ORDINATION WITHOUT INSTALLATION. BY REV. DAVID BURT, WINONA, MINN. ECCLESIASTICAL usages often take form in the mold of circumstances. The history of the various church polities reveals the fact that principles have been stretched, bent, compressed, and suited to the civil and social condition of Christianity, while its friends have not been sufficiently careful to inquire into the scripturalness of what they sanction. An ecclesiastical error once incorporated into the usages of a church is corrected with great difficulty. The prestige of antiquity and the "Fathers" is urged in its defense, and there are some men whose veneration for the acts of their denomination in its primitive times almost exceeds their reverence for the Acts of the Apostles. These remarks find an illustration in some of the modern standards and expositions of Congregationalism concerning a certain agency for the diffusion of the gospel which was potent in the days of Paul, and might be rendered highly efficient at the present time of opened doors, wide and effectual. I mean the agency established by apostolic usage for the diffusion of the gospel where churches prepared to receive and sustain a settled ministry can not be secured without some years of patient effort. The term missionary having been used in modern times principally to denote one sent far hence to the heathen, this word, even when qualified by the word home, does not fully designate the agency in question. by the term evangelization, and the preacher undertaking this work by the name evangelist. These terms are certainly scriptural. It is admitted on all hands that in apostolic times there was an order of evangelists in the Christian ministry, to which belonged Philip, the evangelist, Timothy, whom Paul exhorted to do the work of an evangelist, Titus, who actually performed the same work, and many others. Yet the assumption has been made by some, that such persons do not constitute a permanent order in the Christian ministry; that we should restrict ordination, except in case of those sent on some definite missionary work, to those who are installed pastors of the churches effecting their ordination. Before endeavoring to establish the point that the office of evangelists was designed to be permanent, it may be well to inquire, if so, why has the fact been almost overlooked in the Congregational church polity as developed in our own country? Among the influences contributing to this result, are these: 1. The predominantly religious character of the people in New England during its early history. The ecclesiastical usages of that age were very much affected by the fact that the mass of the people, if not Christians, were, from principle, the supporters of Christian institutions. The nature of the work to be accom- A church was deemed an indispensaplished in wide regions of our own ble organization in every colony and country where there are no nominal community large enough for its existheathen, the slow and laborious pro- ence. Hence the ministerial work of cess by which self-supporting churches that time was not to set agencies in are to be secured in many communi- operation for the conversion of the peoties of our land, are better designated ple to a belief in the importance of Christian churches, to form them for church membership, and for the duty of receiving and supporting preachers of the gospel. They already had either piety or principle for these works, and the only practical question was to supply such churches as sprung up out of the convictions of the people with a settled ministry. This required only the order of the ministry designated as bishops or elders, and the main question was, how shall these be constituted and settled? Had our wide West, with its teeming population, regardless of churches, indifferent to the gospel and its ministers, been before the minds of the Mathers, and Cotton, and Davenport, they would have written some things concerning the New Testament agency for evangelizing these regions, which, under their circumstances, never occurred to them. The question in their time was how to take care of churchloving communities, and give them an able and a permanent ministry. The details of this work they set in order according to the mind of Christ; but we are not to infer that they have set forth the whole New Testament scheme for the propagation of the gospel through the agency of Christian ministers. Bonaparte developed the laws of warfare for large armies working in countries well supplied with munitions of war; yet something more has lately been said about the management of military expeditions against an unsettled race on our frontiers; and we shall yet learn that the science of war can find ways to meet such a foe, of which even the genius of Napoleon never spoke. In the religious conquest of the West and South, we shall find that there are evangelizing agencies contemplated in the New Testament which the condition of the New England fathers did not require them to use. To quote them as authorities, beyond the letter of which we must not go, is like relying on the rules for the management or heavy artillery in a campaign against flying guerrillas. 2. Another cause of imperfect views respecting the office of evangelists, is: An illogical inference from the principle strenuously held by the Puritans, that it is the prerogative of the local church to ordain its own minister. This is certainly a doctrine of the New Testament; but does it follow from it that no ministers are to be ordained, unless, at the time, they are wanted by some already existing church, as settled ministers? This seems to be the inference of some. They quote the fathers of Congregationalism to prove that we should not ordain candidates for the ministry until they are elected by some church to the pastoral office. The argument is, that it was the custom of those fathers to ordain only under such circumstances, therefore we should not transcend their usage. But who can prove that, under our circumstances, with the unchristianized population of the West and South before them, they would not have ordained all the Philips and Timothys to be found, and sent them out in the name of the churches, to raise up new churches, and to be to them as pastors, without the nominal existence of the pastoral relation, until such times as it could be wisely constituted? The argument that because our fathers ordained only those who were to fill the pastorates of local churches, we should ordain no others, is precisely like the reasoning by which some would discard the practice of infant baptism by quoting the passage, "He that believeth and is baptized," &c. We reply to such, the passage respects only adults, and is not meant to cut off children. And we may say, the doctrine of the fathers, that ordination is an act by which a local church supplies itself with a pastor, is correct for churches prepared to receive, settle, and support pastors, but it has no reference to churches in a state of infancy; none to the process of begetting and bringing churches into the kingdom of Christ. We may assume, from the genius of the gospel as a world-wide gift to men, that it will include agencies for the planting and training of churches under the care of competent ministers, possessing all the prerogatives of the ministerial office, and exercising them for the benefit of such young and feeble churches, until they are prepared to receive and support a settled ministry. The remark, that the limited experience of the early New England fathers narrowed their views and statements on this subject, may be applied without any disrespect to some of the present Nestors in the camp of New England Congregationalism. They speak and write with only their little region of this great land in their thoughts, a spot insignificantly small on a map of the United States, a tract of our country which we could more than cover could we overlay it with some single one of the States west of the Mississippi. Could we transport these good men from their hill-girt homes to the prairies of the West, wide and free as the blue expanse above, could we give them a journey over the vast spaces that stretch away under their setting sun,-peopled with millions who must be won to Christ, if at all, by conquest; they would return to their little district east of the Hudson with at least one new idea, and that idea would be that if the New Testament does not provide and recognize an order of men to be ordained to go and plant churches in this immense tract of country,-churches over which they cannot be installed for years in some instances, then it ought to provide such an agency, and is imperfect without it. Another circumstance which has of late brought the order of Evangelists into distrust is : 3. Certain abuses of the office by men not properly discharging its functions. We find many references to these abuses in the religious periodicals of the last fifty years. A writer in the "Christian Spectator" for 1829 complained that "Associations and occasional councils, too, are ordaining a great number of our licentiates, or, as they have been significantly styled, 'candidates for the ministry of the gospel,' not for the purpose of installing them as pastors over churches, not as missionaries foreign or domestic, not for any specific work requiring the services of an ordained minister, but to seek employment" as revivalists or preachers among our settled ministry. This practice still exists. There are men called evangelists in regions where the kind of labor which they undertake is of a doubtful character. But we should not allow our distrust in such men and their measures to prejudice our judgment on the question before us. We are not arguing for a class of supernumeraries among settled ministers. The office which we have recognized is quite different from that assumed by reputed revivalists. The order of New Testament Evangelists will not build on the foundations of other men. They will not crowd into the sphere of settled ministers, they find work in the regions beyond the reach of such men. I will allude to another circumstance which has affected our views on this doctrine of evangelists : 4. In our arguments against the different clerical orders of the Episcopacy we have sought to gain strength by narrowing the issue to the proposition that pastors are the only permanent order of ministers recognized in the New Testament. We have feared to admit that so far as their work is con cerned there may be two orders in the Christian ministry, lest we should be driven to the admission that the official authority of the two may also differ. Hence we have shown that the twelve apostles had no successors, because, from the nature of the work to which they were called, they could have none. They were to be the witnesses of Christ's life, teachings, death, and resurrection. Their testimony we receive, and discard all pretended apostolic successions. By many, it is attempted to dispose of the New Testament Evangelists and by this, I do not mean the authors of the four gospels—in the same way. They are dropped as a temporary class of laborers, needed at that time, but not as a permanent order of ministerial laborers. We have only then to show that pastors, teachers, overseers, and bishops are interchangeable terms, denoting one and the same office, and we carry our point against the advocates of the clerical ranks of Episcopacy. But is it necessary to success in this argument that we take the ground that there is only one order in the Christian ministry as respects its office work? May there not be more than one order in this respect, while in all matters of rights, authority, and official standing, there is an essential equality, while the functions of the ministry are common to all? Can we not present a better front to Episcopacy by assuming this level and common ground that whether we are installed and settled, or, having been duly ordained by churches which we have left for the work, are preaching and raising up churches not yet prepared to "settle" us,—that we are all equal in the prerogatives of the Christian ministry, than we can present while some who fancy themselves elevated on hills and even mountains by installation, look down upon their uninstalled brethren, as on plains and in valleys, and say to them, "you are hired by the year as I hire my Irishman; you are inevitably made weak and deprived of great moral power. You are under the influence of a system that degrades you"? Is it to be expected that men even with considerable grace, who are doing the work of evangelists in the West, can read grave discussions by their installed brethren intended to show that ministers who are not installed are inferior to themselves in ministerial rank, if indeed they ought to be called ministers, and not be tempted to say, "come out of your clerical corners into the wide field where we preach, and we will show you men who are hired by the year without degradation, — uninstalled but not unstable, and exerting a wider and stronger moral power than many who stand, withered and dry, where installation planted them years ago"? But we would not seem to speak with feeling on this subject. We have only a desire that the cause of Christ suffer no detriment. Those doing the work of evangelists would not be hindered by the utterances of ministerial brethren who might speak and think differently with a more extended knowledge of facts and a wider experience. But it is time to inquire what reasons can be urged in favor of the view that the order of preachers called evangelists in the epistles of the New Testament was designed to be permanent? Is ordination without installation now necessary for the work of planting and raising up churches, not on heathen ground merely, but in many wide sections of our own civilized country? The question arises, why not send forth men with only a license to preach and when they can organize a church, let them be ordained by it, and installed over it? To one without experience in such work this might seem wise. But those who attempt this labor in the newly settled parts of our country find that it often requires several years slow. 1. The office of evangelists is spoken of as distinct from that of pastors and teachers, prophets and apostles. In Eph. iv. 11, Paul says, "and he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors, and teachers." From this passage we learn that the office of evangelists is distinct from the others mentioned, and may co-exist with them-that it is a gift of Christ to his church and is of the same general nature and design as the office of pastors. It is mentioned as co-ordinate with this office, and, so far as appears from the passage, of equal importance. to raise up a church to such a condition fancy and time of growth, often very of strength that a minister could wisely make it the object of his whole care. It is necessary to have two, three, and sometimes more, young churches under the care of one preacher, who shall divide his labors among them. It would be inexpedient to ordain one over several distinct churches, perhaps in rival communities, and no one of several such churches may be so much stronger than the rest as to make it proper to ordain the preacher over it, and if this thing were done it would often disqualify him for exerting the best possible influence in his whole field. Churches in this condition need the sacraments, and, as according to custom, a licentiate could not administer them, great embarrassment would arise from the difficulty and often impossibility of effecting exchanges with those who were ordained. Such churches need in their ministers all the functions of the ministerial office-everything that can enhance the personal power and influence of the men who are to take charge of them. They should be competent for every ministerial function in order to influence the community and give dignity to their work. For these reasons men who are only licensed to preach and are virtually deemed under probation for ordination are not the men for raising up new churches. It is enough that the church be an "experiment; "it is too much that its preacher be an "experiment" also. He should be a man in whom some church has already expressed the confidence implied in ordination. The following particulars are deemed proof that the New Testament contemplates the permanent existence of an order of ministers, ordained without installation, and possessing all the prerogatives of the Christian ministry and exercising them in the planting and training of Christian churches, where such churches must have an in 2. The office of evangelists was given to the church for the same end as that of pastors. All the offices mentioned are said to be alike given "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." It is here declared that the work of an evangelist is of the same nature, in its effects, as that of a pastor. It is the work of the ministry no less than a pastor's labor. It tends to build up the body of Christ, which is the church, and to fill out the character of the saints. Without good reason, we are not to assert that an office, of which such are the results, was temporary, and has now ceased to exist. It appears, 3. That persons called evangelists, and appointed to do the work of evangelists, received the same instructions, and discharged the same functions as did pastors. In Acts xxi. 8, Paul says "We entered into the house of Philip the evangelist, which was one of the seven" who some years before were chosen deacons. Soon after Philip's appointment as deacon, we are told, in Acts viii. 5, that he went down to the city of Samaria and preached unto them. He wrought miracles and baptized believers (Acts viii. 38). In |