On

cannot give the words, but the point of it is that every body has the right to say what seems to him good on any subject, but that none has the right to criticise what is said." this repartee the company laughed again, this time at Parker's expense. He seemed a little hurt, blushed, and blamed the vagueness of the conversation. This anecdote puts Parker before us in his natural attitude of sarcasm, and of vexation when his sarcasm was resented. When his sermon on The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity appeared, the general verdict was that its temper was harsh and sarcastic. Parker had already been forced to defend himself from the same charge in relation to his article on Palfrey's Lectures in a letter to his classmate, Mr. Silsbee. His friends, like Miss Healy and his own brother-in-law, warned him of this peril. On occasion of his letter to the Unitarian Association, Miss Peabody suggested the same fault in gracious terms. When the discourse appeared, Dr. Francis, a somewhat partial judge, while excusing Parker from any evil motives, writes as follows: "I find a great deal in Parker's book to regret. . . . The spirit of it seems to be bad, derisive, sarcastic, arrogant, contemptuous of what the wise and good hold sacred. Nothing of all this did he mean, I am persuaded. I wish very much that he had reserved the publication of it till years had brought more

consideration." .

Mr. Parker had a ready answer for all such suggestions, and that answer was a flat denial. Never did he write a word against man or maid in a sarcastic humor; indeed he dared not; it was quite against his principles to do so. We can hardly accept this defense as honest without a suspicion of some defect in the quality of his mind. He somewhere admits having said sharp things, but declares he does not think them sarcastic. He defines sarcasm as flaying alive and stripping the flesh off the bones. We shall perhaps have occasion to cite some of his gentle sayings, and then our readers can judge for themselves on this head.

ART. II. THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE PEOPLE.

Luther's Sämmtliche Schriften, herausg. von Dr. Walch. 24 Vols. Halle. 1740. Pressense's Early Years of Christianity. The Apostolic Era. New York. 1870. Neander's History of the Christian Religion and Church during the First Three Centuries. New York. 1850.

M'Clintock and Strong's Cyclopedia. Volume II. Art. Clergy.

ST. PETER'S words, "Ye are a royal priesthood," were, to the great Lutheran Reformers, infinitely more than a rhetorical phrase, or hyperbolic expression of the dignity of the common Christian life. Luther himself, in asserting that "the priesthood is common to all Christians," called this, and similar texts, "thunderbolts of God," against which, "neither all the Fathers, nor all the Councils, though they were innumerable; neither long continued usage, nor all the world combined, shall be able to prevail." They express one of the most effective ideas of the great Reformation, a characteristic idea of the primitive Church. They afford also, we think, the best solution of one of the greatest practical problems of modern Christianity. That problem is expressed to-day, throughout European and American Protestantism, by the question: How can the laity be brought into more effective co-operation with the ministry in the life and work of the Church? It has been discussed in sessions of the Evangelical Alliance; it was the chief thesis in a Convention, gathered from all parts of this country, not long since, in New York; and is an incessant topic in our religious journals. Nearly all evangelical denominations seem to be awaking to its urgency. In the New York Convention it assumed, perhaps, a somewhat “radical” form. Its supreme importance renders it desirable that it should be cautiously treated; but any just treatment of it, from the stand-point of the Reformers and of the Apostolic Church, will appear radical, if not heretical, to the confused vision of our times. We cannot fail, however, to perceive at a glance, that, if rightly developed, it may become an epochal idea of modern, as it was of ancient, Church history.

All earnest Christian minds vaguely recognize the true solution of the problem; but this vagueness, to a great degree, neutralizes its solution. General inculcations about the duty of "lay" devotion to Church interests will not suffice. Men of peculiar temperament, or special religious fervor, or ready utter

ance in the social devotional assembly, or of other marked capacity for usefulness, may, here and there, be inspired by such vague appeals; but the Church, as a whole, will unconsciously evade them. We need more specific and positive teaching on the subject. The Apostolic and Lutheran doctrine of the " priesthood of the people" is the real dogmatic basis of the needed reform the stand-point from which the responsibility of the laity should be asserted in our pulpits and religious journals. Thence alone can it take a readily cognizable and positive shape.

Our clergy need to study more the literature of the Reformation, to ascertain fully the importance of its teachings on this subject. The Reformation was projected on two great ideasone theological, the other ecclesiastical. The former was Justification by Faith, the latter the Priesthood of the people. By the one it made the personal salvation of man dependent upon himself, striking away all supposed necessary dependence upon mystical, or rather magical, interventions of the clerical priesthood, and emancipating the individual conscience. By the other it struck, fatally, as we may still hope, the hierarchical ecclesiasticism by which Popery had bound down Europe for a thousand years.

Luther acknowledged the importance of the pastoral, or preaching, office; no man has more emphatically asserted its divine sanctions; but he insisted, in writing to the Senate of Prague, on the "institution of ministers," that the pastor is "one who, in the place and in the name of all, who have the same right, should perform the (sacred) offices, that there be not a base confusion among the people of God, and that a sort of a Babel be not made in the Church." In his "Articles of Schmalkald," written in expectation that they would be presented to a General Council, he affirms the same opinion. The Helvetic Confession, while asserting the importance of the ministry as a distinct function, declares that priesthood "is common to all Christians," though the ministerial function, of course, cannot expediently be so. "In the New Testament," it says, "there is no more such a priesthood as obtained among the ancient people of God, which has an outward anointing, and very many ceremonies, which were types of Christ, who, fulfilling them all, has abrogated all. He remains

the sole priest, and, lest we should derogate from him, we give the name of priest to no minister."

Popery saw the portentous significance of this great thesis of the Reformation; and the Council of Trent issued an article expressly against it, declaring that "if any one affirms that all Christians are, indiscriminately, priests of the New Testament, or that they are all mutually endowed with equal spiritual power, he clearly does nothing but confound the ecclesiastical hierarchy," etc.

Such was the position the Continental Reformers assumed on this question. But we derive our Protestantism mostly through the English Reformation, and this, controlled by an unscrupulous monarch, and led by prelatical chiefs, never thoroughly did its work. The remnants of papal error have, down to our times, disfigured Anglican Protestantism, and are to-day distracting and disabling the National Church; while its Episcopal offshoots in this country (including Methodism) show, more or less, traces of its perverting traditions. In the late struggle for "Lay Representation" in the higher councils of American Methodism, the advocates of the innovation had continually to combat these traditions. A brief speech by one of them, arguing for it from the teachings of the Reformation regarding the priesthood of the people, was generally assailed in the journals of the Church as gravely heretical; and even now, after four or five years, it continues to be assailed in some quarters, though it assumed not one position which is not known to every student of the literature of the Reformation as fundamental in that greatest of ecclesiastical revolutions; not one which the most authoritative Continental scholars of Europe, in ecclesiastical history, do not admit to have been fundamental in the polity of the primitive Church.*

But the Reformation can be no authority for us, except so far as it accorded with primitive Christianity. What, then,

Let

*For Luther's views of the subject see Walch's edition of his works, volume x, and particularly Gessert's Evangelisches Pfarramt. After reviewing the Scripture testimony on the subject, Luther says, as we have already partly cited, this suffice, for these passages establish, in the clearest and most powerful manner, that the office of the word of God is the highest in the Church, and that it is one and common to all who are Christians, not only by right, but by command. The priesthood must, therefore, be no other than a single office, which is common to all Christians. And against these thunderbolts of God, neither all the fathers,

does this say on the subject? The only Scripture use of the word "priest" or "priesthood," as it respects Christianity, is in reference to the common priesthood of Christian men, and the "high priesthood" of Christ. Search through the New Testament, and you will find that all such passages substantially agree with Peter's declaration: "Ye," the laity, the. common Church, "are a chosen generation;" as much so as was the priestly tribe of Levi, and more, for ye are "a royal priesthood," and therein "a peculiar people." And again: "Ye are... built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices." St. John (Rev. i, 6) says: "Unto him who... both made us kings and priests unto God and his Father," etc., (v, 10; xx, 6.)

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is careful, respecting the high priesthood of Christ, to show that it is peculiar, is not according to the priesthood of Aaron or the Levites, but altogether unique-"after the order of Melchizedek." The old hierarchical system was now abolished, having answered its purpose as preliminary to Christianity. Christ having come, with him came the epoch of universal spiritual emancipation for the race. The rending of the temple's vail at his death had a sublime symbolical meaning. Hitherto the sacerdotal tribe could alone officiate in the temple-the highest priest could alone enter within the vail, the holiest of holies, and that but once a year; now had come the day of the universal ecclesiastical enfranchisement and the priestly consecration of all saints. The vail was "rent from the top to the bottom;" and now the apostle (Heb. x, 19) sublimely exhorts the Church, the "brethren," to "have boldness to enter into the holiest," the unvailed, innermost place of the abolished priesthood.

Christianity knows no technical or clerical priesthood-none other than this common priestly function and dignity of all re- . generated souls, under the sacerdotal headship of Christ. It has its ministry-its divinely-sanctioned administrators of instruction and discipline-but not a proper priesthood. It clothes all its true children with pontifical robes, and commands all of

nor all the councils, though they were innumerable, neither long-continued usage, nor all the world combined, shall ever be able to prevail." He proceeds to show, in detail, that all other clerical functions, such as the sacraments, etc., originally pertained to the people.