wett and Stanley, to
say nothing of Martineau, who roundly proclaim that "orders," as
understood by them, are nothing more nor less than a superstition? For
instance, what would the patrons of the "mass in masquerade" answer to
Stanley's direct and emphatic pronouncement: "In the beginning of
Christianity there was no such institution as the clergy; it grew
naturally out of the increasing needs of the community . . . the
intellectual element in religion requires some one to express it, and
this, in some form or other, will be the clergy"?[1] Surely if there
were no "orders" in the beginning, then a priesthood was no creation of
Jesus, his apostles were no priests, they created, therefore, no
priests, and a priestly caste grew up as an intrusion in Christendom
just as it arose in the religion of the holy Buddha in India, and
attempted, though unsuccessfully, to invade the severely simple
religion of Mohammed.

The view which ethical religion takes of sacerdotalism is very well
known, but it is essential to do more than merely repudiate the notion
of priesthood as an integral portion of religion; our duty is also to
possess ourselves of the facts of history and criticism so as to
satisfy ourselves and others who may need such instruction, that
sacerdotalism is not only not ethical, but is anti-Christian, and that
the greatest anomaly the world presents to-day is that of the clergymen
of the Eastern and Western Churches arrogating to themselves the
possession of powers which the founder of their religion and his
earliest followers not only never exercised, but of which they had not
even a remote conception.

A singular interest has been added to this inquiry by the
recently-revived controversy between two of the many Churches into
which Christendom is divided on the highly debatable matter of Anglican
orders. The said controversy had been in a state of suspended
animation from the time of the Stuarts up to the Tractarian movement,
when it was partially revived, and a fair crop of literature sprang up
around it. It has been reserved, however, for our own days to witness
its complete vivification under the auspices of the High Church
societies and certain _sagrestani_ among "the nobility and gentry" of
our day. To the credit of the female sex, we hear of no ladies being
_prominently_ identified with the movement. Even Oxford, once "the
home of lost causes and impossible ideals," concerns itself with these
_minutiae_