tinually exercised upon these interpretations of statute law.

What I am now saying is the simplest commonplace, and being in alid materiâ, removed from controversy, will help you perhaps to see and allow the perfect reasonableness of such general principlesfirst, as applied to the province of the State; secondly and no less, as applied to the province of the Church. To this province of the Church let us now

return.

By help of our illustration we may see now a distinction that perhaps we failed to see before. The Church's authority is the authority of a judge rather than of a legislator. When our Lord gave His Church authority "to bind and loose," He meant not authority to create or develop new doctrine, but rather authority to declare judicially for purposes of discipline what is the faith once delivered to the saints:—authority, in short, to determine what is heresy and what is not. This is precisely what the councils, synods, and bishops of the Church have been ever doing, basing all their decisions on Scripture or what may be concluded from Scripture. Just as the State courts have to apply and (if need be) interpret statute law, but may not add thereto or take therefrom; even so the Church courts have to apply and (if need be) interpret the Law Divine, the Word of God written, but may not go beyond it, nor diminish aught from it. And from these decisions of councils, synods, bishops, or theologians, sanctioned by the approval of the Church's collective

conscience, there has grown a body of Church doctrine, to be found in Creeds, Canons and Articles, which the Church places in the hands of her clergy requiring them to promise that they will be guided by these in all their teaching.

And if this be so, then I will add that a clergyman, thus bound to teach in accordance with these Creeds and Articles, will, if he is a sensible and reasonably modest man, take those same Creeds and Articles for his guidance in his own private study. Not to the exclusion nor to the suppression of free inquiry and free thought—not for one moment-but as a sensible man, continually saying to himself, "These determinations of doctrine, tried and tested by the collective Church during so many centuries, are more likely to be right than any determinations that I individually might think out for myself. I will at any rate give weight to them in all my studies."

And now I have done my best to answer the question that led to all this. It was this: In preparing ourselves for our work as prophets or preachers, in our life, in our study, in our study of God's Word, what guidance are we to seek?

Let me state more summarily our answer.

The Church possesses a historic faith, and this historic faith is a body of doctrine contained in time-honoured Creeds and formularies, resulting from the authoritative decisions which from time to time the Church has had to promulgate in cases of heresy. All these decisions claimed when first.

put forth to be based on the warrant of Scripture; but they owe their present authority, not so much to the councils or synods that originated them, as to their acceptance by the collective conscience of the Church of succeeding ages. Thus endorsed and verified, and continually appealed to in subsequent controversies, they have acquired a cumulative authority. This historic faith, then, I accept as my best guide in the interpretation of the doctrine of Scripture.

And now, in conclusion, let me help you to realize the very great value of such an historic faith.

It is the characteristic and not obscurely predicted feature of these "latter days" that infidelity is more explicit, more self-asserting, than in former times; and not only so, but that signs are not wanting that "the restraining power" of civil government is being more and more withdrawn. We need not be alarmed or discouraged by this. "These things have I told you before, that when the time comes ye may remember that I told you." But clearly it throws upon us increased responsibility. Have we lines capable of defence in our open conflict with unbelief? If our religion be merely emotional we have no such lines. But if our religion rest on a definite faith-that is, on a definite interpretation of Holy Scripture-then we are in a defensible citadel. And here our Anglican Church is in a position of great advantage, having not only the pure Word of God open to all as the one only fountain of dogmatic truth, but also in

her Catholic institutions and creeds and formularies precisely the rule of interpretation—the regula fidei-that her ministry needs. And this is what I meant when I spoke of the great value of a historic faith.

Let us make sure in our studies that we neglect not this high privilege.

LECTURE V.

OUR LIFE AS PRIESTS.

HE heading of to-day's Lecture, according to my scheme, is "our life as Priests." And

the Lecture, according to that same scheme, ought to have some correspondency to my second Lecture, which was on "our work as Priests."

You have observed how these three latter Lectures may be paired (σvσтoxeî) with those three earlier: the fourth, fifth and sixth being meant to show how our life may be so shaped and fashioned as to qualify us for what the first, second and third showed to be our work as prophets, priests and pastors.

The question, therefore, now before us is this: how may we so order our daily life in our own homes as to fit us-no, I will not say to fit us, for who is fit? καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα τίς ἵκανος ;—but let me say rather, and more humbly, so as to make us not ashamed as priests of the sanctuary.

In each of our Lectures hitherto we have gone to the Church's Ordinal, and in those interrogatories addressed to Candidates for the Priesthood we have found excellent guidance. Will it be so to-day? I do not say that the vow to which in regular course we come to-day was intended to be brought into