entarian
theory. It insists on moral goodness in the recipients and ministers
of sacraments. But if the rite works of itself, its mechanical
performance should be sufficient. But no; goodness is needed to secure
any benefit therefrom; and this, of course, is the explanation of the
alleged results of the sacraments. The moral goodness of the recipient
has already secured the blessing before any rite has been administered.

[7] So that what had been thought to be a papal letter turns out to be
a lay homily, showing that a layman could preach as well as a pope in
the second century of our era. This suggests the notorious fact that
unordained ministers are equally, if not more, successful in awakening
ethical and religious emotion than priests and bishops. Nay, women
like Catherine of Siena could hold Europe, its kings, and popes
spell-bound, when "mere men" were powerless. Has any one in this
generation read more powerful appeals to the religious sense than the
fragments of the sermons of Dinah Morris in _Adam Bede_, more thrilling
descriptions of an unavailing remorse than in the sermon on the text,
"Keep innocency, and take heed to the thing which is right, for this
shall bring a man peace at the last," which is preached by the agonised
minister in _The Silence of Dean Maitland_?

[8] The recent papal rescript on Anglican ordination makes it the test
of the comparative value of the rival "orders".

[9] Tertullian in the _De Corona_ distinctly declares that though "it
is only from the hands of our president we receive the Eucharist, if
there be an emergency, a layman may celebrate as well as a bishop". I
am indebted to the late Dr. Edwin Hatch for the historical evidence
above adduced as to the church practice prevalent in the earliest
centuries of Christianity. I would recommend interested readers to
consult his Bampton Lectures, delivered in 1882.

VIII.

PRAYER IN THE ETHICAL CHURCH.

The most important consequence of the new faith that religion is rooted
and grounded not in doctrine but in morality, is the belief that the
religious instinct grows with the growth and advancement of the moral
sense. The old conception that everything religious was revealed once
for all 1900 years ago, that it is impious to add to, or modify, the
heavenly communication then made, we find ourselves obliged to
repudiate in terms. And, hence, we have no creed or articles. We
never know when, owing to advancing knowl