of God,” the rightful “inheritance of the saints in light.” Surely we may with reverence say that, in a true and a deep sense, God Himself is the Answer to prayer. CHAPTER IV. FREE MINISTRY. Our ministry may be said to be free in several distinct senses. 1. It is open to all. 2. Its exercise is not subject to any pre-arrangement. 3. It is not paid. We believe that the one essential qualification for the office of a minister is the anointing of the Holy Spirit; and that this anointing is poured out without respect of persons upon men and women, upon old and young, upon learned and unlearned. The gift is, we believe, a purely spiritual one, as much beyond our control as the rain from heaven; yet as unfailing, as abundant, as necessary to fertility. Our views of this matter differ from those of other Christians, not in the fact that we recognize the free gift of this holy anointing, not even in the fact that we repudiate the idea of its being purchasable by money, but in the fact that our idea of ministry refers exclusively to the offering of spontaneous spiritual ministrations. All would surely agree that it is impossible for any one to offer acceptable prayer, or to sow in other hearts the living seed of the kingdom, without a distinct gift from above. It is obvious that we cannot give what we have not received. It is also surely undeniable that what we have freely received we should freely give; that the gift of God cannot be bought for money, nor restricted in its exercise to humanly prepared channels. No one who believes in the reality of the gift of “prophecy”—of speaking, that is, from the immediate promptings of the Spirit of Truth—would dare to seek either to purchase or to restrain such utterances. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Our doctrine of a free ministry, of course, supposes a real belief in the continual inbreathing of that Divine Spirit, giving both light and utterance through His own chosen vessels for the help of all. It also goes a step further, and regards such spiritual ministrations as all-sufficient. Here is the real point of divergence between us and our fellow-Christians. The vast majority of them regard something more than these purely spiritual ministrations as essential to a full allegiance to our common Lord. Other Christian bodies have from very early times recognized a distinction between clergy and laity, and have regarded at least two sacraments as having been instituted by Christ Himself, and as being in some sense or other “necessary to salvation;” and the greater number, or at any rate the largest, of these bodies have habitually adopted the use of liturgical forms of public worship.