One word more, brethren, of most serious weight and import, as to such objections and I objectors. Carry your mind back to the time of Christ, to the labours of Apostles and Evangelists, and the infancy of the Church, and see of what Spirit they are. I am not speaking, remember, of all who may, from one cause or other, not be able to receive the doctrine of the Christian priesthood and altar, and who, we may well hope and believe, many of them receive the blessing of these gifts of Christ, though they know it not; but I speak of the particular objection with which I have all along been dealing,—that there cannot be a Priesthood, unless marked by striking outward differences visible by all. And I ask, what would have been the part taken, if the framers of such a test, being consistent in their objection, had lived in the days of Christ on earth? Surely we should have heard them saying, aye, in spite of His mighty works and great High Priesthood, “Is not this the carpenter’s Son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us?” {19a} What is He different from another? Or what more likely than that expecting something different in show and demeanour in the great Apostle of the Gentiles, they would have joined in the reproach: “His bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible!” {19b} and have rejected Him? If these things shew us the dangers of such a line of argument, let them keep us from any word said to countenance or support it. It is a solemn thought that we cannot, by even the most careless word of levity, express approval of such assaults upon the ancient faith, or sympathy with those who make them, without becoming sharers in their responsibility. For it is thus, by a few words here and a few there, that public opinion is formed or strengthened; and what can be more awful than to have helped to form it adversely to the truth of God, and in derogation of that “ministry of reconciliation,” and those means of grace, which He has appointed. Surely the sin of such must be, like that of the sons of Eli, “very great before the Lord,” when a prejudice is raised by which men, if they do not “abhor,” are at least taught to deny and despise, “the offering of the Lord.” At the same time, let us pray earnestly for them, for, we will hope and trust, “they know not what they do.” Let us not wish that they went out from us, but let us hope and pray that they may be turned to better things. Let us remember, too, as a ground of charity, that many fall into error here because too much, for many years, the teaching of the primitive Church and of Catholic antiquity has been overlooked as a guide to the due understanding of the Scriptures; and again, because the face of Christendom, alas, is not now so one and undivided as to present all truth in due form, and mode, and weight, to each man’s acceptance. The glory of our Reformation is, indeed, that it