We will not go back to the Old Testament to find any office or officer in the kingdom of Christ. What currency, then, has the word “pastor” in the New Testament? The word is in the New Testament, in some translations, in _one place_. That is its entire currency in the new and everlasting covenant. But then the word “Easter” is found in _one place_ in the common version. Is that authority for _Easter_? If it is in the New Testament in one place, rightfully, it is authority as much as if it were in fifty places. But how does it happen to be there in _one place_? If the translators had, in that _one place_, given us _passover_, as they have done in every other instance to represent the same original, we should have had no Easter in the New Testament. In the same way, if the translators had given us the word _shepherds_, Eph. iv. 11, as they have done in every other case to represent the same original word, we should have had no _pastor_ in the New Testament. On this one variation from the rule, to translate _poimeen_, shepherd, hangs the “pastorate,” so called, the _office_ for the pastor, and we might add, all the “installations,” etc. Probably it is Dr. Watts that exclaims, with other matters before him: “Great God! on what a brittle thread hangs eternal things!” On what a slender prop hangs the _pastorate_! Still, on this platform the pastors stand. In _one place_ and only _one_, in some translations, the original word for shepherd, and so translated in every other place in the New Testament, is translated _pastors_. When the common version appeared, King James issued a proclamation commanding the _translation_ to be read as the _word of God_. If we obey this command we must read the Latin word _pastor_ as the word of God, though the same translators give us _shepherd_ as the English representative of the original word _poimeen_ in every other occurrence of it in the New Testament. In this way we get divine authority in the word of God, and human authority from King James, not only for the unscriptural pastorate in the Church of England, but the equally unscriptural _pastorate_ now trying to grow up among us, first under one plausible pretext and then under another.