exalt the city of Romulus; it met the Greek hierophant, offering traditional sacrifices, or initiating into mystic rites, and told him that religion was not a worship of the deified powers of nature, nor of human passions endued with immortality, nor a secret discipline offering the few promises made in obscurity never to be realised; it met the Egyptian priest, darkly shrouding the secrets of the future world under fabulous histories of Isis and Osiris, with a full and clear revelation of eternal life and how it was to be obtained; it met the Phrygian victim of the mother of the gods with the teaching that religion is not the violation of nature, nor the revelling in secret lusts, but the subduing of the latter, and the sanctification of the former; it met the Persian worshipper of fire and the elements with the disclosure of a personal Creator; it met the monstrous confusion of the Hindoo Swerga, and the distortion of his imagined and antagonistic Trinity of Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, with the one undivided Trinity of one power, wisdom, goodness, will, and godhead, the Maker of His creatures and their Reward. these are only specimens of an infinitely varied disease; the misgrowth of evil had the luxuriance of a tropical vegetation; the abortions of false religion were endlessly divergent, shapeless, monstrous, and contradictory. They every where found the same antagonist. The Christian Sacerdotium came forth among them stamped with the unity of God

But

whom it represented. I am considering it now as a whole. For the moment, and in order to obtain a clear and succinct view of a wonderful and unique creation, I consider it not in its degrees and distributions, but in its mass; I ascend to the fountain-head, and I take the stream as it came forth full and undivided from the Person of the Godman, as it passed from Him to St. Peter and the Apostolic College, and as it was communicated from them to unnumbered successors, that it may last to the end of the world. For this purpose I will view it under seven attributes, in which I think that its unity, its uniformity, and its universality will be found to consist. They rest upon seven divine aphorisms, dicta of sovereign power and wisdom, which are like nothing else in human language, identical with those elder ones, "Let there be light," "Let Us make man after Our own image and likeness," which ministered to the creation as these latter to the re-creation of man. They are such as these: the first, "Go and make disciples all nations;" the second, "Teach them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you;" the third, "Feed My sheep;" the fourth, "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister;" the fifth, "I send you as lambs among wolves; if they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you;" the sixth, "Do this in remembrance of Me;" the seventh, "It is enough for the disciple to be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord."

1. First of all it did not present itself as a work of human reason, but as the message of a superior. In this it was essentially distinguished from all the systems of Grecian philosophy. These were one and all reasonings upon the phenomena of nature, society, the human mind, the beginning and end of man. Infinitely varying in their development, they had one source, one instrument, one standard, to the possession of which all men might lay the same claim, the intellectual faculty in man. The Porch and the Grove indicated what man could do of himself to unravel the great problems of his own nature, of the world in which he lived, of the issue to which he and it were tending. Not so the Christian Sacerdotium. It spoke in the name of another; it held out a commission; it promulgated a law; it acted as a herald, an ambassador, as one sent. So far from professing to be an emanation of human reason, it pointedly abjured any such title. It spoke of facts not contrary to reason, but beyond and above its range. According to the word of its Founder it went forth and made disciples; and the bond of their initiation was belief in a triune God, that is they received upon testimony an incomprehensible mystery. The testimony was the word of those who heard it from their Founder. Thus the first root of this Sacerdotium lay in an authority derived from without. It ran up into the Person of Him from whom it came forth. And in accordance with this origin from the beginning

it was a society of living men, not an abstract doctrine. It came into the world to speak, to bear witness, to proclaim, to announce, to declare as a representative the terms of a prince to his subjects. All these are the actions of persons on persons, and therefore it was not contained in a book; it did not form a codex, nor lie upon a shelf, but lived, acted, persuaded, enrolled adherents, formed a body. A book is composed of disembodied thoughts, but this was thought embodied, incarnate. Human nature was its field. It laid hold on man in all countries and races, under all conditions of society, as its proper subject. Its Founder had written nothing; but He, the Eternal Word, had spoken, had used the word of man as His instrument; and His disciples had received that word committed to them to be spoken. Again, He had acted, and His acts contained the guarantee of His words, and their significance. So in like manner His disciples were to speak and to act. He founded a living society, resting upon His authority, derived from it in the beginning, but no less holding together in virtue of it throughout. His words and His acts were transfused into this society to be its life; and thus it was an extension and continuance of His own work on the earth. Thus from the beginning Christianity consisted in a Christian people. A certain number of men, believing and acting in a certain manner, made the religion. A mere doctrine is received by the individual reason and will,

appropriated by them, and the man by his own act becomes possessed of it. But Christianity was never merely such a doctrine. Entrance into it was more than an act of a man's own will. It took place by a solemn initiation. Continuance

in it was maintained by solemn rites, whose virtue came from without to the recipient. As men were admitted into it, so they might be excluded from it by acts and by actors independent of their own will. Those who followed a Grecian sect were masters of its doctrine, which they took, whole or in part, at their pleasure; took it when they pleased, left it when they pleased, mixed it with other doctrines as they pleased. The power of acceptance and rejection lay in the individual; but not so with that religion part of whose charter was, "Go and make disciples all nations." It was not only a law, but a kingdom.

2. Again, its office was to teach; but the volume, matter, compass of its teaching, were laid up within itself. Not indeed that these were arbitrary, but that the teaching was deposited in the breasts of living men, to be by them applied, unfolded, and set forth in action. The charter ran, "Make disciples all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." As the Founder's own ministry had been "to do and to teach," so He willed the ministry of those to be who were to carry on His work. It was a perpetual living chair of doctrine which He set up,