higher 
 than itself, namely, for individual and collective holiness.* The 
 
 * Matt. XX, 27, 28. 1 Cor. iii, 21, 22 ; ix, 19. 2 Cor. i, 24 ; iv, 5. 
 Eph. iv, 12-16. 1 Pet. iv, 10.
 
 ministry as fixed by the Apostles is the instrumentality which 
 Christ has organized for converting and guiding the world in 
 things spiritual ; and His divine law attaches a special blessing to 
 its duly executed ministrations, whenever the course of the bless- 
 ing is not interrupted by the negligence or the wilfulness of its 
 designed objects. This is Christ's law of the ministry. But 
 another law, equally certain, and of yet larger compass, attaches 
 a general blessing to the act of sincere faith in the Gospel of 
 Christ ; a blessing which may indeed be increased by other means 
 of grace, or altogether suspended if we wilfully neglect them ; but 
 which, nevertheless, supposing " an honest and good heart" in the 
 receiver, is attached without express limitation to the cordial 
 reception of divine truth, simply as such. Through whatever 
 channel the knowledge arrive, we must still confess it "life 
 eternal to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He 
 hath sent ;" and where that knowledge is not complete (as by the 
 loss of important collateral doctrines) we cannot, either from the 
 reason of the thing, or from the information of experience, deny 
 it to be ordinarily effective for sanctification and salvation, so far 
 as it is possessed. Nor can it, without a melancholy perversity, 
 be maintained, either that the peculiar doctrines of which I am 
 now treating (those which regard the Apostolic constitution of 
 the Church) are such in themselves that their absence deprives 
 those which remain of all true sanctifying and saving power ; or 
 that the whole vast residue of divine truth is, by a special suspen- 
 sion of the covenant of grace, deprived of this efficacy in all cases 
 where perfect Church communion is lost ; the latter supposition 
 being as much opposed to experience as the former is to all just 
 conceptions of the proportion and connexions of revealed doc- 
 trines. Nor, indeed, do I think that this ground can be fairly 
 held by any one who is not prepared (in a very mistaken view 
 of the reverence due to mystical and sacramental influences) to 
 question the whole principle that divine knowledge, purely as such, 
 is, when cordially received, made ordinarily efficacious to holi- 
 ness and to salvation : a principle, to establish which from direct 
 and indirect scriptural testimonies, would be to transcribe nearly 
 the whole Bible. It seems, therefore, quite undeniable, that if
 
 10 
 
 any number of persons were to agree to set themselves apart for 
 the purpose of offering that knowledge, or a principal portion of 
 that knowledge, to mankind, we have strong scriptural grounds 
 for anticipating, that that oifer would be attended Avith results of 
 saving benefit altogether irrespectively of any direct commission 
 for the purpose. It is wrong to affirm that the hearers of such 
 uncommissioned persons " must be left to the extraordinary 
 mercies of God ;" for there unquestionably is an ordinary dispen- 
 sation, intimated without qualification, and fully interpreted by 
 subsequent experience, which attaches divine influence to "the 
 hearing of faith ;" influences which groio in regular proportion to 
 faith itself, from its weakest to its strongest intensity in the sub- 
 ject, from its smallest to its largest extension in the object of 
 that fundamental grace, but which in one degree or other, are 
 invariably attached to it as such. This is a transcendental law (as 
 the schoolmen would have termed it) with which none of inferior 
 extent can rightly be conceived to interfere ; but by which, on 
 the other hand, no inferior law is contravened, or limited, or any- 
 wise disturbed. It not only can co-exist with the most rigorous 
 obligations to the appointed ministry, but it actually strengthens 
 the force of these obligations, and even strengthens them in 
 virtue of its very generality ; for in propmiion to the extent and 
 freeness of the mercy of God, ought to be the impulse carefully 
 to search out, and scrupulously to fulfil, every one of His ordi- 
 nances. Nor, therefore, can this view (except by a gross abuse) 
 lead to any indifference to positive institutions ; it being quite 
 certain that he who wilfully neglects the positive ordinances of 
 God, on pretext of possessing sufficient holiness independent of 
 them, does thereby infallibly prove the falsity of his own 
 pretext. 
 
 2. This principle, that a strong obligation to a particular 
 polity may co-exist with a general law of divine benevolence, 
 might be exemplified largely : my limits will only permit of my 
 noticing one or two instances, and these very transientlj'. The 
 honest heathen '* doing by nature the things contained in the 
 law," — the Socrates or the Solon, — was, doubtless, not destitute 
 of his measure of divine approbation • yet the Jew, and the
 
 11 
 
 heathen received into Jewish membership, even though he had 
 brought with him all the largest lights of philosophic morality 
 into that strict and rigorous system, were not the less impera- 
 tively obliged to a special code of. beliefs and ordinances as their 
 sole declared path of acceptable service. Again, among the Jews 
 themselves, in our Saviour's age, perhaps the very most corrupt 
 portion was the most precise in observances, the purest body the 
 most irregular in its Judaism ; nor can any one who knows how 
 He hatli set mercy above sacrifice doubt as to their relative 
 estimation with God ; yet who will deny that the Essene was 
 unwarranted in presuming to neglect or undervalue what the 
 Pharisee by unspirituality discredited 1 Such cases as these show 
 the force of the principle as one of very general applicability in 
 the divine government of the world. They are instances that the 
 fact of divine aid and approbation visibly given to bodies renoun- 
 cing the original constitution of the Church, is one which our 
 experience of the ways of God might have taught us to anticipate ; 
 one at which we are bound to rejoice as a striking manifestation 
 of the supremacy of the purely spiritual element in our religion, 
 and the mercy, victorious over all obstacles, of a God who 
 "waiteth to be gracious" to every sincere supplicant; but which 
 does not form the shadow of a presumption against the exclusive 
 authority'", perpetual obligation, and specific blessedness of the 
 primitive system of ministerial government and succession. 
 
 III. Another view of this important question, which is quite 
 as simple, quite as strongly supported by the general analogy of 
 divine dealings, and which leads to the same result, is that derived 
 from what may be called the principle of accommodation. By this 
 I mean the principle observable in God's merciful dispensations, 
 of suiting Himself to tlie infirmities and errors of His creatures, 
 by occasional variations of His stated laws, without any repeal of 
 those laws themselves. 
 
 To begin from the highest ground. It is evident that all mercy 
 is an accommodation of this kind : a suspension in special cases of 
 the execution of the laws of rigorous justice, these laws still pre- 
 serving their supreme authority, and being virtually acknowledged 
 in the very gratitude that hails their apparent supersession.
 
 12 
 
 Consider next, that the great perpetual exercise of divine goodness 
 consists in the bestowal of divine " grace "; the name of Avhich, 
 on account of this very eminence, has become in a manner 
 ambiguous in the New Testament, being applied equally to the 
 mercy that gives and to the boon that is given. Now, the primary 
 and ordinary end of grace is, doubtless, the support of unfallen 
 beings through the universe, as it is usually supposed to have 
 been, of our own race before the fall ; and in its general collation 
 it was made dependent for continuance on the thankful and 
 upright use of it by the creature. Yet, while this law of grace is 
 still preserved through the millions that adhere to God in all the 
 regions of His creation : while in strictness it might legitimately 
 be enforced on ourselves : we know that the law has been in our 
 case specially widened, and we are thankful for the enlargement, 
 as an act of conspicuous mercy in the sudden accommodation of 
 divine gifts to suit the case of a lost and ruined race. And the 
 special accommodation has now become an enactment of divine 
 goodness, as sure and ordinary as the original law. But Ave may 
 proceed farther still. Under the accommodation the gift itself 
 has actually become more ample and more precious. The redemp- 
 tion achieved by Christ seems meant (through the connexion of 
 God and man in His person) to exalt the creature to a far higher 
 ultimate position in creation than he Avould originally have 
 possessed : while the peculiar embarrassments of a fallen being 
 struggling against inward frailty and outward temptation, give 
 occasion for a larger and more constant measure of assistance 
 from heaven in the jji'esent state. This, I need not remind you, is 
 the spirit of those reasonings of S. Paul in the fifth and the follow- 
 ing chapters of his Epistle to the Eomans ; where he unfulds how 
 the law of God, and the sin, of which, through the weakness of 
 our flesh, it was the occasion, were themselves, in the vast and 
 profound scheme of Providence, the means, and the necessary 
 means, of evolving a far more wondrous exhibition of mercy ; in 
 order that " where sin abounded" grace might " superabound." It 
 may, indeed, be doubted whether the goodness of God could ever 
 have been duly appreciated, if by the existence of sin it had not 
 been led to assume the form of mercy ; whether in an universe of
 
 13 
 
 simple absolute righteousness, it would not inevitably tend to 
 appear an attribute acting by a kind of physical necessitij of dis- 
 tributing happiness in proportion to virtue, and thus cease to 
 excite any very definite or intense emotion of gratitude. It would 
 seem that, at least to beings formed in our mould, the contempla- 
 tion of an enmity voluntarily pardoned can alone render this 
 attribute strongly prominent and characteristic ; just as the sense 
 of divine ivisdom becomes deadened, when confined to mere results, 
 without the perception of elaborate contrivance and difficulties 
 circuitously overcome. The force of the smooth current is not 
 created by the obstacle, but it is manifested by it, measured by it, 
 and might for ever remain unsuspected without it. This specu- 
 lation might be carried much further ; even, as I imagine, so far 
 as to show that for the very idea of goodness, as a distinct pos- 
 itive apprehension in the minds of created beings, some contrast 
 of actual evil seems requisite ; just as, probably, of all the 
 animated beings in our solar system, those, if such there be, who 
 dwell in the sun, have the least distinct idea of light, because they 
 have no contrasted experience of actual darkness, and because 
 merely possible privations, if even conceivable at all, can never 
 impress but faintly. You may reflect whether such considerations, 
 showing the apparent necessity of evil for all practical apprehen- 
 sion of good, do not afford some reason for the permission of 
 its existence. But I must i-eturn to my immediate object. Not- 
 withstanding, then, all this wonderful development of the 
 resources of divine mercy, presupposing a fall from original 
 righteousness, and arising solely out of it, no one, I suppose, will 
 deny, either, that even the full and certain knowledge of the 
 whole series of future blessings to spring from his sin, would not 
 have, in the slightest degree, diminished Adam's obligation to 
 obedience, and the criminality of his rebellion ; or that, could the 
 alternative be at this moment referred to ourselves, we should be 
 bound, in simple submission to the divine law, to prefer that our 
 race had never transgressed, and calmly to leav^e the rest to God. 
 With this striking example impressed on your minds, and sepa- 
 rating (as you may easily do) the principle involved in it from 
 its details, consider, first, — is it unlikely that God should appoint
 
 14 
 
 a special organization of the means of grace in His Church 1 
 Secondly, — that when that organization had been more or less 
 impaired, He should condescend to continue His gifts in a 
 manner accommodated to the alteration? Thirdly, — that in some 
 instances, the graces thus conferred should be even more precious 
 and brilliant in themselves and their results, than were always or 
 often exhibited under the original arrangement ? And, never- 
 theless, fourthly, — that the change out of which His measureless 
 wisdom had framed such evidences of plac;il)i]ity and mercj^, 
 should itself be a fall from a better state, a violation of declared 
 law, a thing to be mourned, and repented, and remedied 1 
 
 TV. 1. A modification of this same principle places in its 
 proper light the objection (perhaps the most plausible of all) to 
 the doctrine of a single fixed and vmiversal form of Church polity, 
 so often drawn from the alleged advantages of religious dissent ; 
 in its tendency to urge rival bodies to watchfulness, in its pro- 
 vision for the diversity of human tempers, in its development of 
 truth by the conflict of opinions. The fact here affirmed appears 
 to me to be, in its limited degree, unquestionable ; but it affords 
 no real presumption against the doctrine it is employed to oppose. 
 Indeed, though it could be j^roved that variance in the body of 
 Christian believers was, in the enfeebled state of that body, not 
 merely useful, but absolutely necessary to keep its energies alive, 
 this unhappy fact would be no proof that it was not our indi- 
 vidual duty to labour to recover the original ordinance of unitj^ 
 For surely we need not pass beyond the very instance on which I 
 have lately insisted, to see that, in God's dealings with man, laws 
 emerge, in consequence of a fall from a prior and better state, 
 which produce in the new and inferior state consequences allow- 
 able, valuable, even indispensable ; and which, nevertheless, we 
 cannot but earnestly desire to remove, in removing the condition 
 that permits or necessitates them. In the unfallen state death 
 was unknown : in the present constitution of the animate creation 
 birth is not more necessary to its continuance than death ; the 
 play of its mechanism would be stopped as certainly if no man 
 were to die as if no man were to be born. How, for this purpose, 
 the tendency to war, the visitations of pestilence, are not without
 
 15 
 
 their providential use, I need not urge ; it is enough to say, that 
 all that vast system of corrupt or imperfect motives which Scrip- 
 ture calls " the world" is itself a mass of these secondary laws of 
 exquisite art, working in each other with precision the most subtle 
 and exact, and all in their degree necessary for the maintenance 
 of the wdiole scheme of human life as it stands ; yet this it is 
 which we, living in the midst of it, are called on to abhor, to 
 forsake, and to reform. The provisions, then, in the new creation 
 of the Church, as those in the old creation of nature, which our 
 degradation has made useful or necessary, have no claitn of per- 
 petuity beyond that degradation itself ; the system of grace and 
 the system of providence may be equally aided by stimulants 
 which are foreign to their primary constitution ; nor is the reality 
 of such incidental motives in either Church or world a proof that 
 the original design of God was not above them, beyond them, 
 altogether independent of their mediation. 
 
 2. And as the alleged occasional advantages of separation are 
 thus shown to be perfectly consistent with the divine purpose and 
 constitution of universal Church unity ; so you will find the same 
 mode of reasoning furnish sufficient answer to all those more 
 daring forms of argument in which it is attempted to be shown, — 
 not merely that variety of government has its advantages, but 
 that uniformity, and more especially uniformity of episcopal con- 
 trol, carries in it an inherent and inevitable tendency to corrup- 
 tion, usurpation, and the ultimate formation of an ecclesiastical 
 monarchy. It seems to be a law of our present imperfect state, 
 that every divine gift must, more or less, suffer by entering it ; 
 coming from God, it yet comes to man ; and in such hands the 
 gift alters in the very process of using it. The " natural tendency" 
 complained of is not in the constitution of the Church, but in the 
 corruption of man ; nor is the ordinary objection against the divine 
 authority of this special Christian polity (that naturally tending 
 to a papal supremacy, it cannot have been designed by Christ, 
 unless that eventual transition was likewise in His design) at all 
 more conclusive than it would be against the divine constitution 
 of the Jewish, which " naturally," — that is, from human pride, 
 indolence, and impatience, — passed into a monarchy also. In each
 
 16 
 
 there was the criminal substitution of a visible for an invisible 
 governor ; the literal and the mystical Israel both murmured, 
 "■ Nay, but a king shall reign over us ; when the Lord their God 
 was their king ;""^ even this very revolution was itself expressly 
 anticipated in the provisions of the Mosaic Law ;| and we know 
 how the predicted change was, nevertheless, characterised as 
 rebellion, and marked with the special resentment of Heaven. 
 The truth seems to be, that God tries His Church as He tries its 
 individual members ; by placing both in positions that bring 
 temptation, by making the temptation increase in proportion to the 
 crimes and wilfulness of both, and by making the sin of both 
 involve its own punishment. Coequal episcopacy afforded a natural 
 temptation to partisanship and ambition ; the criminal dissensions 
 of the Church recommended the papal expedient for enforcing 
 union, and gave opportunity to the most powerful see to usurp a 
 despotic arbitration : and I need not insist how fatally the deser- 
 tion of the Apostolic constitution has brought with it its own 
 punishment in the consequent corruption, debasement, and slavery 
 of half the existing Church of Christ. It would be unjust to the 
 claims of God's marvellous mercy, not to add, that here too (as in 
 the former part of our subject) it has found opportunities for 
 extracting benefits out of evil. The careful student of ecclesi- 
 astical history is not unable to see that, iu the wretched circum- 
 stances of the times, even the papal system had its occasional 
 uses ; the body of Christ, like the natural body, being permitted 
 to possess a sort of vis meclicatrix, by which its very diseases pro- 
 duce results that tend in some degree to alleviate themselves. 
 
 On the whole, then, we have seen that it is quite possible to 
 consider the Apostolic constitution of the Church as the estab- 
 lished dispensation of the means of grace, and to regard adherence 
 to that constitution as a peremptory and perpetual duty ; and yet 
 to recognise the reality of its occasional degradation ; the inde- 
 pendency of divine grace on its necessary instrumentality ; the 
 benefits that have been attained beyond its verge ; and even the 
 benefits that have been at times permitted to arise from opposing, 
 and disputing, and suspending its legitimate claims. 
 
 * 1 Sam, xii, 12. t Deut. xvii, 14.
 
 17 
 
 V. 1. But it may probably be urged, that all these concessions 
 are not sufficient, unless we admit within the circle of the Church 
 itself the various forms of association which have been made the 
 occasions of grace to believers in Christ ; that is, unless we include 
 within our conception of the Church every existing or possible 
 social organization for the preaching of the Gospel. And it is 
 supposed that, unless this admission be made, it will still be 
 necessary to exclude many of the holiest disciples of Christ 
 from that sole claim to eternal happiness which is founded in 
 being members of His mystical body. 
 
 But there need not arise any very perplexing difficulty on this 
 point. We are not forced, in order to save the pious dissenter, to make 
 his irregular society an integral portion of the mystical body of 
 Christ ; the mercy of God secures his salvation, when he is to be 
 saved, on deeper grounds than this. If that mercy can give grace 
 at all (as no man should dare deny) independently of the Apostolic 
 constitution, it surely can give the preliminary grace, — the source 
 of all, and which all others pre-suppose, — of the mystical membership 
 of Christ ; and if to the all -searching eye of God this constitutes 
 that celestial ground of church-membership, of which visible 
 sacraments are the earthly counterparts and the ordinary 
 instruments, then assuredly the same act of grace which made 
 him one with Christ has spiritually incorporated him into the 
 Church, with which holy society he is thenceforth numbered, 
 even though, in unconscious contradiction to the will of God, and 
 doubtless to his own detriment, he unhappily lives without ful- 
 filling its corresponding earthly conditions. It is the primary 
 purpose of God, that all within His Church should be holy, that 
 all holy men should be within His Church ; the blessed design 
 has been contravened in both respects ; and the same difficulty, if 
 there be any, arises equally from both. Millions within the Church 
 are but nominally its members ; thousands beyond it appear in 
 the enjoyment of its real graces : — as the wicked within it are 
 spiritually excluded from its real communion,* so the holy outside 
 it are spiritually included in its circle ; these special arrangements 
 
 * The most respectable of even the Romish theologians have sanctioned 
 this decision ; and the grounds npon which they proceed are plainly applicable 
 to the correspondent case of godly dissentients from the apostolic fellowship.
 
 18 
 
 of God as to individual souls in no respect altering either the 
 duty of men, or the nature of the Church itself, as the kingdom 
 of Christ, and the sole appointed school of immortality. In a 
 word, the same grace which, condescending to human infirmities, 
 could make a man a believer in the Gospel in despite of his unwit- 
 ting desertion of God's arrangements, can, doubtless, in the same 
 despite, secretly enrol him in the list of the household of God 
 along with the Church's baptized children ; nor is there at all 
 more difficulty in the one supposition than in the other, 
 
 2. But it is plain that this special favour to individuals in no 
 respect necessarily extends to consecrate or authorize societies. 
 We believe, and we rejoice to believe it of the former, because we 
 see results which we know can only flow from the union of 
 mystical membership with the divine Head; we have, I fear, no 
 similar proof to justify us in extending the principle to the latter. 
 We certainly may believe that every single member of a schis- 
 matical congregation has been, by God's mercy, made a member 
 of Christ, and in the same secret act (for the ideas are inseparably 
 correlative) registered in heaven a member of the Church which 
 is His body ; and yet believe that that congregation is itself, as 
 such, existing in direct opposition to His will, because in opposi- 
 tion to that blessed society by which he originally purposed to 
 dispense His graces, and because by that opposition delaying His 
 further purpose, through the same societj^, to bind in one brother- 
 hood all the families of mankind. Surely there is nothing sophis- 
 tical or illusory in the distinction. vSurely it is conceivable that 
 individuals may, by the grace of God, be enrolled in the number 
 of Christ's elect people ; that they may thus form a real portion 
 of that flock on which His eye rests with peculiar aff"ection; 
 that, in His abounding mercy, they may live in the enjoyment of 
 all the varied blessings which His Church was primarily consti- 
 tuted to diff'use, — " sitting together," with its brightest saints, 
 " in heavenly places in Christ Jesus ;" and be thus in the eye of 
 God accounted true members of it in being members of Him ; and 
 yet, that the system of polity and visible association to which 
 they externally adhere may form no real portion of the primitive 
 Church of Christ, may be incompatible with its original idea, and
 
 19 
 
 actually perilous to the spirit it was meant to generate and to foster. 
 And this will hold, consistently with many suppositions commonly 
 conceived to nullify it. As, for instance, even though (1) that 
 very system were itself over-ruled to be the earthly instrument of 
 their growth in holiness ; or, (2) even though it were (as all pro- 
 visions for preaching truth must in their degree be) in some 
 respects inherently adapted for that instrumentality. It is even 
 supposable (3) that the occasional workings and results of such a 
 system may not be viewed without a certain measure of divine 
 approbation; especially if they approximate to the original plan, 
 or tend in any degree to preserve its spirit. Or it is supposable 
 (4) that these societies, when pure and exemplaiy, may bo divinely 
 regarded as transitions to a better and brighter state of future 
 catholic union ; or again (5) as temporary forms of association, in 
 which some important principles may be embodied and preserved 
 that would otherwise have run the chance of utter extinction in the 
 world, — fastnesses where some high and holy truths have taken 
 refuge for a time, while the city of God was itself given over to 
 pollution, and the abomination of desolation was standing in the 
 holy place. Nay, it is supposable (6) that the whole body of such 
 systems, though human and unauthorized, may be found to form 
 designed members in a vast scheme of divine moral government, of 
 which the Church itself is as yet but a part, though the noblest 
 part ; or (7) that they may be discovered to have even advanced 
 the spiritual progress of some natures mo^-e rapidly, not than the 
 Apostolic principle is capacitated in itself to do, but — than it 
 would actually have succeeded in doing in certain unhappy 
 conjunctures of times and circumstances. Not one of these 
 admissions (some of which seem often confusedly alleged with this 
 view) does in any respect disturb or w^eaken the distinction I 
 have drawn. 
 
 3. But further, it must, I think, be ruled, — that as all fixed 
 government is in itself, as such, a blessing and divine ; as decency 
 and order in religious societies are themselves, as such, favoured 
 by Heaven ; we may not doubt that God approves of all religious 
 constitutions as far preferable to the greater evils they prevent ; 
 though he disapprove not the less the desertion of His own
 
 20 
 
 Apostolic model. How/a?- this blessing may extend; whether, — for 
 I am perfectly wUliug to suggest a possibility, which, being but a 
 possibility, can in no degree aftect the question of practical duty, — 
 "whether, in cases of long-established order and gi-eat personal 
 godliness, it ever can, or will, amount in the secret estimate of 
 God to an ordinary sanction of the substituted system, it would 
 be extremely hazardous to presume arbitrarily to determine. It 
 certainly seems not inherently impossible, nor from analogy 
 wholly improbable, that it may ; and in all such questions I 
 believe it our truest wisdom, as it ought to be our highest hap- 
 piness, to glorify God by hoping much from His exhaustless 
 goodness. "When our Lord was in that ship in the tempest, 
 which all ages have agreed in employing as a type of His Church, 
 S. Mark alone of the Evangelists, as it were incidentally, observes, 
 — -' and there were also with Him other little ships.'' Xothing 
 more is said through the narration of these " little ships."' Yet they, 
 doubtless, enjoyed a share in the blessing of calm obtained by the 
 ship that bore Jesus Christ. I have sometimes thought that they 
 picture vividly the fortunes of those societies that in these later 
 ages have moved in the wake of the ancient Apostolic Church ; 
 that are with it forced to endiu'e the storms of a world impaitially 
 hostile to every form of religious eftort ; and that are not with- 
 out participating in the blessings of the holy presence abiding in 
 that Church, as long as in sincerity of heart they endeavour to 
 keep up with the Master in His course. Beheve it, the warmest 
 hopes and sympathies are here consistent with the most unswer- 
 ving sense of duty ; my purpose this day is attained if I have in 
 any degree helped you to see how to combine them. Your duty 
 to them and to yourselves once inflexibly fixed, I would even 
 encom'age every hope as to possible variations of the original 
 scheme of di^i^ne government, which may tend to console your 
 regret for honest sepai-ation, or to enkindle your sympathy with 
 vital godliness wherever the sovereign grace of Heaven may cause 
 it to quicken. The law of God I dare to fix ; His mercies I dare 
 not limit : the commandment is " exceeding broad " ; the grasp 
 of love is broader still. He who before now tolerated and 
 sanctified human suggestions in His polity', may in His own
 
 21 
 
 unrevealed counsels have vouchsafed to do so here; be it our 
 hope that He has, our prayer that He will, our resolution never 
 to presume that He must. 
 
 4. Such are the principles and feelings with Avhich, it seems to 
 me, we ought to regard these pious worshippers, and the societies, 
 often most valuable and godly communities, which they have 
 organized for religious edification. Briefly — I have admonished 
 you to discriminate between the individual and the association ; — 
 to regard the latter as the instrument, doubtless, of much real 
 benefit ; and, as such, the rightful object of prayer, of hope, of 
 sympathy ; but yet as labouring under a perilous charge of need- 
 less secession from the Church of the Apostolic inheritance, which 
 must preclude any deeper tie : — to look on holiness, — clear, 
 undoubted holiness, — in the individual, as under all circumstances, 
 an. infallible mark of true incorporation into Christ ; of the mem- 
 bership of His " assembly and Church of the first-born whose 
 names are written in heaven " ; and of a virtual enrolment, in the 
 estimate of our merciful God, among the baptized innocents of 
 His correspondent earthly kingdom. 
 
 VI. You must not consider it strange that, in deciding the 
 important case of holy believers in Christ outside the pale of the 
 Apostolic society, we are left to the inference, — though, I think, 
 a most certain inference, — which, in assuming their connexion 
 with Christ, concludes their virtual insertion into that Church 
 which by the same mystical conjunction alone holds its real 
 tenure of existence, and to which are " added daily such as are 
 saved." At a period antecedent, if not to all separation, at least 
 to all separation of which any godly man could bo found the 
 author or the advocate, it was not probable that the inspired 
 writers should have deliberately stated and resolved such a 
 problem. This is but another form of a principle which I have 
 already more than once insinuated, that God's revelation is not 
 to be made answerable for diflficulties never contemplated in the 
 simplicity of His original plan, and produced only by our own 
 subsequent perversity. Scripture holds a bright lamp at the head 
 of a straight and narrow path, which shines clearly down the 
 whole ; if we rush aside into the thickets, we must expect only
 
 22 
 
 broken reflections and scattered gleams. The Apostles proceed, 
 as all instructors must, upon the supposition that the precepts 
 they deliver and the examples they set shall be respected as of 
 permanent authority ; they cannot be required to provide for all 
 the possible perplexities of a disunion which is itself denounced 
 as sin, any more than for the miserable results of any other guilty 
 abandonment of their admonitions. That every devoted Chris- 
 tian should be a member of the special society they had organized, 
 that every member of that society should be a devoted Christian, 
 were two conceptions which blended in their contemplation of its 
 office and vocation in the world ; holiness of heart and willing 
 submission to the Apostolate (be it the Apostolate of Paul the 
 founder, or of Timothy or Onesimus the successors) were 
 naturally imagined inseparable ; and though they nowhere affirm 
 that these characteristics of a Christian cannot by any possibility 
 be severed, it would be too much to expect that they should 
 have calmly discussed it as probable, and calmly undertaken 
 to console the offenders. Even when (to refer to one oft-abused 
 example) our Lord entertained the case of one who followed 
 not with Him and His apostles,* it was but to check uncharitable 
 conclusions about indkidiiah by reference to the positive gifts of 
 the man, and the positive value of the work he was performing 
 (in conformity to the principles I have endeavoured this day to 
 lay down) ; by no means to suspend, or alter, or modify, in consi- 
 deration of any such individual instance of His grace, the peculiar 
 design of the Church and Mission He was constituting. I saj^ then, 
 the language of the New Testament being framed for that perfect 
 ideal of the Church, in which the two conceptions of member- 
 ship, — that drawn from adhesion to Apostolic government, and 
 that drawn from cordial belief in the Gospel, — exactly coincide, 
 it is plainly possible that that volume should contain no distinct 
 provision for the peculiar difficulties that subsequently arose from 
 those human perturbations of the original scheme by which the 
 designed coincidence was lost. Obvious reasons will, indeed, 
 occur why it would have been injurious that it should contain any 
 express anticipation of the case that arose at the period of the 
 * Mark ix. 38. Luke ix. 49.
 
 23 
 
 Continental Eeforraation ; its determination of the question, if 
 lenient, being likely to encourage the tendency to innovation ; if 
 rigorous and absolute, to preclude the exercise of divine mercy 
 and of charitable hope. And though we could conjecture no 
 reason at all for an omission, of which advantage has been almost 
 equally taken l^y both parties in this argument, it certainly cannot 
 be considered at all more surprising than the similar omission 
 of distinct instruction as to other subsequent difficulties which to 
 the prophetic spirit might have been equally known ; — for 
 instance, as to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of any form of 
 Church monarchy, such as arose in the Middle Ages ; or as to that 
 vast class of questions that have still more largely occupied and 
 perplexed the minds of statesmen and divines from the fourth to 
 the present century,— the true principles and conditions of the 
 union of the Church with the civil power. Indeed it is at once 
 evident that any argument founded upon the allegation of this 
 omission applies indefinitely to a multitude of questions not more 
 precisely resolved ; that to all the answer is equally applicable, that 
 the sacred writers must stop someivhere, if their writings were to 
 be fitted for general distribution ; and that, in the instance 
 before us, having, as they planted their Churches, set the example 
 of the transmission of the Apostolate, their language was naturally 
 framed on the supposition of its perpetuation ; that, therefore, 
 habitually identifying the aggregate of those whose hearts were 
 "purified by faith" with the aggregate of those who joyfully 
 accepted the Apostolic pastorship, they found no occasion for con- 
 templating any such unhappy possibility as the separation of these 
 characteristics of the earthly body of Christ. And hence, it would 
 seem, we need expect, in Holy Writ, the express discussion of this 
 contingency, however interesting it may have become to us, no 
 more than we should anticipate in a book of practical physiology 
 a special determination of the speculative j)roblem, whether a 
 human spirit separated from its bodily organization can still claim 
 the title of a man. Like this question, the other must be decided, 
 less from any distinct adjudication of the case in the authorities, 
 than from a patient consideration of the relative importance of the 
 qualification deficient and the qualification possessed. And when
 
 24 
 
 the matter is brought to this issue ; — revolving the specific character 
 of the entire dispensation and doctrine of Jesus Christ ; His 
 peculiar regard to the inward state of men ; His perpetual 
 appeal to tempers, motives, dispositions; His distinct avowals 
 of the spiritual nature of the kingdom He came to erect, — a 
 kingdom in the heart and will ; and similar topics, which, I need 
 not say, form the substance and the characteristic teaching of 
 the whole four Gospels ; — considering yet further the brief but 
 significant notices which are given us of the nature and object 
 of the Church ; the manner in which, while fixed in its earthly 
 development, like the growth of all other organic bodies, 
 to one definite and ever-recurring type, it is everywhere 
 intimated that the quickening power of the organism, the true 
 eternal ground of its very being, consists in a certain inconceiv- 
 able union with Him who is the heavenly principle of regenerate 
 life ; and that this union, or this in-dwelling, alone constitutes its 
 dignity, its object, and its value ; creating, of course, in all who 
 really share it, under whatever circumstances, the very blessedness 
 the Church, through its teaching and its sacramental functions, 
 is meant to witness and administer ; inasmuch, as though the spirit 
 be the life of the body, the body must never be deemed competent 
 to confine a spirit infinitely vaster and mightier than itself, — a 
 spirit in which it lives no less truly than that spirit in it ; — duly 
 estimating these things, I say it seems impossible to avoid the 
 conviction, that the internal state is that for which the external 
 subordinately exists ; that its presence or its absence must in the 
 divine estimate mainly denominate the individual ; and that when 
 He, " of whose fulness we have all received, and grace for grace," 
 is pleased to bestow, through whatever supplementary means, 
 His sanctifying influences, it must be, — and equally in all cases 
 can only be, — because He has adopted the happy recipient of them 
 into union with Himself, and, therefore, into the mystical associa- 
 tion of His elect people, and therefore virtually, though to us 
 invisibly, into that association which is designed as its earthly 
 form and visible manifestation. And thus is wrought out by the 
 uniting Spirit, — secretly, alas ! to us, because by our guilty dissen- 
 sions we would have it so, — that profound union between all
 
 25 
 
 godly hearts, after whicli good men have ever sighed, but which so 
 many among them have been weakly tempted to pursue by the 
 gradual surrender of every definite conviction in religion : — as if 
 we had a right to give what is not our own, to purchase the 
 luxury of a quiet life with the sacrifice of one shred of that 
 precious deposit of truth which is committed to our keeping ! 
 Thus, I say, w^hen in your disagreeing brother you see the work 
 of faith made perfect in love, and humility triumphant in the 
 self-denying life of the Cross, you are enabled to recognise that of 
 a truth the marks of the Lord Jesus are on him, the true infal- 
 lible signature of the Holy Ghost sealing unto the day of redemp- 
 tion ; and yet, while you adore the mercy that makes him what 
 he is both in himself and as the instrument of benefit to others, 
 to feel also that upon you is imposed the painful obligation to 
 withstand his error, to refuse the visible fellowship of his schism, 
 to labour by all Christian means to persuade him and his to 
 remove an obstacle that retards the glorious purpose of God, that, 
 in the day when He is "King all over the earth," there should be 
 " one Lord, and His name one :"'' — a purpose which shall be 
 fully realised, only when, — in despite of all the temporary oppo- 
 sitions of men, in despite of the far more grievous obstacle of the 
 errors, infirmities, relaxations, and corruptions, that through its 
 various divisions debase His own Church, — He shall yet bind, in 
 and through that Church, all the tribes of men into one spiritual 
 fellowship, that " holy Jerusalem" yet to come, of which the pro- 
 phetic spirit intimates that even in that far distant time every 
 stone of its " walls," independent of any exterior supi:)ort, shall be 
 seen, through all their descending courses, layer under layer, to 
 rest at last upon their foundations alone, and " in whose founda- 
 tions," — He Himself the corner-stone, — " are the names of the 
 tvjelve Apostles of the Lamb."-{- 
 
 If, my reverend brethren, you have accompanied me through 
 the course of these considerations, you will, I trust, have found 
 them contribute towards fixing, on enlarged principles, the ground 
 which, in these troubled times of the Church, you can securely 
 occupy. You will have seen how the duly commissioned minister 
 
 * Zech. xiv. 9. + Rev. xxi. 14.
 
 26 
 
 of Christ may assert the special felicities of his position, and yet 
 consistently acknowledge the fellowship of a true internal bond 
 with such individuals as, holding the fundamental doctrines of the 
 Gospel, manifest the possession of the Spirit by " the fruits of the 
 Spirit," and can justly plead the authoritative warrant that " by 
 their fruits" they should be "known;" you will have been 
 furnished with the outlines (the occasion admits no more) of a 
 theory, which, instead of vaguely ' evading notorious difficulties, 
 provides for all the facts of the case as they are found in the past 
 history and present circumstances of the whole body of Christian 
 believers ; which, expanding with the expanding mercy of God, 
 acknowledges His undoubted agency wherever there is righteous- 
 ness and true holiness, and yet makes the very immensity of that 
 mercy an additional argument for the obligation of adhering with 
 scrupulous fidelity to that sole form of Church polity and minis- 
 terial transmission which they who best knew " the mind of 
 Christ" have for ever consecrated by their sanction. 
 
 Amid all the riches of divine mercy, then, and all the varied 
 triumphs of the Cross around us, our position is still, in one 
 remarkable respect, peculiar and alone. I have sacrificed this day 
 the easier and more genial task of practical exhortation for the 
 labour, more necessary as things now stand, of clearing a dark and 
 contested question. But for a moment yet, before I leave you to 
 a more authoritative expositor of your duties, let me beseech you, 
 brethren, to remember, that, if your jilace is thus prominent in the 
 eye of Heaven, your responsibilities are proportionably awful. If 
 I magnify your office, it is that I may magnify your obligations ! 
 If no men speak from Heaven so directly as we, from no men 
 does Heaven expect so faithful a message. It may be indolence 
 and cowardice in others to Avithdraw from the work ; it is high 
 treason against the direct legation of God, in us. Men have dared 
 to speak slightingly of this conception of a transmitted com- 
 mission ; I appeal from hearts embittered by controversial dis- 
 putings to every unprejudiced mind, when I ask, is there not, 
 after all, something unutterably awful in the thought of a mission 
 inherited thus directly from the Incarnate God 1 When, instead 
 of the vague inference that finds the proof of a commission in the
 
 27 
 
 utility of the office or the necessity of the time., the minister, how- 
 ever humble, can actually trace along the page of history the 
 unbroken succession that ends in the mighty Twelve and their 
 mightier Master ; when the voice that bade him tend the flock of 
 Christ is felt to be the echo, — after many a reflection, indeed, yet 
 still the very echo, — of the voice which spake on the evening of 
 the Eesurrection, — " Eeceive ye the Holy Ghost," — and that, 
 again, itself an echo from the central recesses of the Father's own 
 eternity ; when thus, by no ideal connexion, however true to the 
 meditative reason, but by plain and tangible links, we see our- 
 selves bound to the living and suff'ering Christ, — I ask you, does 
 it not give an impression of reality, of awful and awakening 
 reality, to our whole office 1 Does it not seem to bring Christ 
 fearfully new us 1 Must not a man thus empowered feel himself 
 sent with a force and directness nothing else can supply, charged 
 with a work from which he dare not withdraw, and " straitened 
 till it be accomplished f 
 
 Such are my own feelings of the practical value of this great 
 truth ; and you will remember that these impressions are inde- 
 pendent of all fair controversy ; for they turn not even on the 
 necessity of the succession, but on the historical fact that it exists. 
 But if you still hesitate to assume this ground, a large field is 
 open, where we can, not unprofitably, meet. Whatever your con- 
 ception of the nature of your commission, you acknowledge at least 
 that a commission you have received ; Christ has made over to 
 each of us a special portion of His vineyard, to cultivate for immor- 
 tality. For that definite allotment, and for every soul therein, we 
 shall have to answer in the day of wrath. Those are awful words 
 of the prophet : " Where is the flock that was given thee, thy 
 beautiful flock ? What wilt thou say when He shall visit upon 
 thee 1"* Hundreds, yea, thousands, have passed through the 
 hands of some of us ; what report of our ministry have they 
 brought into the world of spirits 1 Oh, brethren ! of a truth they 
 are no slight matters, these souls of men with which we have to 
 deal ! Eternal destinies are suspended on our hourly work ; every 
 forgetful day is a robbery of Him whose chief reward for all " tho 
 * Jer. xiii, 20, 21.
 
 28 
 
 travail of His soul" is in the multitude that we are to train for 
 Him to glory. Shall Ave disappoint Him, and, as far as in us lies, 
 neutralize the redeeming work of the Cross 1 Called to be the 
 stewards of His household, shall we lay waste His inheritance ; 
 or, Avhat is as criminal, suffer it lie fallow and unproductive 1 He 
 has promised us His unfailing help in prosecuting the work He 
 began ; He has promised us a glory eminent above others even in 
 a world where all is glory ; — " rulers over many cities," " the joy 
 of our Lord," " the brightness of the stars for ever and ever." 
 May we daily see before us the Crown, and willingly bear the Cross 
 we call upon others to carry ! May we keep before our thoughts 
 that great and final day of visitation, more awful far than all 
 these its earthly images ; " when the Chief Shepherd shall 
 appear," even " the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls," to inspect 
 the accounts of our stewardship, to scrutinize our fidelitj'', to 
 require the blood of the unwarned sinner at the hand of th.e 
 faithless watchman, to recompense with rest everlasting the 
 humble and laborious minister of truth and peace !