mission involves.

The gift of Holy Orders must be transmitted by those to whom the function of transmission is assigned, and by no others.

Hence the difficulties which are raised around the Episcopal order are not vital as regards Orders in general. Supposing it were true that the monarchical Episcopate, as we know it, did not arise simultaneously over the whole Church, but that some Churches were governed by a College of Presbyters rather than by one individual, it still would not follow that the Apostolic succession was broken. To prove this, it would be necessary to show that the Colleges of Presbyters had not the right to transmit the power of ordination. This would be. somewhat difficult; and would require the assumption that the presbyters mentioned in the New Testament were simply in the position of our modern priests—an assumption which the language of the New Testament does not support. What is probably the true account of the matter is that the College of Presbyters, by which the full power of the Church was exercised, devolved its ordinary functions of preaching and celebrating the Holy Eucharist upon persons to whom the name of presbyter was afterwards restricted: while these ordinary functions, together with the power to ordain, were massed in the single ruler of each Church. This plan would doubtless be commended by the fact that the business of management is often best performed when the responsibility rests upon a single person; but far more important than this was the function of the bishop as the repository of Apostolic doctrine and practice. This duty rose into prominence as soon as heresy began to trouble the Church; and the letters of Ignatius show how decisive a fact it was if the bishop

condemned an opinion or excluded a man from communion. It stamped him at once as a transgressor of the Apostolic tradition or usage. So S. Irenæus at the end of the second century appeals against the Gnostics to the consentient testimony of the Apostolic Churches, expressed through the succession of their bishops. This is the ground upon which the Gnostic theories were rejected as innovations.

1

Thus the concentration of the authority of the Church upon the single ruler is a typical case of that which we have already described as the guarantee of validity. The tradition of the faith as well as the transmission of the Orders is committed to the keeping of one person. Any variations upon his creed, any independent ministerial acts outside his commission, have no guarantee at all. They may have merits of their own, they may spring from excellent motives but they have not the stamp of the authority of the Church. It may be said, perhaps, that if this is all, if independent action simply means acting without the Church's guarantee, why should not a man run the risk of obtaining the grace he seeks, and do as he pleases. In such cases, we must answer, the value of an act depends upon its tendency, and not merely upon the motive of the agent or the actual disturbance it may cause at the time. An act such as this, which is practically one of schism, is destructive of the whole order of the Church in its tendency, even though its motive may be unexceptionable, and its immediate effect small. It is on this same principle that actions of very small apparent significance may be treated very severely at law, in view of the anti-social tendency they involve. It

1 P. 376.

cannot, therefore, be lawful for a person thus to act independently in defiance of the society and its organization.

The Episcopal office, then, stamps with the authority of the Church all that is done with its imprimatur; it guarantees the validity of the Orders conferred upon those who minister in the ordinary business of the Church, and so indirectly it affirms the validity of the Sacraments they administer. The functions of the priest include all the powers of the bishop save that of laying-on of hands. The priest is charged with keeping up the regular life of the Church. He baptizes, celebrates the Holy Communion, absolves, and, in general, displays the spiritual side of things before men. Especially is he concerned with preaching and conducting the public worship of the Church. The deacon merely assists in all these duties; he has no separate and peculiar functions. According to the present order of the Church, the diaconate is not a permanent position; it is used as a step towards the priesthood.

The Orders bestowed by the bishop in the regular way are indelible. No person who has once been ordained can get rid of the fact, or be other than an ordained man. The grace of Holy Orders separates a man for the work of the Holy Spirit, and gives him a definite position and character. He may act unworthily of his high calling, or he may cease to act at all; but he does not on that account lose his priestly character. Moreover, his moral unworthiness, though it deprives him of much influence and power in the Church, does not strictly invalidate the Sacraments he administers. At first sight this may seem a hard doctrine, but in reality it could hardly be otherwise. The ordained man is the chosen minister of God, to whom positive functions have been

entrusted. It may be that he should never have sought Orders at all, and some responsibility may rest with the bishop who ordained him; but, once given, the Orders cannot be denied; the gift is there, however unworthy the recipient. No man is, strictly speaking, worthy of the gift, and if the validity of the Sacraments depended upon the worthiness of the priest, there would indeed be few celebrated, which the Church could be sure were valid. Of the effect upon the man who thus tramples upon the gift of God, it is not necessary to speak. That such men occur and are chosen to act in the name of the Church, is one of the signs of incompleteness which depend on its militant position in the world.

V. There are two subjects connected with the Church to which we must give some portion of our remaining space-the Christian life and the invisible Church, the Communion of Saints.

A. The Christian life. The conduct of life is one of the questions which has exercised the minds of philosophers at all times, and some of the loftiest results of human thought on this subject have been the work of pagan thinkers. The problems which have engaged the attention of philosophers are concerned with the nature of good, the motive for moral action, and the ideal of human life. They are closely allied problems. According to the answer given to the question of the nature of good, the motive and the ideal of human life will vary. If good be only another name for pleasure, then the motive for obtaining it will be found in the natural desire for pleasure, and the ideal will be a life as full of pleasure as may be. There are, roughly speaking, three lines upon which the philosophy of this subject moves. The nature of good is sought in expediency or pleasure,

or in knowledge, or it is represented as having a special character of its own. According to the first, that rule of conduct will be best which brings the greatest happiness or pleasure to the greatest number; according to the second, virtue is the knowledge of right and wrong; according to the third, virtue is its own reward: it is expressed by the surrender of desires and passions to what is recognized as the higher motive, and is independent of pleasure or pain as such.

To rest the whole weight of the obligation to virtue on pleasure, or even on knowledge of good and evil, is an experiment which cannot be said to have proved successful. For the former suggests no reason why the virtuous course should be preferred by any one who is prepared to face the unpleasantness of evil, when it happens to be unpleasant, or refuses to trust the future to make up in pleasure for the immediate unpleasantness of doing good. And the latter never accounts for the desire and the habit of doing evil in the face of knowledge that it is evil. The theory which recognizes that virtue is a thing which stands alone, and cannot be explained in terms of anything else, has a great advantage over either of these other positions. If it fails to explain virtue and merely recognizes its existence, it at least does not offer an untenable explanation.

The prominent note of the non-Christian systems is the externality of the moral law to the conscience. The Jewish Law demanded obedience to an elaborate code of ritual acts, and commanded, as from without, the pursuit of virtue. In Pagan systems virtue consists in the conformity of the life to an ideal. It is an ideal formed by the reflection of the mind upon itself, but it is thrown outwards in statuesque separation, and regulates life