the case in the days of the first apostles, who required that even those who should be appointed to the lowest ministrations in the Church should be men not only "of honest report," but "full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom" and such it must be also in these days, when the gifts of the Spirit are poured out upon the Church in a less degree indeed, but not in a less proportion to the objects which they are designed to accomplish. But as in the apostolic age much ignorance and many errors were found to prevail with respect to the nature and use of such gifts, so likewise is it now. To one of these errors it is my intention to call your especial attention in the present discourse, and as my office frequently imposes on me the duty of speaking from this place on the subject of the Christian Ministry, and as I have already on more than one occasion treated of it in its more general bearings, I may be excused, if on the present I confine myself more particularly to a single point connected with it, which possesses features of considerable interest and importance.

The error then, of which I would now especially speak, is that of those who, in their zeal to maintain the all sufficiency of God's Word and Spirit to instruct and guide mankind, think it right to disparage all the aids of human learning, as of something altogether distinct from, and independent of the teaching of God. And on this point I would argue thus: No one of the counsels of God has been more clearly stamped on the face of his general dispensations, than a design that

man should feel his need of the aid of his fellow man, and that the various members of the great social body should be knit together by the bond of mutual dependence. The fact that even the barest necessaries of life, and the lowest grade of knowledge, are unattainable, except through the medium of human labour, is a sufficient proof of the design of God to make man the instrument of his own happiness, while the unequal distribution of physical and mental powers no less clearly proves that no individual was sent into the world to act alone; that no one of his faculties was conferred upon him solely for his own use and benefit ; but that all were to co-operate towards the great end of general good, each contributing to the common stock the advantages with which Providence has peculiarly blest him, and receiving in turn his share of those, which have been bestowed upon others and denied to himself.

It is by this continual interchange of the varied gifts of Providence that the inequalities visible in the system of Divine dispensations are made continually to approximate to a general level. Thus the productions of peculiar climates are spread over the face of the civilized globe a single genius enlightens a whole age: the discovery of an individual becomes a blessing to millions. Thus arts grow up, and science enlarges its field; and thus in proportion as the principle of mutual dependence has been recognized and acted upon, the sum of human happiness has been encreased, its resources multiplied, and its enjoyment extended.

Such is undeniably the universal law, which God has prescribed to man in all his temporal concerns. Has he extended the same law to spiritual things likewise? This is the real point at issue between those who value and those who despise that, which, in contradistinction to the inspired word of God, is entitled human learning. No assumption can be more unjust than that the one loves to trust to the arm of flesh, the other only to the Spirit. The single question is whether God has made the flesh an agent and instrument of the Spirit whether he has designed that each separate individual should derive immediately from heaven all that is necessary for Christian edification, or that, as in the case of temporal advantages, men should grow in knowledge and in grace by imparting to each other the benefit of those spiritual gifts, which he has bestowed upon them severally.

The history of the Church from the earliest ages strongly support the latter of these views. The very institution of the Church itself; the various orders and offices within it; the unequal distribution amongst its several members of the means and opportunities of edification; all tend to shew the analogy which subsists in this respect between temporal and spiritual things. St. Paul in the passage from which my text is taken, has placed this argument in a clear and striking light. "The manifestation" says he "of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal: " and a reference to the entire chapter proves that the Apostle speaks of the profit not of the gifted individual alone, but of the whole body of Christian believers. "There are" says ·

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he "diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit"—" To "one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom; to "another the word of knowledge, by the same Spirit ; "to another faith, by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing, by the same Spirit; to another the "working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of "tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues : "but all these worketh that one and the self same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will." Then follows the explanation of God's design in this dispensation. "For as the body is one, and hath "many members, and all the members of that one "body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." "Now are they many members, yet but one body: and "the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need "of thee; nor again, the head to the feet, I have no "need of you." From such expressions it should seem that, when the Almighty established the law that, during the course of his earthly existence, man should be to man the channel and the instrument of his blessings, the steward of his manifold grace, he did not design to except from that law the important concern of Religion and all history and experience confirms this view. It might have pleased God to implant in the soul of every man such an infallible guide and teacher, that Religion would have stood entirely clear and independent of all extraneous circumstances, and each individual would have been to himself "the witness and the keeper" of the Truth. But we know that he

has not done so and a bare inspection of the Bible

itself shews that it was not his design to do so.

The word of God comes to us from the hands of its inspired authors in a language, which alone would render it a sealed volume to the great majority of mankind; its doctrines are laid before us without any systematic form or arrangement: intermixed with the records of national history; scattered promiscuously through a variety of discourses and letters; veiled under the highly-wrought imagery of Poetry; and associated with a multitude of those allusions to times and circumstances long since past away, which supply the only true key to their meaning. And yet this book is understood by the simplest and the most unlearned: and why is this? because God, in giving us his Word, has provided also for its interpretation and elucidation. He has not only discovered to us the precious mine, but he has supplied also the labourers aud the instruments of labour, whereby its treasures may be extracted to enrich and benefit mankind. There is scarcely a branch of human learning, a talent or faculty of the human mind, which has not been sanctified to this great purpose. The labours of the linguist, the philosopher, the historian, the traveller, have all in their turns been employed in accumulating light from various directions on a single point-the written Word of God: and this light has been reflected back in the holy beams of Truth, revealing to the eye of Faith the glories of "Emmanuel, God with us."

But it is not only in the unequal distribution of intellectual powers, and the means and opportunities of acquiring knowledge, that we trace this design of the divine dispensations. We believe that God has