and disciple all nations. . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." Does he call upon men to repent? It is because He has chosen to withdraw Himself Who in His own person called men to repentance. Does he proclaim the message of salvation? It is because he is the ambassador, the representative of One Who in His own blessed Person was the embodiment of God's reconciling love. So said one whom we look upon as the type of the Gospel preacher: "God was in Christ," said St. Paul, "reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead," because Christ is away, and we have to speak for Him, "be ye reconciled to God."

And yet in all this the priest is the instrument in the hands of a present Christ; Christ is using him-his very voice; for One once said, “He that heareth you heareth Me;" and He also said, "I will give you a mouth and wisdom;" and a servant of Christ also said, "Ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me ;" and this same servant of Christ, when he brought the forgiveness of the Gospel home to a sinner in the closest possible way, says, "If I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person (or the sight) of Christ."

Again, a Priest, when he is celebrating the Lord's Supper is doing what Christ did. As Christ took bread, blessed, and brake it, so does he. He presides at Christ's board, as it were, and shows forth the Lord's Death, because He is at the right hand of God, exhibiting there the reality of which the earthly priest is celebrating the Sacrament; and yet the priest's whole service depends upon the presence and power of Christ. It is a service which implies the absence of Christ-" Ye do show forth the Lord's death till He come "—and yet if it be worth anything it is the peculiar pledge of Christ's most intimate presence, for "He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me and I in him."

And so we might go through every ministry of the Church, and show that in it the human, fallible, sinful minister acts in the place of Christ absent, and yet acts on the strength of Christ's invisible presence.

Now the realization of this by the ordained servant of Christ is the one thing needful. We have to account of ourselves, and men have to account of us, as the ministers of Christ, the ministers of an absent Master; and so, as such, we are left in trust, we are left to ourselves so far as this, that we do not see His eye, nor hear His words of encouragement and reproof. It is put to our honour how much, or how little, we should do. Now, according as

we realize that we are the servants of Christ, and have to act for Him, we shall fulfil our ministry.

He has gone away Who, being the only begotten of the Ruler of the universe, took our nature upon Him, and in that nature exercised a holy, loving, self-denying, laborious ministry, and we have in His absence to act for Him. Well, the more we remember this, the more we account ourselves His servants Who exercised such a ministry, the more holy, loving, selfdenying, laborious, will be our ministry.

The unholy minister forgets, or knows not, that he is the minister of the Holy One. The unloving minister, who loves not men's souls, and is not anxious about their eternal life, forgets, or knows not, that he is the servant of One Whose "love passeth knowledge;" of One Who leaves the ninety-nine sheep and goes after the lost one till He finds it, so much does He love it. The self-indulgent priest forgets, or is willingly ignorant, that he is the minister of One Who pleased not Himself, and had no settled home. The idle minister remembers not that it is more than once said of his Master that He and His "had no leisure so much as to eat." The faithless minister forgets that he is left in trust-left in trust by the Good Shepherd with His own flock that He has bought with His own Blood. So that the one grand stimulus to ministerial exertion is for the priest to remember his commission, and

Who gave it to him, and that his commission is given to him to do in Christ's absence what Christ Himself did when visibly present. The most faithful servant is the one who most habitually remembers this; the most faithless is the one who habitually forgets it.

But it may be asked, "Is not this belief dangerous? Has it not, at least, its dangerous side? Does it not tend to foster an exaggerated sense of self-importance in those who hold it? Does it not lead many a man to think more of himself than of his work, more of his order than of his mission, more of his place and position in the Church than of the honour of Jesus Christ ?"*

"Undoubtedly, all forms of the conviction that we are specially privileged or responsible have their dangers. To know this a man need not be in holy orders. Pharisaism and self-assertion in sacred things are not confined to the ordained ministers of Christ. See how men are personally puffed up with the idea of their individual predestination and election. See how the so-called enlightened look with quiet contempt on those to whom God has not given the same clearness of spiritual apprehension as they possess. I have in more than one case known the ability to pray fluently in public spoken of

*Much in this and the following page are adapted from a sermon of the Rev. H. P. Lyddon on "The Moral Value of a Mission from Christ," page 26.

as something which entitled him who possessed it to boast. So, too, it has been with the gifts and calling of the clergy. The clergy are but men, and their faults are conspicuously thrown out into relief by the sacredness of their office. But self-importance does not seem to me the natural result of belief in the reality of the ministerial commission. A clergy which should profess to have nothing really to distinguish them in the matter of a commission from their lay brethren could only undertake to teach and feed Christ's people because of their supposed inherent fitness for the work; that is, because, simply and merely because of their talents, or learning, or spirituality. Now would not the very consciousness of the possession of these be more likely to engender self-importance? Is not that which is personal, individual, peculiar to the man himself, more likely to minister to this self-importance than that which he only enjoys in common with every member of a vast corporation, and which implies nothing that distinguishes him from his clerical brethren? Surely in every true Christian soul the felt contrast between the high commission received and the feeble grovelling efforts of the personal life is a perpetual warning against self-exaltation." The thought that a man is the commissioned minister of such a Master, receiving, too, his commission through the hands of such labourers as Christ's Apostles, must be ever