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The use and Abuse of Priesthood.

"Thus saith the Lord, the Heaven is My throne, and the Earth is My footstool: where is the house that ye build unto Me? and where is the place of My rest? For all these things hath Mine hand made, and all these things have been, saith the Lord; but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word." These wonderful words by the Hebrew Isaiah have been heard and repeated in the world for more than two thousand years, and not even yet have they been generally accepted and believed, as the highest truth about God. Here and there, at rare intervals in this long period, men have risen up to warn their fellow-men of the danger of neglecting them, to rid the world of its deep-crusted superstition, and false notions of the majesty and goodness of God. But they have found few followers, the ears which they addressed were dull of hearing, the eyes which they tried to open were unable to see the spiritual realities crowding around them, the hearts to which they appealed in God's name were hardened by self-righteousness, self-will, and a cold, dead formalism; they still turned, again and again, to the offerings of burnt incense and bloodshedding, thinking to please the most Holy God by sacrifices of that life which He alone could give. Men still clung to a visible temple and an elaborate temple worship, shutting up and shutting in, as they thought, the presence of the infinite God, within the narrow boundaries of time and place, and shutting out, alas! from the blessed privilege of communion all those who refused to enslave themselves to their opinion, and to worship after their manner. The few who, in all ages, have raised a protest against the common falsehood and folly of priestcraft, have had at last to bend their necks to the executioner's sword, or have fallen, like the holy martyr St. Stephen, beneath an avalanche of stones hurled at them by infuriated and priest-driven mobs.

Let us now consider what is that protest made by the Lord's prophets, which men are so slow to understand, and priests are so ready to punish. I will give it in the plain words of St. Stephen: "The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands." God's presence is not confined to the church, or house of prayer, which we build for his worship. God's, service does not entirely consist in the offerings of prayer and praise which we offer to Him there. Proclaim these truths where you will, and the priestly instinct will rise against you; their craft is in danger; God's presence and the blessings of Heaven are made cheap and common; men can worship God without their help or sanction, and thus their hold on men's minds will be weakened.

It is the glory of Protestantism to have, in a great measure, got rid of these priestly notions. Our breaking away from the Church of Rome 300 years ago was, in reality, the first public page 239 act of the Christian Church to liberate her children from priestly tyranny. But we must not boast; we are still very far off the liberty which we ought to have inherited from the great Reformers. Priests are but men, and men like to be priests after all; and the lust of power; the craving for tyranny over the minds and hearts of men, and to hold the keys of Heaven and Hell is natural, and if crushed in one form in one age, will burst out again in another form in another age. We could point to cases where it is quite as bad now as ever, both among the clergy of the Church of England and among the most illiterate and obscure of dissenting preachers. For when the priestly element was driven out at the Reformation, it came back again with seven spirits nearly as wicked as itself, putting the fetters of words and creeds and articles upon the necks of the people, and giving the clergy the power to say, "you cannot come to God now any more than you could before, unless you come in our way and by our help; you must now be bound by what the Bible teaches, and we are the interpreters of it, and so you must be bound still by what we think and say. God is still shut up in the Bible, and nowhere else can you see Him or hear His voice; without us and our teaching, you will get only false notions out of the Bible, and then you are lost."

So by degrees, the priest-spirit wrought fetters, and enchained the minds and souls of men tighter than ever, and all the while men fancied that because they were Protestants, they were free; that while they had the Bible for their own reading, they were safe in their liberty. Never was there a greater delusion. First one and then another arose denying that those priestly doctrines were in the Bible, denying that the Bible claimed for itself that infallibility which the priests ascribed to it. And what was the consequence? The old persecutions broke out afresh, and whether the modern Reformers were laymen or isolated clergy, or an independent and high-minded Bishop, they were hunted down. They are hunted down, I should say, now, in these very days of boasted liberty. When the bigoted priests and people can do nothing else, being restrained by the English law from tormenting their opponents, they turn to and revile them, saying "all manner of evil against them falsely."

You remember how the old silversmiths of Ephesus, who wanted to kill the Apostle Paul and his friends for preaching the Gospel of God, were afraid that the silver shrines for the Goddess Diana would fall into disuse, and so their craft was endangered by the proclamation of God's true spiritual service and His Love for men. Very much after this manner do some few of the ultra-sacerdotalists say within themselves, "our craft is in danger, the people will get to know too much; we must keep them in ignorance of what is said in these books, or they will cease to depend on our help and guidance in getting to Heaven."

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To find indeed the Living God and to enter into the calmness of His Rest, we must seek Him not in the Sacraments alone, nor in the pages of the Bible alone, still less in the counsels of priests; but we must seek Him also in our own homes, in the scenes of our daily work, in the toil of labour, and in the gladness of mirth; in the pleasant gatherings of friends and neighbours, as much as in the solitude of our own hearts.

Then, and not till then, can we hope to meet the Living God in the House of prayer, when we have learnt what He is, and can recognise Him again and again in the records of His dealings in olden time; when we have listened to His constant voice in our consciences, and in the sweet echoes of nature, and have learnt to distinguish that Voice above the clamour of human words, and above the Babel of false prophets, who are ever crying in our ears, "Thus saith the Lord," though the Lord hath not sent them. "For to this man will I look," saith the Lord of Hosts, to this man will I show the bright beams of my countenance, at all time and in all place "even to him who is poor and of a contrite heart, and who trembleth at My word."

To hear many talk, one would think that God Himself had come into existence and built the world, and then suffered it to go to ruin, only to glorify themselves; they would think themselves almost ill-used, if God intended to save all mankind as well—if He intended to "give every man his penny," and to make others, who had come later into the vineyard, equal unto themselves who had "borne the burden and heat of the day." Such are far enough from contrition, far enough from seeing God.

But besides this poverty and contrition of soul, one thing more is required, if we would see God; we must "tremble at His word"—tremble with a sense of holy awe and reverence—as sons of a righteous Father, and not as slaves and cowards. We must tremble at that voice of His in our hearts, which tells the youngest and oldest of us what we ought to do, and what we ought never to do.

There is sadly too little reverence paid to this conscience of ours, this real word of God. We have been content to put in its place a very silly superstitious reverence for the words of men—for the counsels of priests—for the creeds of Churches. The true Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever, comes only to our inmost souls by the divine echo of our consciences. Unless that voice gives its Divine sanction to what we hear or read, then what we hear or read is no Word of God to us.

And, what is more important than all, we must obey the conscience, if it is to grow within us and lead us into all truth. It will not bring us to God if we systematically refuse its warnings, and close our ears to the injunctions which it gives. If we will but strive to do as our consciences bid, and live in a humble sense of our own sins and shortcomings, we shall never need a page 241 higher title to the constant presence of God. Our world will be His temple, our daily life and work and rest will be all His service and all His worship.

Then the place in which we meet to unite in prayer and praise and meditation, will be to us in truth the "House of God and the Gate of Heaven." We shall find this service our delight and our rest, because in every other service we have "set God always before us," studying only to please Him, and willing to take even the lowest place at His feet. And after death, when we climb from this earth, which is His footstool, to that Highest Heaven which is His Throne, and join that Heavenly feast for which our souls are longing, there will surely be seats of honour at His right hand, and a welcome far higher than we desired or deserved; not only "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!" but the accents of a closer fellowship, "Friend, go up higher."—Rev. Charles Voysey.