of what nature is that which makes such ministerial distinction between the few and the many? Of the answer to this question, at least so long as it is in an abstract form, there can be no doubt. The work is God's work, and the authority to undertake it must be God's authority. Even if we should hold that nothing is required except a popular approval, the 'call' of the Church or of a congregation, or, more simply still, a man's own inner sense of capacity and of inclination; yet even these, if they are to have the semblance of adequate warrant for a life of ministry, must be conceived of as the immediate methods through which God appoints and enables. The first and most cardinal principle, then, for a ministry which can possibly claim to be valid or authorised, is adequacy of commission; that is, commission understood to proceed from God.

This principle is in Scripture abundantly expressed and illustrated. To pass by all lessons derivable from the Old Testament ministry (which might be validly urged in support of this principle, however much we believed that the Levitical distinctions of ministry had themselves no counterpart whatever in the Church of Christ); to omit even the broader emphasis upon the principle in such passages as the denunciation of the prophets who were not sent in the 28th of Jeremiah, or the 'Here am I, send me,' following upon the 'Lo, this hath touched thy tongue,' of the 6th of Isaiah; it emerges as a principle no less cardinal in the Church of the New Testament. Compare our Lord's commission to the twelve, 'As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you,' with the argument of Romans x., ' How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent? even as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good things!'

Our Lord's words base the 'sending' of Apostles upon

His own 'sending.' This sending, or commission, regarded (along with human capacity of sympathy) as an essential principle of priesthood, even in the Person of Christ, is the basis of the argument in the 5th chapter to the Hebrews: Every high priest, being taken from among men, is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins who can bear gently with the ignorant and erring, for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity; and by reason thereof is bound, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. And no man taketh the honour unto himself, but when he is called of God, even as was Aaron. So Christ also glorified not Himself to be made a high priest, but He that spake unto Him, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee: as He saith also in another place, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.' And again, that these words, because they apply to Christ, do not therefore apply to every Christian in the same sense, is clear from 2 Cor. ii.-v. amongst other places: 'Thanks be unto God, which . . . maketh manifest through us the savour of His knowledge in every place. . . . And who is sufficient for these things? . . . Such confidence have we through Christ to Godward; not that we are sufficient of ourselves to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God; who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. . . . Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we faint not; . . . but we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves; . . . wherefore we faint not; . . . all things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; . . . we are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, as though God were intreating you by us1.' It will be observed that, 29; Eph. iv. II, &c.

1Cf. Rom. xii. 6-8; 1 Cor. xii.

in these passages, the sense of Divine commission is the backbone of ministry; partly in the more negative sense that, without it, no man durst presume to exercise ministerial functions at all; partly in the more positive sense, that to those who have it, it alone, that is to say the overshadowing consciousness of Divine command, Divine companionship, Divine empowering, constitutes all the reality of what they do, and is to them all their courage and their strength. In other words, any aspiration to ministry in Christ's Church, or attempt to discharge its duties, however otherwise well-intentioned, would be a daring presumption at the first, and in practice a disastrous weakness, in proportion as it was lacking in adequate ground to believe in its own definitely, validly, divinely received authority to minister.

'Even so send I you'-nothing short of this can bear the strain of ministry. 'When He had said this,' the text of St. John proceeds at once, 'He breathed on them and saith unto them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost."' I am not now discussing these words as a formula in the Ordinal; but looking at them in a more general way, it is plain that valid authority to minister (whatever the methods which convey or assure it) means such gift of Spirit as enables-by Divine warrant and in Divine power to a real 'ministration of the Spirit.' If the first point to lay down is that authority to minister must be felt to come to the individual soul from God, the second is that the differentiating character and essential meaning of ministry is 'Spirit.' This essential 'Spirit,' character of ministry, and its dependence alike for its valid inception, and for its maintenance throughout, upon 'Spirit,' receives careful expression in the address in our Ordinal to all candidates for priesthood. Forasmuch then as your Office is both of so great excellency, and of so great difficulty, ye see with how great care and study ye ought to apply yourselves, as well that ye may show yourselves dutiful and thankful unto that Lord who hath placed you in so high a dignity; as also to beware, that neither you

yourselves offend, nor be occasion that others offend. Howbeit, ye eannot have a mind and will thereto of yourselves; for that will and ability is given of God alone: therefore ye ought, and have need, to pray earnestly for His Holy Spirit. . . . You will continually pray to God the Father, by the mediation of our only Saviour Jesus Christ, for the heavenly assistance of the Holy Ghost.' That the Ordinal subsequently purports to convey an exceedingly solemn charisma of the Holy Spirit, and that this solemn charisma for ministry is conceived of as constituting the essential distinction and capacity of ministerial life, is of course, upon the face of the service, obvious.

I am not now discussing the Ordinal in itself, only glancing at its coherence in this matter with the scriptural principle that Divine commission, whose constitutive character is endowment of 'Spirit,' is the one warrant for, and the one strength of, any form of self sufficing or independent Church ministry. But it may be worth while to emphasize this particular point of view by quoting the striking expression of it in words which will be widely accepted as authoritative.

'Now, besides that the power and authority delivered with those words is itself xápioμa, a gracious donation which the Spirit of God doth bestow, we may most assuredly persuade ourselves that the hand which imposeth upon us the function of our ministry doth under the same form of words so tie itself thereunto, that he which receiveth the burden is thereby for ever warranted to have the Spirit with him and in him for his assistance, aid, countenance, and support in whatsoever he faithfully doth to discharge duty. Knowing therefore that when we take ordination we also receive the presence of the Holy Ghost, partly to guide, direct, and strengthen us in all our ways, and partly to assume unto itself for the more authority those actions that appertain to our place and calling, can our ears admit such a speech uttered in the reverend performance of that solemnity, or can we at

any time renew the memory and enter into serious cogitation thereof but with much admiration and joy? Remove what these "foolish" words do imply, and what hath the ministry of God besides wherein to glory? Whereas now, forasmuch as the Holy Ghost which our Saviour in His first ordinations gave doth no less concur with spiritual vocations throughout all ages, than the Spirit which God derived from Moses to them that assisted him in his government did descend from them to their successors in like authority and place, we have for the least and meanest duties performed by virtue of ministerial power, that to dignify, grace, and authorize them, which no other offices on earth can challenge. Whether we preach, pray, baptize, communicate, condemn, give absolution, or whatsoever, as disposers of God's mysteries, our words, judgements, acts, and deeds, are not ours but the Holy Ghost's. Enough, if unfeignedly and in heart we did believe it, enough to banish whatsoever may justly be thought corrupt, either in bestowing, or in using, or in esteeming the same otherwise than is meet. For profanely to bestow, or loosely to use, or vilely to esteem of the Holy Ghost we all in show and profession abhor1.'

Now in everything that has hitherto been said, or quoted, on the subject, it has been clearly implied that commission, to be commission in any sufficient meaning of the term, must be commissioned not from below but from above. Only as it is clearly understood to be from above-from God essentially and not man-can it spiritually authorize or empower; however much such authorizing may be accompanied by, or even may require, as a regular preliminary, acclamation or acceptance from below. It never can be conferred by those who have not authority to confer it. Even on the extreme supposition that either popular choice or individual impulse were the sufficient witness and method of God's appointment, it would still be God's act and not the popular voice, God's 1 Hooker's Eccl. Pol., Bk. V. lxxvii. § 8. p. 462.