action, to secure its validity, as the medium of grace. We are not speaking of any thing personal and private, but of that which may be gathered from the heaven-guided practice—the official and authoritative intention—of the Founders of the CHURCH, in this matter, which has ever, _in fact_, descended to the Bishops, and is not now a mutable thing. Before the decease of the Apostles, “laying on of hands” had become the recognised ceremony of Ordination and Confirmation; and so at length, the Apostle St. Paul, in his later years (A.D. 64, or 65), speaks of the DOCTRINE “of laying on of hands,” (Heb. vi. 2,) which by that time was a known and admitted point of rudimental Christianity. Towards the close of the Apostolic career the Christian system universal seemed to have become thus arranged with general uniformity of discipline: so that after the destruction of Jerusalem, according to the prophecy, “before that generation passed away,” the “SON of Man came in His kingdom,” with more of fulness, completeness, and glory than heretofore. While, in the early history of the Acts of the Apostles, we see the elements of the Christian kingdom gradually assembled and composed, neither reason nor history justify us in looking for the complete system of the Apostles until towards the close of their career. Even the extant Epistles to the Churches, seem to indicate various stages in the development of the Christian System. (1 Thess. iii. 10, 11; 1 Cor. xi. 34.) The Apostles imparted of their powers, for the edification of the Body of CHRIST, just as necessity arose and Churches spread, and miracles and gifts supernatural became less frequent. And when they left the world, they left their perpetual power to appointed Successors, in all the great departments of the Spiritual kingdom; bequeathing likewise the promise of the great King of saints, “Lo I am with you always.”—And so, at last, (to return to the metaphor of our text,) “All the building was fitly framed together,” and grew “into an Holy Temple in the LORD.” Such is the clear historical view of Christianity, and the statement of it is an analytical statement of the Catholic Religion from the beginning. We do not find the facts of Scripture and History to be “difficulties.”—But let us now, finally, endeavour to combine what has been said, and briefly consider, in a more synthetical way, our whole Christianity, as it lies before us both in the Gospels and Epistles.