ceeds from an internal unity of Christian consciousness; but where the reconciliation is only external, the deeplyseated differences, though for a brief period repressed, will soon break out afresh. But what is of the greatest importance, we here behold the seal of true catholicism publicly exhibited by the apostles, and the genuine apostolic church. The existence of the genuine catholic church, which so deeply-seated a division threatened to destroy, was thereby secured.

We are now arrived at a point of time in which the Gentile church assumed a peculiar and independent form; but before we trace its farther spread and development in connection with the labours of Paul, let us first glance at the constitution of the church in this new form of Christian fellowship.

CHAPTER V.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH, AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL USAGES OF THE GENTILE CHRISTIANS.

THE forms under which the constitution of the Christian community at first developed itself, were, as we have before remarked, most nearly resembling those which already existed in the Jewish church. But these forms, after their adoption by Jewish Christians, would not have been transferred to the Gentile churches, if they had not so closely corresponded to the nature of the Christian community as to furnish it with a model for its organization. This peculiar nature of the Christian community distinguished the Christian church from all other religious associations, and after Christianity had burst the fetters of Judaism, shewed itself among the free and self-subsistent churches of the Gentile Christians. Since Christ satisfied once for all that religious want, from the sense of which a priesthood has every where originated,--since he satisfied the sense of the

need of mediation and reconciliation, so deeply seated in the consciousness of the separation from God by sin, there was no longer room or necessity for any other mediation. If, in the apostolic epistles, the Old Testament ideas of a priesthood, a priestly cultus and sacrifices are applied to the new economy, it is only with the design of shewing, that, since Christ has for ever accomplished that which the priesthood and sacrifices in the Old Testament prefigured,-all who now appropriate by faith what he effected for mankind, stand in the same relation with one another to God, without needing any other mediation, that they are all by communion with Christ dedicated and consecrated to God, and are called to present their whole lives to God as an acceptable, spiritual thank-offering, and thus their whole consecrated activity is a true spiritual, priestly cultus, Christians forming a divine kingdom of priests. Rom. xii. 1; 1 Pet. ii. 9. This idea of the general priesthood of all Christians, proceeding from the consciousness of redemption, and grounded alone in that, is partly stated and developed in express terms, and partly presupposed in the epithets, images, and comparisons, applied to the Christian life.

The

As all believers were conscious of an equal relation to Christ as their Redeemer, and of a common participation of communion with God obtained through him; so on this consciousness, an equal relation of believers to one another was grounded, which utterly precluded any relation like that found in other forms of religion, subsisting between a priestly caste and a people of whom they were the mediators and spiritual guides. apostles themselves were very far from placing themselves in a relation to believers which bore any resemblance to a mediating priesthood; in this respect they always placed themselves on a footing of equality. If Paul assured the church of his intercessory prayers for them, he in return requested their prayers for himself. There were accordingly no such persons in the Christian church, who, like the priests of antiquity, claimed the possession of an esoteric doctrine, while they kept the people in a state of spiritual pupillage and dependence

on themselves, as their sole guides and instructors in religious matters. Such a relation would have been inconsistent with the consciousness of an equal dependence on Christ, and an equal relation to him as participating in the same spiritual life. The first Pentecost had given evidence, that a consciousness of the higher life proceeding from communion with Christ filled all believers, and similar effects were produced at every season of Christian awakening which preceded the formation of a church. The apostle Paul, in the 4th chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, points out as a common feature of Judaism and Heathenism in this respect, the condition of pupillage, of bondage to outward ordinances. He represents this bondage and pupillage as taken away by the consciousness of redemption, and that the same spirit ought to be in all Christians. He contrasts the heathen who blindly followed their priests, and gave themselves up to all their arts of deception, with true Christians, who, by faith in the Redeemer, became the organs of the Divine Spirit, and could hear the voice of the living God within them; 1 Cor. xii. 1. He thought that he should assume too much to himself, if, in relation to a church already grounded in spiritual things, he represented himself only as giving; for in this respect there was only one general giver, the Saviour himself, as the source of all life in the church, while all others, as members of the spiritual body animated by him the Head, stood to each other in the mutual relation of givers and receivers. Hence it was, that, after he had written to the Romans that he longed to come to them in order to impart some spiritual gift for their establishment, he added, lest he should seem to arrogate too much to himself, "that is, that I may be comforted, together with you, by the mutual faith both of you and me;" Rom. i. 12.

Christianity, on the one hand, by the Holy Spirit as the common higher principle of life, gave to the church a unity, more sublime than any other principle of union among men, destined to subordinate to itself, and in this subordination to level, all the varieties founded in the development of human nature. But, on the other hand,

mental peculiarities were not annihilated by this divine life; since, in all cases, it followed the laws of the natural development of man, but only purified, sanctified, and transformed them, and promoted their freer and more complete expansion. The higher unity of life exhibited itself in a multiplicity of individualities, animated by the same spirit, and forming reciprocal complements to each other as parts of one vast whole in the kingdom of God. Consequently, the manner in which this divine life manifested its efficiency in each, was determined by the previous mental individuality of each. The apostle Paul says, indeed, "But all these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will, 1 Cor. xii. 11; but it by no means follows, that he supposes an operation of the Divine Spirit totally unconditional. In this passage, he is simply opposing an arbitrary human valuation, which would attribute a worth to only certain gifts of grace, and refused to acknowledge the manifoldness in their distribution. The analogy to the members of the human body, of which the apostle avails himself, betokens the not arbitrary but regulated development of the new creation in a sanctified natural order; for it is evident from this analogy, that as, among the members of the human body, each has its determinate place assigned by nature, and its appropriate function, so also the divine life, in its development, follows a simi lar law, grounded on the natural relations of the individualities animated by it. From what has just been said, we are prepared for rightly understanding the idea of charisma, so very important for the history of the development of the Christian life, and of the constitution of the Christian church in the first ages. In the apostolic age, it denoted nothing else than the predominant capability of an individual in which the power and operation of the Holy Spirit that animated him was revealed ; * whether this capability appeared as something communicated in an immediate manner by the Holy Spirit, or whether it was already existing in the individual before

† The φανέρωσις τοῦ πνεύματος peculiar to each person.

his conversion, which, animated, sanctified, and raised by the new principle of life, would contribute to one common and supreme object, the inward and outward development of the kingdom of God, or the church of Christ.* That which is the soul of the whole Christian's life, and forms its inward unity, the faith working by love, can never appear as a particular charism; for as this it is which forms the essence of the whole Christian disposition, so it is this which must govern all the particular Christian capabilities; and it is because they are all regulated by this common principle of the Christian disposition, that the particular capabilities become charisms; 1 Cor. xiii.

That by which the developed natural endowment becomes a charism, and which is common to all, is always something elevated above the common course of nature, something divine. But the forms of manifestation in which this higher principle exhibited itself, were marked by a diversity, according as it was the result of an original creative operation of the Holy Spirit, making use of the course of nature, and evincing its presence by some immediate effect, (though even here a hidden connection might exist between the natural peculiarities of the individual and such a special acting of the Holy Spirit); these are charisms which, in the New Testament, are called δυναμεις, σημεῖα, τερατα ; or the manifestations might be deduced from the development of natural talents un

* The word most generally used, whereby (since Paul has used it in this sense) is signified, all that concerns the internal advancement of the kingdom of God-whether in reference to the church in general, or to individuals-is oxodoμe. This use of the word arises from the practice of comparing the Christian life of the whole church, and its individual members, to a building, a temple of God which is built on the foundation on which this building necessarily rests, 1 Cor. iii. 9 and 10, and is in a state of continual progress towards completion. On this progressive building of the temple of God, both in general and individually, see the admirable remarks in Nitzch's Observationes ad theologiam practicam felicius excolendam. Bonn, 1831, p. 24.