where there are no true qualifications. No college of physicians could invest an ignorant clown with the right to prescribe medicine. They might give him a diploma, but this would be but a name authorizing him in his ignorance to work as much mischief as he could. He would not be a physician in fact--that is, he would not be a healer. This designation would be a practical falsehood. It would denote something, when there was nothing to be denoted. And so prelatical hands may entitle a man to use the name of a minister, but they cannot entitle him to be one except as he loves the Saviour, and lives to Him. The man might have had on his head the hands of all the apostles, but if after his appointment to the office of a minister they had discovered him to be immoral or heretical, they would have disowned him, warned the churches against him, declared his ministry to be null and void, and Paul would have hurled at him the anathema with which he scrupled not to scathe, if need be, an angel's brow-" Though we or an angel from heaven preach unto you any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be accursed."

The truest ministry of heaven is that which, preaching the truth as it is in Jesus, with simplicity and godly sincerity, awakens sinners from their death in trespasses and sins, and builds up believers on their most holy faith-it is that which turns moral wastes into fruitful fields-it is that which enkindles hope in souls that once despaired-it is that which starts men upon the pilgrimage which has Christ for a guide, the Holy Spirit for light, truth for refresh

ment, and heaven for the goal and home. Such a ministry may be found in every Christian Church. It exists in glorious abundance and power among Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Methodists, as well as in the Church of England. By their fruits ye shall know them; and when the proud but hollow ecclesiastical claim which we have now examined shall be forgotten, thousands and tens of thousands of ministers of Christ whose heads were untouched by episcopal hands, but whose hearts were touched by the Spirit of God, will shine as stars in the firmament for ever and ever, surrounded by those whom they have turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.

BAPTISM NOT REGENERATION.

THE claims put forth by the Ritualistic clergy to be accounted a priesthood and an apostolic succession, have been considered and estimated in the two previous lectures. We have seen that they are usurpations, discredited alike by the teaching of Scripture and the facts of history, and that they are expressly and indignantly repudiated by many who minister in the same Church, and who look with astonishment and sorrow on the resuscitation and rapid spread of a sacramentarianism which is beguiling men from the simplicity which is in Christ. It is but a logical sequence from the assumption that the minister of Christ is a priest, that he should arrogate a mystic power by which material things are either wholly changed in their quality, or charged with a virtue which, apart from sacerdotal consecration, they could not possibly possess. Functions which are destitute of all force the world will not believe in. Priesthoods can only live so long as they are known or

suspected to be in the possession of powers special to themselves, and affecting for the better or the worse the prospects of mankind. When the time has fully come that the conviction now widely spread shall be universal, that there is no class of men holding any distinctively mediatorial position, or capable of investing with saving influence the ordinances which they administer, the days of the "hierarchy" will be numbered. This truth is so clearly apprehended by the apostles of Ritualism, that they are employing every conceivable means for the purpose of persuading the people that the priesthood they claim is a real thing, under the commission and seal of heaven, and holding such strict relation to men's salvation, that while it is not absolutely impossible to reach heaven without the sacraments which they consecrate and administer, such a happy issue is at best doubtful, and not to be hazarded by those who take counsel of prudence and discretion. So long as they can propagate this delusion they will live, but not a moment longer. When their pretensions are seen universally to be exploded, our nation will lay them aside as lamps that have no light, and will forsake them as "broken cisterns," or "wells without water." This lecture and the next will be devoted to an examination of the revived assumptions of the Ritualists in connection with sacramental efficacy. These assumptions we hold to be not only false, but fatal. They assail the gospel not merely at some of its remotest twigs, but at its very root. They are not only not the gospel-nor in harmony with the gospel-but to