Now, if a Bishop really believes that the _Imposition of Hands_ is a divinely instituted rite, the means ordained by inspiration of Christ, and used by his Apostles, whereby the gift of the Holy Ghost is conveyed and received, for the ministration of the mysteries of the gospel dispensation:—if he believe that he is a minister of the Spirit, an apostolically appointed steward of these mysteries, I can see nothing “foolish,” nothing presumptuous in his saying at the very moment that he believes that he is _dispensing_ the gift—“Receive ye the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto you by the Imposition of our Hands.” It would, at least, tend to show that he had _faith_ in the efficacy of his ministration. But to imitate the significant act of our Saviour and his Apostles, ever performed by them with a specific object, and ever resulting in a _blessing_, in the communication of some _spiritual gift_, to have recourse to the sign, with _no faith_ in the thing signified, esteeming it but a barren ceremony,—would seem to me to be but little short of an “indefensible” mockery of an external rite, hallowed to spiritual purposes by the authority of inspiration. If you can believe in the _mystery_ of the sacraments, if you can believe that “the bread which we break, the cup of blessing which we bless,” do, by the prayer and solemn invocation of the Priest, become, in some inexplicable and mysterious manner, the “Communion of the body and blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper:” if, in _this faith_, you hesitate not to give the consecrated elements to the communicants, manifesting the signification of the rite, by the words, the “body and blood of Christ, take, eat—drink:”—I can see but little reason why you should stumble, at the not more mysterious communication of the spiritual gift for the office ministerial, by the Imposition of Hands. They are mysteries; but the whole gospel dispensation is a mystery:—we must become as “little children” or we cannot receive them—for no sooner do we grow _wise_ enough to ask “how these things can be,” than we are certain to reject them as “foolishness.” Some boldly, like the Socinian, as requiring a “prostration of intellect,” too humiliating to be submitted to—others hiding from themselves their want of faith, under the garb of humility, under which garb, I wish, that frequently something more of rationalism may not lurk, than its wearer would either willingly suspect or acknowledge.