1 Peter 2:9

THE HIGHEST OF ALL VOCATIONS

‘Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.’

1 Peter 2:9 (R.V.)

In the eyes of the early Church it was so splendid and sacred a distinction to be within the people of God that no distinctions within the body were anything like as important. To be a layman—whether you were Apostle or only a hearer—was to be a man called, chosen, marked, consecrated, responsible; to be a layman was to have a vocation and a value.

I. Here lay one of the chief outward differences between the religion of the Temple and the religion of the upper room. The old Jewish Church was split into sharply divided castes: the priest, charged with the work of sacrifice, purification, and prayer; the scribe and lawyer, charged with the authoritative dogmatic exposition of the law, stood clean apart on a higher plane from the common and despised people which knew not the law. The new Church, on the other hand, was one; manifold in tasks but one in spirit, feeling, life; one in the supreme fact that its ascended Lord gave, inspired, sustained the energies of every member. If one man was commissioned to teach, yet all were bearers of the Spirit; if one stood alone to offer the Eucharist, yet all were in the sacerdotal body, fellow-offerers and sharers in the one sacrifice. There was no room for modern clericalism then, because there was no room for the modern layman, or for what common opinion means by a layman to-day.

II. Many of the causes which led to the gradual separation of clergy and people were natural, and in their working, justifiable. While in the earliest age a presbyter or deacon would have his trade to follow if he were free, or his master to serve if he were a slave, as the Church grew towards maturity the increase of clerical responsibilities made it necessary to provide a special maintenance for the clergy; the clergy took a stated share of the monthly offerings of the faithful.

(a) The effect of this arrangement was that in turn all Church officers came to stand on the footing claimed by St. Paul as permissible to an Apostle; preaching the gospel, they lived by the gospel. Yet even when this step was taken, and the line of division between cleric and layman became visible as a professional distinction, there was much in early Church life which tended to preserve the conception of Christian unity. Within the Church walls the differences of function brought the distinction between the orders into prominence; but in daily life it was less obvious. Moreover, the lines of hierarchical division were crossed by other distinctions. The possession of a spiritual gift, such as prophecy, might lend one layman more weight than he would have had as presbyter or deacon; another as a confessor or martyr might wield an authority almost as great as that of a bishop; another as a scholar might be found preaching and teaching even where the higher clergy were present to sit under him. Further, for several centuries the laity retained their place in corporate functions of vital importance, such as the election of clergy and bishops, or conciliar deliberation.

(b) But little by little the laity lost their ground. The clergy became more and more official and professional, and with the specialisation of clerical work came the lowering of the ideals of the laity. As bishops, priests, deacons, and the rest passed clean away from secular life into a sphere of their own, and the clerical profession, the clerical world, came into being, so little by little it began to be felt that the layman’s was a lower vocation and a lower responsibility: that he might wear a lighter cross and tread an easier path; and from this root sprang all that lamentable classification of Christian callings, more deadly, perhaps, than any schism, which put the monastic life highest of all, the clerical vocation next, and lowest that of the mere Christian, the mere layman.

III. Shall we ever retrace and reverse the story of this miserable degeneration?—Will the time ever come when to be baptized, confirmed, and a communicant is felt to be in itself the highest of all vocations? We feel and speak now as if the difference between man and priest, priest and layman, were a difference in kind, whereas that between Churchman and non-Christian were only a difference in degree. Shall we ever come again to feel that to be in or out of the body of Christ is an alternative so tremendous that in comparison with it the difference between priest and layman dwindles almost into insignificance? If that apostolic conception ever returns, then I will dare to suggest that it may bring with it not only life to the dead bones, but also the return of one other feature of the apostolic age.

IV. The army of our priesthood.—What is it but a series of skeleton battalions? The diaconate we have all but abandoned, utilising it solely as a stage in the probation of a priest. But is it altogether beyond the horizon of any one’s dreams that if the vocation of the laity were restored to its true place of honour we might dare to fill up the skeleton battalions as they would have been filled up in the apostolic age? Then there were men—a few—who, preaching the gospel, lived by the gospel; but the mass of men in holy orders were also men of business and handicraft. There must always be an army of priests who shall withdraw from secular cares, and “draw all their cares and studies” towards the work of the ministry; but must there never again be men in holy orders who live and work and gain their bread in ordinary employments? It would be easy to show how the intolerable strain put upon many a town priest might be lifted if this dream came true, and how the brotherhood of the Church might be welded together, if only in this matter precedent were our servant and not our master. At present we have pushed so far out into the realm of experiment as to restore, partially, timidly, tentatively, the order of Readers. The gain is real, but it is jealously guarded by restrictions, and it is proportionately small. I would plead for a bolder outlook, and will venture to put the plea in one concrete form.

—Rev. H. N. Bate.

Illustrations

(1) ‘One strange feature of the traditional organisation of the Church is this: that while we revere the vocation of the clergy and undervalue that of the laity, yet each one of the three orders is miserably undermanned. A Christian of the fourth century would say that a Bishop with a diocese of 30,000 Christians would have as great a burden of pastoral responsibility as any man could bear, that a diocese of 100,000 was unprecedented, one of 1,000,000 unthinkable. Our episcopal order, with its dioceses of two, three, and four millions, is but a fraction of what the Church of England practically requires for its immediate needs.’

(2) ‘At the Pan-Anglican Congress the Bishop of Auckland made a moving appeal on behalf of the young nations—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa—for men to go out and help to keep the white man Christian; “to save the man in the back blocks from the curse of trying to do without God.” Every one knows that as things are we can do nothing else and nothing better than to feel it as natural and normal for a priest to go out to New Zealand as it is for him to move from parish to parish at home. But one cannot help asking oneself how St. Paul, or a Church inspired by St. Paul, would have heard and answered the cry of the young nations. Can you imagine St. Paul writing back from Spain or from Corinth to Antioch, Jerusalem and Cæsarea, “Send us elders and deacons, for there is work to be done, and it will all go to pieces unless you send us men”? You know what he did and what he would do. He went and founded local Churches, and he found their officers on the spot. He “ordained elders in every place.” In the Canadian township he would not be content, would not think that there was a living Church at all, unless he could leave the farmer, the builder, or the schoolmaster as elders and deacons of the local brotherhood, to minister, to administer, to break the bread for the people of Christ.’