ternal unity of Christian consciousness; but where the reconciliation is only external, the deeply-seated 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; we will, therefore, before tracing its further spread and development in connexion with the labors of Paul, 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 polity of the Christian community at first developed itself, were, as we have before remarked, very nearly resem bling those which already existed in the Jewish church. But these forms, adopted 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 a model for its organization. This peculiar nature of the Christian community was that which distinguished the Christian church from all other religious associations, and which especially showed itself after Christianity had burst the fetters of Judaism, among the free and independent churches of the Gentile Christians. Since Christ had satisfied once for all that religious need, from the sense of which a priesthood has every where originated,—that need of mediation grounded in man's consciousness of separation from God by sin-there was no longer room or necessity for any other priesthood. 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 showing, that, since Christ has for ever accomplished that which the priesthood and sacrifices in the Old Testament prefigured, the reconciliation of God to men,-all who now appropriate by faith what he effected for mankind, stand in the same relation 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; that their whole consecrated activity is a true spiritual, priestly cultus, Christians forming a divine kingdom of priests. Rom. xii. 1; 1 Peter ii. 9. This idea of

the gospel 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.

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. The apostles even 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 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 them. selves, 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, 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, have themselves become the organs of the Divine Spirit, and can hear the voice of the living God within them; 1 Cor. xii. 1. He even 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 should be 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, should stand 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, lifted above every other principle of union among men, destined to subordinate to itself, and in this subordination to adjust and harmonize, 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 it rather purified, sanctified, and transformed them, and promoted their freer and more complete expansion. This higher unity of life was to exhibit itself in a multiplicity of individualities, animated by the 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 expressed and manifested itself in each, must be determined by the previous mental individuality of each. It is true the apostle Paul says, "But all these worketh that one and self-same 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 unconditioned. 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 afterwards 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 similar law, grounded on the natural relations of the individual qualities animated by it.

From what has just been said, we are prepared for rightly understanding the idea of charism, 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 his conversion, and animated, sanctified, and elevated by the new principle of life, was to serve 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 life,

• The "manifestation of the Spirit,” (pavépwolę toû πνεúμaτoç) peculiar to each person. 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 "to edify," (olkodoμɛiv.) 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, 10, and is in a state of continual progress towards completion. On this progressive building of the temple of

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; which Schleiermacher also acknowledges in his work on Christian Morals, p. 308. Yet we cannot perfectly agree with him when he asserts that the predominant Christian idea for everything which can be called virtue in the higher sense of the word, is xápiopa. It is true, that inasmuch, as along with the Christian disposition all the virtues pertaining to its practical exemplification in life are not given at once-inasmuch as its development is gradual, and as hence it may follow, that in the unity of the same disposition, one virtue may predominate in one person, and another in another, the name Charism may be applied to the prominent virtue. Yet this difference is found to exist: for the full soundness of the Christian life in every man, and for the good success of every labor for the kingdom of God, the cooperation of all the fundamental or cardinal virtues is required; but the same cannot be said of all the peculiar capabilities which are marked by the name of Charisms, lying outside the department of morals, although appropriated by it. Thus it cannot be laid down as a requirement, that they should all be found together in every individual. Rather is this excluded by the idea of individuality. Peculiar charisms belong to one, which do not exist in others; and this indicates the need of individuals having their deficiencies made up by others, like the collective members of one body; to the soundness of the body belongs the conjoined organism of all the charisms which the divine life of Christianity appropriates from the collective life of humanity.

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 different, according as they were the result of an original creative operation of the Holy Spirit, entering into and appropriating the course of nature, as they were something immediately worked, (though even here a hidden connexion might exist between the natural peculiarities of the individual and such a special acting of the Holy Spirit)-the charisms which in the New Tes tament, are called "powers, signs, wonders," dvváμeis, oηueta, тéρаTа or, according as they were the result of the development of natural talents under the animating influence of the Holy Spirit. The first kind of charisms belongs more to the peculiar operation of the Holy Spirit in the apostolic age, that peculiarly creative epoch of Christianity on its first appearance in the world; the second kind belongs to the operation of

God, both in general and individually, see the admirable remarks in Nitszch's Observationes ad Theologiam practicam felicius excolendam. Bonn, 1831, p. 21.

the Holy Spirit through all succeeding ages of the church, by which human nature, in its essential qualities and its whole course of development, will be progressively penetrated and transformed. It is true, therefore, that these two forms of charism, as they were manifested in the apostolic church, are clearly distinguishable; the gift, indeed, by which effects were produced in the visible world, which could not proceed from the existing powers and laws of nature, the gift of dvváμεiç, and one still more definite, that of curing diseases, the xápiopa lapáτWV, are called special gifts; 1 Cor. xii. 9, 10. But these gifts are only special as coördinate with others; we find no division of gifts into two classes, extraordinary and ordinary, supernatural and natural; for we contemplate the apostolic church from the right point of view, only when we consider the essential in all these gifts to be the supernatural principle, the divine element of life itself. Just as all Christian truths, so far as they belong to the sphere of the new higher life which the Holy Spirit alone can disclose, are called " Mysteries."

The charisms which appeared in the apostolic church, may be most naturally divided into such as relate to the furtherance of the kingdom of God or the edification of the church, by the word, and such as relate to the furtherance of the kingdom of God by other kinds of outward* agency. As to the first class, a distinction may be made, founded on the varying relation which the self-activity, developed in the several powers of the soul and their performances, bore to the inworking of the Holy Spirit; varying as the immediate force of inspiration predominated in the higher self-consciousness (the voйç oг пνεйμа), and the lower self-consciousness (the xǹ), the medium of the soul's intercourse with the outward world, was repressed; or as the communications of the Divine Spirit were received under the harmonious operation of all the powers of the soul, and were developed and employed by the coöperating sober exercise of the understanding.t

Hence the gradations in the charisms of which we have already spoken, p. 35, the charism of "speaking with tongues," of "prophesying," and of "teaching." Men who were prepared by the early cultivation of the intellect, and the aptitude for mental communication, knew how to develop and communicate in logical consecutiveness what the illumination of the Divine Spirit revealed to their higher self-consciousness. The didάokahoi are therefore teachers possessed of Christian knowledge (yvooiç) gained by means of a self-activity animated by the Holy Spirit, by the development and elaboration of truth discerned in the divine light. The prophet, on the contrary, spoke as he was carried away by the power of inspira

* Compare 1 Pet. iv. 11.

We can here make use of what Synesius in his Dion says of the relation of the Bacchic frenzy, Baкxɛia—of the "mad leap," üλμa μavikov, of the "possession by a god," Ocopopno-to the completeness of the "moderate and controlled power," μέon kaÌ ÈTIOTAτικὴ δύναμις.