any means (even of Divine institution) by which such a blessed result could be accomplished. And we might easily account for such a difference did it appear to us that the revelations of God exhibited only one principle of salvation for man from sin, through Christ, to sanctification; but several means, of greater or less efficacy, which God might, consistently with His truth and promises, use to conduct men to it, and use with varied power according to circumstances.

But does he intimate nothing, then, here, about the means to be employed? We cannot say that; because the main object of his address is to whet and kindle their anxiety for persons who have been already made Christians—that they should' feed the Church of God,' and (as the words seem to indicate) including themselves.

When he said 'feed,' he evidently used a phrase which the mind of the elders of Ephesus could at once interpret: to them it needed no explanation; nor does it, I think, to any attentive reader of St. Luke and St. Paul.

When the former writes about the earliest Church of all, that 'they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers,' he describes almost all the spiritual food which that Church received through the ministry of man. But one more seems to me to be suggested in the Epistle

to Timothy, where he writes, 'Give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine;' and there also he connects the benefit resulting to the minister with that which he will impart to others, for he says, 'So doing, thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee.'

I think him, with respect to this feeding of the Church, to have had uppermost in view those congregational means which required fellowship on the part of the disciples-the communion of the Lord's Supper, united prayers, the public reading of the Scriptures, and moral instruction about human duties, such as we find addressed to different classes at the end of almost all his epistles.

We use the word doctrine as applied to articles of belief, but it is perfectly plain that St. Paul applied it to moral habits. Sound doctrine isto honour our masters; to be sober, grave, temperate; to love husbands and children, and other such things as these.

And human nature, after man's conversion, has doubtless enough, both of infirmity and ignorance, to require such help and research about the ways of godliness. But where God was daily prayed to in the name of Christ, and the Holy Spirit asked for, and the Eucharist very frequently administered, that which we call in English doctrine' would be sustained and

nourished by those very actions; it needed not the daily voice of the preacher; if he had some other object to aim at continually, as well as moral instruction, it was then, exhortation, words of encouragement and consolation, persuading them to be hopeful and to persevere.

Now, as we approach the latter part of this sermon of St. Paul, we may observe that his thoughts take this practical turn which I have been describing; they go to these doctrinesindustry, watchfulness, honesty of human labour, and readiness to give of our earthly substance in the name of Christ.

About these ordinary and daily virtues he speaks with fulness and great anxiety. He bids them conquer those particular infirmities which their calling exposes them to. It was not, then, without reason that I asserted we must be careful to view the whole together.

For if we take only half and dismiss the remainder, it would be easy for us to argue that he had laid down repentance and faith to be the whole counsel of God, and thereupon to dismiss all practical habits from our teaching and our scheme of religion, as if they were part of a Jewish law.

But when we think of the whole we are entirely certain that the elders of Ephesus never misunderstood St. Paul in this way; but the last

and most vivid appeal which he made to them was to fasten on their consciences the pattern of his own labours and self-denials, and to proclaim the promises and rewards of Christ to a life of benevolence.

The end of this sermon was nowise at variance with the leading principle; but he was earnest to tell them what that principle led to, that it was not a purposeless and barren faith, but that it meant belief that, with His grace, we should be enabled to follow his rules and his example.

On the whole, then, we have in this address a very considerable opportunity of seeing what mainly constituted, in the mind of St. Paul, the Christian religion as it was to be declared and enforced upon the conscience and feeling of individuals, something by which any simple Christian may try the spirit of his instructors almost as well as a learned one.

But the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour is a society, and an orderly body, as well as a spiritual condition of each several member, and, therefore, we ought not to pass over such a sermon as this, without a desire to find out what were the mutual ideas of the Apostle and the Ephesian elders upon the authority which existed in the Church, and the subordination, which was appointed by God.

To his own apostolical authority St. Paul

makes one direct and positive allusion, for he calls the whole business of his life amongst them, the ministry which he had received of the Lord Jesus.

When he thus speaks he is evidently looking inward on himself, and not on them, like a man who is thinking how anxious he must be who has such a message delivered to him by God Himself, and such an office. But what would be, meanwhile, passing in the minds of the elders?

They, doubtless, would listen with the feeling of men who said to themselves, These instructions and warnings are not a whit less to us than if they had come from the very lips of the Son of God: this is His servant, and these are the counsels which he is charged to give us. For God hath planted this authority in the Church: 'apostles first; then prophets; then pastors and teachers (1 Cor. xii. 28).

Whilst St. Paul is speaking about himself, it is like a person who has not one particle of doubt about his own authority, but who is absorbed for the moment by the contemplation of its great responsibility; and so when he passes on to these elders as persons who are to follow in his footsteps, he only insists on the solemnity of their being appointed by God but no man could be assured that he was an overseer in the Church