first mixed in the episcopal office, we are not informed. Something of both is necessary, doubtless, in every bishop, and few would, perhaps, clearly discern their province. Although it must be admitted that the work of ruling' and 'governing' is often mentioned in the New Tes tament as belonging to the bishop, there is no reason to believe that he was, in the primitive ages, in any other sense a ruler than as he was the executive of the authoritative acts of the Church. The ostensible difficulty of this subject is only apparent. The bishop must be either the master of the Church or its servant. If the former, he destroys the rule- ye are all one in Christ; if the latter, his carrying out the determinations of the Church, as its executive authority, accounts for his having as much the appearance of a ruler as of a teacher of the faithful.

Clearly as the apostle Paul defines the sphere, the duties, and the qualifications of the Christian bishop, he is not less lucid or emphatic in sketching the scattered shoals and the sunken rocks from which the new-launched vessel of the ministry was in danger. He warns some of the elders and their churches, that the minister was not a popular tribune who could only reach the objects of his vocation through the arts of oratory. In the Grecian cities, where the orators were extemporary kings, and the people the awarders of crowns and applause, the bishop was in danger of forgetting that the excellency of the power is of God, and not of man.' The love of originality was in the first ages as seductive as it has often proved since, and hence Timothy was repeatedly warned to hold fast the form of sound words,' for Hymenæus and Alexander had been lost upon that quicksand. Not less perilous was the love of power to the Christian bishop, who from being brought by his office into a closer contiguity with conscience than had been possible before, might easily glide from the rank of an adviser into that of an inquisitor, and thus both destroy his flock and himself. No profession can close its doors against the besetting sin of the human race, the love of money, and even the self-denying office of the spiritual elder would furnish too many occasions for this gratification; hence the anathema against the love of money, the root of all evil, and it is placed in the same category with the sins of the flesh,' from which the bishop was bade to flee.' The abuse of erudition has wrecked many of the teachers of the Church in all ages. It all but destroyed that of Judæa, and Paul was fully sensitive of the snare, and admonished Timothy to shun as mortiferous objects foolish and unlearned questions,' and Titus not to give heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men.' To some natures, the love of fame is more seductive than all the other perils of life, and Paul warned the bishop neither to be desirous of being the founder of a sect, the author of an opinion, or the idol of a church. Animal pleasures chiefly beset the young, the sedentary, and the luxurious; and it is easy to read in the apostle's frequent excitation to Timothy and Titus, to reading, to energetic action, and to the cultivation of all the purest sentiments of the gospel, an admonition of their animal danger. In the old Gentile world an omnipresent spirit of superstition enslaved society, and as

Christianity was heaven-born freedom, and required for its appreciation a spirit of power and of love, and a sound mind, Paul reminded Timothy that a Christian might be superstitious too, and that he must avoid profane and old wives' fables.' In short, the apostle appears to have seen thus early nearly all the evils that have ever destroyed or weakened the bishop, whom he implored to beware of a lack of courage in the days of trial, of a spirit of contentiousness in the rage of heresy, or of spiritual pride, either as accruing from great success, or from conscious power. Thus arose an entirely original office in the world, fraught with more beneficent or dangerous influence to mankind than any other character, political or scholastic, that had ever existed. Here was an order of men, who were the accredited ambassadors of Heaven, sent to subjugate all nations, but armed only with benignant words and personal goodness, and limited to the use of means that were 'lovely and of good report.' An empire to be established that recognised no geographical boundaries, might well alarm the zealots of the petty republic, and even the advocates of the largest kingdoms. To establish a fraternity of all nations appeared stark insanity to those little philosophists, who then, as now, believed in the unamalgamable nature of the different races. To commence a regeneration of mankind without a treasury, or a general organization, seemed in the estimation of the rich so remarkable an absurdity, that they concluded base designs were concealed within this unpretending policy, or the Christian bishops were fools. But it was not only the superficial of the first ages that misread the true purport of the Christian bishopric. The deeper thoughted saw the gravest evils parturient from this new doctrine. If men were to be incorporated into an universal brotherhood to which women, slaves, and every class of the illiterate were equally eligible to membership, a society would in time arise, that would disdain the imperium in imperio, and at once override all kingdoms, control all rulers, and abolish all the artificial ranks of life that were uncongenial with its progress. Civic rulers required no great study to see in the Christian bishopric an alarming check to their power. The monarch governed by force and fraud, availed himself of popular prejudices, and appealed chiefly to the cupidity and the passions of men, but was shy of appeals to reason. The bishop addressed himself to mind, appealed to the inward love of freedom, roused the sense of truth, treated all men as capable of judging the highest questions, abjured force, and sought only to rule by conscience and love. Here was a difference, indeed! Political government only allowed the few to speak and hear, but Christianity claimed for all the right of hearing and speaking whatever was true, and of making every man judge of the questions which revelation had opened, and time had explained. Thus the world and the Church came into instant collision. The bishop was authorized to rule by Heaven, the monarch by men. The former treated all things in a new light; the latter attempted to darken many of the great questions of truth, and affirmed to have the right to ignore others. The schools of philosophy saw an end to one great section of their verbosities, and that brought about by the most simple

and humiliating verities. The gospel struck all fictitious personages to the dust, and raised à power from the lowly and the simple followers of Jesus that amazed the troubled imagination of men. Here was an army of wisdom covering the world with its hardy and expert planters of thought; establishing in every family the moral tutor; and anointing lips with a heavenly and ever-ready eloquence that had only been familiar with the jargon of superstition, blasphemy, or the obscene. No one can read the Pagan histories of the first Christian age, without seeing that all these views were felt by the world; and that to this class of feelings must be attributed those fearful persecutions that were chiefly designed to suppress the new order of Christian teachers, who were regarded as dangerous rivals of the civic power. When it was, however, found that suppression was impossible, the policy, partly Satanic and partly human, was changed to neutralize the bishop, by clothing him with civic power, with donatives and political honours, and thus the sad story of our repulses begins.

The hostility of the world to the Christian bishopric has never ceased throughout the intermediate ages. To make the preachers of the gospel subservient by different means, has always been one of the standing aims of all governments. A singular history is this alone, and if confined to our own country it would develop more startling facts than political history can reveal. Political rulers begin by despising the bishop, who is then persecuted, and afterwards endowed; and if not endowable, he is to be weakened by divisions, hampered by checks, or bribed by praise. There is no respite from this war for the true bishop of Christ Jesus. Society is always changing its phase of civilization, but its relation to the divine truth and institutions remains the same intensified hostility. It loves to have the preeminence in all questions of worship, teaching, and government, and to apply the same rules of policy and art to the Church as it does to the State. But the bishop must give place not for an hour,' where the honour of his bishopric is concerned; and as he cannot compromise, there is no alternative but the continuance of the war with the successors of the men who said, Did we not strictly charge you that ye should not speak any more in this name?'

Of uninspired descriptions of the Christian bishop there is a great diversity some beautiful and impassioned effigies Baxter has given us; rude and epigrammatic portraitures are to be found in Joseph Hall and Donne. Quarles, Gurnal, and Watson, the Puritan, have finely hit off parts of the true episcopal character; but a nobler summary of the leading qualifications of the Christian teacher it would be difficult perhaps to name than that of Bishop Ken. But how immeasurably above all, meantime, does Paul rise in his description of the episcopal office, which his writings first mainly founded! He is the man of God: the perfect workman that, though adjudged by more than mortal scrutiny, needeth not to be ashamed. He is an ambassador of God, and an interpleader with men in Christ's stead.' He is the wise master-builder, who neither imposes upon an insecure foundation a costly edifice, nor upon a grand base erects a mean super

structure. He is the captain of a crazy ship in a perilous sea, incumbered with the twofold duty of saving himself and them that hear;' or an athlete at the Olympics, and is cautioned to remember, that however sinewy or lithe, he is not crowned except he strive lawfully. Or he is a good soldier of Jesus Christ, and is warned that he is not on light duty, with no enemy to subdue, but has to contend with a fierce world of malignant passions, and subtle hordes of disguised bowmen, and must both watch and endure hardness. The Christian bishop, according to Paul, was the steward of the mysteries of God, and it became him to divide to every one a portion of meat in due season, and withal to win the heart of the refractory by his gentleness, and comfort the sophist by his well-arrayed reason. His conversation was to be in heaven, and yet a keen inspector of the ways and tendencies of men a herald, to rouse the sleeping sentinels; a watchman, to descry distant dangers, and yet neither to meddle with the affairs of other men, nor neglect his own vineyard. Never since the sun beamed on the human race had a more important office been founded; and never had an intellect grasped with firmer hold, or seen with more penetrative discrimination, all its liabilities, its exigence, its issues, or its perils. The apostle might not have been able to guide a trireme through the Cyclades with Nearchus, or to manoeuvre the legions at Actium as well as Augustus, or to lecture as well as Euclid on the planetary times; but in the themes of his calling, and on this of the Christian bishopric in particular, he soared above not only all the men of his own age, but into a higher heaven of purer lustre than mortal has ever done since. Nor was it wonderful. He explains the enigma. We have the mind of Christ, says he, and have delivered to you what we have received from the Lord Jesus. Those great but uninspired Christian men that lived in the following ages, and who were familiar with all that was profound, beautiful, or noble in Roman or Greek pages, felt the matchless superiority of Paul, and might well often utter their fond utinam to have seen Paulum in ore. Never was a greater miracle of divine grace. Never did human nature glow with such comparative divinity before or since; and no man has ever passed through this world, and stamped upon its intellect and heart so grand and enduring an impress, as this diminutive Cilician Jew. If the Christian bishops had followed Paul as he followed Jesus, instead of taking for their models the mordant Athanasius, the allegorical Origen, the turgid Gregory, the mystic Bernard, the dominant Wesley, the metaphysical Calvin, the imaginative Taylor, or the pugnacious Baxter; an idol would not have now existed; and instead of Christ's Church being ript into shreds of life, that one conclusive argument for the divine origin of the gospel, the hallowed life and the Catholic love of the brethren, would have superseded the necessity for all other literary proof, which is now so stupendous and yet so ineffectual on the masses of unregenerate mankind.

R. S. B

PERHAPS this question has been proposed to you, to enforce some maxim of common-place morality, or to deter you from following Christ. And although you have felt some misgivings, its mysterious vagueness has imposed upon you, and you have adopted the course recommended, for fear of what the world would say. Now, I do not doubt that there are men who have thus been kept from evil actions, and so far I will cheerfully own that the effects of this question have been good. But can it be good to make what the world may say, the test of right and wrong? And is it not made so by those who use no higher appeal? For myself, I ascribe half the wrong-doing amongst men to this source. This seems to me the ultimate effect that we can trace of the employment of this inquiry, as the sanction in matters respecting which the conscience, the truth of the gospel, the example of Jesus, ought to decide.

This has followed; and besides, many a noble resolution has been paralyzed, many a generous purpose brought to nought, and many a one prevented from fulfilling the secret desire of his heart to be a disciple of Jesus. 'What would the world say?' The soul gets bewildered in the mist of terror those words call up, and it shrinks back from life, from life eternal! Perhaps it has been so with you. But did you never ask who were the world,' nor what were the consequences implied in that question, nor even what the world does actually say? I do not wonder at the nameless fear which has filled you, when your aspirations have met with this response. Let us ask these questions now, and endeavour to get true answers; and let us see if we cannot penetrate this mystery, and destroy the power of these mischief-working words, for ourselves, at least.

What would the world say?' I will tell you.

'If you do as the world does, and so do not condemn it, nor excite the suspicion that it is in the wrong, it will praise you living, and lament you dead.

If you are an evil-doer, it will excuse you, and extenuate your conduct, until that course would awaken uncomfortable apprehensions respecting itself; and then it will turn upon you, and condemn you with a bitterness, arising not from its dim and beclouded notions of what is right and good, but from the desperate hope of proving, by that means, that it is altogether different from such as you:-unless your evil-doing should lead to what it calls prosperity; and then it will never doubt that you have been slanderously misrepresented by the

envious.

If you will follow Christ, it will show you no mercy; and the more silently and earnestly you do so, the more will it feel bound to vindicate itself by condemning you. It will watch for, and hunt after, and magnify, and exult over, every shadow of a failing, though it should