In imitation of its divine Lord, the Apostolic Church employed not only the apostles, but its lay members in preaching the Word. '-At that time (after the death of Stephen) there was a great persecution against the Churcli which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scat- tered abroad tliroughout the regions of Judea and Sa- maria, except the apostles." "Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word" (Acts viii, 1, 4). The same fact is illustrated by the course of Paul, of whom, immediately after his con- version, and long prior to his ordination, it is recorded, "and straightway he preached Christ in the syna- gogues" (Acts ix, 20). In this act the regenerated per- secutor showed that Christian obligations jirecede min- isterial, and that whosoever is born of God not only hath the witness in himself, but is prompted by the Holy Spirit to utter his testimony in the ears and to the hearts of his fellow-men.
Tlie allusions to the modes and accompaniments of worship in Ilom. xii, G-8, and 1 Cor. xiv, as well as in several less detailed passages, clearly imply that the apostles were accustomed to encourage the exercise of all sjiecies of gifts in the Church, but especially those of exhortation and prophecy. From these scriptural ex- amples, it is just to infer that lay preaching, in the va- rious forms of teaching, evangelizing, and prophesying, had from the first a double object: 1, to do good to all men ; and, 2, to develop and prove the gifts of those who IVoni time to time were called from the ranks of the laity to the more public ministry of the Word. Such, doubtless, continued to be the practice of the Church during the early centuries, and it was only by degrees that it became modified under the hierarchical spirit which became developed at a later period. In- teresting proof of this is found in connection with the history of Origen of Alexandria. He, as a layman of known learning and skill in exposition, having gone to Ciesarea, was invited by the bishops there to preach. True, his preaching on that occasion was made the ground of a charge from Demetrius of Alexandria against the bishops who invited him. But the form which the charge took is in favor of the general right of laymen to exercise their teaching fiuutions in the Church. His alleged offence was not that he, being a layman, taught, but that he taught when bishops were present. The accused bishops, Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctistos of Ca'sarea, defended themselves, not ■with a plea of ignorance or of exceptional circumstances, but by an appeal to the common law of the Church. They knew the custom, even in the form of wliich De- metrius complained, to prevail at Iconium and other diurclies of Asia. They believed it to prevail else-
where, and thought it proper to be recognised at Alex- andria also (see Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi, 19).
In the fourth Council of Carthage we find, with the name of Augustine among the subscriptions to its laws, the rule, "Laicus prajsentibus clericis, nisi ipsis jubenti- bus, docere non audeat" (can. 98). From this we may infer that in tlie absence of the clergy a layman might teach, and also in their presence at their request. It is noted by Socrates {IJist. Eccks. v, 22) as an exceptional custom of the Alexandrian Church that the office of reader might be filled by even an unbaptized catechu- men. The commentary of the pseudo- Ambrose on Eph. 4th recognises that at the commencement "omnibus concessum est et evangelizare, et baptizare, et scripturas in ecclesia explanare." In the so-called Apostolic Con- stitutions, representing the practice of the Church in the 3d and 4th centuries, we find tlie law that " if any man, though a layman, is skilful in expounding doctrines, and of venerable manners, he may be allowed to teach"' (viii, 32). Similar indications are also found in the Shepherd of Hermas. See Laitv.
But it is unnecessary to dweU upon the lingering evi- dences of a custom that was destined to be crushed out by increasing perversions of the original spirit of the Gospel. When ritual ceremonies came to supersede not only the practice, but the very idea of evangelization, it is not surprising tliat preaching itself became a ceremo- ny, and at length a rare and infrequent ceremony. Not merely laymen, but even presbyters of the Church, were inhibited from ]3rcaching, except by special permission of bishops ; while many of the bishops, who had arroga- ted to themselves the exclusive right of preaching, ei- ther through ignorance or indolence practically aban- doned the custom. " There was a time when the bish- ops of Eome were not known to preach for five hundred years together! — insomuch that, wlien Pius Quintus made a sermon, it was looked upon as a prodigy, and, indeed, was a greater rarity than the Swculun's Lmli were in old Pome" (Bingham, Orif/. Eccl. book ii, ch. iii, § 4). This general abandonment of the great and pe- culiar work of the Christian ministry had its counterpart of error in monasticism, which, by an equal perversion, sent myriads of the best men in the Church during suc- cessive centuries to waste their lives and religious zeal in fruitless penances in desert places and gloomy clois- ters. Had the lives and talents which were thus thrown away in monastic idleness been wisely employed in va- rious forms of evangelization, whether lay or clerical, who can tell how much better the world would have been to-day ! In fact, nearly all the real progress made by Christianity during several of the mediaeval centu- ries was by exceptional missionary effort among various aboriginal nations of Europe. The general abandon- ment of preaching above alluded to formed a pretext for the establishment, in the 13th or 14th centuries, of sev- eral preaching orders of monks, specialh' the Franciscans and Dominicans. These monks, in an ecclesiastical point of view, were laymen, and by profession they were also mendicants. Nevertheless, thej' acquired great in- fiucnce and great wealth for their several orders. But such results did not relieve the evangelical barrenness of the period, nor render less necessary the great llcfor- mation of the 16th century. In the Reformed churches there was a general breaking away from the trammels of ecclesiasticism, together with an energy of purpose wliich did not scrujile to employ any agencies at its command for the dissemination of truth. Still, under I the infiuence of long-prevailing custom, that great ele- j mcnt of Christian power to be derived from the personal activity of devoted laymen was to a large degree suffer- ed to lie dormant, and in some cases actually repressed. The first formal and greatly effective organization of lay preaching as a system, and as a recognised brancli of Church effort, took place under John Wesley at an early period of that great religious movement known as the revival of the 18th century. See Stevens, Histoi-y of Methodism, i, 173, 174,