press home its great and solemn truths, with earnestness and power, upon the understandings, the hearts and the consciences of men.

Thus, then, we interpret the Apostolic Commission: A world in darkness, ignorant of God, dead in trespasses and in sins, was to be redeemed and saved by the efforts and prayers and tears of such as they to whom the commission was first addressed, and through the divine efficacy of the truth which they preached. No frowns, no menaces, no unfaithfulness of friends, no perils, were to be allowed to turn them aside, or prevent their testimony on the behalf of the Gospel of the grace of God. Even though their lives were made sorrowful by the unfriendliness of the world, their hearts grieved by the wrongs and the injustice of men, their way blocked up by dungeons and scaffolds, they were to go on, fighting manfully the good fight of faith, and enduring cheerfully for the sake of the Cross of Christ.

Consecrated and set apart by the descent and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, those early preachers were faithful to their high commission. Even in the darkest days they never faltered. Opposition and perils only armed them with new courage. Persecuted of all nations, and hated for the sake of Jesus, they clung with a warmer and closer attachment to his cause, and pressed forward with the Gospel to the very ends of the earth. In the streets of cities, in private houses, in prisons, with chains upon their limbs, threatened with violence and death, they preached with unfettered soul and speech, Jesus and the Resurrection, and won rejoicing converts to the new religion.

The ministry of the apostles was an itinerant ministry. The ministry of Christ was an itinerant ministry. He did not seek to gather and build up a large and flourishing Church in Jerusalem alone; concentrating at that point his chief efforts, and the divinest exhibitions of his grace and mercy. He went about doing good by his preaching and miracles, not having where to lay his head. He was like his religion, not to be confined to any one spot, nor to any particular class, nor to any special times and seasons. His life and ministry "marked one of those grand strokes of destiny, one of those grand crises which inaugurate humaner ideas of God, humaner fellowship among men, and humaner arts of life than the world had yet permitted.”

He was not for Jerusalem, not for the Jew, nor for the Samaritan, but for humanity and the world. His mission, specially, was to the lost, to the poor, the sinful and heartbroken. He was the door to a broader church than men have ever established, and his a more unselfish religion than his professed followers have ever yet dared put into practice. By incessant journeyings,-now in Samaria, now in Gallilee, again in regions remote from these,—everywhere, in private and in public, in synagogues, in the streets of cities, on the sea-shore, teaching and living as no man ever before taught and lived, he sought to bring himself and his religion into personal and immediate contact with men with the wants and maladies of the human soul. And when those busy and tired feet "were nailed for our advantage to the bitter cross," and the blessed lips, from which had dropped only the words of eternal life, lisped that last prayer for murderers and were mute, there succeeded another ministry — and yet a ministry whose field was the world, and its work the preaching of a universal and unselfish religion. In other words, it was to preach Christ, not the Christ of a nation, or of a sect, or of any one age or world, even, - not a partial, "a little narrow Christ," the representative of a narrow religion, that saves only little-souled men and women, but the Christ that loved and died for all men, and whose kingdom embraces the good and the pure of all countries, all times, and all creeds.

We said that this ministry, like Christ's, was an itinerant ministry. It was a ministry without permanent abode one that traversed the habitable globe, uttering its testimony by the wayside, in the dwellings of the poor, in the high places of heathenism, and before kings on their thrones.

It will be conceded that this was the best possible ministry for that early gospel-day. It met a then present necessity; it supplied a demand. The Gospel was to be preached every where a broad and spiritual religion to establish its empire not only in individual hearts, but in the heart of the world. Its salvation was to come to individuals and communities by or through faith, and faith could only come by hearing, and hearing by the divine words of Jesus as preached by human lips. Every apostle of this religion was in some sense a missionary. In assuming the responsibilities of its ministry, he became a debtor to all men the chosen instrument of

God for evangelizing the world. His commission made him an itinerant it makes an itinerant of every Gospel preacher today.

From Apostolic times to the present, an itinerant Christian ministry has proved itself most efficient. So far as success in spreading the knowledge of Christ is concernedin carrying salvation to the souls of men-no other description of ministry can compare with it. Take away the missionary element from any sect or Church of to-day, and shut the door of itinerancy against its ministry, and its life is gone it has parted with its strength, and with its chief means for the spread of its doctrines, and the enlargement of its ecclesiastical borders.

Itinerancy in the Methodist Episcopal Church is, as is well known, the chief feature of its economy. This has made Methodism a missionary system from the first. Like the Apostles of old, her itinerants have gone into all the world, proclaiming the message of God's mercy to the lost and guilty sons of men. They have penetrated the fastnesses of the wilderness, and visited the remotest pioneer settlement upon the boundaries of civilization.

It is common to speak harshly and derisively of the system of itinerancy as it obtains in the Methodist Churchto denounce it as absurd, out of date, and unadapted to any existing condition of things. It undoubtedly has its burdens, and these now and then may bear heavily. But see what are its great practical advantages as demonstrated by the unparalleled growth and prosperity of the Church adopting it. Methodism began, for the most part, with a ministry of limited intellectual resources with little or no previous theological training. Had the most eminent of them been confined to a single field of labor, to a single parish, "their names and memories would have died with them.' Their talents were amplified by the wide range of their labors, and the results of their ministry made glorious indeed. Under no other system, in the same space of time, could so grand an organic structure have been reared by the same men.

We are indebted to our own large and flourishing growth as a denomination, to the itinerant character of our early ministry, and to the missionary spirit that now prevails among our preachers under a different system of things. When itinerancy was the rule, and not the exception, we reached

and influenced more minds than we could have done in any other way, because of the diversity of ministerial talent employed in the same fields of labor. It is often the case that a minister, zealous and faithful, utterly fails to impress favorably certain individuals, or to enlist their sympathy. He is not positively disliked by them, but still, either because he is not a congenial spirit, or for other reason, he does not interest and of course does not benefit them. Associated with him, a co-laborer in the same field, is one in whom this class find just what they need. His preaching, the breadth and quality of his thought, seem providentially adjusted to their dimensions and taste, and they spiritually thrive under his ministrations. Under the one-man system their spiritual powers might have languished in a sickly existence, or, perhaps, have been dormant forever. It required all the varied talent and the peculiar personal gifts of a Paul, a Peter, a James, a John, a Silas and a Bartholomew, in the Apostolic ministry, to go into all the world, and preach the Gospel successfully to every creature. The employment of the same differing and divers gifts is as essential now. Their employment in combination is demanded alike in all parts of the gospel field-in every congregation that every class of mind may have its deepest wants fully met, and every variety of taste be gratified.

We must not overlook, in this connection, the distribution and equalization of ministerial talent, as a matter essentially important. Under the itinerant system, the system inaugurated by Christ himself, "no one Church is allowed to retain a brilliant preacher, or efficient worker, to build up a powerful and overgrown organization, into which a multitude may press in order to enjoy fine preaching and pleasing social amenities, rather than to become workers in the vineyard of our Lord." Paul does not locate in Athens or Corinth, and make these the field of his labor. John, the beloved disciple, does not confine the ministry of a gentle spirit and the preaching of a divine charity to Jerusalem alone. The bold and impetuous Peter does not "settle" in any city of Judea, and there expend his zeal for the cause of Christ. There was a broad distribution of the peculiar and differing gifts each possessed, which were employed on the same field for the accomplishment of a purpose that, but for their conjoint exercise, had failed.` So

now under the same system. The great preacher "having made his impression, having stirred up and brought together elements of power and usefulness, leaves them to grow by their own Christian activities, and goes forth to work like results elsewhere." Thus he labors effectively in many fields, and the practical results of his ministry are increased many-fold. The least successful are followed by those more successful. Hearts uninfluenced by one are reached and graciously affected by another; and the work of the Lord prospers abundantly through their conjoint labors.

It would seem that we are being providentially driven back to the primitive system of Apostolic labor. The universal favor with which the itinerant lecturing system meets, is indicative of the adaptation of itinerancy to the urgent wants of our times. It supplies the varied talent and genius of the best minds and hearts of the age, to all parts of the land, and thereby ministers to every variety of taste, and every diversity of preference and mental condition. The people are coming to crave the same diversity of talent in the pulpit, and this itinerancy alone can supply. It can not be found in combination in the person of any one preacher, although as learned and eloquent as Paul. The whole Apostolic Brotherhood alone can furnish it. Even at the present time there is no such thing as a "settled ministry.' Indeed, the ministry of every Church is very. unsettled. It is a ministry on wheels!-without permanency of location. In the good old days of New England, the minister was settled for life. He became a fixture in the parish to which he was called the spiritual head of the Christian body. He lived and died among his people, respected and loved by them to the last. It is vastly different now. The preacher has come to be regarded as little else than a hireling-he is to do so much work for so much pay. The pastoral relation has but very slender existence,—the idea of permanence does not attach to it. Men are installed as pastors of congregations,-it might very appropriately be done on horseback!-for these pastors may remain a year, perhaps two, or five years; it certainly would not be safe to say more than six! In how many cases after a "call" has been received, and the preacher has "settled," does he find arrayed against him an active and vigorous minority who criticise him without mercy- speak lightly, perhaps deri

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