sake. The care of the church's finances, the oversight of its property, etc., are as much spiritual duties as the service of the bread and wine at the Lord's Table, for example; and the men and women to whom such matters are committed need to be-even as those were in Jerusalem, who were chosen to distribute relief to the Grecian widows-" full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom." The results, then, of this investigation are as follows: 1. The early churches were under the supervision of a person known as bishop, pastor, or elder, according as one aspect or another of his work or character was in contemplation, and it was only he who-except for the single instance given in Acts vi. 6-was solemnly set apart to his office by the formal ceremony of ordination or the imposition of hands. That is to say, there is no rule laid down anywhere for the ordination of deacons; and in the absence of such a rule it is as invalid to insist on the ordination of deacons as to insist on the imposition of hands as a method of imparting the Holy Spirit immediately after the administration of baptism. 2. As it soon became necessary, under the multiplication of the bishop's duties, to relieve him of a part of them, the nomination of personal assistants was asked for, in order that he might be more at liberty to attend to the spiritual side of his work. 3. Such, however, was the conception of the dignity and sacredness of the church as the body of Christ, and of the vital relation of all its interests, secular and sacred, to each other, that only men of the highest Christian character, as indicated by the words "full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom," and by the qualifications laid down by the apostle Paul, were deemed worthy of having entrusted to them even its temporal affairs. 4. All these assistants and coadjutants of the pastor, what ever the particular duty of each, or of groups of them, constituted the church's diaconate. In relation to the church they were the pastor's fellow-workers; in relation to him they were not independent of him, but officially subordinate to him. Nevertheless their office was one of great dignity. It was a dignity derived from that of the church itself, for which no service necessary to her prosperity could be considered menial; and they were also themselves to dignify their office by their lofty and irreproachable Christian character as exhibited both in their business life and their home relations. In conclusion, the only divergence of the present practice in churches of the Congregational polity from the New Testament models, as herein set forth, seems to be that they have limited the sphere of the diaconate, and then-notwithstanding the theory that there are only two offices in the New Testament church, namely, those of the pastor and deacons-they have been obliged to supply the vacancies thus made, by appointing boards and committees, which, too, have been generally composed of men of lower grade. Furthermore, they have not been as careful as they ought to have been, with the apostolic teaching before them, in the selection of men for a diaconate of even this limited range of service, and thus they have lowered the moral standard of the office, greatly to the detriment of the church and the efficiency of the pastor. Finally, the proper relation of the deacons to the pastor has not been properly maintained. Too frequently they have been the pastor's critics instead of his assistants and fellow-helpers. Cheerfully acknowledging the many exceptions, which there are among our churches, of boards of deacons composed of brethren who exalt the dignity of their office, adorn the gospel they profess, serve the church with utmost fidelity, and by their wise counsels and timely sugges Vol. LXI. No. 244. 8 tions contribute to the stability of the pastorate, we are constrained to admit that in the most of them, and these perhaps the weaker churches, which can the less afford to be careless in this matter than the stronger ones, such departures from the New Testament standard for the diaconate as we have noted may be found, and the inevitable consequences are lowered church efficiency, more or less friction in the membership, and shortened pastorates. The case in Acts vi. 6 cannot be quoted in support of the ordination of deacons in our churches now, because those seven brethren were not deacons at all as we have now limited the functions of the office, although they were such (as we have shown) in the New Testament meaning of the word and the scope of duties covered by it. That is, we must readjust our notions of the office, and bring it up to the apostolic or scriptural standard, making it inclusive of all service rendered the church other than that of the pastor, before we can quote the ordination of the Seven as a precedent for the ordination of those whom we call deacons. ARTICLE VII. AN APPEAL TO THE NEW SCHOOL OF BY MR. PHILIP HUDSON CHURCHMAN. WHEN we turn to discuss the great question of the Higher Criticism, we find almost the same thoughts awaiting expression in different form. First comes approval of the principle. I have seen conservative lips curl in scorn at the mere mention of "the accursed thing": I have heard talk about "laying foul hands on the ark of the covenant." Shall we need to repudiate such nonsense? My conservative brother, what were the Reformers but higher critics of things that all men then held to be divine? Did not Jesus Christ apply the pruning-knife of criticism to many things thought sacred by good men of his day? Do not you yourself apply the principles of literary criticism to the Bible when you explain that much of the pious talk in the book of Job comes not from God, but from Job's worldly friends; or are you not using historical criticism when you admit it to be possible in antediluvian chronology that "the names denote an individual and his family spoken of collectively," and that "the longevity is the period during which the family had prominence or leadership "?" Are you not doing something that your forefathers would have condemned? Are you not indulging in the pernicious right to probe and to change one's mind? 1 Continued from p. 529. 'These sentences are quoted from a Bible dictionary of a most conservative type. No sane man will imagine that this discussion is aimed at the Higher Criticism as such; the indictment is against its contempt for scholarship that has not reached its own radical conclusions, and against its preponderatingly negative attitude. We should remember that the New School has no patent rights on these tardy epithets, these remarks that "no intelligent man accepts that notion nowadays" or that "scholars and scientists rejected this idea long ago." These weapons which the ordinary liberal uses so generously against his conservative brother are just as handy for the Unitarian against the liberal who still accepts miracles; for the ethical culturist against the Unitarian if he believes in prayer and responsibility; for the agnostic against the ethical culturist if he insists on the ethical significance of life; and perhaps, even, for the materialist against the agnostic. I do not think that conservatives get full credit for their profound scholarship in this flippant age, nor that calling "tardy names" will mend matters much. What better illustration of this spirit could be found than a recently published remark made by a foreign critic about an American preacher whom he was eulogizing? "Of course," said he, "thinking men disagreed with him on many points." "Thinking men," forsooth! Is not that intolerable? Granting that much, if not most, scholarly opinion is with the critic in many of his views, what right has he thus dogmatically to ignore the ripe scholarship on the other side, and to award to his own school the modest title of "thinking men"? Take another case. A certain higher critic has been much attacked (unwisely and sometimes not too kindly, it seems to me), and behold an apostle of liberalism asserts that all this opposition is due to "invincible ignorance or unchristian malice." This is being "broad" and "liberal"! The advanced school's contempt for hostile scholarship, |