of His parting instructions. Is not this a hint to us all, on authority which cannot safely be despised, that we must look to the actual conduct and system of the early Church for a true notion of the things pertaining to "the kingdom of God," of which our Lord then spake to His Apostles. However early, on minute points, partial errors may haVe crept in, is it not evident to common sense, that the system which we trace back in the Church to the very generation next following the Apostles, must be in all great points the very system enjoined by our Lord, and partially disclosed in the subsequent history of His servants?
It follows, that in order to make out our Saviour's will on any point relating to the discipline and proceedings of His Church, the first portion of Scripture to which our attention is directed is the Acts of the holy Apostles.
Now, the very first Act of the Apostles, after Christ was gone out of their sight, was that commemorated his day;—the ordination of Matthias in the room of the traitor Judas. That ordination is related very minutely. Every particular of it is full of instruction; but at present I wish to draw attention to one circumstance more especially: namely, the time when it occurred. It was contrived (if one may say so) exactly to fall within the very short interval which elapsed between the departure of our Lord and the arrival of the Comforter in His place: on that "little while," during which the Church was comparatively left alone in the world. Then it was that St. Peter rose and declared with authority that the time was come for supplying the vacancy which Judas had made. "One," said he, "must be ordained;" and without delay they proceeded to the ordination. Of course, St. Peter must have had from our Lord express authority for this step. Otherwise it would seem most natural to defer a transaction so important until the unerring Guide, the Holy Ghost, should have come among them, as they knew he would in a few days. On the other hand, since the Apostles were eminently Apostles of our Incarnate Lord, since their very being, as Apostles, depended entirely on their personal mission from Him (which is the reason why catalogues are given of them, with such scrupulous care, in so many of the holy books):—in that regard one should naturally have expected that He Himself before His departure would have supplied the vacancy by personal designation.
