anger is not so much zeal on your account, as discomposure on his own. You have shaken, 'what such minds chiefly seek, his comfortable assurance in Religion.

The development of the religious nature of Man, even under Christianity, though in many quarters it has disguised and refined, has not yet removed this substitution of the Priest for the Religion of the spirit and the truth, for the worship and consecration of the individual soul. The Religions of antiquity, including the Jewish, recognized the priesthood of peculiar individuals; they established and consecrated this elementary tendency to approach God by proxies and mediators, for that which there was nothing in their own spirit to destroy, they necessarily sanctioned. Both Paganism and Judaism, at least in its later forms, appointed priests, men set apart for the performance of holy offices, who had an access to God denied to the people,who offered sacrifices on especial altars, which would not be accepted from profaner places or less holy hands, who had a power of calling down a blessing from above and of adjusting the relations of Heaven and Earth, which it would be the last impiety, only to be expiated by death, for any unanointed man to assume. And it is a remarkable evidence of how the unenlightened mind clings to the idea of a material consecration, and of mechanical conveyances, that the priest who presented the offering of the people, and drew down the answering blessing from on high, was so appropriated to dead things that never change, that he was not the person

employed even to teach morality, was not looked to as the national Instructor, was not in any way concerned with the higher agencies of intellectual civilization, was not expected to be, indeed was not permitted to be, one of the Lights of the age. Under Paganism this office belonged to the Philosophers, Poets, Orators, and Statesmen; - under Judaism it formed the peculiar function of the ProphThe Priest uttered no burning word, spoke no vivifying truth,- darted no light direct from God into the selfish heart of the world, - rebuked no oppression,- broke by moral force no oppressor's chain; - but there he stood at his altar, a dead symbol, an official personage, not acting on man but interceding with God, — a mechanical provision that certain religious formulas, in which the nation might be deeply concerned, should not be neglected. The Priest received no inspiration in his own heart; he was holy in no higher sense than one of the vessels of the temple was holy; he was professionally sacred, officially pious, set apart, not to receive by communion with God a divine life into his own sóul, and thence breathe it out to others, but what is wholly a different matter, and not a spiritual but a cabalistic function, to communicate an outward consecration. I do not recollect, either in Heathen or in Jewish history, one single instance in which a Priest was one of the higher agents of God for the civilization of man. Moses, not Aaron, was the Lawgiver and Statesman; and Moses, not Aaron, understood and breathed forth the mind of God. The one received an inspiration: the other only im

parted a corsecration. Where is it on record that a priest ever purified the national worship, softened the national superstitions,- nay, even rebuked the national sins, or, by his honest reading of the writing on the wall, made tyrants tremble? I profess not to know: for when the ministers of Christ have done these things, as their Master did, they were, like Luther, in arms against the sacerdotal principle; and let it be recollected that Christianity knows no hierarchy, and that the Prophet, not the priest, is the successor of the Apostles. Looking even to the priesthood of Judaism, it is evident that God made no account of these official persons, nor expected true service from them. They were the conservative symbols of the existing present, not the reforming influences of the diviner Future; and, like all men used for official purposes, in which the free heart has no place and the intellect no exercise, they were timid, slavish, timeserving. It was a Priest who yielded and made the golden calf at the bidding of the people,—and no priest, but a Prophet, who dashed down the Tables of Stone in his burst of righteous sorrow, and summoned both priest and people to a severe account. In that noble legacy to all generations, the Bible, whose effectual inspiration the universal heart acknowledges, the Priest has left us not one word of immortal power. He whose devotion still flows through the world, like a refreshing stream, was no priest, but a man, who, though not faultless nor unstained by great sins, was yet, in the natural movements of his free spirit, in his self-kindled penitence, piety, and love, after God's own heart.

Isaiah, who evangelized Judaism, was no priest. Daniel, no unworthy image of Christ in the judgment-hall, was no official formalist, but one who communed with God, and spoke out the divine monitions of the living oracle. In the light of these facts, that Judaism tolerated an official priesthood at all, can only be explained on the principle, that Revelation itself has an historical development,that it was not intended to teach absolute Truth, but to apply such aids to the mind, as, without destroying its own freedom, might introduce more spiritual ideas, and stimulate the unfolding of its own powers. It is the great peculiarity of Christianity, as a Religion, that it has abolished the priest,

that it teaches the priesthood of the soul, and that to recognize an official mediator is to go back to Paganism or Levitical Judaism, and annul the distinctions of the Gospel. "The true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth: and the Father seeketh such to worship him." "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?" "If any man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." It is remarkable that the word which describes the priests of the Pagan and Jewish religions is never once applied in any part of the New Testament to the Apostles or ministers of Christ. He who knew what was in man recognized in every mind a divine element capable of entering into immediate communication with the spirit of God. He removed the barriers of materialism, of fear, and su

perstition, and outward devotions, and into the pure and seeking heart introduced a living sense of the intimate presence of God. Christianity is the only Religion the world has ever known, that has appointed no Altar, no Priest, no Sacrifice. Its altar is the humble and filial heart; its sacrifices are the passions; its oblations, the desires of a pure, merciful spirit; and its priest, the soul that devoutly communes with God. This is a remarkable fact, running counter, as it does, to the strongest tendencies of unspiritual man, to the still unsubdued disposition to repose upon symbols, and approach God through ecclesiastical proxies, it augments the love and veneration with which we place ourselves at the feet of our divine Messiah.

and

The lower tendencies of human nature, however, have withstood the Gospel, and taken their own course, and still a Priesthood makes pretensions to be indispensable mediators to the Church of God. Nor would it be just to say, that these superstitions originate in the designing policy of a few hierarchs : they have their roots in human nature; they are accommodated to the indolence, the weakness, the selfish fears, and unspiritual distrusts of man. It is altogether unphilosophical to call this state of things the craft of priests. It is priestcraft; but it is the priestcraft of the laity, to the full as much as the priestcraft of the clergy; it is the low and mechanical religion of the one, that calls into existence the low and mechanical functions of the other. Priestcraft is not a business that Priests can carry on by themselves; the people must be abetting and