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HAVING established the fact that our Lord Jesus

Christ has instituted a ministry which is to be coeval with his church, we proceed

2. To consider the uses, qualifications, and mode of preserving, a standing ministry.

ist. Its uses.

The common sense of mankind, in all ages and countries, has taught them, that no system of religion çan be maintained and perpetuated, without an order of religious teachers. Search the world over, and you shall not find a nation, civilized or savage, without such an order. The truth or falsehood of the religious system has no immediate connexion with this argument. It is founded upon a principle which includes the cardinal secret of human improvementthe division of labour. In other words, that to ensure excellence in any occupation whatever, it must be confined to a particular class of men, and these men must be confined to it. Set ten individuals to work at ten different species of industry, so that every one shall be employed by turns upon all the ten; let other ten work at the very same things, but distribute them so as that each of the ten shall have his appropriate employment, never intermeddling with the other nine; and two effects will follow-First, The produce of each particular species of industry will be incomparably better; and, Secondly, The ag

gregate produce of all will be incomparably greater, upon the second plan than upon the first. That is, the work performed in the ten branches of industry by ten men, each one being limited to a particular branch, will be incomparably superiour in quality and quantity, to the work performed by the same number of hands labouring promiscuously in all the branches. Whoever disputes this position, has yet to learn the first letter in the alphabet of human experience. Apply this to the church of God. The religious cultivation of a people upon the principles of revelation, furnishes matter not only for a separate calling; but for a calling which requires subdivision.

The rules of faith and duty are comprised in a miscellaneous volume, the different parts of which are to be studied, compared, explained, enforced. This is not the work of a novice; of an occasional Exhorter of one who spends six days of the week in a secular employment; and comes forth on the sabbath, to vent his babblings under the name of preaching. Talent, learning, and labour, have found the week short enough for the right preparation of a people's spiritual food, and the discharge of other ministerial functions. In proportion as intellect is strong, knowledge deep, and the habit of application vigourous, is a sense of the ministerial trust impressive and awful. Feebleness of mind, and the conceit of ignorance, make it sit light upon the heart, and frustrate some of its noblest effects.

Were we not accustomed to absurdities, we should think it unaccountable, that, while the education of children is an exclusive occupation, the education and direction of children and men both, should ever be merely an incidental matter; and be left to the chance-medley of a fugitive hour! Had Christianity set out upon this maxim, she had never reached the age of one hundred years. Her divine head did not

commit her, for a single day, to such irregular and incompetent guidance. Those things which, in later times, are the fruit of patient and painful investigation, were, at the beginning of her career, in the East, open to every eye and familiar to every mind. Yet her teachers were a separate order, as the very face of her history in the New Testament shows. If Timothy, who was an extraordinary officer, a native of those regions from which the scriptural allusions and illustrations are taken; a disciple, too, of an inspired master, was enjoined to "give himself to read

ing, to exhortation, to doctrine;" if he was not to neglect, but to stir up the "gift which was in him, "which was given him by prophesy, with the laying "on of the hands of the Presbytery"-If he was to "meditate upon these things; to give himself wholly "to them; that his profiting might appear to all;" how can equal diligence and application be dispensed with in others who have to encounter much greater difficulties without the same advantage? How dare men, not possessing the hundredth part of the infor mation necessary to elucidate a single chapter of the Bible, which happens to contain matter beyond the simplest rudiments of Christianity, how do they dare, under such circumstances, to ascend the pulpit as expounders of "the oracles of the living God?" If "the priest's lips must keep knowledge, because "he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts," how shall the crude and undisciplined mind" bring forth "things new and old ?" It is not possible; the constitution of God's world forbids, that a man who is busied six days out of seven, in mechanical, commercial, or other secular toil, should have his intellect trained to the immensely important and comprehensive duty of instructing his fellow-men in the will of God, and the science of happiness. If the diffusion of religious light; if the formation of the moral habits

of a community; if the prevention and suppression of errour and vice; if the consolation of the afflicted; if the administration of ordinances designed of God as means of eternal life, do not demand an entire devotedness of those to whom they are intrusted, nothing can.

It is vain and foolish to dissemble facts. All sound exposition of the scriptures; i. e. all the pure and steady light of truth which shines in the churches, has been the work of men thus devoted. The discourses of others are, for the most part, mère shreds pilfered from the webs woven by that industry, learning, and talent, which they affect to undervalue. That usurpation of the sacred office, termed lay-preaching, now grown so common, cannot fail, unless a miracle should invert the course of nature, to degrade, and if it become general, to destroy, the ministry of reconciliation. The enemy could desire nothing more noxious to Christianity, than gradually to expel all cultivated talent from her pulpits; and to throw her interests into the hands of men self-approved, and self-sent. There is, indeed, an apology, which, though insufficient, cannot be denied to have a foundation! Shrewd men, even in vulgar life, hear preachers who, in the cant phrase, have been regularly bred, utter very small discourse; confine their lucubrations to a few plain points, repeat the same things in the same way, and that none of the best, until every person of a tolerably retentive memory, can tell pretty nearly beforehand, what "entertainment" is to be expected. With such facts habitually before them, they learn to imagine that the ministry is no mighty affair; they say, and they say truly, that "they can preach as well themselves;" and the next step is to try. The people perceive no great superiority or inferiority; and why should they maintain a man for giving them instruction of no

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better quality, than they can get for little or nothing? All this is natural; and, more, it is reasonable. Why indeed? Let us not pretend to dispute what the world knows to be true. Let us not shut our eyes upon our own disgrace, and the ruin of the Christian D

cause.

Pudet hæc opprobria! We have ample ground for humiliation. There are many, many "regularly bred" clergy, who are much fitter to make shoes, or buttons, or baskets, than to make sermons. No disrespect to any branch of mechanical industry; but every thing in its place. No men can be more out of place, than multitudes who are in the ministry. It was a sad mistake which caused them to stray into the pulpit. How has this happened? By what fatal perversion has the province of instructing mankind in things pertaining to God and to eternity, fallen so frequently into the hands of the ignorant and stupid? And why, when young men, neither stupid nor ignorant, enter upon it, does the progress of their ministry so little correspond with its original promise? There are two prominent reasons.

(1.) The miserable provision for their temporal support.

When men consecrate themselves to the religious weal of a people, and do, by that act, forego the opportunities open to all others, of providing for themselves and their families, a competent maintenance is the least remuneration which they have a right to claim. It is the dictate of common sense, common justice, and common humanity. It is also the express commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ. But, notwithstanding these considerations, the ministry is little better than a starving profession. Not one man in twenty, were he compelled to live upon the salary allowed by his congregation, could escape from beg gary and rags. The certain effect is, on the one hand,