a population of heathens.  Look at St. Paul’s account of the church of Corinth, in the 12th chapter of his 1st epistle to the Corinthians, and see if any two things can be more different than his notion of a church, and that which many people seem to entertain amongst us.  Compare the living body there described, made up of so many various members, each having its separate office, yet each useful to and needed by the others and by the body,—­and our notion of a parish committed to the charge of a single individual:  as if all the manifold gifts which the church requires could by possibility be comprised in the person of any one Christian; as if the whole burden were to rest upon his shoulders, and the other inhabitants might regard the welfare of the church as his concern only, and not theirs.

But not only is the church too often confined in men’s notions to the single class or profession of the clergy, but it has been narrowed still farther by the practical extinction of one of the orders of the clergy itself.  Where the laity have come to regard their own share in the concerns of the church as next to nothing, the order of deacons, forming, as it were, a link between the clergy and the laity, becomes proportionably of still greater importance.  The business of the deacons, as we well know, was in an especial manner to look after the relief of the poor; and by combining this charge with the power of baptizing, of reading the Scriptures, and of preaching also, when authorized by the bishop, they exhibited the peculiar character of Christianity, that of sanctifying the business of this world by doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.  No church, so far as we know, certainly no church in any town, existed without its deacons:  they were as essential to its completeness as its bishop and its presbyters.

Take any one of our large towns now, and what do we find?  A bishop, not of that single town only, but of fifty others besides:  one presbyter in each, church, and no deacons!  Practically, and according to its proper character, the order of deacons is extinct; and those who now bear the name are most commonly found exercising the functions of presbyters; that is, instead of acting as the assistants of a presbyter, they are often the sole ministers of their respective parishes; they alone baptize; alone offer up the prayers of the church, alone preach the word:  nothing marks their original character, except their inability to administer the communion; and thus, by a strange anomaly, the church in such parishes is actually left without any power of celebrating its highest act, that of commemorating the death, of Christ in the Lord’s supper; and if it were not for another great evil, the unfrequent celebration of the Communion, the system could not go on:  because the deacon would be so often obliged to apply to other ministers to perform that duty for him, that the inconvenience, as well as the unfitness, of the actual practice, would be manifest to every one.