CHAPTER III. THE PROPHET IN THE CHURCH.

FOR the individual and the community alike the deepest influences are expressed in life rather than words, yet it remains true that through the symbols of spoken thought life must again and again come to expression. In former days this was realised in the value set upon prophecy, if we may use the word in its broadest and highest sense, as the forth-telling, in the language of human thought, of the Divine will present behind our lives and at work amid the world.

One of the changes that strike one most in organized Christianity to-day, compared with the Church of earlier times, is the general absence of prophecy in this sense, in all but very occasional crises. The prophetic instinct is not dead indeed, but men find its highest manifestations rather outside the Church of earlier times. The leaders of the Church have been too often content to repeat the messages of the prophets of a former day rather than to seek for a living voice within their midst. Yet those who know anything of the life of the Church from within, judged not merely by this incomplete [p.34 ]expression, but seen as it affects the daily lives of countless men and women, must surely agree that in spite of all the trammels of convention and tradition the Church has still a life to pass on and a message to deliver for the needs of to-day. Those who would have it become once more the school of the prophets will surely be willing to look for a few moments at the picture which has come down to us of what place prophecy filled in the Church life of the earliest days, and how the prophet was supplanted, not killed, as some have thought, by the priest, but rather silenced by the iron grip of organization.

In the fourteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians is preserved for us a picture the meetings of an early Christian Church, full of interest to the historian.

It is clear from this description that an important part was usually taken in these gatherings by men who gave to their fellow worshippers what they believed to be God's message or revelation to them. This was something quite distinct from the recitation of a hymn or a passage of Scripture, or from the interpretation of scripture, or again from the teaching of doctrine. It is regarded by the Apostle Paul as the highest spiritual gift, one earnestly to be desired, although it was not given to all, but only to some. Of the nature of this ministry we get a glimpse in his description of the way in which an unbeliever who enters the assembly is convinced by it. [p.35] The ministry goes to his inmost self, reading the needs of his heart.

"If all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.[3] <#_edn3>

The message of prophecy is one, as it seems, which reaches the subconscious self of the incomer, who suddenly beholds the realities of his own inner life in this flood of light that flows in upon him, piercing through the veil that custom and convention had wrought about him. But the prophetic word does not merely give this fuller knowledge of his own nature to the stranger; it puts him also into touch with a higher self. He sees in a flash of revelation not only the evil in his own life, but the source of power to set it right, here in the midst of this assembly, and bowing himself before it he confesses the Divine Presence.

If we ask how this prophetic ministry is conceived as coming to those who exercise it, it would seem from the words of the Apostle that it is not by exercise of the intellect that prophecy comes, though the understanding is to be cultivated in connection with another highly prized gift, that of teaching. But the Corinthians are urged to long after the gift of prophecy most of all; they [p.36] are to prepare themselves for it, then, by prayer, the door through which our life opens out into the Divine life and is fed from it. The teacher thinks over what he knows of the needs and difficulties of his fellows, ponders over the truths that have been made clear to him in the past, searches amongst the sayings of the Lord, the teachings of the Apostles, the words of the Law or the prophets of old, for help for the present. Not so the prophet. He may, indeed, go through all this preparation of thought, but the essential preparation for his work is prayer; prayer in which he must be willing to lay aside, if need be, all these thoughts of this. The prophetic spirit reaches out to realize the condition of those to whom it is to minister, and upward in search of light and strength from its only source.

Sometimes it is not given to the prophet to reach conscious hold of Him by whom we are all upheld, and then all his ministry may be but a cry for help, with a deep sense of need. Sometimes he feels the presence very near, and as he keeps close to the Father's hand, those about him are given to feel it too.

Or, perhaps, some word of the Lord, or some thought of other days is suddenly illumined by a fresh light, and his message is to hand on the fire from the altar, that those about him may light their torches too.

The prophet is God's spokesman. He must lose thought of himself in his message. He is [p.37] translating for others and to others in the presence of the Giver of the message. He must keep in touch with those to whom he is speaking. He must remember too how easy it is for interpreters to expand and embroider upon the original, and thus to mar it. And, therefore, the prophet should keep very close to the Giver of the message, who may have given to others its fuller exposition.

One danger of the prophets of Corinth was very present to St. Paul's mind.

Some of them seem to have got so wrapt up in a sense of the Divine communion that they did not keep that control of their whole nature, which would lead them to find expression in the language of intelligence. Carried away by their feelings they gave utterance to the experience of their spirit in words broken and unintelligible, the channels of word and thought over which their brains had control seemed too small for the flood of emotion which swept out in overmastering power, so that their tongues moved and they spoke without knowing what they said. Paul knew better than any of them the hidden things of the Spirit, the groanings that cannot be uttered, the thoughts that flash upon us and cannot be caught up by our halting reason, following slowly after, the striving of the soul that no words can compass, the God-given intuitions which cannot be imprisoned in words.

But he knew too that language was given us not for the joy of expressing what we feel but as [p.38] a means of sharing our experience with others. To speak with an unknown tongue, to abandon oneself to the ecstasy of the moment, may be right for our own life, he writes, but it is useless for our fellows. We must not be content to soar up ourselves into the world of life and light, we must try to bring back into our world of sense some symbols of the truths of the world beyond, imprisoning in words which men may understand fragments of the truths which can never wholly be expressed in words.

At times the message burns so within the prophet's breast that he feels he must speak, no matter what is happening about him. Thus it seems that sometimes at Corinth two or three prophets would speak at once, and mar each other's messages. But this was to lose sight of their true place, to forget that the message was given them that others might receive it.

The prophet, he writes, is still master of his own spirit: he is not to allow his reason to lose its right control. He has to use his intelligence in deciding when he is to speak and when he must hold silence. He has not to let his conscious self be submerged in the sub-conscious, like an island beneath the waves of the surrounding sea; rather is he to gather on to its dry land the goods the waves have brought him, before he sends them forth again to other shores. In this way may the Divine message not only bring help to him but comfort to all to whom it is sent. [p.39] Thus the picture of the Church of Corinth and St. Paul's advice for its needs is one to which men may look who are seeking to-day for that true prophetic ministry which seemed to the Apostle the most important of the gifts of the Spirit to the Christian Church.

It may help us too to consider how far that gift has been present throughout the succeeding ages, and how far it has been hindered by the Church from finding its true exercise.

When next we get a glimpse of the Church at Corinth, more than a generation has passed away, and probably few of those who were members when St. Paul wrote are still alive. The majority of the church is in disagreement with its Elders or Bishops, and has deposed them from their positions; and the Bishop of Rome, Clement writes in the name of his church, in reply to some letter from the Corinthians, to urge them to be reconciled, and give once more the honour that is their due to these worthy presbyters. The first epistle of Clement is a long and beautiful letter, and enters with tact and deep concern into a discussion of the dissension that is troubling the peace of the Corinthians, but it makes no mention whatever of the place of prophecy in the Church. The word prophet does occur twice in the epistle, but only in reference to the Old Testament.

At the same time it is clear that Clement is very sensible of the importance of the position of [p.40] the bishops or presbyters, though it is not quite clear whether these are wholly distinct offices. Apparently the Church at Corinth was trying, in the spirit of Greek democracy, to dispense with its church officers. Clement tells them [4] how the Apostles went about setting up bishops and deacons amongst the first fruits of their converts in different cities; these offices had even been foreseen ages before, he notes, by the prophet Isaiah (Ix. 17). [5] <#_edn5>

It was not right, he urges, that men who had been appointed by the apostles and afterwards by other men of renown, with the consent and approval of the whole Church, who had fulfilled their duties without blame, should now be cast out of their offices.

If we turn to another group of letters, written some twelve years later by Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom at Rome, we find, again, that the only references to prophets and prophecy deal with old Testament days, but that the greatest importance is set by Ignatius upon the relations of the Church to its Bishop: "Do all of you," he bids the Church of Smyrna, [6] "follow the Bishop, as Jesus Christ the Father, and follow the College of Presbyters as the Apostles, and give heed to the deacons as God's commandment. Let no man do anything of those things that appertain to the Church apart from the Bishop. Let that Eucharist be accounted valid that is under the authority of the Bishop or of him to whomsoever he himself entrusts it. Wheresoever the Bishop appeareth there let the multitude be, even as wheresoever Christ Jesus is there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful apart from the Bishop either to baptise or to hold an Agape, but whatsoever he approves that is also well pleasing to God; that all that is done may be safe and valid." (According to present Catholic doctrine even a woman may validly baptize.)

We see at once that it would not be easy to fit into such an ordered Church as this prophets like those of the earliest Church in Corinth.

But while in most of the larger towns the churches had been developing along lines like these it would seem that at the same time there were out of the way places in which a much more primitive tradition was preserved.

We can get some idea of this from the passages in the Didache which refer to prophets and travelling apostles.

Two whole chapters of this ancient book of teaching (xi. and xiii.) are devoted to this subject, whereas only the briefest mention is made of bishops and deacons, and in these words, "Elect then for yourselves bishops and deacons, worthy of the Lord, men gentle and not money loving, true and tested, for they too themselves offer to you the service of the prophets and teachers; [p.42] "Despise them not then, for these are they who are honoured of you along with the prophets and teachers."

Thus it would seem that the bishops and deacons are chosen by the Church for its work, perhaps in default of sufficiency of prophets and teachers, to do the work which these would do, and they seem at least to need, in the writer's eyes, to be supported by an appeal which he would not think of making on behalf of the prophet and teacher whose messages carry within themselves their authority. That the true prophet stands, in his eyes, above the human ordering of the church, seems clear too, from the section which gives instructions as to the words (and very beautiful words they are too) of the eucharistic prayer (ch. x.). At the conclusion of this model prayer the writer adds: "but allow the prophets to offer thanks as much as they choose."

Warning of almost naive simplicity is given against dangers from false prophets. Apparently the temptation to emotional enthusiasm is not before the writer's mind, as it was before Paul's in writing to Corinth. The travelling evangelist, or apostle, as he is called, is to be received "as the Lord," but if he stay for as long as three days he is to be recognised as a false prophet. The readers are warned not to judge the prophet who speaks in the spirit, this being treated as the sin against the Holy Ghost.

"But not every man who speaks in the spirit [p.43] is a prophet," the writer goes on," but only if he have the ways of the Lord," thus making the character of Christ the objective standard by which prophets are judged.

"From their ways then shall the false prophet and the prophet be known, and every prophet who appoints a feast in the spirit does not eat of it, unless, indeed, he be a false prophet, and every prophet who teaches the truth, if he does not do that which he teaches, is a false prophet." The readers are warned against judging the prophet who does some strange symbolic act for the edification of the Church without bidding others to do as he does," for even thus also did the ancient prophets." "But whoso saith in the spirit Give me money, or any other things, to him ye shall not hearken; but if he speak concerning others who are in need, and bids men give, let no man judge him" (ch. xi.). The true prophet who is willing to settle amongst them is worthy of his keep, they are told, and so is the true teacher; "and so," the writer continues, "ye shall take every first- fruit of the produce of your wine-press and threshing floor, of your oxen and of your flocks, and shall give to the prophets, for they are your high priests.

"But if ye have not a prophet give to the poor; and so likewise with bread, oil and wine, with

money, clothes and all other things" (ch. xiii.).

Here we have, perhaps, the hint of a transitional stage between the early church of Corinth and the churches of Clement and Ignatius. The prophet [p.44] has the first place of honour and next to him the teacher but all churches have not their prophet, and in these bishops and deacons must act in the place of prophets and teachers, and be honoured as such, while in other churches the prophets and teachers were treated as a sort of Christian priest, and one may see how their work came to be regarded as a regular church office and gradually assimilated, in church after church to the offices customary in the larger congregations like Rome and Antioch. As time passes the place of the prophet is more and more taken by the bishop, and by the end of the second century it would seem, that, for such a bishop of the Church Catholic as Apollinaris of Hierapolis, the prophet was a memory of the distant past.

The Montanist movement in Phrygia had owed its strength to the appeal which it made to the prophetic tradition and the prophetic spirit. In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Phrygian convert Montanus had gone into prophetic ecstasies which shocked the more orderly members of the church, and a separation ensued, in which Montanus was joined by two prophetesses, Prisca and Maximilla; they continued for some time, it would seem, to appeal to those within the greater church to recognise them, for a fragment of Maximilla which is preserved to us, runs thus:

"I am chased like a wolf from the flock; I am wolf, I am utterance, spirit and power." (Eusebius v.§ 16). [p. 45]

Some, like Tertullian, listened; but the Church, as a whole, was frightened at the excesses of their enthusiasm and probably, as a result, prophecy became more than ever suspect. Irenaeus, it is true, mentions amongst the Divine gifts still given to Christians in his day, that some have the knowledge of things to come, as also visions and prophetic communications (Eus. v. § 7), but this certainly does not imply any frequent and general gift like that in the early church of Corinth.

His contemporary Alcibiades, indeed, writes a book to demonstrate the impropriety of a prophet's speaking in ecstasy, which Apollinaris abridged (Eus. v. § 17). The good bishop of Hierapolis was very earnest in his attack against the Montanists: "They will never be able to show," he writes, "that any in the Old or New Testament were thus violently agitated and carried away in spirit. Neither will they be able to boast that Agabus or Judas or Silas or the daughters of Phillip or Ammia, in Philadelphia, or Quadratus or others, that do not belong to them, ever acted in this way." It is very significant that the latest examples of eminent prophets in the Church here named, are Quadratus and Ammia. Ammia appears to be unknown to Eusebius, who alludes to her in this chapter as "one Ammia," but Quadratus he has mentioned in a previous book as a prophet contemporary with Ignatius, in these words: "Of those that flourished in these times Quadratus is said to have been distinguished for his prophetical gifts. There [p.46] were many others also noted in these times who held the first rank in the apostolic succession." (iii. § 37); whether this Quadratus is to be identified with the philosopher who wrote an apology for Christianity to Hadrian (iv.§ 3) is uncertain.

It seems from the words of Apollinaris, which Eusebius goes on to quote (v. § 17), that the Montanists claimed that their prophets and prophetesses were the successors of Ammia and Quadratus, but Maximilla had now been dead for some years, and the bishop challenges his opponents to point to any living prophet who had succeeded her: "And if you have no succession of prophets then," he urges, "you must give up your claim to represent the Christian Church. (For the apostle shows that the gift of prophecy shall be in all the church until the coming of the Lord)." What would have been the bishop's answer if the Montanists had turned on him with the demand that he, too, should produce his living prophets within the pale of the great church? In view of what he has told us, may we not believe that his answer would be somewhat on this wise: "The gift of prophecy has never been removed from the church; though it may be dormant as far as such prophecies as those of Quadratus are concerned, it may be called forth again at any time by the Divine will, and will be recognised at once by the bishops, who are the divinely appointed authorities, without whose approval no true prophet will act. And if there be no such prophets [p.47] now, in any church, the bishop takes their place, expounding as is fit the will of the Lord to the people, and guided himself by the Holy Spirit"? How are we to explain this remarkable change that we have thus witnessed, and was it the necessary and right development of the Church which led to it?

To those who know how, in the seventeenth century, another experiment was begun, which after nearly nine generations, is not yet ended, in the holding together of religious communities of which an essential feature has always been the freedom of prophesying, it may, at first sight, seem easy to reply that the change was no necessary one.

One would not say that they were wrong, for who can say what might not have been, if men had only been faithful to their highest ideals, and been willing always to take the rough and narrow way that leads straight up to the heavenly city? But we shall, perhaps judge more fairly if we think how very much greater were the difficulties that beset the Christian organisms of the first and second centuries, than those, great as they were, with which George Fox had to grapple. He had, it is true, to deal with companies of men and women, amongst whom were enthusiasts or individualistic quietists, who would brook no discipline, and many of them were poor and very ignorant folk; but how different in many cases was a church of the first century. Imagine a [p.48] community of varying nationalities, containing a number of slaves, many of them illiterate people, others degraded by their past life to the lowest depths; men and women rescued from lives of terrible evil and still under constant temptation to fall back; a number of Christian Jews with strange oriental customs and traditions, half- familiar only with the language and civilisation of their adopted town; a few men, possibly, of higher social position and greater education, but the majority only able to communicate with each other by a lingua franca of bad Greek, which was the native tongue only of a small minority. One can see what a babel of confusion might easily arise amongst such a community, especially when we remember that many had but an imperfect knowledge of Christ and His teaching, and very few churches possessed all the works which we have in our New Testament.

Moreover, a great change had come from the days of Paul's letter to the Corinthians. That little church was then still living in the days when the Christians as such were tolerated by the law. Gallio's decision had removed the church at Corinth from any need to observe secrecy.

But after two generations the position had wholly changed, and to be a Christian was a penal offence which, if adhered to, was punishable with death. This necessarily involved a need for greater precaution, for more order and wise management in the assembling of the Church. [p.49] And in the early days when the churches lived in constant expectation of the immediate end of the age and the outward coming of Christ to set up His Kingdom, they would naturally lay little stress on church order; the struggle of the church militant was but to last a brief time more; there was no need for much organisation, or for any other connection between one church and another than the friendly ties of love. One church might have its prophets and teachers, another only presbyters or a bishop and deacons; others of larger size and needs might have ail these officers together with deaconesses and widows. But no one was anxious about such differences. Travelling apostles and evangelists formed living links of love betwixt church and church, and occasionally, individuals and churches sent letters to each other. No other bond was needed.

But when it became slowly more evident that the Church might yet have to continue long years at work in the world before the consummation came, and when it seemed to the leaders that they had to fight a life and death struggle, on the one hand against the vast force of the world empire of Rome, whenever a persecuting edict might be enforced, and on the other against a growing crowd of strange errors, which seemed to them to be sent by the Devil to delude the hearts of the faithful, and draw them away from the Gospel of Christ; can we wonder that they did their best to draw the scattered communities of [p.50] Christians to a sense of unity under a like organization, adapted for a strenuous fight to preserve the good order of the Church from being shattered by persecutions from without or broken up and corrupted by false or mistaken brethren from within. And often, too, especially under the fire of persecution, something of the true prophetic spirit showed itself in the bishops themselves, as they admonished their fellow believers to be faithful even unto death, and beheld, amidst the shadow of death, visions of the deep things of God. Very true is this of Ignatius, whose letters breathe forth again and again the fiery faith and zeal of the true prophet, with flashes now and then of great and Christlike thoughts that still shine like gems amid the dust of pious exposition and mistaken exegesis that even first century Christian literature shares as a characteristic with our own. In the letter which he wrote to his friend Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, one sees how intensely he felt the importance of a bishop's work for the life of the Church, how great the need was for gifted and holy men to fill such posts and what true help such men were able to give to the struggling communities for whom they lived and whom they served. Ignatius, for all his exaltation of the bishop's office, is full of humanity, feeling his own unworthiness and regarding himself as the servant of his church. As we hear him urging upon Polycarp to do his best to save all his flock, to put up with them all, even as Christ bears with [p.51] him, to love not just the good disciples but rather more especially the worse, and to conquer them by gentleness, to stand like a rock against false teaching, to care for the widows and not to overlook the slaves, we feel indeed how high the task of such a bishop was; and with both Ignatius and Polycarp, as with countless of their less illustrious fellows, it was a task crowned by martyrdom.

But if history shows us how valuable was the work done under the system of the catholic hierarchy to preserve a living Christianity across the centuries, it also bears witness to the way in which in succeeding ages the prophetic spirit re-asserted itself. A long series of heresies from that of the Montanists in the second century to that of the Fraticelli in the fourteenth, or of the Lollards and Hussites in the fifteenth, up to the days of the Reformation and the Anabaptist prophets of Munster, give us evidence of the way in which that spirit meets the profound need of humanity and proves the outcome of deep stirring of soul. But inside the Church itself we shall find again that the spirit of prophecy cannot be banished, just because there always was true life there. Yet the prophetic gift does not go along the orthodox channels of the hierarchy, but is continually bursting out in new and unexpected quarters, so that often the authorities of the Church are in a strait whether they are dealing with a saint or a heretic. To those outside the Church, the canon sometimes seems strange enough which [p.52] rules into one class St. Theresa, into the other Madame Guyon, which, after burning Savonarola was almost on the point of canonising him, which deposed and exiled John of Parma, and then beatified him. The prophetic spirit surely often found its outlet in the early ages amongst the monks of the desert, witness for instance such a saint as Telemachus, who brought to an end the gladiatorial shows at Rome; and in later times first in the Benedictine and the subsequent monastic orders, and then, very notably, in the Franciscan brotherhood, it found freer outlets than the church of the day could provide, while the lives of countless saints bear witness to some touches at least of the spirit of the prophet re-asserting itself in spite of the trammels of the organization of the church. If the gift of prophecy were to be connected with a divinely ordered hierarchy we might naturally look for it most of all in the popes. Yet in so many centuries comparatively few popes have been canonised as saints, and few amongst these are conspicuous as showing forth this gift in the way in which we see it in such a simple woman as Catherine of Siena, or in plain men like Giles of Perugia.

In our own day, a devout catholic like Fogazzaro has pictured for us the way in which a true prophet may arise within the bosom of the Church, only to meet with obstacles from the authorities, and finally with persecution ending almost in martyrdom. Yet that book, which, in spite of [p.53] Papal prohibition, has found such warm support and awakened such eager interest in Catholic Italy, bears witness to the profound longing (which many in England surely share) that there is within the orthodox Church for a deep spiritual ministry, which the recognised authorities have not always supplied, for a revelation of new truth to meet the needs of our day, for a fresh unfolding of the meaning of the gospel of Christ, which shall appeal once more with apostolic power to the hearts of men.

Two centuries ago the early Quakers felt that they had known such an experience and tried to hand it on to others. Need we wonder if it should appear that the Society of Friends to-day has inherited their traditions but not their spirit? For, indeed, the prophetic spirit can never be inherited, or passed on from man to man by any mechanical arrangement. It must come anew from generation to generation, often after the hardest travail of soul, through fresh strivings, as the result of other needs; but we can, at least, see that our ordering, whether of the Church's life or our own, is such as not to hinder its coming but to prepare us for it.

And not the least of such a heritage has been a form of worship and a view of life which may still give not only to a little community but to a wider world a school of the prophets.

When we see the weak side of quietism, and mistakes of an earlier day of mystics (as now we [p.54] are so apt to do), let us not forget that, amidst the quietist Quakerism of the eighteenth century, there grew up and flowered one of the most beautiful products not only of Quaker but of Christian training; to many of us to-day, John Woolman speaks as do few others with the power of a true prophet. Yet too often in the past the Society of Friends has been content with a succession of minor prophets, whose message was only to a little congregation. Without was a multitude who had no priests or shepherds, and nations needing a guide. To-day, if we cannot make teachers like Woolman, at least we can prepare the way for their coming.

Prophecy is born of prayer, supported by it, not the prayer of words, but that attitude of soul, of will, of which the most beautiful of our collects are the momentary reflections. In this spirit then, feeling our need and our fellows', let us long for more light to come into our lives. Let us remember that we have not just to sit down contentedly in the dark and wait for God's light.

If we try to listen to the voice of the prophet teachers of the past whose message still comes home to us, and to picture the thoughts of some disciple of theirs to-day, might we not frame them thus?

"If we cannot scatter the clouds, we can at least clean our windows and open our doors. Every faculty of our nature is God's gift and to be used in His service, and so we are not to think of prophecy [p.55] as coming with the atrophy of the intellect; with every power of our minds we are called to serve God and seek truth, which is His revelation. To pray, ' Thy will be done ' should be, as Fogazzaro has told us, no attitude of passive submission, but a call to our whole nature to strive to the utmost for the cause of God.

"Then we must remember that the more truly we are at one with Christ, the more we shall feel ourselves fundamentally united with all our fellows. We shall feel their wrongs and sins as ours, and their needs too, and as we come to feel this, we shall realise more and more that in every act and word and thought we are not our own.

"Every evil desire overcome is a victory for our brothers, and not merely for ourselves. Our lives are intertwined one with another, and constantly, unseen and unknown to ourselves and each other, we influence one another for evil or for good. The prophet is nothing else than a true priest, not to one or two, but to a multitude.

"We are all called to be priests, and, if God calls us to be prophets, in learning to be truly priests, we shall unconsciously be learning too in the prophets' school.

"The priest must have a two-fold vision, of the truth above him and of the brother beside him who has need of the truth. The more he can see of either, the more he can be brought into communication with his fellows, and with the truth, the more priestly will his service be. [p.56] "Let us be faithful in word and deed to the highest that we know, and higher things shall be revealed unto us. Let us be patient with the worst and those who naturally repel us. Far more repulsive has been the evil in our own thoughts in the eyes of the holy angels. Let us not be uplifted because others have been helped through us; Truth is not ours, but God's.

"Let us not be discouraged if our work seem fruitless; never despair of the truth. Have faith in the truth that has been revealed to you, for some day others too shall see it.

"Have faith in the Truth that is yet unknown; others perhaps have already caught some glimpse of it.

"Blessed is the man in whose heart there is built an altar with the inscription written: ' To the unknown Truth '; of such men are prophets made.

"Truth is beautiful in the mouth of a friend, but most divine when it is seen in the heart of an opponent. The devil had delight to seek for faults in Job; let us seek rather to see, with Christ, the good in the heart of the publican."

Those of us who are striving after this ideal should be the greatest of sacerdotalists; our faith and worship are built up upon belief in the essential priesthood of every human soul. Let us not forget then, that if all men have some vision of God, all may teach us something of Him. And since heavenly truth comes to no man naked, but clad in changing robes, let us strive in our [p.57] search for truth, alike in speaking and in listening, to remember that the garment of words changes and may mean one thing to us and another to our fellows. Let us get beneath words and forms to the life-giving spirit, and as we are to be the greatest sacerdotalists let us be the most thorough- going of ritualists too, to whom there are symbols and lessons of the Divine Life, not only in the beautiful liturgies of the altar, but in all the mysteries of nature and the sacraments with which life is full.

For surely there are not merely two or seven sacraments, but seventy times seven, for him whose heart seeks ever fellowship with his brothers and with the Father above him, who would be loved in them, and served by their service. The whole world is God's and full of His light; our lives are His and they are our fellows. And since in every heart of man is some well through which the God-given waters of life may flow, we may go forth in faith to our work; as we serve our neighbours and search for truth, in the spirit of followers of Christ Jesus, seeking that our own wells may be made wider and deeper, and that their springs may be shared more fully by others, God will make priests of all of us, and, if He will it, prophets too. [p.58]