Prophets appear as chief men, leaders, rulers (whether strictly official or not)—both speaking the word of God and bearing rule over the congregation.' Presbyters who, together with their presidency of the churches, labored "in the word and in teaching" were to be doubly honored. It was Timothy, an evangelist, charged with "handling aright the word of truth," to whom was committed as a vice-apostle the temporary superintendency of the church in Ephesus. It was prophets and teachers in Antioch who laid their hands upon two of their own number, to send them away on a special mission to the nations.*

3

And it is one of these same missionaries who unites henceforth the two functions most conspicuously in his own ministry: as a prophet, receiving visions and revelations from the Lord, and declaring the spirituality and inexorableness of the law, the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the way of access to God, the unity of the Spirit, the unsearchable riches of Christ; as an administrator, planning and opening the way for the universal extension of organized Christianity, exercising discipline, ordaining elders, sending representatives to set things in order in places where he could not be personally present. At one time we find him writing to the church in Corinth: "I know a man in Christ, how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words.” At another time he sends to the churches a plan for gathering money for the relief of the poor: "Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I gave order to the churches of Galatia, so also do ye. Upon the first day of the week let each of you lay by him in store, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come."

A mystic, was he? Truly a matchless mystic, if to call this man by such a name means that, through the divine life in his own spirit, he discerned intuitively the things of the Spirit of God. And he was all the more competent lifter of a collection

for the poor and director of the external affairs of the churches because of that spiritual discernment. For the heavenly things interpret the earthly and show the eternal relations of even the lowliest and most external duty. It is by the light of the resplendent sun, millions and millions of miles away, that men walk on their own little planet; and it is those who "walk in the light as God is in the light" that may expect to see clearly, so as to organize wisely, all service for Christ and his kingdom., Except in that light, how can they even know Christ and his kingdom, for whose sake the Church is to do whatever she does?

One can imagine an acceptable priest under the Old Covenant pursuing his round of daily duties without the inner teaching of the Spirit: one cannot imagine an office-bearer of an apostolic congregation fulfilling his office without such teaching.

Nor can it be asserted that the New Testament idea is practically lost and forgotten. Its witness has been wrought into the economy of all evangelical churches; for it is the minister of the gospel who is chosen as best fitted for the office of administration. The double qualification is sought, the grace of spiritual truth and the gift to create or maintain institutions. Prophet-rulers, preachers-in-charge, are appointed. Because not less manifest now than ever in Israel or ever in the first Christian century is the need of the heavenly vision to the man on whom shall rest the organizing and governmental care of the churches. "O Thou Eternal One, I must go up to the Mount ere I give laws to the people."

Is the double need of grace and gift sometimes fulfilled in power-as in the case of the strong "practical mystics," a Wesley, a Chalmers, a Fliedner, a Hudson Taylor, a Dwight L. Moody, a Hugh Price Hughes? Then may be heard the note of progress in the building of the Church. Then indeed will that kingdom of love and of law in which Jesus Christ bears the scepter show signs of its presence and its coming.

Index

INDEX.