made for God, hence religion is personal. One conception is realized in connection with the other; each, operating alone, fails. The Catholic has, perhaps, insisted too much upon the social side, and has regarded religion too exclusively as institutional; but the Protestant has thought too much of religion as purely a personal relation to God, and has under-estimated far too much the organic side of religion, its social aspect, which found expression in Old Testament times in the daily and occasional offering of sacrifice for the people as a whole, and which in the Christian Liturgy has always found expression in some prayer paralleling more or less exactly our "Prayer for the Church Militant. We individually are children of God, but we succeed best in realizing this relationship as we are united in the Body of Christ, the Holy Catholic Church, which is the social expression of religion, from the human point of view. For a deeper appreciation of the meaning of these twin truths. we need a fuller indwelling of God's Holy Spirit, and when this appreciation comes we shall see how all along we have been contending for the same thing. Books of learning may be multiplied, but we shall understand only when the Holy Spirit teaches us.

The current philosophy, to which reference has been made, is helping to bring in a somewhat new view of the Church's Sacraments, which does not impair their efficacy, but removes the mechanical nature which has sometimes been attributed to them. We are learning something of how the Holy Spirit works in, through, and upon matter, and how that which was merely material becomes through His working sacramental, i.e., matter raised to the nth power, given its fullest expression, fulfilling its highest destiny. There is much to be said for the wider use of the term "sacrament," the use that prevailed in the earlier Church before Peter Lombard crystallized the term so that it applied exclusively to the Seven, for all nature is in a sense sacramental, i.e., God revealing Himself through the creative Spirit in the material. Man is himself a sacrament, his material body has its highest value as being a means for the

expression of his spirit, upon which and through which the Holy Spirit works.*

One other aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church must be referred to briefly; He safeguards revelation, the aspect of which the Nicene Creed speaks when it describes Him as the One "Who spake by the prophets." The Bible is still in the crucible of the critics, but their work no longer disturbs us as it did once, for we have learned that no criticism of sane scholarship can destroy the spiritual supremacy of the Holy Scripture for the purpose for which it was given by the Holy Spirit, i.e., to tell us about God, and not to teach us immaterial facts which we could learn for ourselves. The Bible is worth while because through the Holy Spirit who speaks in it we are led to God as no other books leads us. Again, it is the Holy Spirit who protects the revelation of our Lord, for He takes of His and declares it unto us, and thereby makes His revelation of Himself effective, something more than one philosophy among many.

In conclusion, viewed from these various view-points, it is the energizing presence of the Holy Spirit alone that enables the Church to find Christ, to attain the true goal of the "back to Christ" plea.

Secondly, let us think of the work of the Holy Spirit in the priesthood. We find here at the very outset need of the selfassertion of S. Paul, for the Holy Spirit works especially through the priesthood, and one does not misuse his office when he magnifies it as being the instrument of the Holy Spirit, the tool which He has chosen to use for the doing of His work in the world. That the gift bestowed upon the priest, the gift which confers an indelible character, is that of the Holy Spirit has apparently always been the belief of the Church. In the earliest Ordinal known, that of Bishop Serapion, we find the following prayer said at the laying on of hands: "We stretch forth the hand, O Lord God of the heavens, Father of Thy Only-Begotten, upon this man, and beseech Thee that the Spirit of truth may dwell (or settle) upon him.-Let that divine spirit come to be

*This thought is developed at length in Fr. Bull's "The Sacramental Principle."

in him that he may be able to be a steward of Thy people. Give a portion of Holy Spirit also to this man, from the Spirit of Thy Only-Begotten." Another ordination prayer, from an Abyssinian Jacobite source, is interesting: "My God, Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, regard this Thy servant, and bestow on him the spirit of grace and the counsel of holiness, that he may be able to rule Thy people in integrity of heart." These early ordination prayers show the mind of the Church in those days, and that mind has never changed in this respect,* for from that time to the present similar prayers have been used in the Church, as, e.g., in our own Ordinal, "Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God." The gift then, which we have seen reasons for believing the world to be seeking, is in a sense, ours to impart; or, at least, to put the world in the way of securing for itself. Does the world look to blind guides? There is a rich spiritual literature which we should know and from which we should be bringing treasures, treasures for which the world is hungering. Dr. Barry, in the book from which we have already quoted, asks: "How can the priest unskilled in ascetic theology and to whom mystic theology is an unknown field, the suspected camping place of spiritual tramps and nondescripts, give such guidance?" We must remember that these theologies are the results of the action of the Holy Spirit upon the souls and minds of generations of devout seekers after God, The "Imitation" of S. Thomas à Kempis is as truly a fruit of the multifold activity of the Holy Spirit as is the "Summa" of S. Thomas Aquinas. Being possessed of the Holy Spirit as his characteristic gift the priest should radiate spirituality wherever he may be and at all times. The priest cannot lose the gift and is never off duty. Skrine in his Pastor Futurus (p. 247) describes the ideal priest in quite another way, so unusual that his words deserve quotation, though they come to the same thing that we have just been attempting to say, he says: "If you came too near him

*Hooker, E. P., 5:77:8-"he which receiveth the burden (of the priesthood) is thereby forever warranted to have the Spirit with him and in him for his assistance, aid, countenance, and support in whatsoever he faithfully doth to discharge duty." The whole section should be read.

you got religion, as from another sort you may get the measles. When one thinks of it, that is how we get most things, like good manners or a panic; we catch them from some one. Now I believe this is how we clergy are to convert people: we must have Christianity in ourselves, then come near people and give it them. Conversion by contagion is the best name I can find for it." An uncoverted clergy cannot convert the world and conversion doesn't come through much thought, or through kindly feelings towards our brother men and the desire to do some good in the world, but through the real change in nature that the Holy Spirit alone can effect.

It is a truism that people show what they are in what they do, rather than by what they say; but the priest is, in a measure, an exception. He has, more than most others, to express himself by what he says; good sermons do not atone for a bad life, but a good life and good sermons should go together; and indeed real goodness cannot appear in the one unless it is present in the other. If a priest's life is good, it is because the Holy Spirit is actively in him and manifesting His presence in the priest's character and then, necessarily, in his preaching. The writer has no intention of criticizing the chairs of homeletics in our Seminaries, and would be quite incompetent to undertake the task if he had the desire, but it does seem that much of the present-day preaching is without the power that must accompany the presence of the Holy Spirit, "Who spake by the prophets." It would be helpful for us to study the lives of the Old Testament prophets, or those of the Apostles, and see how little they seem to have of natural fitness, or of worldly advantage, learning, training, etc., to fit them for their work, and how the mission was successfully accomplished only because the Holy Spirit who called them remained with them and taught them what they should say. Far be it from the writer to underestimate the place or importance of sound learning. New times impose new demands, and more to-day, when every one has really or in his imagination a smattering of learning, than ever in the past "the priest's lips should keep knowledge." But, when all is said and done, we need to remain longer in the

school of the Holy Spirit; if our preaching is to be effective we must never feel that we have graduated. The measles are not caught from one who has entirely recovered, nor can religion be caught from the priest who once had a spiritual experience and does not feel daily that dependence upon the Holy Spirit which alone can make his preaching and all his work effective. We must cultivate that gracious Presence if we are to accomplish the word that God always has for His prophets to do: in the Old Testament, in the New, in the early Church (witness the "Didache"), and in every age wherein He has sent forth His holy men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The voice of false prophecy is always clamorous and the people are perplexed sorely as they seek guidance; they can discover the true prophet only as they take knowledge of him that he has been with God. We must not satisfy ourselves with specious delusions that the truth must prevail. Ultimately it is not to be doubted that it will, but meanwhile we must help it. For neither a most beautiful Liturgy, nor the attractiveness of an orthodox Creed, nor that of an unbroken succession can satisfy, without the stirring of a supernatural life, implanted, nurtured, maintained and developed by the Holy Spirit.

Let us conclude this section, which has run on to a greater length than was intended, by laying down this as the thesis which we have sought to establish; the Holy Spirit is the peculiar gift bestowed upon the priesthood, enabling it to do its work of preaching, teaching, baptizing, consecrating, absolving; there can be no thought of self-glorification in the proper exaltation of one's office, which, while it has the highest honor given it in the name it bears, is still priestly only in a derivative, ministerial

sense.

Thirdly, let us think of the work of the Holy Spirit in the sphere of personal religion. We need to recover S. Paul's strong conception of the place of the Holy Spirit in the normal Christian's life, a conception which has never since been equalled. The possession of the Holy Spirit should be a primary fact of Christian experience. But, in addition to the neglect of which we have spoken, there has been a distrust, founded