ministry; and it cannot continue to be after the extraordinary ministry that caused it ceases to be, without a conservative ministry. Hence the distinction of ordinary and extraordinary ministers.

Moses and Jesus were, superlatively, ministers extraordinary. So were, in a second degree, the prophets and the apostles. Priests and Levites were the ordinary ministers of the Jewish institution. Evangelists, teachers and deacons, (sometimes called preachers, pastors and deacons,) are the ordinary ministers of the Christian institution.

While a single Christian family on an island, or on a foreign mission in the midst of a Pagan empire, may be a church, and may dispense and enjoy social ordinances as a Christian institution, in all other cases churches are communities, organized and disciplined by a divinely constituted ministry of three ranks-evangelists, pastors and deacons.

These are apostolic designations--words which the Holy Spirit taught, indicative of official duties. The term "elder" denotes one of age, and was appropriated to all governors, Jewish and Christian, because experience, or age, was an essential prerequisite. But because of the indefiniteness of the term--indicating, sometimes, a mere ruler, president or governor; at other times a teacher-it yields in appropriateness, on this subject, to the term pastor, as the Apostle Paul evinces when he says, "When Jesus ascended up on high," when he triumphed, or "led captivity captive, he gave gifts" "to men." (offices) "And he gave," or 66 even he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers, for the perfecting of the saints; for the work of the ministry; for the edifying" (building up) "of the body of Christ: till we all come into* the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man; to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."+

The original term Poimeen, here used, has, in my judgment, the pre-eminence, and hence it ought to be read pastor or shepherd. It has in both testaments, in all the scriptures, the chief dignity in expressiveness and appositeness, to the station and work assigned the officers here named. They are elders; they are bishops; but much more, they are pastors-they are SHEPHERDS; the greatest and noblest of all.

No one can be a shepherd who is not a bishop; yet a shepherd is more than a bishop. A bishop oversees a flock; but a shepherd, in fact, oversees, feeds, and protects the flock at the hazard of his life.

* Not in but into the unity, &c.

+ Eph. iv. 11-13.

Jesus, the great and the good shepherd-the bishop of our souls-delights in this term, or in the idea which it represents; and hence he so often and so impressively applied it to himself "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep,"* &c., &c. And Paul calls him (Heb. xviii. 20) "the great shepherd of the sheep." And Peter calls him "the shepherd, the overseer or bishop of our souls."t "Feed the flock of God which is among you;" and "when the CHIEF SHEPHERD shall appear, you shall receive a crown of glory which fadeth not away."‡

But our present topic is not the development of the Christian ministry, but the maintenance of it. By maintenance or support I do not, indeed, mean, as many mean, the mere feeding and clothing of a Christian ministry, but the creation, qualification, and garniture of an evangelical ministry, as well as its sustenance.

The disciples of Christ were, at a very early period, taught by the great Teacher himself, to pray to the "Lord of the harvest to send forth reapers to gather it." But the Lord did not teach his disciples to pray for any thing to be performed by miracle, or without the use of appropriate means. Hence it came to pass that he added the part of a teacher, and formed a class.

If not of the school of the Peripatetics, who taught and studied while walking about, he taught his original school while peregrinating Judea and Galilee, and both in public lectures, in private conferences, and by frequent examinations, developed to them the doctrine or science of his person, character, mission and kingdom. By precept and example, as well as by descanting upon the doctrines, commandments, and examples of other schools, of other teachers, and of other pupils, he inducted his disciples into the true doctrine, spirit, character, and design of his mission into our world, and of the spiritual and everlasting kingdom and institution which he was about to establish in the world.

The apostles, also, after his example, when fully accomplished for their official duties, were to become teachers of others, not only in preaching the gospel and planting churches, but also in providing a ministry for those churches and for the world. Paul, whose history and labors are most amply detailed, was most assiduous, not only in preaching and teaching Christ, but also in training men, both young and old, for the work of the Christian ministry, and gave instructions to Timothy and Titus to the same effect. From these devel. opments in the Christian Scriptures, so fraught with instruction to all ages, we have learned much, and may still learn much more.

One command of Paul to Timothy implies all that we conceive necessary to this great work. "The things," said he, "which you have learned from me, the same commit thou to faithful or to able men, who shall be competent to teach others also." Thus provision was made for a perpetual ministry in the church.

Titus, too, as well as Timothy, had an injunction from Paul to the same effect-to set in order, in the Island of Crete, the things left undone, and to constitute or ordain elders in every city, as he had been orally directed by Paul himself.

It is a proverb in our Israel, that what is every one's business is no one's business, and therefore, the Lord constituted offices, and these imply officers. If the whole body were an eye, an ear, a mouth, or a tongue, what a useless, unsightly body would it be? This is a subject that needs no argument.

A. C.

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY THE TRUE PRINCIPLE OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT.—[ Continued from p. 576.]

MAN AN EMBODIED SPIRIT.

THAT man may not lose the feeling of responsibility, it is important that he keep constantly in view the unity of his being; otherwise he may be led to suppose himself a compound of incongruous parts, over which he will feel himself to have but little control. The want of this proper feeling of unity has been conspicuous in all ages and amongst all nations-the most enlightened equally with the most savage; wherever, in fact, the true light of man's origin and destiny has not shone. When man loses this view of his unity, with respect to his intellect and volition, he carves as many divinities out of himself as he has affections, desires and ideas, and makes them visible by all imaginable combinations of beauty and deformity. "Having thus," says a modern writer, “reduced poetry into sculpture, and made feeling a permanent presence, heathens fall down to adore their own conceits. They divide their divinity by personifying their own lusts, and think they see a god where they behold an image of themselves; they people the empyrean with heroes that outrage humanity, and crowd their heaven with horrors that earth can scarcely tolerate."

It would seem, indeed, as though a disposition had always existed in minds not truly enlightened, to represent their own feelings as

different from themselves; and therefore, it is no marvel that, in this respect, the philosopher but emulates the savage. The modern phrenologist, professing to be a modeler of minds, would demonstrate his rational status by presenting us with casts of his mental faculties and affections as distinct from himself, but resident in the numberless cells of his brain; while the savage, with equal ingenuity, evinces the same view of his mental condition, when he attributes the powers of his own soul to insensate matter, which he shapes according to his own conceit, and the form he calls a god; for his philosophy, too, teaches him that bodies do not act without spirits residing in them. Materialists of the phrenological school settle their incongruities by arranging them in opposite compartments, like prisoners in a penitentiary. There is, however, this difference in the cases in the penitentiary, one individual inspects many others, but the philosopher distributes himself in fragments through a multitude of darkened cells, and thus disposes of his faults and his faculties together, while the individual is lost and the mind is no where.

Others would analyze intellect and volition as they would the soil, and having separated the elements and set them aside, they wonder what we mean when we ask them what they have done with the soul?

What, then, must we think of some of our best writers upon morals, who would teach us that desires and affections exist without volition. They certainly mean more than their words signify, else we cannot understand them; for where is the desire without will, and where the affection that is neither pleasing nor displeasing? Can there be any manifestation of self without the will being excited? All we feel is but the result of the correspondence between the sensitive soul and its object; for if these can be viewed with so much indifference as not to produce in us volition, there can be no impression, and we necessarily fall asleep and enter the world of dreams, for even dreams are more real than sights and sounds, without effect upon us. It is these, in the qualities of the things that habitually engage and exercise the will, that give individuality to character. We never attend without the exercise of will, and the qualities of things induce a state of mind in the individual regarding them, according to his intuitive perception, habit, or association. By intimacy with the feelings of others, we are apt to feel like them. Their tastes become ours; we sympathize with them until we resemble them. In this manner it is that our affections, as well as our intellect, are educated; and it is just as easy to depart from good SERIES IV.-VOL. I.

54*

feelings as from sound thinking, by fellowship with erroneous souls. The workers of iniquity who depart from God, not only forsake truth, but they yield to the power of falsehood, which is never a mere negative, but an active evil, positively at work to corrupt the will. Hence it is that the untutored and unrestrained by the counsels of the wise and good, not only stray from the path of life, but actually suffer the pains that are inseparable from the ways of error and disobedience.

The emotion we cannot separate from the affection, nor the desire from the will. Will in action is desire, and a will inactive is no will.

"The mind," says a late English writer, " operating in relation to objects of sense, is mind under more or less of emotion-self more or less impressed by what is agreeable or otherwise; thus the soul evinces its will; and the mind, attending to ideas and comparing them, whether from direct impression or in the memory, is a thinking mind or intellect. Now, it is evident, that both will, and the power of knowing or being impressed, are essential to a conscious being. And man's superiority, as a mind, is shown in his capacity of abstracting his attention from objects to fix it upon ideas, so as to reason concerning them. His reason is his faith. So, then, man, fully manifested, wills, knows, believes, and loves. This is hie nature. Therefore, he must be provided with objects in keeping with his nature-things to desire, to understand, and to believe. And in as far as man is created with a capacity of thinking of the Creator as the originator of all things, he must be constituted to find in Him the supreme object of desire, of knowledge, and of faith. In other words, man's will and intellect must find their satisfaction in God, and in what he provides; for man cannot rationally enjoy any thing in creation but as he finds in it the expression of his Maker's mind towards himself. Therefore, an irreligious man is so far unreasonable; his reason is without its chief end, the efficient object of love, the only source of light and joy.

To know truly, to love truly, to believe truly, is to know, love, believe, what God has provided; and to be deprived of this, is to be ignorant and unhappy. But He has not left himself without witnesses of his tender care for human beings. He has given us all something for the exercise of whatever faculties we possess, leading us on in thought from the deficiencies of the past and the present, to the fulness of the future, that we may be conscious that we hang upon his unfailing Providence for all we have and all we hope."

"Let us not suffer ourselves," says the same writer, "to be