Excerpt from The Christian Ministry Not a Priesthood: A Sermon Preached at the Opening of the Sessions of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in Nashville, Tenn;, On Thursday, May 17, 1855 There are two leading theories on the nature, and two on the constitu tion, of the Ministry. Waiving the consideration of the latter of these topics, except in a very cursory way, the doctrine held by our own Church, and by most of the Protestant churches, concerning the former, is, that the Min istry has been constituted to feed, and, in conjunction with the representatives of the people, to govern the Church; that its chief functions are, to preach the gospel and administer the sacra ments of Baptism and the Lord's Sup 'per, together with the exercise of dis cipline; and that its power is wholly moral, or spiritual, and that only minis terial or declarative. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.