With God in the World Part 4

Thus far little has been said of the more corporate aspect of the spiritual life--of army movements, so to speak. Our minds have been chiefly on the duties of men in their individual capacity. Not that any one can ever behave so that he alone is affected by his output of energy. Whether consciously or unconsciously every human being that breathes, according as he moves his will upwards or downwards, elevates or hinders his fellows. The most secret pa.s.sages of life should be traversed with reference to others, in order that we may be ruled by that beautiful consistency which will enable us to act formally in public without readjusting our whole inner temper. There will be no wrench, no unnatural straining to become what we cannot be at a moment's notice, but on the contrary merely an exhibition under altered conditions of the spirit which has all along actuated us. For instance, one who has not learned to pray hard for others and to ponder over their welfare, cannot hope to speak to men with any force on spiritual topics. He has not cultivated the frame of mind that will give him power to do it. If he tries, his words will most likely be irreverent cant or an empty echo. It is only out of the fulness of the heart that the mouth can speak effective words.

In no department of life is this more true than in corporate wors.h.i.+p.

The power of public wors.h.i.+p is dependent upon and the outcome of healthy and faithful private wors.h.i.+p, to say nothing of the rest of the personal life. Those who have true personal religion will feel their life of devotion incomplete without common prayer; a growing desire for public wors.h.i.+p is an index of a man's deepening spirituality. On the other hand, when we hear men saying that they do not care for church services, that they can pray just as well at home, and so on, it is safe to conclude that whatever fine-spun theories they may hold, as a matter of fact they are suffering from spiritual atrophy, praying neither at home nor anywhere else. Private devotion whets the appet.i.te for public wors.h.i.+p. And those who are in intention true to fundamental Christian principles will not mistake the end of the Church's corporate wors.h.i.+p.

The a.s.sembling of the congregation is something far larger than the creation of a public occasion for saying private prayers. There are numbers of persons who go through the whole service without a thought for any one but themselves, sucking the liturgy dry of whatever touches their own immediate concerns, but oblivious to those who kneel around; and perhaps private manuals supply the place of the Prayer Book. Such persons squeeze into their own cup all the inspiration that a harmonious concourse of men carries with it, and make no return. Like the horse-leach's daughters their cry is, "Give, give." Could anything be more selfish or more anomalous? There is no effort of imagination, no kindling of sympathy, no struggle to enter under the shadow of the prayer of the congregation, so that they are as completely alone as though they were in a desert place.

Nor is public wors.h.i.+p a device for rousing in people a devotional frame of mind, which will enable them to pray better by themselves. Doubtless one indirect effect of the great dignity and beauty of liturgical wors.h.i.+p, is to stimulate those who partic.i.p.ate in it to a deeper devotion at home. But public wors.h.i.+p is a climax, not a mere means to an end; it is the culmination of private devotion, not its starting point.

Without hidden spiritual effort, it is a phantom of the real thing; with it, it is the matchless consummation of adoration, prayer and sympathy.

Under the least satisfactory conditions the congregation gathered in G.o.d's house has marvellous dignity; the unity of movement, the rich variety and the rhythm of liturgical expression characterize it as the most august of human a.s.semblies.

But the possibilities of the Church in prayer rise to their supremest height, when the congregation is rich with the fruits of personal religion. So closely woven are the public and the private phases of devotion that they are of a piece. The power of the former is due to the hours of secret prayer, the struggles with self, the nerving of the will--in short, all that hidden discipline and training that lie behind the veil of private life. Out of this, corporate wors.h.i.+p emerges as effect rises out of cause. However great, then, the private life of devotion is in which men pray to G.o.d in the guarded secrecy of their homes, it is only preparatory, leading up to the service of the sanctuary.[19] Private prayer is the lesser, public the greater; the former is the exercise of the individual members with special regard to their own development, the latter is the stately movement of the whole body in beautiful unison. Each member contributes to the whole what has been gained in private efforts; each comes to give rather than to receive, or, if it may be so put, to receive through giving; and of course a man can give only what he has gathered.

The glimpses we have of heavenly wors.h.i.+p[20] reveal nothing but common wors.h.i.+p. We see no individuals standing apart from the throng, absorbed in their own little expression of praise. The ranks are unbroken, and one united and uniting impulse thrills the whole. The visions recorded by S. John are visions not merely of ideal wors.h.i.+p in its restricted sense of spoken prayer and praise, but of the ideal life. The fundamental idea of common wors.h.i.+p consists in dependence upon G.o.d and fellows.h.i.+p with man, and when all life is filled to the full with this twofold spirit, all life will be wors.h.i.+p, and let it be said here with firm emphasis, that if we do not lift up our life to the level of our prayers, eventually our prayers will be dragged down to the level of our life. Life in heaven is something more than one long Sunday service; it is the use of all powers and faculties in the spirit of wors.h.i.+p, wors.h.i.+p representing the highest and finest temper of mind of which we have experience. So when we read the figurative language of S. John, we must remember that he is declaring under the symbolism of wors.h.i.+p what the features of heavenly life are--the conscious service of G.o.d in a harmonious human society.

Similarly here on earth common wors.h.i.+p is a symbol of true life as well as a means of sustaining it. The attention of the congregation gathered before the altar is fixed upon G.o.d, and no stronger indication of the reality of brotherhood could be conceived than the visible a.s.sembly occupied in a common exercise. When all our activities become saturated with the consciousness of G.o.d in His perfection, and with the fact of the oneness of Christ's mystical Body, formal wors.h.i.+p will be no more a necessity. But that will be when heaven is reached, for which day there must be some little waiting yet. In the meantime it is vital that wors.h.i.+p, as we know it, should not be an excrescence on life but a real part of it, part of it as truly as the deep, silent tide flowing between narrow banks is part of the same river which above and below is worried by rocks or widened into a lake. Public wors.h.i.+p should represent perhaps the most concentrated part of life, but nothing unnatural, nothing out of gear with work-a-day moments. Work should flow into wors.h.i.+p as easily as the stream into the ocean. There should be, in all the business of life, the steady application of G.o.d's laws, and that underlying consciousness of His Person and Presence which, so far from detracting from the efficiency of our work or preventing full devotion to it, will intensify every energy. The melody of the song is emphasized and supported by the accompaniment, not lost in its mult.i.tude of sounds.

Given this att.i.tude of mind, and what a simple, natural thing praise with the lips becomes! And how sublime the uprus.h.i.+ng flood of hymnody from an a.s.sembly of men of like mind!

Again, public wors.h.i.+p ought to be the highest and not the only expression of parochial family life. The a.s.sembled congregation is the symbol of an enduring Christian brotherhood, where mutual consideration, love and service form the unalterable watchwords. To-day this thought is much obscured by the parochial family having so little reality outside the church walls. This is especially applicable to city churches, where congregations gather from the remotest localities. The parish seems to be fast dying out and the congregation is taking its place. The people who wors.h.i.+p in the same building neither know one another nor, in many instances, desire to. This is simply fatal to ideal public wors.h.i.+p, one purpose of which at any rate is to quicken and seal the sympathy that already exists as the result of intercourse in the outside world. It is a grave responsibility for any one, for the sake of what he may deem to be larger spiritual privileges, to leave the church of the locality in which he lives and where his natural duties and friends.h.i.+ps lie, to go to some distant place of wors.h.i.+p where fellows.h.i.+p is impossible. Ideally the wors.h.i.+ppers belonging to the parochial family are all known to one another and in frequent personal contact; they do not look to their clergy alone for spiritual help, but also to their fellow laymen. All too often the clergy are supposed to have the sole responsibility of spiritually aiding the members of a parish, whereas, the laity, whether they recognize it or not, have almost an equal responsibility. The clergyman does spiritual work, not because he is a clergyman, but because he is a Christian; though his special vocation determines the exact form his work should take. If there were more intelligent sympathy among the members of the congregation one with another, what strength would come to the penitent struggling to his feet, what added power to the faithful! Many fail, not because the clergy have been negligent, but because those who are termed the brethren have never extended a helping hand to support, to comfort, to cheer. If a congregation were alive to these responsibilities outside of the church, what a glorious time would be the gathering within its walls--inspiring, thrilling! Indeed, any one who tries to be unselfish and to act in the common concerns of life with reference to his neighbour's interests, any one who has elsewhere learned ever so little about intercession, cannot be unmindful when he comes to church of those who wors.h.i.+p by his side, strangers though they be. By the exercise of sympathy, sympathy which he has learned to kindle with less at hand to quicken it to life than that given by the living, breathing forms near by, he can bring close to him his fellow-wors.h.i.+ppers, moving into the shadow of their intercessions as well as calling them in to share his own. It will be noticed that the usual order has been reversed in the foregoing. Usually men are urged to wors.h.i.+p well that they may live well;[21] the proposition that has been made here is that men must live well if they would wors.h.i.+p well. It makes little difference which way the thought is expressed, the mode of expression depending on the part of the circle at which we begin our course. Life runs up into wors.h.i.+p and wors.h.i.+p runs out into life. Each leads into the other.

The use of a liturgy is an added power to public wors.h.i.+p. It is only by liturgical aids that public wors.h.i.+p can become common wors.h.i.+p. A liturgy delivers a congregation from the spiritual idiosyncrasies of a minister as well as disciplining those of the wors.h.i.+ppers themselves. The comprehensiveness and symmetry, the saneness and dignity of the Book of Common Prayer are educative forces of enormous value. Left to themselves men lose the true perspective of things; they dwell too much on matters of secondary importance, and become insular in their outlook. A liturgy comes in as a corrective of these const.i.tutional failings; it confronts us with all that is vast in the realm of truth; it calls us away from the consideration of those things over which we have pondered until morbidness has seized upon us; it ministers that grateful rest which comes from the mind being freed from the contemplation of one set of interests, by being caught away by and absorbed in new and wider interests; it rounds out the devotional life; it invites us to lean upon the prayers of others as we desire them to lean on ours.

All who aspire to wors.h.i.+p well in the congregation must note that the liturgy sets the tone for all devotions. Those who in private affect spiritual exercises foreign to the character of the Prayer Book of the Church, may get a certain emotional satisfaction for the moment, but they purchase the luxury at the cost of weakening their power for common wors.h.i.+p. Their private prayers form no preparation for their public prayers. The clergy have it as a grave responsibility to see that the books of private devotion which they put into the hands of their people are such as fit into the Church's system.

Demeanour in the congregation is a small thing to think of after the great central theme that has been holding our attention. But nothing is unworthy of consideration which bears on the perfecting of common wors.h.i.+p; and with two simple observations on demeanour this chapter will be closed. First, regarding the self-consciousness that both distresses the soul and weakens its devotional power. The sense, while in the act of prayer, of being observed by others, is distracting. But is it not a piece of conceit to imagine that we are being observed, widely at any rate, as well as something akin to an insult to those about us? Are we not implicitly charging them with neglect of duty and with irreverence? After all they are probably occupied with their devotions as we ourselves should be. The simplest way of conquering the distraction when it arises is to take the person or persons concerned into our prayers by a conscious act. Then in the second place, as to our own behaviour, it is only common charity to avoid singularity of conduct. Most of the ordinary acts of reverence which the individual may practise, can be so un.o.btrusively performed as not to attract notice.

But when there is a danger of causing distraction to others, as in a strange parish for instance, it is more conducive to real reverence to omit than to observe them. Sometimes the best way to be loyal to a principle is deliberately to break a rule, and if this suggestion be reasonable then why should not a person, unaccustomed to ornate ritual, fall in with any legitimate customs observed, if he finds himself at any time in a church where such customs obtain?

FOOTNOTES:

[19] _The writer does not hesitate to advise persons who are temporarily residing, as is often the case during the summer, where there is no Episcopal Church, to attend public wors.h.i.+p, once a Sunday at least, at the representative Evangelical place of wors.h.i.+p of the community.

Reading the Church service at home by one's self is no subst.i.tute for public wors.h.i.+p._

[20] _As_ e. g. _in Rev. v: 11-14_.

[21] _See p. 7._

Chapter X

_The Great Act of Wors.h.i.+p_

The Eucharist is the Church's great central act of corporate wors.h.i.+p. It would be strange, considering the origin of this wonderful mystery, were it otherwise. Even those who regard it as a bare memorial of the historic occurrence of Christ's Pa.s.sion and nothing more, however highly they may honour the ordinary round of prayer and praise, approach the Eucharist with unwonted awe.

Of course no one conception of its character is complete, as its various and stately names testify. So bound up with the Person of our Lord is it, that, as new treasures of knowledge are laid open concerning Him who is the eternal Son of G.o.d, this feast of rich things is proportionately enriched to the partic.i.p.ant. Says Jeremy Taylor in his quaint and reverent way: "The Holy Communion or Supper of the Lord is the most sacred, mysterious and useful conjugation of secret and holy things and duties in the religion."[22] And withal it is, in essence, of all simple things the most simple--a meal, a meal transformed and exalted, it is true, but still a meal. However difficult the liturgy may be for unlearned folk, the sacrament itself, "the breaking of the bread," is easily understood by every one, even the least wise. Nor is it hard to reconcile the idea of a feast with this meagre meal of a morsel of bread and a sip of wine; for everyday experience has prepared us for the conveyance of great wealth through what has no intrinsic excellence. If a sc.r.a.p of paper can have the value of heaps of gold, and, by the law of a.s.sociation, an age-worn trinket can become of priceless worth, it suggests no unreality to claim that under certain conditions a simple meal becomes a royal banquet, filling heart and soul and mind, and admitting into the very presence of the Most Holy and Most High. There is diversity in the explication of this act of wors.h.i.+p, but whatever difference of opinion there may be regarding its exact nature, those most widely separated in thought will agree in this, that it is a profound rite, and that in it is spiritual wealth. And in these days, when at last men are beginning to perceive that truth is always greater than its best definition, no one will contend that what he sees in the Eucharist is all that it contains.[23]

The best commentary on the Eucharist is the closing chapter of our Lord's mortal career. The Son of Man, as He approached the Cross, drew nigh to that which throughout His ministry He had viewed as a goal; the crucifixion was what He had been preparing Himself for in all that He said and did throughout His human experience; His whole life was indeed a "long going forth to death." He aspired to reach the moment when He would be lifted up from the earth. He saw and predicted with composure all the horror and shame of the Pa.s.sion, the betrayal and desertion, the scourging and spitting. But He saw even more clearly the dignity and wonder and majesty of the opportunity contained in it all, and spoke of it with suppressed joy: "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" The Cross would test to the full His obedience to G.o.d and reveal to what lengths Divine love would go to redeem sinful man. When men near the goal of their innocent ambition their cup of joy is full; nor was Christ's less than full. In the first Eucharist the pain of self-sacrifice for the time being was lost in the joy of self-fulfilment. When He took the bread and the wine and said, "This is My Body which is broken for you," "This is My Blood which is shed for you," He made the sacrifice of Himself. It is this act which separates His death from all other deaths, transforming the crucifixion from a judicial murder into a triumph of self-oblation. It is not the Cross which explains the Eucharist, but rather the Eucharist which explains the Cross.[24] Eliminate the Eucharist from the story of the Pa.s.sion and our Lord's death sinks from the atoning act by which the world is reconciled to G.o.d into a mere act of resignation to a painful fate, to be cla.s.sed with the death of Socrates and like heroes. It is the Eucharist that enables us to say that the crucifixion was a sacrifice; that however true it is that Christ was put to death by sinful men, it is a truth of greater magnitude that, according to His repeated prediction, He laid down His life for His friends; that the Cross of Calvary, and through it every cross that bows the shoulders of men, has become the instrument of victory and a school of obedience and sympathy.

No act of Christ was a mere personal experience. The Son of Man, as in loving sympathy He declared Himself to be, was the Universal Character whose life must needs concern and touch all other lives. It was His expressed desire that His fellows should share all that He was and did.

He, the Son of G.o.d, became the Son of Man that we might become Sons of G.o.d.[25] Therefore it is not surprising that, at this the supreme moment of His life, He should bid the representative group who companied with Him, and through them all men, come in and partic.i.p.ate in its power and joy; He did not merely lay down His life, but asked others to enter into His experience, saying, "Take, eat; this is My Body," "Drink ye all of this; this is My Blood." For what is the import of this invitation but this? "a.s.sociate yourselves with Me,--aye, be one with Me, incorporated into Me, in this great moment of self-offering; for I would present you a willing surrender in and with Myself." The idea of at-one-ment was never more intelligible than in these latter days. We are becoming more and more conscious of how close-wrought are the fibres of the human race; we recognize how the life of any one man affects the life of his fellows, and how the individual can gather into his own soul the sorrows and joys, the perplexities and aspirations of many people. If this is part of the experience of _a_ son of man, it follows that _the_ Son of Man, by the extension and completion of that quality which, when found in us, is known as sympathy, if by nothing else beyond,--and the character of His personality tells us there is much beyond that is inexplicable--not only may but must take into Himself and hold there for time and eternity the whole race--except so far, alas, as men struggle from the freedom of His embrace into the slavery of a false independence. Thus the Eucharist is the divinely chosen means whereby we men are invited to enter into, and consciously to appropriate the highest points of the victory of the Cross as well as what lies beyond,--the resurrection life. Through it He shares with us His life-giving death and His deathless life, His Divine nature and His perfect humanity, and we are "accepted in the Beloved."

The various t.i.tles of the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood suggest its various aspects,[26] one of which, and that the one that happily is most common in our Church, we shall consider--the Holy Communion. This t.i.tle indicates the view of the sacrament which most readily appeals to the human heart. The Holy Communion means, of course, "the Holy Fellows.h.i.+p"--not "a" but "the," that fellows.h.i.+p which above all others is holy, the end of which is to make all who partic.i.p.ate in it holy. It is fellows.h.i.+p with the Father in Christ--not merely with Christ; that is not the whole of it, for Christ, the Son of G.o.d and the Son of Man as He is, is the "Way" to the Father. Nor is it an ordinary fellows.h.i.+p, of which the fellows.h.i.+p of mere men is a complete image. Ordinary fellows.h.i.+p allows two lives to intertwine; but here so close is the relations.h.i.+p that "Christ _with_ us," "we _with_ Christ" is inadequate to describe the intimacy, and "we _in_ Christ," "Christ _in_ us,"

phrases which no one dare to apply to any other friends.h.i.+p, can alone tell the tale. And "we in Christ" not "Christ in us" is the grander and more frequent phrase. "In Christ" tells of the unmeasured wealth of fellows.h.i.+p, divine and human, which is the Christian heritage; it is the whole parable of the vine and the branches in two syllables.[27] This is the G.o.dward aspect of the sacrament. And in this connection three things are to be noted:--

-- 1. Every fresh communion is a new point of contact with G.o.d in Christ through the working of the Eternal Spirit; each last communion means more than any of those which have gone before, as even in our a.s.sociation with a human friend new qualities and untried depths of familiar characteristics are revealed in each successive act of intercourse. Friends.h.i.+p is taken up day by day on a higher level than formerly, because of these new glimpses of the inner recesses of life which are caught from time to time as friends meet. And frequent repet.i.tion of the sacrament ought no more to impair its value, than frequent meetings the reality of friends.h.i.+p.

-- 2. Communion is only begun and not ended at the altar. It is something more than a touch for a moment. Grace is not the infusion of some mysterious spiritual property, which G.o.d having imparted leaves the recipient to make use of by himself; grace is the gift of G.o.d's personal working in the life through the indwelling Spirit. G.o.d never holds His faithful children one moment to let them go the next. He enfolds us in Himself with a tightening embrace, as by loyalty to His laws and repeated acts of faith, we expose new portions of our nature for Him to lay hold on. The sense of G.o.d's presence may be peculiarly full as we kneel to receive the heavenly food, just as at the moment of meeting again one whom we love the emotions are deeply stirred; but by virtue of yesterday's communion, G.o.d is as near at hand to-day as He was when we received the sacrament. The Holy Communion would fail in its purpose if it made the presence of our Lord a reality only for the time being, and did not more fully introduce men into the Divine presence as an abiding state. The fact of G.o.d's immanence in us requires this conclusion.

-- 3. The result of a faithful reception of the Holy Communion should be holiness in the common, everyday life, from which an incident, the family meal, is borrowed and transformed as the symbol and means by which all other incidents may be transformed. So great a mystery demands all the majesty of a liturgy and the accompaniment of stately wors.h.i.+p; and a dignified ritual attached to this representative, this common act of our human life, is most valuable as indicating the majesty of all that is commonplace when it is touched by G.o.d. Just as we consecrate certain times and seasons in order that all times and seasons may become holy, so in the sacraments G.o.d has taught us to consecrate the simplest acts of ordinary life--the bath and the meal--as typical of the potential sacredness of all acts, and as a means of sanctifying and enn.o.bling them. So the Holy Communion touches alike private life and life in society, the life of recreation and the life of business, and unless it transfigures each of these departments of human experience it falls short of its purpose. Let the business man remember that he strains to see and touch the Most Holy at the altar that he may see and touch the Most Holy in the market; let the professional man and the man of letters, the day labourer and the scientist each in his sphere be carried from the vision of G.o.d in the Eucharist to the abiding fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d in his special vocation. He who comes _from_ G.o.d goes _to_ G.o.d, whithersoever his steps may bear him. The presence of our Lord at the altar is special but not exclusive. It is not a lamp lighted for a moment and then put out, but a light which will illuminate all life, and enable us to see at every turn the vision of omnipresent Love.

It is one function of the sacraments to enhance, not to dim, the reality of G.o.d's immanence in all His works; to train us to perceive and apprehend that

_Earth's crammed with heaven And every common bush afire with G.o.d_,--

a declaration which otherwise would be held to be but a poet's fickle fancy or a vague philosophical idea. Days are coming, if they are not already upon us, when in the midst of scientific progress and explanation in which men are p.r.o.ne to rest as final, the believer's ceaseless theme must be the Divine indwelling. And the strongest and most telling means of keeping alive this truth for ourselves and others is the sacramental system of the Church.

Thus far we have been thinking of the G.o.dward aspect of the Holy Communion--fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d in Christ. On its manward side it is fellows.h.i.+p with man in Christ. As it sustains us in Divine fellows.h.i.+p and lifts us continually into purer heights, so it a.s.sures us of our incorporation in the mystical Body of Christ, "which is the blessed company of all faithful people," and inspires us to deeper love. Here again it is necessary to recall the original simple form of the sacrament, a form so simple that, as Bishop Westcott says somewhere, it is difficult in the earliest references to it to distinguish it from the ordinary family meal. The brethren gather around the common table and partake of the common loaf.[28] And the use of the one loving-cup from which all drink goes beyond the customs of ordinary family life. The Holy Communion, which is a social act, speaks of the transformation of social life.[29] Just as the constant sharing of food at one table is the pledge of loyal service to one another on the part of all who partake, as well as a means of gaining strength to fulfil the pledge, so the Holy Communion is a pledge to mutual service and equipment for its accomplishment. "In Christ" a new relations.h.i.+p is established between man and man, or rather an old relations.h.i.+p is deepened and consummated.

Brethren after the flesh are made brethren in the Lord.[30] Family and national ties are very sacred and very close, but they reach the full purpose which G.o.d designed for them only when they become the basis for spiritual kins.h.i.+p. It is considered a dreadful thing, and rightly so, when men of common blood are at variance with one another; nothing is more shameful than a family feud. And on the other hand, blood relations.h.i.+p is in itself a demand for the most loyal service that men are capable of rendering. Now through the sacramental life a kins.h.i.+p is established and sustained as real and as binding as that consequent upon the accident of birth; so that for Christian to be at variance with Christian is as unnatural as it is for two of one family to strive with one another; for Christian to over-reach Christian is as treacherous as it was for Jacob to steal Esau's blessing. The loyalty which those who are "in Christ" owe one another is the loyalty due among those who sit at the same board and eat of the same loaf, among those in whose veins runs the blood of a common mother. When men learn the reality and force of spiritual kins.h.i.+p, social problems will be solved and social evils will cease.

But a hasty glance has been bestowed in the foregoing pages on a mystery of unsearchable depth, and many of its aspects have not even been noted.

The more obvious aspects are the ones upon which stress has been laid as including in them all others. As with all other forms of approach to G.o.d, so here, what a man knows about the Holy Communion is that which G.o.d has taught him in his reception of the Sacrament. Those who would fain plumb its depths must come frequently and preparedly to the feast.

Nor is preparation a formal act. It is unfortunate that some teachers make it so by laying insistence on a set form. The best, and indeed the only, true preparation is an outcome of a full knowledge of the thing for which we wish to prepare ourselves, just as the best thanksgiving for a blessing is the spontaneous utterance consequent upon a contemplation of the gift received. The man who knows the spiritual significance of the Holy Communion, _ipso facto_ knows how to prepare to receive it.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] _Works: Vol. viii. p. 8._

[23] _It is not easy to be understood, it is not lightly to be received; it is not much opened in the writings of the New Testament, but still left in its mysterious nature; it is too much untwisted and nicely handled by the writings of the doctors; and by them made more mysterious, and like a doctrine of philosophy made intricate by explications, and difficult by the apperture and dissolution of distinctions.--Jeremy Taylor, Works, vol. viii, p. 8._

[24] _Milne._

[25] _2 Cor. viii: 9._

[26] _See a valuable little book, Some t.i.tles and Aspects of the Eucharist, by E. S. Talbot, D. D. (Bishop of Rochester). Rivington, Percival & Co., London._

[27] _Bp. Alexander._

[28] _Cf. 1 Cor. x: 17.--"We, who are many, are one loaf." The one serious objection to the otherwise convenient custom of using unleavened bread in the shape of wafers is that the symbolism of the common loaf is lost, and the point of contact with common life is somewhat obscured._

[29] _Our Church, by the t.i.tle adopted, by the form of service used, by the spirit of her rubrics where they touch upon the subject, plainly declares it to be her intention that the Holy Communion should always be celebrated so as to be a social act. The priest is not a mere representative of the congregation, doing things_ for _them, but a leader acting_ with _them. For the priest to act without the congregation is only less anomalous than for the congregation to act without the priest. Not that the_ whole _congregation present should necessarily receive at any given celebration of the Holy Communion, though in the judgment of the present writer the ideal would be reached only thus._

[30] _Cf. Philemon 16._

Chapter XI

_Witnesses unto the Uttermost Part of the Earth_