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SERMON

DELIVERED
at the ©rotnatwn of
CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS, D.D.
AND
CHARLES HENRY SNEDEKER
at tit ^ro=ffiatf)rttaZ, Hefo ffotk
Sunday, Mat the Fourteenth, 1899
BY
GEOEGE WILLIAM DOUGLAS, D.D.
WITH A PREFATORY NOTE
BY
THE BISHOP OF NEW YORK

•KTefo gotfe
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1899
All rights reserved

ORDINATION SERMON

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SERMON

DELIVERED
at tije ©rimation of
CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS, D.D.
AND
CHARLES HENRY SNEDEKER
at tije Pro=Cat^I)raI, Nefo gotfe
' Sunday, May the Fourteenth, 1899
BY
GEOEGE WILLIAM DOUGLAS, D.D.
WITH A PREFATORY NOTE
BY
THE BISHOP OF NEW YORK

Nefa ffork
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1899
All rights reserved

C0FTBI8HT, 1899,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

NottoooB Wtcsa
J. 9. Cuihing s Co. — Berwick ft Smith
Norwood Mail. U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION
The Sermon which goes with this was, imme
diately after its delivery, asked of the preacher
for publication by the united voice of his brethren
of the Clergy who heard it, and in that request I
accounted it a privilege to unite. The occasion
was one of exceptional interest, for it was the
ordination to the priesthood of two men, each of
whom had won distinction in those other Commu
nions from which, in riper years, they turned to
that of the Church, to whose higher ministry they
were to be advanced. One of them had w8n equal
distinction as a pastor and preacher in the large
fellowship which sprang from the work of John
Wesley; and the other, as a Presbyterian teacher
and scholar, was known by his writings all round
the world. They were seeking for authority to
exercise their ministry in accordance with historic
precedent and catholic usage.
Under such circumstances it seemed appropriate
to the preacher that the idea of authority should
5

be presented in the higher reality of its essential
basis, and this task I think he has discharged
with equal clearness and conclusiveness. There
is, in his words, no disparagement of those various
expressions of the conception of authority, as
these find form in symbols, articles, or other
formulated utterances all down the track of his
tory. But the time has come when the Church
and its teachings must vindicate themselves by
something more than speech hardened into dog
matic terms. In our age, and in a world that
reads, and compares, and inquires, because it
thinks, authority must vindicate itself by its
appeal to those judges of all truth which are the
image of the Divine in man — the spiritual intui
tions, the conscience, and the reason.
Especially is this true in the dealings of the
Church *and her teachings with Holy Scripture.
The Coptic Church keeps her Scriptures im
prisoned in a silver casket, which her votaries
kiss ; and, in the same way, a modern fetichism,
which has dishonored the Bible while claiming
to be its elect guardian, has shut it up, these
many years, within the iron walls of a dreary
literalism ; robbing it, thus, alike of interest and
of power. The Book is a literature; priceless,
incomparable, and most precious ; but still a litera-

ture , and it must accept, and those who love and
reverence it must accept for it, the conditions of
its existence. One of those who has contributed,
with equal reverence and equal learning, to vindi
cate its claims and to discriminate concerning its
contents, was one of those to whom this Sermon
was addressed. The Christian student is incom
parably richer for his labors ; and those who know
them will, I think, most cordially recognize the
pertinency of this discourse to our dispassionate
judgment not only of such labors, but of all that a
higher scholarship has done for us, in our genera
tion, for the advancement of godliness and good
learning throughout the Christian world.
HENRY C. POTTER,
Bishop of New York.
Diocesan House,
New Yobk:
Whltsun Eve., 1899.

SERMON DELIVERED AT THE ORDINA
TION OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS,
D.D. AND CHARLES HENRY SNEDEKER,
AT THE PRO-CATHEDRAL, NEW YORK,
SUNDAY, MAY THE FOURTEENTH, 1899,
BY GEORGE WILLIAM DOUGLAS, D.D.
By what authority doest Thou these things ? and who
gave Thee this authority? — St. Matthew xxi. 23.
This question was put to Jesus Christ, and
Christ parried it. Before we can understand why
Christ parried the question, we must notice who
they were who put it to Him. We are told that
the Chief Priests and Scribes put the question, —
the very party among the Jews who laid their
main stress on the Mosaic Law and the Jewish
ecclesiastical traditions. Now it was they who, as
the term is usually employed, were most authori
tative in their religion, — who depended most on
what we should probably term the dogmatic posi
tion. At first sight, therefore, it might appear as

10

if our Lord was here avoiding a great opportunity ;
for as His Gospel was essentially authoritative, it
may well seem strange that He should decline
to state the nature and source of His authority
to those whose bias was supposed, by themselves at
least, to be in favor of the dogmatic method
in religion. Again and again Christ did state to
others the grounds of His authority: why, then,
does He decline to do so to this deputation of the
Chief Priests and Scribes ? The reason for Christ's
silence in this case is disclosed when we compare
it with a previous passage in the same Gospel,
which throws light on it by contrast. At the con
clusion of the Sermon on the Mount we are told :
" It came to pass, when Jesus had ended these say
ings, that the people were astonished at his doc
trine : for He taught them as one having authority,
and not as the Scribes." Now surely it is remark
able that the Scribes should here be said not to
teach with authority : for according to our conven
tional notions of authority in religion, that is the
very note of their teaching. Their method was
this : whatever maxim they enjoined, whatever
practice they forbade, they always did so, not as of
themselves, but upon an appeal to the traditions of
their Church and the prestige of Moses the Law
giver. And when we examine the contents of the

11

Sermon on the Mount, we find that our Lord's
method was apparently the reverse of this. " Ye
have heard that such and such things have been
said by them of old time, but I say unto you " is
His constant refrain. Certainly if you and I had
been suddenly called upon to decide whether
Christ or the Chief Priest could the more properly
be described as a teacher by authority, we should
have answered in favor of the Chief Priest. Ob
viously, therefore, when the people said of Jesus
that " He taught with authority and not as the
Scribes," they were suggesting an idea of what
authority really is very different from that which
we commonly ascribe to it. And here we are
laying our finger on a point most important to
Christianity in all times : the shade of essential
difference between the conventional notion of
what constitutes authority, and the New Testa
ment idea. When the people in the New Testa
ment declared that our Saviour spake with
authority, they were using a phrase which, as it
has come to us across the intervening tongues, and
has been transferred by us from one situation to
another, has largely lost for us its pristine breadth
and power. We generally apply the term to a
process of thought, a method of appeal, a rule of
obedience, which, however correct in their own

12

sphere, cannot, in the original signification of the
term, be properly called authoritative. Our trans
ferred usage does little harm provided we re
member the original signification of the phase, as the
people in the New Testament applied it to Christ,
so that we interpret our usage accordingly ; but
our usage does great harm if we fail to appreciate
what it is that constitutes any religious argument,
whether from tradition or otherwise, really author
itative according to the New Testament idea.
The appeal to tradition may be authoritative, and
it may not: that depends. And it is because this
question goes right to the roots of some of our
most modern difficulties in religion, that I ask you
to consider with me this morning, my friends,
what it is that authority really signifies. Why
did the Jewish common people consider that Christ
spoke with authority, while the Scribes spoke
without it ? Thus we shall not merely understand
why our Lord thought best to parry the Scribes'
inquiry when they asked Him what His authority
was, but we shall also carry away with us in our
text to-day a great help to our personal religion in
this perplexing age.
The word authority, as its derivation shows,
conveys the idea of the personal self in action,
in production. An author is a person who

13
creates or produces something. His vital self
has a hand in it, otherwise he is not its author.
A man speaks with the supremest authority
possible to him who speaks himself, his whole
self, straight out ; and the weight of his author
ity will largely depend on the weight of his
personality and connections. An abstract idea is
an idea severed from its author. An abstract idea
lacks authority unless and until it comes to us
in and across some living being. You speak of
thought, of art, of love, of religion, of life it
self in the abstract, and you cannot help con
veying a vague impression, difficult to seize and
easy to argue about unconvincingly. But set
before us a thoughtful man, an artistic man, a
religious man, a living human being, and instantly
we know what you mean. The mystery of the
matter is not removed, but the power of the fact
is felt. The lover speaks with the authority of
love, the artist with the authority of art, the
thinker with the authority of thought, because
in each love and art and thinking are alive, are
personal, are productive. And the reason why
a truly religious man exercises an unmistakable
authority in religion — an authority which other
men may reject, but which they cannot gainsay,
— is precisely this: that one chief root of the

14

scepticism of honest sceptics is the apparent
unreality of religion to the sceptical soul.
Such souls are not conscious of religion in them
selves, and the religion of most other people
who call themselves religious does not satisfy
the sceptic. But once let a truly, an entirely
religious person live and move before them, and
instantly religion acquires real authority in their
eyes. The authority of it may not convince the
sceptic, because of some other authority to which
he prefers to bow; but at any rate there is now
a genuine, actual authority for religion because
religion is vital in an impressive personal being.
This is the original significance of the term au
thority, and this the method whereby the children
of the Church derive their religion from their
fathers and teachers, with the personal Spirit of
the Living God back of all.
And closely allied to this meaning of the term
is another, equally germane to the conception.
An idea acquires authority not merely because
it is realized in the person of him who utters it,
but also because it finds a response in those to
whom it is uttered : not only because it expresses
him, but because it expresses them, — represents
somewhat of their own being and experience ;
and the more persons there are, and the better

15

they are, of whose personal life the idea is an
expression, the greater will be the authority of
the idea. Here lies much of the force of the
Christian appeal to ecclesiastical tradition. A
Christian who, in the Providence of God, is
possessed by a certain truth, and who desires
to commend that truth to other people of his
own day and generation, is able and glad to
show them that this truth has been embraced
not by himself alone, but by countless others
long before, till at last we come to the living
Christ Himself committing His unique author
ity to the Church of the Apostles. And the
special force of what we term the authority of
Primitive Christianity is its special nearness to
the very Christ of the Gospel. The Christian
of to-day is not content with the authority of
his single personality though he be conscious
that in him as in a temple dwells the personal
Holy Ghost; he desires to reenforce his own
authority, and the authority of his commission,
by the authority of a long, broad line of others
in the past. This usage of the Christian is simi
lar to that stirring phrase of the Old Testament —
"The God of our fathers hath sent me."
Now the Jewish Scribes, in spite of their os
tentatious appeal to tradition, lacked authority

16
in the eyes of the people, not because the people
did not respect their own traditions, nor be
cause these traditions did not express a great
deal of the people's personal experience, but
because the Scribes did not present to the people
the authority of personal religious character.
The Scribes were what Christ called them,
hypocrites. Appealing to the Law, they were
not as individuals exponents of its spirit in
their own life and conversation. And it was
because they did not themselves act out the
Law in its essential spirit, that they so readily
overlayed it with customs of their own. They
lost the fine sense of what would be in keeping
with the Law.
And when Christ declared against some feat
ures of the Law according to the Scribes, He
did so in the interest of the original Mosaic
ideas which the Scribes' traditions had ob
scured. As He Himself insisted, He was not
destroying the Law but fulfilling it; and the
evident reason why our Saviour parried the
Scribes' question as to the nature of His au
thority was, that the Scribes were not sincere
in asking it. The authority of true conviction
and of personal loyalty to the Mosaic tradition
was wanting in their question, and hence they

17

were not only unworthy to receive Christ's
answer, but unable to understand it if it had
been given.
It would be an interesting study for us to
open at this point our New Testament, and
see how entirely Christ realized in Himself
what was wanting in the Scribes — the root
idea of authority, the authority of the individual
personality: how He alone was what we call
whole-souled in his grasp and presentation of
the truth He preached : so much so that He
alone of all men that ever lived could declare,
"I am the Truth." Of course we should ob
serve behind and above this, which we feel to
be within the scope of the perfect Man, that
the authority which Christ exercised, and was
recognized as exercising, was more than human
because Christ Himself was more than human.
Behind the impression of His beautiful per
fection as the ideal Man, there is something
that abashes us with "the glory as of the Only
Begotten of the Father." It is this ever-present,
predominant consciousness in Christ of His
own essential Divinity, which most of all im
pressed those who came closely in contact
with Him, and which breathes in such utter
ances as these: "Before Abraham was, I AM."

18
"Destroy this body, and in three days I will
raise it up." " Which of you convinceth Me
of sin?" "I have power to forgive sins." "He
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."
"Father, glorify Thou Me, with the glory
which I had with Thee before the world was."
Who can read these sayings of Jesus without
perceiving that he is confronting an unique
personality? and it is this uniqueness of Christ's
personality, combined with the thoroughness
of its expression, which contributes to the
uniqueness of His authority over men.
Yet even in Christ's case we see the authority
of His own personality reenforcing itself by the
experience of those whom He addresses. " Come,
see a Man Who told me all that ever I did" —
that exclamation of the Woman of Samaria is the
utterance of one who is evidently impressed not
only by the unique personality and the intense
personal conviction of Christ Himself, but also by
Christ's singular power of reading to her her own
experience — of summoning to the aid of His author
ity the authority of the woman's own life, whose
results and meaning she could not gainsay. " Out
of thine own mouth I will convince thee," Christ
seems to say. Or, to put it as Coleridge puts it,
" Christ finds me " — finds me. And when in our

19

day a true Christian preacher appeals to the
Church's tradition as a power, he feels that no
small measure of that power springs from the fact
that the experience of the Christian Church, taken
in the large, shows up what the religious men of
Christendom have ascertained to be the outcome
of human soul-life ; and if, in any individual case,
the man's own self does not respond to the tradi
tion, then the tradition cannot, for the time being,
be authoritative to him, even though Christ Himself
be behind the tradition. It was "when he came
to himself" that the Prodigal Son said, "I will
arise and go to my Father," — then, and not
before. Nay, more. So strong is the instinct of
mankind as to this quality of true authority — as
being the embodiment of the life — that the fail
ure of the Church Catholic to convert the world
may be largely ascribed to the Church's failure to
embody thoroughly in herself the message that
she has preached. In spite of the truth to which
she witnesses, in spite of the validity of her main
traditions, the world is impressed by the authority
of the Church's witness only in proportion as the
Church is herself impressive by her real devotion
to Jesus Christ. A lukewarm Church, a worldly
Church, a Church that fears to love God with all
her mind — fears under Christ's guidance to con-

20
front the intellectual or the social problems of the
present hour, like the Foolish Virgins sleeping
with their lamps — such a Church lacks authority
in the eyes of sinners, and must lack it always.
Or, to refer to another of Christ's parables, when
our Master intrusted with such solemnity to His
authoritative Church the Deposit of His Truth for
all time, and gave His promise that the gates of
hell should not prevail against her, not to the end
of the world, Christ gave that Deposit not to be
hidden in a napkin or buried in the earth, but to
be put out over and over again at interest, in
trusted to living, toiling, thinking, progressive
men — made to grow with the growth of His
people, according to their needs and opportunities,
to the new knowledge that should be vouchsafed
to them in the days of the years of their pilgrim
age. Such was the lesson that Peter and Stephen
and Paul drew from the experience of the
Hebrews; such was the warning of Christ Him
self when He was instructing by parables His
timorous disciples in the things pertaining to the
Kingdom of God. Intellectual paralysis is no
attribute of the Church of the Living God, but
intellectual faith — faith that is manifested by
works. Given the Deposit, the Christian banker
must take the banker's risk, in all humility, in

21

hope of the banker's gains. Else when the Divine
Depositor asks for His account, He will pass on
the whole transaction this awful verdict : " Thou
wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I
reap where I sowed not, and gather where I did
not scatter: thou oughtest therefore to have put
my money to the bankers, and then at my coming
I should have received back mine own with inter
est. Take ye away, therefore, the talent from
him, and give it unto him that hath the ten
talents. And cast ye out the unprofitable servant
into the outer darkness" — the darkness of the
stagnant soul, of the paralyzed mind.
There is another aspect of the subject which
may not be passed by to-day, for it conveys a
solemn and searching lesson to us. The New
Testament shows that even Jesus Christ, with all
His intrinsic authority, was dependent for the
effect of His authority upon the character and
will of those who came to Him. The Gospel
itself declares that " He came unto His own, and
His own received Him not." Over the hypocriti
cal Scribes He exercised little authority in prac
tice, and even of the people who honestly felt
His power — who perceived that He spake with
authority and not as the Scribes — even of these
He made few converts because of the hardness of

22
their hearts. God Himself, the Author of the
universe, does not coerce it. The devil, we are
told, believes God, but he does not bow to God's
authority. How seldom, when we speak of per
sonal or ecclesiastical authority, do we take in
the import of the New Testament itself in this
regard. There is the very Son of God, living in
human form, walking, teaching, praying among
the children of men, exhibiting His impressive
and majestic character. Yet after a life of three
and thirty years there are but twelve men whom
He can strictly call His apostles, and one of these
betrays Him! And He is the Almighty God,
Who created man and holds him in the hollow
of His hand ! It is God respecting His own
image in His creature: respecting the individual
free will and free intellect of His creature. Yet
is it not the tendency of every one of us, my
brethren, who is possessed by strong convictions,
to assume toward others an attitude which is
quite the opposite of this ? Are not intolerance
and earnest faith to be seen constantly together?
Is it not, for example, extremely difficult for most
parents and teachers, who feel sure that they know
what is best for their children and pupils — is it
not difficult for them to act upon Christ's prin
ciple that even the authority of absolute truth

23

can do nothing with those who are not ready for
it? How well it would be for us teachers if we
remembered better that fine saying of the Old
Testament psalmist and prophet, " Thy gentleness
hath made me great." And do we not all fail
in the other direction also, — fail to recollect that,
if we wish to be authoritative, the chief thing for
us to do, is to be in ourselves as far as possible
equal to the truth that we wish others to em
brace? There is a very practical and personal
application of Christ's saying, " I am the Truth."
Would to God that you and I tried better to be
what we believe. There is no authority like per
sonal character in religion. And, believe me, the
hard-headed men of the world respect no other;
nay, your little child, with his shy but keen in
sight, he too, in the long run, respects no religious
authority but this. Nor need I remind you that
this authority is never acquired by us except from
God: it comes to us when Almighty God co
operates with our own free will, working in us
that which is well-pleasing in His sight. Even
in our Saviour's case, when men asked Him
whence He got His authority, replied, "The
Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works."
And this same truth has another face which
must not be passed by. All about us are men and

24

women who, with greater or less sincerity, are
studious of Christianity, personally concerned with
Christ's message to mankind. Jesus is really
drawing them, as He said He would. And so
they go groping in many books, and investigating
all sorts of evidences, and listening to this person
and that person, who claims to have something to
say about Christ and Christianity and the Church
of the Living God. It is well. But, my brother,
while you are thus considering what other men
can do to help you toward Christ, what the
Church can do, does it ever occur to you to con
sider what you yourself can do, what you must do,
to bring you to Jesus ? Does it occur to you that
you may actually be as one of those who saw and
heard Jesus in the flesh and still were not con
vinced by Him ? that if Jesus Christ is to have au
thority over you He must also have authority in
you, from you, out of your own life ? that in your
mind, when you are thinking thoughts that are
yours and not another's ; that in your heart, when
its desires are yours and not another's; that in
your will, when its deliberate volitions are part
and parcel of your inmost self — that then and
there there must be a response to Christ if you
are to know Him as the Truth ? " Christ in you
the hope of glory?" The authority of Jesus is

25
in a far-off way suggested by that of Purity. The
human mind and conscience are so constituted
that the mere presence of a pure man or a pure
woman awakens our approval. Simply to see
purity is to recognize its authority as the stand
ard for human life. But between such recog
nition and the being one's self pure there is a wide
interval; and you yourself must be trying to be
pure before you fully appreciate the authority of
purity in another.
Now the method of religion, the movement
of the religious mind, are somewhat like that.
Many a thoughtful and reverential man in our
day, disposed to be a Christian, but seeing that
he cannot fathom beforehand the substance of
Christianity, nor altogether square it with mod
ern science or the new learning, says to himself :
"If this were a matter of business, or even of
human affection, I should follow the weight of
probability. In such cases faith is reasonable.
In ordinary cases faith is not opposed to reason,
but to sight. We are here to live, to think, and
to aspire ; but if in living we should always wait
till we can completely see, we should die first.
We must act on faith in order to live ; and so in
ordinary life faith is rational, — is not opposed to
reason, but to sight. Ordinary life is a perpetual

26

venture of faith in business, in education, in juris
prudence, in the affections. Reason itself is a
perpetual venture of faith in the capacities of
the mind. But is not religion different from or
dinary life ? If I say that I accept the Christian
Creed, must I not thereby imply that I know
all about it beforehand ? " To that question we
Christians answer emphatically, No. The method
of religion and of regular human life are identi
cal, for true religion is part and parcel of the true
man's life ; it ought to be, it must be, for true
religion is the final expression of man's life. I
could not be religious if I did not find that the
method of assent is identical with that which I
have to employ in the affairs of my daily secular
existence. If religion did not harmonize with
that, I should think it unnatural, irrational, to
be religious. But it is because in religion like
wise faith is not opposed to reason, but simply to
what we call sight, — it is because I recognize
that the authority of Jesus Christ asks of me an
assent whose quality corresponds with that which
I give when I love my friend before I have com
plete knowledge of him, or when I devote my
self to a profession or a trade before I have
mastered it, and in order to master it ; or when I
accept the dogmas of an art or science in order to

27
learn them, — it is because of this likeness in the
method of assent that I feel so happy in devoting
myself to Jesus Christ. This is the very note
of the Incarnation : that the Eternal Son of God
became Man that we might believe in Him as
we believe in man, — that He might " draw us
with the cords of a man." Here , is God made
Man in order that we might believe in Him as
we believe in Man. The deepest, the longest and
most earnest thoughts of the most earnest men
point now to Jesus at the last, and my own
heart and mind impel me to Him; but if I will
not put faith in Him as I put faith in man, if I
will not follow the pointing, I cannot expect
that Christ or His Church will ever convince
me, for that would be to expect that the method
of my religion should be different from the
method of true and steadfast human life, whereas
religion is the consummation of life.
And I say that if you wish to admit the author
ity of Jesus Christ with your whole free intelli
gence and soul, the best way, the only way, to
arrive at such admission is to undertake now so
noble, so serviceable, so elevated and devoted a
life, that you cannot do it except by Christ ; and
then see whether the certainty that Christ is what
He claimed to be, and that you are what He said

28
you are, God's child, does not break in on your
mind and soul. We are all agreed in our better
moments as to the beauty and the ideal truth oi
Christ's maxims of practical conduct. The Sermon
on the Mount is common ground nowadays, —
common to the Socialists and the Positivists, and
the Agnostics, and Christians, too, so far as the
ideal of the thing is concerned. Go out, then, and
try to live it awhile. " Why stand ye here all the
day idle? Go ye also into the vineyard, and
whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive." Strive
to deal with your neighbor, with yourself, with
God, according to that standard of the Sermon on
the Mount. You will fail constantly, but God will
see to it that sometimes you succeed. And when
you are for a little while succeeding : when pure
thoughts have driven awhile your impurity away,
and gentle deeds have cracked the crust of your
habitual selfishness, and the smile of some lonely
man or sickly woman, or of some neglected child
that you have succored, or of some servant to
whom you have been courteous has beamed upon
you, and turned your oldtime cynicism into trust
and honor and a peace that passeth understanding,
— then in that moment open your New Testament
and read a little of what the Church has kept for
you of the sayings of Jesus Christ; and see

29
whether the authority of Christ is not conclusive
to you at last — whether His key to human soul-
life is not the key — whether you can care for
your old life any more, and whether you can pos
sibly lead the new life without Christ's help —
whether you must not now protest to Him, as
Peter protested, " Lord, to whom shall we go ?
Thou hast the words of eternal life." You will
perceive at last that the Son of God speaks with
authority, and not as the Scribes : that " every one
that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God : "
that "he that loveth not knoweth not God, for
God is Love ; " and " that greater love hath no
man than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friends."
My brothers, who are to be set apart this day
to the sacred office of Priest in the Church of
Christ, this is no idle form, no empty ceremony.
The words are spoken too deliberately, the acts
are done too solemnly and with sanctions of too
great antiquity, too Catholic acceptance, to be
lightly estimated to-day. Behind what is now
going forward there is not merely the force of
an earthly organism which for nineteen centuries
has challenged the attention and modified the
manners of the most influential nations of man-

30

kind: there is also the grace of Jesus Christ,
our Master and Saviour. Nevertheless it is no
opus operatum, no miracle accomplished without
the cooperation and consent of the individual on
whom it is performed. The Minister himself, by
dint of his own express endeavor, must acquire
the character which the Spirit of the Living God
is ready to convey: else he has the form of the
ministry without the motive. This Ordination
to-day is a peculiarly interesting occasion. One
of you is by profession a scholar, striving to in
terpret the unchanging and unchangeable Evangel
of Jesus Christ our Lord to the modern needs
and the questioning spirit of our wide-minded
age. The other is working in one of our typi
cal Parish Settlements in this great metropolis,
where the problems of Progress and Poverty are
so pressing and so vital as to give pause to the
most energetic and the most generous benevo
lence. "There are diversities of operations, but
the same Spirit." Each of you comes to us from
a different Church not now in communion with
ours — alas ! foisthe Church's broken unity. Into
the hands of each of you the Bible is put, and
you solemnly declare that the Holy Scriptures
contain all doctrine necessary to salvation ; and
that you, for your part, as Priests of this Church

31
of Christ, are determined to teach nothing as
necessary to salvation but that which you shall
be persuaded may be concluded and proved by
the Scripture. In your hands likewise is the
Prayer Book, and you deliberately pledge your
selves to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments
as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church
hath received the same ; and to be ever ready to
banish and drive away from the Church all erro
neous and strange doctrines contrary to God's
Word, at the same time setting forward, as much
as lieth in you, quietness, peace, and love among
all Christian people. Thereafter you, and all
this company, recite together the Nicene Creed,.
and partake together of the Holy Communion.
Let no man, then, assert that this Church of
ours is not an Ecclesia Docens — a teaching
Church ; that she has not fairly and squarely,
and in all humility and charity, set the bounds
within which her ministers may range — bounds
that are few and simple, and wide enough, and
charitable, yet definite at last. Your ordination
vow, as full-grown, intelligent, conscientious men,
is your pledge to her and to the world that you
know what you are undertaking, and that you
will be faithful Priests, intellectually as well as
morally responsible, the Lord being your helper.

32
The Lord Jesus Christ, our Master, was found
in fashion as a Man, and He expects manliness
in His ministers — the Mens sibi conscia recti,
" the mind conscious of the right." It would be
interesting and helpful, in this time of much
disputation, to go back seventeen or eighteen cen
turies and show historically how large a liberty
of intellectual search and spiritual discussion was
in the primitive Church considered to be com
patible with just such vows, and with these
same simple standards of Faith and Practice,
and with the method of the first General Coun
cils ; and how fine and free, yet devotional
and reverent and orthodox, was the theology of
the great fathers of that earlier age, "rightly
dividing the Word of Truth." But this supremely
solemn hour, and your attitude of soul, my broth
ers, demand a different word. Sursum Corda:
"Lift up your hearts." By the hands of the
Bishop and his Presbyters, the Spirit of God
Almighty is coming down on you. Lift up your
hearts to Him, and receive from Him your com
mission. The Lord God liveth, before Whom
you stand.

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