results of their labors are felt to-day by various schools of theology, and will be felt all through the future in the onward march of thought towards the perfect knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus.

The theology of our times is becoming more and more Christo-centric. That it is so in New England is due largely to the genius of one man, very unlike Dr. Taylor in the structure of his mind, but resembling him closely in his love and his eager and daring pursuit of truth. Whatever may

have been the demerits of the teaching of Horace Bushnell, it had this great merit, that it turned the theological thought of New England into new channels, that it compelled our theological thinkers to look more closely and more earnestly at the person and the work of Christ-the central themes of the glorious gospel of the Blessed God.

ARTICLE II.

THE LIMITS OF MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY.

BY THE REV. EDWARD N. PACKARD, SYRACUSE, NEW YORK.

THAT there is an increased pressure of responsibility coming upon the ministry of the present day grows more and more painfully evident. Respecting this pressure two diverse tendencies are manifest: on the one hand, there is less to favor the ministry in the social and intellectual life of the world; while, on the other, there is more thrust upon it inside the church. Men in general rely less upon their spiritual fathers and teachers for guidance, while they exact more of them as managers of religious business. The minister fills too small a place in the whole life of man and too large a place in the church. This has come about gradually through many complex causes, but chiefly through the departure from the primitive pattern of church organization, and the refusal or the inability of the laity to do their share of the work. There are certain simple duties in the Christian life that are its unchanging mold. Religion is the dress of faith. Its place is in the outward duties such as Christ performed as our pattern. No division of labor in the church can release the members, as a whole and individually, from these duties; yet they are constantly neglected by the church at large or done through substitutes. It is not an exaggeration to say that not a few seem to regard the pastor and the women of the churches as alone responsible for the care of the sick, the comfort of the sorrowful, for carrying sympathy to the downcast and outcast, showing social attention to strangers, for the nurture of the young, and restraint upon the law-breaking classes. For this, so some

tian warfare.

imagine, the minister is hired as the coachman is,-using the word with no intentional indignity, but with the same underlying conception of his office. He is a substitute in ChrisHe is a paid overseer of a religious concern. It may not be most convenient for him or the people that he should be made the settled pastor; and anon the sheep are without care because the hireling fleeth. The laymen are not idle, but busy, too busy and too heavily weighted with business cares to have strength and leisure, as they believe, to visit the fatherless and the widows, to converse with persons on religion, to know the stranger in his home and family, and to have a real share in the oversight of the church.

It is not intended to imply that this comes from lay ambition, or covetousness, or strife for place and consideration amongst men. All are on a common level of consecration and of worldliness, of success and failure. The real causes are deep. They are ultimately moral and they affect insensibly the whole world. Christian life to-day may be as good and wholesome as at any period since the days of the apostles, but it is almost grotesquely unlike the early pattern. The gap between the church and the masses has never been so great as the gap between the church and Christ. Possibly if we considered this more honestly we should see fewer deaf children sitting in the market-place. The constant need is of more holiness and more practical sense in Christian work. The men in the churches are working in this overburdened world at unreasonable hours, knowing that to cease doing so is simply to drop out of one's place and not recover it; working hard up into the sacred hours of the Lord's Day or quite through them. Often, when less enslaved by business, they are compelled to drag a wearied body, and offer a preoccupied mind, to the worship of the Almighty. Or, if they are independent, to use the common phrase, and have capital and are employers, their responsibilities and working hours only increase, unless they are well towards the top places in business. It is easy

to say of the capitalists that they should relinquish a part It of their load so as to acquire time for Christian service. may be that this is impossible: the whole may be endangered if a part goes from their hands,-such is the remorseless grind of the business world in this latter half of the nineteenth century. And still, in spite of it, we must have more lay helpers if we are to see our divinely appointed service performed. The early churches were chiefly made up of the laboring classes, and yet they had time to work for Christ and to evangelize much of the world of their day. Out of such a condition of things, with laymen doing little personal work, it is no wonder that there is a call for men in the ministry who are good pastors, who can attract the young, and keep hold of the strangers, and preach with seraphic eloquence.

As to the work of woman, whatever may be true in politics, she need have no fear as to her sphere in the church. It will be large enough. The foreign missionary interest has largely passed into the busy hands of Christian women. They read the intelligence, prepare the missionary concert, raise-in some churches at least-most of the money for foreign missions. They pray and call on the husband, father, and son to commute through the contribution box. They do most of the social work of the church in the homes of the people, while men are losing the art of being social in Women do the chief work in keepone another's houses. ing the temperance issues alive. Perhaps more men would come to church if the men of the church.did more to inMinisters are popularly associated with duce them to come. women because their brethren among the laity demit their own responsibility to such an extent that church activity looks feminine.

Besides all this, the weakened conscience as to church obligations throws a wholly needless burden upon pastors. Take the one item of neglect to unite with new churches, when residence has been transferred from one locality to another. Forty per cent. of the non-attendants at church in a certain

community were found to have old and unused letters of dismission in their pockets.

In getting the subject before us, consider also the second service on the Lord's Day. Out of the seminary comes a young Timothy to be ordained and set over a church. But for what? To preach the Word? Undoubtedly. But he soon finds that he has been appointed, by usage at least, to preach two sermons a week, and that the second one must be preached to a half-empty house. This is not a calamity it may be, but it is an annoyance and a burden. He feels himself responsible before God for the creation of an earnest and interested evening audience. Such, however, are the habits of the congregation that in the morning he comes home from the pulpit with his mouth filled with laughter; in the evening, with sawdust. In the morning he may be something of a Pharisee; in the evening he says, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Under these depressions he is tempted to enter the "novelty business," and to hire mensingers and women-singers, and that of all sorts. He may

resort to stereopticons or paintings to catch the popular eye. He will choose perhaps startling themes, and do anything, in a word, that is not positively secular and wholly irreverent, to induce the very Body of Christ over whom the Holy Ghost has made him overseer, to attend to its own business and support the preaching of the Word.

Against these methods of calling together the people I have nothing to say in criticism. A living dog is better than a dead lion. Respectable death, dullness, indifference to the situation, these are not apostolic nor Christ-like. But there is some better way for the churches than to leave upon their pastors the load of creating audiences. This should be shared by the church. If more souls can be reached at the evening hour in some unconsecrated spot, some street corner or park or theatre or public hall, why not resort to them, rather than die of inanition, or resort to novelties that soon weary and leave all as before?

But our young brother is called to preach in a church?