The Christian Priesthood.
I. It is amongst the most common, and certainly not the least dangerous of the errors of the day, to identify the Church with the clergy, as though the laity were not to the full as much one of its constituent parts. Our common forms of speech both encourage and prove the mistake; for we speak of a man as "designed for the Church" when preparing for the clerical profession, and we speak of him as "entering the Church" when he takes holy orders. The whole Christian community is made up of priests. We are not speaking of what that community may be by practice, but only of what it is by profession; of what it ought to be, and of what it would be if it acted faithfully up to the obligations it had taken on itself. When settled in Canaan, the Jews were far from proving themselves a "kingdom of priests," for they turned aside after false gods, and dishonoured, in place of magnifying, the name of Jehovah. But supposing them to have been a nation of righteous men, not only outwardly in covenant with God, but consecrated in heart to His service, then it is easy to perceive that they would have stood to all surrounding countries in the very position in which the tribe of Levi stood to themselves; they would have been witnesses for the Almighty to the rest of the world, standing in the midst of the vast temple of the earth and instructing the ignorant in the mysteries of truth. And beyond question what the Jewish nation might have been, that may be the Christian Church; that would it be if its every member acted up to the vows which were made for him at his baptism. Let a parish of nominal Christians be converted into a parish of real Christians, so that there should not be one within its circuit who did not adorn the doctrine of the Gospel; and what should we have but a parish of priests to the high and living God? Christian nations stand in the same position to heathen nations as Christian ministers to Christian congregations. They have much the same duties to perform the same power of witnessing for God, the same opportunities of supporting the great cause of truth. In the one case as well as in the other there may be a great want of fidelity. The priesthood in the persons of the nation, just as the priesthood in the persons of individuals, may be grievously disgraced, and its obligations forgotten, and its duties not discharged; but all this interferes not with the fact that there has been an ordination, a solemn setting apart to the service of God, whether of a people or an individual.
II. Every man who has been received by baptism into the Christian Church has been invested with a priestly office, and shall be hereafter dealt with according to the manner in which that office has been performed. If the Church as a body is to be a kingdom of priests, it follows that every member of that Church, in his individual capacity, can be nothing less than a priest. The priestly office, indeed, is no longer what it was as regards the ministers of the Church; but it is not one jot altered as regards the members of the Church. It is not what it was as regards the ministers, because they have not to make atonement by the offering up of sacrifice; but it is what it was as regards the members, because their ministrations are still to be those of a holy life and consistency and steadfastness in maintenance of truth.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1707.