But, although much still remains untouched, this discussion must draw to a close. In the ideal Church there is no Lord's Day or holy seasons, for all days are the Lord's, and all seasons are holy; there are no places especially dedicated to God's worship, for the whole universe is His temple; there are no persons especially ordained to be His ministers, for all His people are priests and prophets. But in the Church as it exists in a sinful world, the attempt to make all times and all places holy ends in the desecration of all alike; and the theory that all Christians are priests becomes indistinguishable from the theory that none are such. In this matter let us not try to be wiser than God, Whose will may be discerned in His providential guiding of His Church throughout so many centuries. The attempt to reproduce Paradise or to anticipate heaven in a state of society which does not possess the conditions of Paradise or heaven, can end in nothing but disastrous confusion. In conclusion the following weighty words are gratefully quoted. They come with special force from one who does not himself belong to an Episcopalian Church. "By our reception or denial of priesthood in the Church, our entire view of what the Church is must be affected and moulded. We shall either accept the idea of a visible and organized body, within which Christ rules by means of a ministry, sacraments, and ordinances to which He has attached a blessing, _the fulness of which we have no right to look for except through the channels He has ordained_ (and it ought to be needless to say that this is the Presbyterian idea), or we shall rest satisfied with the thought of the Church as consisting of multitudes of individual souls known to God alone, as invisible, unorganized, with ordinances blessed because of the memories which they awaken, but to which no promise of present grace is tied, with, in short, no thought of a Body of Christ in the world, but only of a spiritual and heavenly principle ruling in the hearts and regulating the lives of men. Conceptions of the Church so widely different from each other cannot fail to affect in the most vital manner the Church's life and relation to those around her. Yet both conceptions are the logical and necessary result of the acceptance or denial of the idea of a divinely appointed and still living priesthood among men."[48] FOOTNOTES: [47] See an admirable article on the Christian ministry by Dr. Salmon in the _Expositor_ for July, 1887; also the present writer's _Church of the Early Fathers_, pp. 58 ff.; 92 ff.; 2nd ed. Longmans, 1887. [48] Professor W. Milligan, D.D., on "The Idea of the Priesthood," in the _Expositor_ for July, 1888, p. 7. CHAPTER XI. _THE APOSTLE'S RULE RESPECTING SECOND MARRIAGES; ITS MEANING AND PRESENT OBLIGATION._ "The husband of one wife."--1 TIM. iii. 2.