It was natural that the ideal of a universal priesthood should find expression in the earliest literature of the Christian Church, reviving and enlarging beyond the boundaries of race the appeal of the earlier Hebrew prophets: twice in one writing of the Apostolic Age [24] are Christian folk spoken of as a holy priesthood or a royal priest- hood, while in the vision of the Apocalypse the same ideal is held up for the Church that now is and for the Church that is to be, in the millennial reign upon earth of the faithful disciples of Christ. [25] In the Pauline epistles the disciples are not actually called priests, but both the individual Christians and the Church as a whole are spoken of as Temples of the Holy Spirit, and appeal is made to the Romans "that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice unto God, which is your reasonable temple-service."[26] Moreover, the body in such a passage does not mean so much the flesh and blood, as the whole visible personality of a man; in like manner in that triumphant paean which seems to have been written by the apostle in the conscious- ness of the nearness of impending martyrdom, the thought in the words "I am already being poured out as a libation" [27] is that his whole personality is being poured out and offered up as [p.103] a final priestly act of cheerful giving: for the libation was the glad offering made not merely by an official clergy, but by the head of the household as its family priest, or by the individual as sharing in the universal priesthood of humanity. Priesthood was regarded, it would seem, in the earliest days of the Church as a function to which all its members were called, but even in the apostolic age certain officials were appointed to fulfil particular duties in the Church on behalf of their fellow members. Yet several generations appear to have passed before priest and presbyter were regarded as fully equivalent terms.[28] As Church organization developed, the gifts of the Spirit were conceived less and less as widespread throughout all the parts of the body, and more and more as confined to certain classes, while in course of time these classes became more official and professional in character. Yet if we remember how repeatedly institutions tend to fetter and destroy the ideal that has created them, we shall find cause to wonder not in the growth of clericalism in the Christian Church, but rather in the fact that all down the ages of her continuous life men and women both within and without the ranks of her officials have realized, in part at least, the higher ideals of true priesthood. [p.104]