tians, I cannot see how we can help setting the highest value on their testimony to the way in which the Scriptures of the New Testament were interpreted in their day.

It stands to reason that we must do this, for the Christians of that day had the oral teaching of the Apostles and Apostolic men to enable them to ascertain the true meaning of Scripture. Writers of the second century, for instance, had access to nearly the same writings of the Apostles as we have; they had the same Spirit of God to enlighten them, and they were familiar with that Christian doctrine which was then in existence, which was derived from the oral teaching of the Apostles before the writings of the New Testament were collected into one volume.

If we did not give some weight to the testimony of such early writers, we should be wilfully, and of set purpose, putting from us a means which God has given to us of ascertaining the right interpretation of His word. If men with such advantages bear witness that the Scriptures were uniformly interpreted in one way, and not in another, it is a strong proof to us, who hold that one way of interpreting Scripture, that we are right in so doing.

The following will serve as an illustration, and make my meaning clear:

In the third chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, we have our Lord's words, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Here our Lord apparently connects Regeneration with Baptism.

If this had been the only place in the New Testament in which spiritual benefits were connected with the “washing of water," we should, perhaps, have been tempted to explain it away; but we have at least twelve other places in which, as I have shown, things pertaining to

salvation are connected with this Sacrament.

Taking

this into account, the overwhelming probability is, that our Lord alluded to the water of Baptism when He spake of being "born of water."

The Church of England has adopted this conclusion in the opening sentence of her Service for the Baptism of Infants, and she also directly asserts it in her comment on these very words of our Lord in the "Service for the Baptism of such as are of Riper Years."

Now, it must be, in the nature of things, a very strong testimony to her correctness in thus interpreting John iii. 5, to find a Christian writer who flourished within fifty years of the publication of St. John's Gospel, speaking of Baptism thus:—

"Then they (the catechumens) are led by us to the water, and are regenerated by the same process of regeneration by which we were ourselves regenerated; for they then receive the laver in the name of God the Father and Master of the Universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost. For Christ says, 'Except ye be born again, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.' This well-known passage is from Justin Martyr, an author who lived in Palestine; and the date of his martyrdom is not later than 160.

Now, this place bears testimony to the fact, that when our Lord used the word "water," in the expression, "born of water," it was from the very first understood to refer to that baptismal water which God, for some good but inscrutable purpose, had joined with the Spirit, as a means whereby He brings about Regeneration.

In a large number of authors who have written within the last three hundred years, we have our Lord's words interpreted as if by "water" He did not mean water; many, for instance, say that to be "born of water and of

the Spirit" means to be born of the Spirit acting like water. According to this view, our Lord's allusion to water was not merely superfluous, but dangerous and ensnaring, because the Holy Spirit had elsewhere connected grace with the application of water in Baptism, and the attentive student of Scripture could not help remembering this when he thought of our Lord's words here. Another writer, whose words I have now before me, lays down that by water " we must here understand the word of God, so that our Lord means, "Except a man be born of the Scriptures and of the Spirit."

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Now, these interpretations, however ingenious or seemingly spiritual, are simply traditional. They are "traditions" which can be traced to certain fallible men living about three hundred years ago.

Let the reader notice that these traditions set aside the natural meaning of Christ's words, which certainly imply that Regeneration is a joint birth of water and of the Spirit. Men who hold these traditions hold that our Lord instituted a mere form of profession, as a sort of substitute for circumcision, when He ordained Baptism in water in the name of the Trinity.

The Church rejects these traditional interpretations, traceable to certain so-called reformers, and adopts that carlier interpretation traceable to Apostolic times, which makes our Lord's words in John iii. in harmony with those other words of His Spirit which connect grace with the due reception of Baptism.

Then, with respect to the other Sacrament, I have remarked that every reference to the Holy Communion in the New Testament implies that it is a means of grace in which the faithful are, in some true but mysterious and heavenly way, made partakers of the Body and Blood of Christ.

We have a reference to the mystery of the Holy Communion in the same author I have quoted above. Justin, in his "Apology," writes thus: "For we do not receive it as common bread or as common drink, but in what way Jesus Christ our Saviour, being through the Word of God incarnate, hath both flesh and blood for our salvation, so also have we been taught that the food over which thanksgiving has been made by the prayer of the word which is from Him, from which (food) our blood and flesh are by transmutation nourished, is the flesh and blood of Him, the Incarnate Jesus. For the Apostles, in their records which are called the Gospels, have delivered that Jesus so commanded them, that He, having taken bread and given thanks, said, 'Do this in remembrance of Me. This is My body; and likewise, having taken the cup, and given thanks, He said, 'This is My blood.""

Whatever obscurity there may be about some parts of this passage, it is decisively in favour of the fact that the teaching of the Primitive Church, which in Justin's time must have been mainly derived from the oral teaching of the Apostles, was in accordance with the written teaching of the Apostles in the New Testament; and every word of their written teaching on the Eucharist is in favour of the high view of the Sacrament-that there is in it a mysterious communication of our Lord's Body and Blood.

If the teaching of the Primitive Church had been rationalizing on this point, Justin Martyr would never have described Eucharistic doctrine in such terms when writing to commend Christianity to the heathen; for in what he says of the nature of the Eucharist he rather creates a difficulty in the way of the heathen embracing the Gospel, whereas, by representing the Eucharist as a mere memorial, he might have made all clear.

The interpretation, then, which makes our Lord's words

to be mere figure or metaphor, is traditional, to be traced to Zuingle and certain other so-called reformers. It is just as much a tradition as the Invocation of Saints, and nothing like as old.

In the early Christian writers (and by "early " I mean those who lived in the century or century and a half after the Apostolic age) we have a considerable literature; not very voluminous, but amply sufficient to show what was the tone and character of the theology of the times when the oral teaching of the Apostles cannot have died out.1

These writings amply prove that this theology was neither Romish, nor Rationalistic, nor Calvinistic, nor Puritan.

We gather from it that the Christians of the earliest times took a high view of the Sacraments, without believing in Transubstantiation; that they took a high view of the official character of the Christian ministry, whilst they were altogether ignorant of the claims of the Papacy. Nothing conceived in the tone of a modern Puritan treatise has come down to us from these times.

No single treatise of any early Christian writer can be tortured into conformity with the Calvinistic or Methodistic systems.

But it is hinted that the mystery of iniquity was then at work, and that this mystery is discernible in the undoubtedly high tone of every single reference to the two Sacraments which we find in these writers.

1 Writers of all shades of theological opinions quote these early Christian authors when it serves their purpose. An orthodox Presbyterian (Dr. Dwight) refers to every passage in them which seems to prove the doctrine of the Trinity, as if it was so much Scripture. They are universally appealed to as evidences of the early reception of the various books of the New Testament.