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ART. IV.—1. An Earnest Ministry the Want of the Times. By John Angell James. 4th Edition.

2. The Church in Earnest. By the same Author.

[London: Hamilton and Co. WHEN Mr. Ward, of Oxford notoriety, published his Ideal of a Christian Church,' he professed to be in anxious search after the reality, which, happily for himself, he soon after discovered. But his was much more of a human ideal than of a divine, and it satisfied itself with a human reality. Taken obviously, in the first instance, not from a Divine source, but from the Roman model of the middle ages, it very readily adjusted itself to the degenerate reality, as it exists at the present day in popery. But those who have more reverence for the Divine ideal than for any human or historic representation of it which has ever been presented to the world, cannot fail to mark, or cease to deplore, the interested delusion which was and is practised, by attempting to hold up this ideal, or its alleged reality, as the true church which the Son of God redeemed, and over which he continues to rule.

The Divine idea of the church, or of a single church, for it admits of indefinite plurality, as we find it developed, not in the fifth century, but in the first, and within the New Testament, (and it is developed there adequately for all purposes of constituting, governing, and extending,) has been strangely metamorphosed by passing through human brains. The Divine constitution is obviously that of a voluntary society, consisting of a ministry in and with a church, to which it stands in a relation of office divinely appointed, but personally elective. The ministry is within and for the church: the church is left to complete itself by the ministry. Though distinct yet one; correlative, co-ordinate, and corporate; but like the human individuality, susceptible of unlimited multiplication for the purpose of perpetual and boundless extension, without self-willed division, or sinful alienation, but under the obligation of fraternity and mutual recognition of equality, till the whole corporation, viewed as a totality or universality of identical corporations, shall become commensurate with the globe and with human nature; after which is to follow the realization of the idea of visible and perfect unity, always kept in view and desiderated by each distinct church, but to be attained in perfection only in the church of the heavens, when these countless circles will ultimately melt into one.

Most of the churches of history have exhibited some infraction of the Divine model, something taken away, or added. Instability, change, and decay, have been the consequence.

The Divine model was presumed to be imperfect. It was too simple for statesmen and philosophers. It must be made more imposing, elaborate, dignified. The lily must be painted, the rose must be perfumed. Pleas of time, place, and circumstance, soon induced reasons for additions and alterations which convinced the ambitious and satisfied the interested. The first great and still enduring alteration was borrowed from heathenism. The state had always regulated and conserved the religion of its people, and why should it not do the same for Christianity? The answer ought to have risen spontaneously from every Christian heart,-because our religion neither needs nor admits your regulation and conservation. It undertakes these for itself, and if you force your services upon us, you will paganize and corrupt our religion. But the idea of incorporating the human with the Divine did not startle the newly Christianized heathens by its incongruity and peril. It originated, moreover, with the imperial and aristocratic, and to say the best and most charitable thing we can, was adopted in the hasty zeal of new converts, and perhaps at the suggestion of a prudent statepolicy, which could devise no other and no better expedient for harmonizing the discordant principles of Christianity and heathenism.

They accordingly undertook the perilous and presumptuous task of making the sovereignty of Jesus Christ quadrate with the sovereignty of the emperor over all estates and conditions of men. They essayed to establish the Christian church under the state, and in dependence upon it; when it had previously established itself in a Divine independence, without the state and against it. Many important and essential alterations in the relation of the ministry to the church were the consequence. These were too readily submitted to by the ministry, under the temptation of greater stability and augmented authority. They exchanged dependence on the church for slavery to the state. But the chain was a golden one, and it was at any rate worn willingly and gracefully. The innovations and corruptions then commenced, speedily grew into frightful deformities and disgusting monstrosities, which have received from modern churchmen the fashionable and philosophic cognomen of developments. But they have thoroughly defeated the design, and marred the utility, both of the church and its ministry. Indeed, the national churches, as they appear in history, and as they show themselves in modern practice, exhibit a ministry created, sustained, and authorized by the state, or else a ministry self-creating, and creating even the church. In both cases the spiritual body of Christ is annihilated for all purposes of self-government, and its authority is either wholly absorbed by

the clergy, or divided between them and the civil power. The word church, which ought to convey the idea of a Christian brotherhood baving its proper officers, signifies with such only the clergy. The Divine idea of the Christian corporation is excluded, and the only government acknowledged, or practised, is derived either from the ministry, or civil legislation. This they call ecclesiastical law, church law, or connexional law; but it is not found in the Divine statute book, and is often opposed to it. The enormous abuses and shameful corruptions sanctified, in the name of Christianity, by these innovations upon the simple and beautiful type of scripture, have provoked some men to run into the opposite extreme, and to absorb the idea of the ministry in that of the church. Hence the systems which have constituted churches without a ministry, or one wholly self-prompted and self-appointed, as among the Plymouth brethren, and others of earlier days. It is true, they have endeavoured to preserve the idea of a ministry as well as of a church; but it has been a ministry as independent of the Christian people, as the clergy of Rome, or of England. The responsibility of its election, authorization, and maintenance, has been thrown off the church as such, on the Holy Spirit, while the pastoral or episcopal office has been abolished, in deference to those inward selfpromptings which are ascribed to direct inspiration, but which, if subjected to no collective judgment of spiritual men, open the door to all sorts of confusion and fanaticism, as well as to spiritual gifts.

These may be extreme cases-a ministry without a church, and a church without a ministry. The truth lies somewhere between them, as well as many minor deviations cognate respectively to the one or the other. All these deviations assimilate themselves both in their nature and their effects to the false type, after which they are formed. The measure of their departure from the infallible standing point is always indicated by the corruption both of the church and of the ministry.

It is not within our present purpose to go further into these deviations. We prefer to suggest, that there is a Divine ideal both of a church and a ministry, and of their happy reciprocity. Their mutual influence and relationship, dependence and independence, are settled by authority that leaves no room for human intervention. The Divine idea of both, because it is perfect, and of universal application, ought to be deeply pondered, apart from all historical exemplifications. At any rate, let not the fair conception give place to the more imposing schemes of statesmen or churchmen, who enforce them by pleas of expediency and stability. Let not the Divine model be discredited, under the pretext of altered circumstances or of

utopian impracticability. If it makes no parade of theory, and presents itself in no systematic form, yet it secures the perfection of both, in being pre-eminently practical and divinely simple. Let not the Christian brotherhood content itself with confessing and deploring the general corruptions and deviations which may be discovered in all churches, historic and existing; neither let it sink into hopeless despondency, under the difficulties that prevent its realization of the true and perfect ideal; but let it anxiously and devoutly keep this type in view, and hopefully place itself in the path of return; and though we cannot augur the discovery of a perfect church on earth, we may promise a far happier, holier, and more fruitful state of all churches than has hitherto been witnessed. The ideal of a church, like that of each Christian, should be perfection. The Divine standard, in no case, could be supposed to fall below it. Progression towards such a standard, in the church as well as in the individual, is, we believe, the utmost that ought to be professed, at least in the present life, and before the millennium. What may take place then, it is, at any rate, not so urgent to inquire, as how we may help both the church and the ministry forward in the line of usefulness and holiness.

Mr. James, in the two treatises at the head of this article, has treated with his usual practical tact, first the ministry and then the church. He has, wisely for usefulness, eschewed all controversy about the relations of office and systems of government. Christian ministers of all denominations may read, and probably will read, approvingly and advantageously, his Earnest Ministry. It calls them to their sacred duties in so generous, affectionate, and energetic a spirit, that every right-hearted mau, and every man who wishes to be so, will peruse the book with refreshment, and lay it down with holy and invigorating aspirations. Its characteristic is that of the man, and the explanation of his own success. The want of earnestness is assumed to be the great defect, and its attainment the desidera. tum of the times. First he reviews the apostolic ministry. From this he takes the idea of that pre-eminent earnestness by which it was characterized, both as to matter and manner. Having presented various specimens of what he understands by earnestness, he proceeds to exemplify it in reference to the delivery of sermons, and the discharge of other duties involved in the pastorate, which he again illustrates by examples. These he follows up by Motives to Earnestness-Means of Obtaining an Earnest Ministry-and concludes by a chapter on The Necessity of Divine Influence for an Efficient Ministry.' One citation from the chapter on Motives to Earnestness' will satisfy our readers on the sterling excellence of the work. It is all we

can admit in our limited space; but it will commend the book as admirably adapted to its object :

When Pilate proposed to the illustrious prisoner at his bar the question, what is truth? he placed before him the most momentous subject which can engage the attention of a rational creature: and if Christ refused to give an answer, his silence is to be accounted for by the captious or trifling spirit of the querist, and not by any supposed insignificance of the question, since truth is the most valuable thing in the universe, next to holiness; and it is truth that is the theme of our ministry, even that which by way of eminence and distinction is called the truth. Take any branch of general science, be it what it might, and however valuable and important it may be considered, its most enthusiastic student and admirer cannot claim for it par excellence, that supremacy which is implied in the definite article, the truth. Who shall adjust the claims of this distinction, between the various sciences of natural and moral truth, and declare which is the rightful possessor of the throne, against the false pretensions of usurpers? Who? The God of truth himself; and he has done it, and placing the Bible on the seat of majesty in the temple of truth, has called upon all systems of philosophy whatever, to fall down and do it homage. This is our subject: eternal, immutable truth. Truth given pure from its divine source, and given with the evidence and impress of its own omniscient author. Oh, what are the loftiest and noblest of the sciences: chemistry, with its beautiful combinations and affinities; or astronomy, with its astounding numbers, magnitudes, distances, and revolutions of worlds; or geology, with its marvellous and incalculable date of by-gone millions of ages-to the truths of revelation? What is dead, inert matter, with its laws of materiality however diversified, classified, or combined,-compared with the world of mind, of souls, of immateriality and immortality, and with the laws of moral truth by which they are regulated? What is nature to the God of nature? What the heavens and the earth, to the glorious mind that looks out upon them through the organ of vision, as from a window that commands the grand and boundless prospect? What the fleeting term of man's existence upon earth, with its little cycles of care, and sorrow, and labour, compared with the eternal ages through which the soul holds on her course of deathless existence? The works of creation are a dim and twilight manifestation of God's nature, compared with the grandeur and more perfect medium of redemption. The person of the Lord Jesus Christ is itself a wonder and a mystery, which will shine all other displays of deity into darkness: this is the shekinah in the holy of holies of the temple of God's creation, towards which, as they bend over the mercy seat of his work of redemption, all the orders of created spirits, from the most distant parts of the universe, reverently turn and do homage to the great God our Saviour. This, this is our theme, the truth of God, and concerning him; the truth of an incarnate deity; the truth of man's redemption by the cross; the truth of the moral law, the eternal standard of rectitude, the tree of knowledge of good and evil; the truth of the gospel, as the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God, the truth of im