which Christ had himself held, but which he now delegated to them; ("as the Father had sent him, so he sent them,")-the order which retained them to the Church as ministers, but conferred upon them the duties of superintendence—the order which now more than ever was required in the Christian community, not only because its Head was about to remove his personal presence from it, but because it was about to become largely and rapidly extended.

In this view we find ourselves confirmed by observing the conduct of the Apostles subsequent to this transaction. Hitherto they had assumed no duties in the Church but those of a purely pastoral character. If we are right in the interpretation we have placed upon the circumstance we have just considered, we are prepared to expect to find them executing functions of a very different, of an authoritative nature; discharging those duties of ordination, of arrangement, and of government which Christ had hitherto fulfilled. And our expectation is not disappointed. We turn to the record of their conduct, the Acts of these Apostles, and there we find them taking upon themselves these (to them) unusual offices of Church administration. The emergencies of the infant Church call for the exercise of those powers which Jesus had hitherto wielded, and they are found lodged in his Apostles' hands. They admit by ordination seven individuals into the ministry,

1

(Acts vi. 6.) for the qualifications required in the candidates, and the duties discharged by them altogether forbid us to consider the deacons of the sixth of Acts as secular officers of the Church. (Acts vi. 3-10; viii. 5-35). They do more, they ordain presbyters, or elders, in every Church. (Acts xiv. 23). They take upon them, which they never before did, the care of the Churches, and they discharge duties in reference to them, which it is evident, other ministers were unqualified to perform. (Acts viii. 14-17). The whole tenor of Apostolic acts subsequent to the departure of Christ, is of a kind wholly dissimilar to that they had before observed. And while it tends to prove that they had been elevated into an order distinct from that with which they had been once connected, it also establishes this point, that in the Church immediately subsequent to the ascension, there was a disparity among ministers. Its ministerial constitution was this ;-the Apostles acting in the Church as its overseers or bishops, the presbyters ordained by Jesus, and increased in their numbers by Apostolic appointments, discharging the duties of ordinary pastors; and the deacons, an inferior order, preaching and baptizing, but apparently not confined to any fixed or responsible charge. (Acts viii, 5, 26; xxi. 8.)

III. Now this point, to which we have conducted our subject, carries us into another important consi

deration--the nature of the Episcopacy exercised by the Apostles. The condition of the Church was at this time unsettled. Christianity had emerged from the comparative obscurity in which its infancy was sheltered, and was making sensible inroads upon the ignorance and darkness of the world. Its object was to bring individuals and peoples to the faith of Jesus. To systematize and regulate its converts was a second step in its movements. The Apostles therefore at first were not limited in their Episcopal functions to any one sphere of duty. As Apostles, they were missionaries to the world; as bishops, their care extended over the whole population of the faithful. They were ready to superintend wherever superintendence was required. But in process of time the extension of the Church, and the increase of its converts called for some system more fixed and settled. They demanded that these inspections, which were hitherto general, should be restrained to particular spheres of action. That this was early contemplated we have proof in the remark of St. Paul in the second chapter of Galatians. "James, Cephas and John gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision." (Gal. ii. 9). This appears to have been the first grand division of Episcopal labour. Its allocated spheres were the Jewish and Gentile worlds. And in accord

ance with this principle of restricting the early prelates of the Church to a peculiar scene of duty, we find from this time the Apostle James located at Jerusalem, the eldest bishopric of Christianity. Antiquity concurs with Scripture in assigning this especial district of the vineyard to him. The writers of the early ages with one voice style him Bishop of Jerusalem.* The ecclesiastical historian, Eusebius, has left upon record a line of thirteen bishops who presided over that see successively, and has placed him first upon his list. And although Scripture makes no precise statement, contains no definite record upon this fact, it presents such indications of its existence, as must, with every unprejudiced, every candid mind, amount to a demonstration. In each of the visits which Paul paid to Jerusalem, the first three years, and the second fourteen years after his conversion, he found James there. (Gal. i. 18, 19; ii. 9). Upon another occasion, that on which he forced his way to Jerusalem through the tears, the remonstrances, the heart-breaking entreaties of the believers of Cesarea, he found him still resident there; and the manner in which this Apostle is distinguished from other ministers in that metropolis in the narrative of Paul's interview, is utterly inexplicable upon any other ground, than that of his being of superior station to them.

The day following Paul went in unto

*See Appendix, C.

James, and all the elders were present." Take this, my brethren, in connection with the history of the council held at Jerusalem on account of the strange doctrines which disturbed the Church of Antioch, and you will discover still stronger reasons for believing that at this period James was, what the united voice of antiquity report him to have been, the occupier of the Episcopal chair in Jerusalem. His language upon that occasion is that of the president of a solemn assembly collecting the declarations made, and announcing his decision in the tone of official authority. "My sentence is that we trouble not those which from among the Gentiles are turned unto God." A language this and a tone calculated much to favour the supposition that James presided over that day's deliberations, because he was upon the ground of his own jurisdiction-within the boundary of the sphere of his own Episcopal duties. All these incidental testimonies, corroborated as they are by the voice of history and the evidence of antiquity, combine to shew us that Episcopacy held by all the Apostles as successors to their master, and originally stretching itself, without systematic arrangement, over all the movements of Christianity, became (as far as James was concerned) an appointment limited and restricted to a particular territory. The same might be evidenced in the cases of other Apostles; and