Authority in Religion

ON any other ground than this, who would dare to assume the Office into which we induct our young brother this even ing? To be, as the minister must be to a certain extent, the guide and keeper of a collective conscience; to be deemed, as, in spite of all his disclaimers, he must inevi tably be by the younger and less enlightened members of his ?ock, an infallible oracle of moral and religious wisdom; to modify, even where he does not mould, the moral sense and standard Of scores or hundreds of families, - who would venture to take upon himself such a charge, except as furnished and instructed for it by a higher discretion and a surer wisdom than his own? Indeed, on what other ground can the ministerial office stand even the test of common sense? The idea of dependence on one's own intuitions for his views of truth and duty, if followed to its legitimate results, would vacate every pulpit in Christen dom. For why are not the intuitions of the people as wor thy of reliance as those of their professed teacher? Or, if he is above authority, why are not they equally so? If he has no need of going to Christ, for still stronger reasons have they no need of going to him, for counsel. He often hasin his congregation older, abler, better men than himself, on whom it were the height of arrogance for him to im pose his own self-derived notions of the true, the right, and the good and, if he really speaks not from authority higher than his own, he Should beg such persons, at least, either to stay away from church, or to change places with him. Were it not so lamentable, no Spectacle could be more con summately ridiculous than that of the mere Stripling who stands up before a congregation, in which are men of mature wisdom and women in the ripened beauty of holi ness, and professes to take his position above prophets, apostles, and the very Saviour; to look down upon the gospel as obsolete or obsolescent; and to give forth his own (so-called) intuitions as the sole standard of truth and mirror, of duty. But, if a revelation has Indeed been made, then may the mind ingenuous, honest, fitly trained and devoutly consecrated, serve not inaptly as an interpreter, even for its superlors In years, ethical experience, and spirit ual wisdom.

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