sion they should have the power of casting out devils and talking in
strange tongues; that they should handle serpents and drink poisons with
impunity; that they should lay hands on the sick and they should recover.
The Roman Church claims some of these powers for its clergy and its
sacred objects to this day. Miracles, it is professed, are wrought by
them, or through them, as in the days of the apostles. Protestantism
proclaims that the age of such occurrences as the apostles witnessed is
past. What does it know about miracles? It knows a great many records
of miracles, but this is a different kind of knowledge.

The minister may be revered for his character, followed for his
eloquence, admired for his learning, loved for his amiable qualities, but
he can never be what the priest was in past ages, and is still, in the
Roman Church. Dr. Arnold's definition may be found fault with, but it
has a very real meaning. "The essential point in the notion of a priest
is this: that he is a person made necessary to our intercourse with God,
without being necessary or beneficial to us morally,--an unreasonable,
immoral, spiritual necessity." He did not mean, of course, that the
priest might not have all the qualities which would recommend him as a
teacher or as a man, but that he had a special power, quite independent
of his personal character, which could act, as it were, mechanically;
that out of him went a virtue, as from the hem of his Master's raiment,
to those with whom his sacred office brought him in contact.

It was a great comfort to poor helpless human beings to have a tangible
personality of like nature with themselves as a mediator between them and
the heavenly powers. Sympathy can do much for the sorrowing, the
suffering, the dying, but to hear God himself speaking directly through
human lips, to feel the touch of a hand which is the channel of
communication with the unseen Omnipotent, this was and is the privilege
of those who looked and those who still look up to a priesthood. It has
been said, and many who have walked the hospitals or served in the
dispensaries can bear witness to the truth of the assertion, that the
Roman Catholics know how to die. The same thing is less confidently to
be said of Protestants. How frequently is the story told of the most
exemplary Protestant Christians, nay, how common is it to read in the
lives of the most exemplary Protestant ministers, that they were beset
with doubts