These are the readers, or exhorters, and the superintendents, and both classes appear to be spoken of in such a way as to make it clear that they were not to be permanently retained as orders of office-bearers in the church distinct from those above named. [Sidenote: Readers.] Readers, or exhorters, were to be provided for those churches which could not presently be supplied with ministers. These readers were to be men judged most apt distinctly to read the common prayers and the Scriptures, but they were to be encouraged and urged so to exercise their gifts that they might grow in knowledge and utterance, and in time might come to be entrusted with the power of preaching the Word, administering the sacraments, and discharging all the functions of the ordinary pastor.[194] Special provision was made for the spiritual improvement of these readers or exhorters in those weekly meetings for the interpretation of Scripture which, originally introduced among the exiles at Frankfort and Geneva, were after their return set up by them in England under the name of prophesying, and in Scotland under the name of the exercise.[195] The portion of the book relating to the superintendents opens with a statement of the reasons which had led its framers "to make difference betwixt preachers _at this time_."[196] These last words, as has often been remarked, would have been unmeaning had they regarded the superintendent's office as by divine institution permanent in the church and superior to that of the ordinary minister. Accordingly, when they proceed to state in detail the reasons which induced them to sanction such a difference, these are found to be--not, as in the Anglican Ordinal, that there have always been in the church of Christ distinct orders of bishops and presbyters,[197] nor even as in Alasco's book that such offices were in some sort necessary, though, save in matters executive, in no way superior to their brethren the ordinary ministers of the church, but--that the dearth of qualified preachers or ministers at that time in Scotland was so great, that if each were to be settled in a single town or parish, and allowed to make continual residence therein, the larger part of the realm would be left altogether destitute of that efficient spiritual instruction, oversight, and training which the people themselves eagerly longed for, and the reformed leaders earnestly desired to provide for them. To meet this emergency, without being obliged to avail themselves so generally and unrestrictedly as the English had done of the former popish incumbents, they deemed it most expedient that these should, for a time at least, be restricted to the humbler duties of readers; and that from the whole number of godly and learned men then in the realm ten or twelve should be selected, and one of them assigned to each of the proposed provinces, which he should visit annually through its whole extent, preaching from time to time in