A fair examination into this question is most important, but we cannot enter upon it at the present moment. We must necessarily defer it to another day. I trust, with God’s help and guidance, to resume our subject on Sunday next, and endeavour further to see how the doctrine really stands, taking, briefly but carefully, into consideration these three points:—
1. What is the testimony of the Holy Scripture as to the doctrine of the Christian priesthood, altar, and sacrifice?
2. How this has been understood by the Church from the beginning? and,
3. How it has been received by our own branch of the Church Catholic, the Church of England?
And I will only add now, whilst I pray that we may all strive simply to know the will of God that we may do it, that there can be no more practical matter than this to engage our thoughts and hearts. For, if it be so, that Christ has left Him no priests now on earth to minister at His altars, and no sacrifice with which His people are concerned, a great part of what so many believe, I might say, of what the Church of God for eighteen hundred years and more has believed, to be of the essence of our faith, is a mere fable and superstition; whilst if, on the other hand, “it be truth, and the thing certain,” { 43} that a Christian priesthood, ordained by Christ Himself, and these sacrificial powers, and altar and sacrifice, remain and must remain ever in His Church, what words shall describe the misery and sin of those who are endeavouring to rob a whole nation of their belief in such truth of God, and to pour more than slight and contempt upon the ordinances of Christ; so that, in fact, they would, if they could have their will and way, unchurch the Church of God in this land, deny the virtue of His mysteries, and starve the children of God who seek to receive at His altar the benefits of His sacrifice, humbly waiting on Him there, and partaking of the sacrifice and feast ordained by Him.
Oh! let us pray indeed that we may come to the consideration of so weighty a matter, casting away all passion and prejudice and preconceived opinion, and whatsoever may hinder us from seeing the truth of God, to which may He of His mercy guide us. And may He grant us also that we may not merely know the truth, but when we know it follow it, in our daily life and conversation, without turning aside to the right hand or to the left.