public were excluded, when he made a raid on them, all who were found there would be sure to be Christians.

It might be supposed that it was only at the smaller meetings that the members were allowed to conduct the services, and that when the whole church was assembled only the elders would be allowed to take part, but it was not so. The synagogue rule was rigidly adhered to, and the services were conducted by the members as in the smaller meetings. There was no pulpit; one had a psalm, another gave an address, a third had a tongue, while a fourth interpreted, a fifth had a revelation, which seems to conclude the series; but Paul urges upon them a gift greater than all the others, "Ye may all prophesy one by one." "I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues” (1 Cor. xiv. 5).

CHAPTER IV.

TEMPLEISM THE ROOT OF THE PAPACY.

THE great apostasy which was predicted in Scripture,

and which so disastrously hindered the spread of Christianity by corrupting the Church, commenced almost immediately after the death of the Apostles and the elders that outlived them. Even during the lifetime of the Apostles, the mystery of iniquity had already begun to work, and in the hands of the Judaising teachers, who sought to bring the Church under subjection to the weak and beggarly elements of the Levitical dispensation, gave early indication of the channel in which it was to run.

We have shown that the temple service and the Levitical system generally were intended to accomplish two great purposes. The first was to give the Israelites healthy employment, until under the Pentecostal dispensation they should be set free to evangelise the nations; so that Abraham might be the heir of the world. The other was, that it might be a schoolmaster to teach the carnal Israelites, by means of shadows and parabolic illustrations, the great features of the person and work of the coming Messiah.

When the Messiah did come, and when the substance and the reality took the place of the types and shadows, the continuance of the temple system would have been not only unnecessary but injurious; because, instead of

leading to a better acquaintance with Christ as our Saviour, it would rather withdraw our attention from Him, and prevent us from rising to a more spiritual perception of His preciousness and glory. And in addition to that, it would have so monopolised our time and energies in the continual round of ordinances, that there would have been no time for the Church to devote itself to the great work of the evangelisation of the world.

There were various causes which conspired to favour the return of the Church to the carnality of the temple system; the first of which was no doubt the lingering affection which the Jewish Christians bore to the departed glories of the temple services. The destruction of Jerusalem put an end to the Levitical ordinances, and the Jewish Christians were at length relieved from the obligation to observe them. And yet we should judge very wrongly of the human heart, if we supposed that even the Christian Jews did not feel a pride in the gorgeous and Divinely instituted temple services, which they alone were privileged to engage in. Even though it entailed upon them a bondage which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear; yet when at length the destruction of the temple put an end to it, and when that which for thirty long years had been only ready to vanish away actually disappeared, they never till then knew how dearly they loved it. Even the Jews that were dwelling in foreign lands, although they could not be present at the morning and evening sacrifices, or any of the solemn feasts, had a pleasing consciousness that these were going on; and it would be not without a pang that they became aware that they had ceased for ever. The destruction of Jerusalem, therefore, however necessary it might be for the full development of Christianity, must have given a shock to the Christian Church in the person

of every one of its Jewish members, and that at a time when the Jewish element largely preponderated. A void would be created that could not but be felt; and it was not unnatural that there should be at least a tendency to make up for the blank by grafting upon Christianity itself something of the nature of the priesthood, and the ritual of the old dispensation.

In course of time also the Gentile converts would outnumber the Jewish, and their influence would tend in the same direction; so that when the spirituality of the Church declined, they too would long for something resembling their elegant temples and their old spectacular rites, which the Jewish regard for the Bible and detestation for idolatry would fail to neutralise.

But the chief source from which the apostasy took its rise was the natural carnality of the human heart, which is common to both Jew and Gentile. The same dislike to retain God in their knowledge, which gave birth to the abominations of the heathen, was the real parent of the great apostasy.

Man is naturally a religious being, and even the carnal heart must have a religion of some kind. The sense of moral nakedness is an instinct of our fallen nature, and in the absence of the righteousness of God is felt to be intolerable. The guilty soul feels that it must have something to come between itself and God, and, like Adam and Eve in Paradise, seeks to manufacture for itself a covering or screen, behind which it may hide itself. The Levitical law had provided for that want, and every animal that was slain provided a temporary covering for sin, so that the shame of the worshipper's nakedness did not appear. Thus, from the time of Abel downwards, to the last sacrifice that smoked upon the altar in Jerusalem, there was a blood-stained screen, behind which the guilty conscience.

felt as if there was a covering for his sin. There was even something in the way of doing in these Levitical ordinances, so that the Jew that did them rested in them, and made his boast of the law, because he lived by them.

But when the temple was destroyed and its carnal ordinances ceased, but more especially when God in Christ presented Himself as the sinner's portion without any intervening ceremonial, the carnal mind shrank from His presence, and eagerly sought some outward observances to come between him and God, and at the same time enable him to pay his homage to his Maker. Nor would this be difficult to find, because there is no veil that shuts out the felt presence of God so effectually as that which is woven. of ceremonial rites and bodily observances.

Moreover, if Christianity was to receive the patronage of the rich and great, it was felt that it must be made so that unconverted men could adopt it as their religion, giving an outward and bodily homage, without any spiritual devotion or a holy life. When the Church's love began to grow cold, therefore, and its fervour to abate, the outward forms and customs which had been once the natural clothing of a living Christianity not always the wisest or the best, became first stereotyped, then traditional, and at length sacred. Gradually, these grew into a rigid and embellished ritual, the performance of which became the substitute of spiritual worship and fellowship with God. As it departed more and more from the simplicity and spirituality of the synagogue, it approached more and more to the type and character of a temple service, until it ended in the full blown Romish apostasy.

But there was another reason why the carnal mind preferred the temple service to the worship of the synagogue. A priest was needed. It was not only necessary that