diction, pronounce absolution, and consecrate the eucharist."

In popular usage to-day the word priest is used mostly by those who hold the Catholic theory of the ministry, and the word clergyman or minister by those who hold the Protestant theory. Among certain classes of Protestants the word preacher is the one most commonly used. Speaking strictly, however, and without prejudice, there is no more reason why any one should object to the term priest than to the terms bishop or deacon. And to use the term presbyter is simply to beat the priest around the bush, and meet him again face to face. As for the words clergyman or minister, they are perfectly good words, and no one need be ashamed to apply them, as they are meant to be applied, as comprehensive terms to designate all the sacred orders, whether bishops, priests or deacons. Even the despised word preacher has its use, when that is precisely what we mean.

Belief in the priesthood is the characteristic that distinguishes the Catholic theory of the ministry from the Protestant. We are safe therefore in laying down the general principle that wherever we find priests we are in a Catholic church, and wherever we do not find them we are

in a Protestant Church. For some unaccountable reason Protestants abhor the very idea of priesthood.

With this distinction in mind we open the Book of Common Prayer, and we at once detect its Catholic flavor. We find that the second of the ordination services is called "The Form and Manner of Ordering Priests." Elsewhere in the rubric of the Prayer Book, especially in the Order for Holy Communion, it is frequently directed that the priest shall do or say certain things. It is true that the term minister is also used very freely; but it is used only for such functions as may be performed by a deacon or a lay-reader as well as by a priest. It is also used in many places as a comprehensive term to include the bishop as well as priests or deacons. There can be no doubt that the Prayer Book sanctions the designation of the second order of the ministry as priests, and therefore ranges itself definitely among the liturgies and service-books and formularies of the Catholic Church.

XXV

MATRIMONY

ROADLY speaking, there are two views of marriage current in the modern world: the secular and the religious view. A good many controversies on the subject might be avoided, if people would first state which of these two views they hold.

According to the secular view marriage is merely a temporary partnership between a man and a woman, with no religious significance and no spiritual implications. They enter into contract relations with each other before an officer of the state and two witnesses, just as anyone might make a contract to rent a house. If either or both should fail to live up to the terms of the contract, the contract may be dissolved and each of the parties may be free to marry again. Most advocates of this view naturally see no reason why the marriage relation should be continued when it proves distasteful to either party. When the wife becomes middle-aged and loses her physical charm, the husband need have no compunc

tion in throwing her aside and marrying a girl in the freshness of early youth.

According to the religious view, marriage is a sacramental union of a baptized man and a baptized woman, which is dissoluble only by death. It is sacramental in that it is a means of grace. The man and the woman in this case are the ministers of the sacrament. When they pledge themselves before witnesses to be loving and faithful to one another until they are parted by death, the Holy Spirit infuses into them the gifts of grace which will enable them, so long as they co-operate with the Holy Spirit, to fulfil their duties to one another and to any children that may be given them.

S. Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians speaks of marriage as a great mystery, like the relation of Christ and His Church. The love of husbands for their wives should correspond to the love of Christ for the Church. He sacrificed Himself for it, to hallow it, to present it to Himself, and to keep it holy. Christ's love for His Church is that of a husband for his bride. Just as Christ and the Church are one Body, so husband and wife become one flesh. Moreover in an ideal marriage the wife would reverence her husband with something of that same reverence which the Church shows towards Christ.

The Christian view of marriage is nothing if not idealistic. It presents to the world a high and noble ideal, which obviously cannot be lived up to without the continual help of Divine grace. But the grace is given at the very moment when the vows are taken. The actual results in many a Christian household are sufficient evidence that a superhuman power has operated through sacramental marriage to restrain and soften and ennoble and beautify the characters of men and women. Dr. F. W. Foerster has given eloquent expression to this conclusion in his admirable book on "Marriage and the Sex Problem" (p. 72):

"Since Christianity develops man's capacity for self-forgetful devotion to the highest extent, it has in every direction enriched and deepened the sexual emotions. What was love in the heathen world compared to the love of Dante, Petrarch, and many another since? The well-developed soul which confines itself to the limits of the loyalty and responsibility of which it knows its need, and restrains the Eros from asserting itself at the expense of Character, receives back again, with thousandfold increase, all which it may have seemed to lose; nay, it develops its own truest life to its fullest fruit and escapes the emptiness and vanity of the sensuous world. It may be said indeed that the responsi