God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,” (that is, in the natural world when He said, “Let there be light:”) “hath shined in our hearts,” (that is, in the new creation of the spiritual world,) “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.” [4c]  And then, in the text, he seems to meet an objection, that if his call and ministry in the Gospel were of so glorious a nature, the instruments thereof would bear more or higher marks of glory themselves, he adds the words of our text: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” [4d]

And now, brethren, again I ask, what is the treasure, and to whom committed?  Surely the ministry of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ, entrusted to human stewardship!

And who shall disparage this, or overlook it, or deny the gifts and treasure of and in those who bear it, though they be but as earthen vessels; though they look simply like other men; though they are “men of like passions;” though they have few or no high marks or tokens, to be discerned by man’s eye, of the greatness of the treasure which nevertheless they bear?

This thought, this warning against denying God’s gifts when lodged in earthen vessels, and so speaking against them as actually to make a new Gospel totally unlike to that which has been from the beginning, is especially a danger of our day: a day when men live so much by sight, and, alas, so little by faith; when restless and free enquiry ranges over every subject, and men pride themselves upon their refusal to submit to any authority but their own reason, or their own mere opinion, or to receive anything beyond that of which they can understand the mode and assign the use.

Not, perhaps, the most unfrequent of these attacks of the present time is directed against almost the very subject of our text: the reality of the treasure or gifts bestowed upon the ministers and stewards of Christ’s mysteries, because they are contained in earthen vessels.  Whereas St. Paul fully claims and asserts that there is this treasure, and gives as the sufficient reason for its being so lowlily enshrined, that thereby it would be seen indeed that “the excellency of the power is of God, and not of man;” [6] these objectors deny there can be any such treasure as it is asserted there is, because it is not to their eye exhibited in or by, glorious, or sufficiently distinctive, instruments.

Take a case in illustration, very near indeed to the argument of the Apostle in this place.  If our Christianity in our beloved Church of England is, and is to be, the Christianity which has been from the beginning, it cannot be without a priesthood, and an altar, and a sacrifice.  I do not propose at this moment to go into the proofs of this, but rather to notice an objection which is sometimes triumphantly put forward, by modern infidelity or ignorance, as fatal to all such claims.  It is said, that if it were so that there is a priesthood, (which it is intended to deny;—O sad and fearful thought!  That any should be found to deny and refuse the chiefest means of applying to us the pardon of the Cross): but if it were so, then, it is said this priesthood must be seen to be such by some peculiar exhibition of its powers, by some glorious or distinctive appearance in the treasure-bearing vessels.  So it is said, Whatever there may be elsewhere, the Church of England at least has no priesthood, and no priests.  No!  Can any one believe (it is added) that they are priests who are young men, as others, one day; and are ordained, with so little outward difference, the next?  Can it be that prayers and a laying on of hands, even by bishops, can effect such a change when all looks so nearly the same?  No, truly!  If such there were, if such there be, if we are to believe in a power given of this kind, if the priest can consecrate, and offer upon the altar of God, let us see the difference.  Let the young, who are to fill such an office, be educated, not as other young men are, living with them in social life at our schools and Universities, but as set apart for this from their earliest days.  Let them be known of all as a separate kind or caste; let them have a distinctive dress; let them give up social life; let them, above all, renounce the married state, and give themselves up to pursue their avocation in the single life; and then, perhaps, we may be more inclined to believe in their sacrificial function; in their power to officiate sacerdotally at the altar; in the committal to them of the power of the keys, and all which is included in the idea of a distinct order and a priestly authority.  Now all this, brethren, is mere man’s wisdom, setting forth, in truth, not what it really desires to find as the mark of a priesthood, if it might have this in vessels of gold or silver, but simply, if it may not disparage and deny a priesthood of Christianity altogether, (which yet it desires to do), at least delighting to deny it to us; to raise a prejudice against it, and to drive from the Church of England (if it were possible) all those who cleave to the statements of our formularies as they are, and to the faith once for all delivered and handed down to us.

But observe, brethren, what all this really amounts to.  I am not saying whether there should not be (unto the more edification), a more distinctive theological education for the future priesthood than very often there is among us.  I am not saying whether there might not, with advantage, be some greater distinction in outward appearance or dress, than we have among us generally, for those who minister in holy things.  (Let it, however, here be remarked, that the greatest objection and hindrance as to this proceeds, as we well know, from the clamours of those who would first deny us all priestly character, and then reproach any who, claiming it, are anxious to mark it also by some outward difference.)  I am not, however, now dwelling upon these things, nor even on what are the advantages or disadvantages of a celibate clergy, but I say that to suppose the presence or absence of these outward signs or marks should affect the essence of the priesthood, and men being in reality and truth ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God, in the full sense in which these words are understood in all the primitive writings and liturgies of the Church of Christ, shews, not only an ignorance of the very first principles of Christian worship, but a strange overlooking of the truth taught in the text, and confirmed to us in so many other places of Holy Scripture.  If St. Paul confessed that, even with him, his ministry was confided to an earthen vessel; if there were no need and no likelihood that any of the primitive stewards of God’s mysteries should be distinguished as by a star upon their breast, or any insignia of their rank in the Apostolic band, then it can amount to nothing as a disproof of the priesthood of the ministry of the Church of England, that those who serve at her altars have but the outward look and bearing of other