Studies of Christianity; Or, Timely Thoughts for Religious Thinkers Part 3

The formation of human society, and the inst.i.tution of priesthood, must be referred to the same causes and the same date. The earliest communities of the world appear to have had their origin and their cement, not in any gregarious instinct, nor in mere social affections, much less in any prudential regard to the advantages of co-operation, but in a binding religious sentiment, submitting to the same guidance, and expressing itself in the same wors.h.i.+p. As no tie can be more strong, so is none more primitive, than this agreement respecting what is holy and divine. In simple and patriarchal ages, indeed, when the feelings of veneration had not been set aside by a.n.a.lysis into a little corner of the character, but spread themselves over the whole of life, and mixed it up with daily wonder, this bond comprised all the forces that can suppress the selfish and disorganizing pa.s.sions, and compact a mult.i.tude of men together. It was not, as at present, to have simply the same _opinions_ (things of quite modern growth, the brood of scepticism); but to have the same fathers, the same tradition, the same speech, the same land, the same foes, the same priest, the same G.o.d. Nothing did man fear, or trust, or love, or desire, that did not belong, by some affinity, to his faith. Nor had he any book to keep the precious deposit for him; and if he had, he would never have thought of so frail a vehicle for so great a treasure. It was more natural to put it into structures hollowed in the fast mountain, or built of transplanted rocks which only a giant age could stir; and to tenant these with mighty hierarchies, who should guard their sanct.i.ty, and, by an undying memory, make their mysteries eternal. Hence, the first humanizer of men was their wors.h.i.+p; the first leaders of nations, the sacerdotal caste; the first triumph of art, the colossal temple; the first effort to preserve an idea produced a record of something sacred; and the first civilization was, as the last will be, the birth of religion.

The primitive aim of wors.h.i.+p undoubtedly was, to act upon the sentiments of G.o.d; at first, by such natural and intelligible means as produce favorable impressions on the mind of a fellow-man,--by presents and persuasion, and whatever is expressive of grateful and reverential affections. Abel, the first shepherd, offered the produce of his flock; Cain, the first farmer, the fruits of his land; and while devotion was so simple in its modes, every one would be his own pontiff, and have his own altar. But soon, the parent would inevitably officiate for his family; the patriarch, for his tribe. With the natural forms dictated by present feelings, traditional methods would mingle their contributions from the past; postures and times, gestures and localities, once indifferent, would become consecrated by venerable habit; and so long as their origin was unforgotten, they would add to the significance, while they lessened the simplicity, of wors.h.i.+p. Custom, however, being the growth of time, tends to a tyrannous and bewildering complexity: forms, originally natural, then symbolical, end in being arbitrary; suggestive of nothing, except to the initiated; yet, if connected with religion, so sanctified by the a.s.sociation, that it appears sacrilege to desist from their employment; and when their meaning is lost, they a.s.sume their place, not among empty gesticulations, but among the mystical signs by which earth communes with heaven. The vivid picture-writing of the early wors.h.i.+p, filled with living att.i.tudes, and sketched in the freshest colors of emotion, explained itself to every eye, and was open to every hand. To this succeeded a piety, which expressed itself in symbolical figures, veiling it utterly from strangers, but intelligible and impressive still to the soul of national tradition.

This, however, pa.s.sed again into a language of arbitrary characters, in which the herd of men saw sacredness without meaning; and the use of which must be consigned to a cla.s.s separated for its study. Hence the origin of the priest and his profession; the conservator of a wors.h.i.+p no longer natural, but legendary and mystical; skilful enactor of rites that spake with silent gesticulation to the heavens; interpreter of the wants of men into the divine language of the G.o.ds.

Not till the powers above had ceased to hold familiar converse with the earth, and in their distance had become deaf and dumb to the common tongue of men, did the mediating priest arise;--needed then to conduct the finger-speech of ceremony, whereby the desire of the creature took shape before the eye of the Creator.

Observe, then, the true idea of PRIEST and RITUAL. The Priest is the representative of men before G.o.d; commissioned on behalf of human nature to intercede with the divine. He bears a message _upwards_, from earth to heaven; his people being below, his influence above. He takes the fears of the weak, and the cries of the peris.h.i.+ng, and sets them with availing supplication before Him that is able to help. He takes the sins and remorse of the guilty, and leaves them with expiating tribute at the feet of the averted Deity. He guards the avenues that lead from the mortal to the immortal, and without his interposition the creature is cut off from his Creator. Without his mediation no transaction between them can take place, and the spirit of a man must live as an outlaw from the world invisible and holy.

There are means of propitiation which he alone has authority to employ; powers of persuasion conceded to no other; a mystic access to the springs of divine benignity, by outward rites which his manipulation must consecrate, or forms of speech which his lips must recommend. These ceremonies are the implements of his office and the sources of his power; the magic by which he is thought to gain admission to the will above, and really wins rule over human counsels below. As they are supposed to change the relation of G.o.d to man, not by visible or natural operation, not (for example) by suggestion of new thoughts, and excitement of new dispositions in the wors.h.i.+pper, but by secret and mysterious agency, they are simply _spells_ of a dignified order. Were we then to speak with severe exact.i.tude, we should say, a Ritual is a system of consecrated charms; and the Priest, the great magician who dispenses them.

So long as any idea is retained of mystically efficacious rites, consigned solely and authoritatively to certain hands, this definition cannot be escaped. The ceremonies may have rational instruction and natural wors.h.i.+p appended to them; and these additional elements may give them a t.i.tle to true respect. The order of men appointed to administer them may have other offices and n.o.bler duties to perform, rendering them, if faithful, worthy of a just and reverential attachment. But _in so far_ as, by an exclusive and unnatural efficacy, they bring about a changed relation between G.o.d and man, the Ritual is an incantation, and the Priest is an enchanter.

To this sacerdotal devotion there necessarily attach certain characteristic sentiments, both moral and religious, which give it a distinctive influence on human character, and adapt it to particular stages of civilization. It clearly severs the wors.h.i.+ppers by one remove from G.o.d. He is a Being, external to them, distant from them, personally unapproachable by them; their thought must _travel_ to reach the Almighty; they must look afar for the Most Holy; they dwell themselves within the finite, and must ask a foreign introduction to the Infinite.

He is not with them as a private guide, but in the remoter watch-towers of creation, as the public inspector of their life; not present for perpetual communion, but to be visited in absence by stated messages of form and prayer. And that G.o.d dwells in this cold and royal separation induces the feeling, that man is too mean to touch him; that a consecrated intervention is required, in order to part Deity from the defiling contact of humanity. Why else am I restricted from unlimited personal access to my Creator, and driven to another in my transactions with him? And so, in this system, our nature appears in contrast, not in alliance, with the divine, and those views of it are favored which make the opposition strong; its puny dimensions, its swift decadence, its poor self-flatteries, its degenerate virtues, its giant guilt, become familiar to the thought and lips; and life, cut off from sympathy with the G.o.dlike, falls towards the level of melancholy, or the sink of epicurism, or the abjectness of vicarious reliance on the priest.

Wors.h.i.+p, too, must have for its chief aim, to throw off the load of ill; to rid the mind of sin and shame, and the lot of hards.h.i.+p and sorrow; for princ.i.p.ally to these disburdening offices do priests and rituals profess themselves adapted;--and who, indeed, could pour forth the privacy of love, and peace, and trust, through the c.u.mbrousness of ceremonies, and the pompousness of a sacred officer? The piety of such a religion is thus a refuge for the weakness, not an outpouring of the strength, of the soul: it takes away the incubus of darkness, without shedding the light of heaven; lifts off the nightmare horrors of earth and h.e.l.l, without opening the vision of angels and of G.o.d. Nay, for the spiritual bonds which connect men with the Father above, it subst.i.tutes material ties, a genealogy of sacred fires, a succession of hallowed buildings, or of priests having consecration by pedigree or by manual transmission; so that qualities belonging to the soul alone are likened to forces mechanical or chemical; sanct.i.ty becomes a physical property; divine acceptance comes by bodily catenation; regeneration is degraded into a species of electric shock, which one only method of experiment, and the links of but one conductor, can convey. And, in fine, a priestly system ever abjures all aim at any higher perfection; boasts of being immutable and unimprovable; encourages no ambition, breathes no desire.

It holds the appointed methods of influencing Heaven, on which none may presume to innovate; and its functions are ever the same, to employ and preserve the ancient forms and legendary spells committed to its trust.

Hence all its veneration is antiquarian, not sympathetic or prospective; it turns its back upon the living, and looks straight into departed ages, bowing the head and bending the knee; as if all objects of love and devotion were _there_, not here; in history, not in life; as if its G.o.d were dead, or otherwise imprisoned in the Past, and had bequeathed to its keeping such relics as might yield a perpetual benediction. Thus does the administration of religion, in proportion as it possesses a sacerdotal character, involve a distant Deity, a mean humanity, a servile wors.h.i.+p, a physical sanct.i.ty, and a retrospective reverence.

Let no one, however, imagine that there is no other idea or administration of religion than this; that the priest is the only person among men to whom it is given to stand between heaven and earth. Even the Hebrew Scriptures introduce us to another cla.s.s of quite different order; to whom, indeed, those Scriptures owe their own truth and power, and perpetuity of beauty: I mean the PROPHETS; whom we shall very imperfectly understand, if we suppose them mere historians, for whom G.o.d had turned time round the other way, so that they spoke of things future as if past, and grew so dizzy in their use of tenses, as greatly to incommode learned grammarians; or if we treat their writings as sc.r.a.p-books of Providence, with miscellaneous contributions from various parts of duration, sketches taken indifferently from any point of view within eternity, and put together at random and without mark, on adjacent pages, for theological memories to identify; first, a picture of an a.s.syrian battle, next, a holy family; now, of the captives sitting by Euphrates, then, of Paul preaching to the Gentiles; here, a flight of devouring locusts, and there, the escape of the Christians from the destruction of Jerusalem; a portrait of Hezekiah, and a view of Calvary; a march through the desert, and John the Baptist by the Jordan; the day of Pentecost, and the French Revolution; Nebuchadnezzar and Mahomet; Caligula and the Pope,--following each other with picturesque neglect of every relation of time and place. No, the Prophet and his work always indeed belong to the future; but far otherwise than thus. Meanwhile, let us notice how, in Israel, as elsewhere, he takes his natural station above the priest. It was Moses the prophet who even _made_ Aaron the priest. And who cares now for the sacerdotal books of the Old Testament, compared with the rest? Who, having the strains of David, would pore over Leviticus, or would weary himself with Chronicles, when he might catch the inspiration of Isaiah? It was no priest that wrote, "Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt-offering: the sacrifices of G.o.d are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O G.o.d, thou wilt not despise." It was no pontifical spirit that exclaimed, "Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of a.s.semblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting: your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them." "Wash you, make you clean." Whatever in these venerable Scriptures awes us by its grandeur and pierces us by its truth, comes of the prophets, not the priests; and from that part of their writings, too, in which they are not concerned with historical prediction, but with some utterance deeper and greater. I do not deny them this gift of occasional intellectual foresight of events. And doubtless it was an honor to be permitted to speak thus to a portion of the future, and of local occurrences unrevealed to seers less privileged. But it is a glory far higher to speak that which belongs to all time, and finds its interpretation in every place; to penetrate to the everlasting realities of things; to disclose, not when this or that man will appear, but how and wherefore all men appear and quickly disappear; to make it felt, not in what nook of duration such an incident will happen, but from what all-embracing eternity the images of history emerge and are swallowed up. In this highest faculty the Hebrew seers belong to a cla.s.s scattered over every nation and every period; which Providence keeps ever extant for human good, and especially to furnish an administration of religion quite anti-sacerdotal. This cla.s.s we must proceed to characterize.

The Prophet is the representative of G.o.d before men, commissioned from the Divine nature to sanctify the human. He bears a message _downwards_, from heaven to earth; his inspirer being above, his influence below. He takes of the holiness of G.o.d, enters with it into the souls of men, and heals therewith the wounds, and purifies the taint, of sin. He is charged with the peace of G.o.d, and gives from it rest to the weariness and solace to the griefs of men. Instead of carrying the foulness of life to be cleansed in heaven, he brings the purity of heaven to make life divine. Instead of interposing himself and his mediation between humanity and Deity, he destroys the whole distance between them; and only fulfils his mission, when he brings the finite mind and the infinite into immediate and thrilling contact, and leaves the creature consciously alone with the Creator. He is one to whom the primitive and everlasting relations between G.o.d and man have revealed themselves, stripped of every disguise, and bared of all that is conventional; who is possessed by their simplicity, mastered by their solemnity; who has found the secret of meeting the Holy Spirit within, rather than without; and knows, but cannot tell, how, in the strife of genuine duty, or in moments of true meditation, the Divine immensity and love have touched and filled his naked soul; and taught him by what fathomless G.o.dhead he is folded round, and on what adamantine manhood he must take his stand. So far from separating others from the heavenly communion vouchsafed to himself, he necessarily believes that all may have the same G.o.dlike consciousness; burns to impart it to them; and by the vivid light of his own faith speedily creates it in those who feel his influence, drawing out and freshening the faded colors of the Divine image in their souls, till they too become visibly the seers and the sons of G.o.d. His instruments, like the objects of his mission, are human; not mysteries, and mummeries, and such arbitrary things, by which others may pretend to be talking with the skies; but the natural language which interprets itself at once to every genuine man, and goes direct to the living point of every heart. An earnest speech, a brave and holy life, truth of sympathy, severity of conscience, freshness and loftiness of faith,--these natural sanct.i.ties are his implements of power; and if heaven be pleased to add any other gifts, still are they weapons all,--not the mere tinsel of tradition and custom,--but forged in the inner workshop of our nature, where the fire glows beneath the breath of G.o.d, framing things of ethereal temper. Thus armed, he lays undoubting siege to the world's conscience; tears down every outwork of pretence; forces its strong-holds of delusion; humbles the vanities at its centre, and proclaims it the citadel of G.o.d. The true prophet of every age is no believer in the temple, but in the temple's Deity; trusts, not rites and inst.i.tutions, but the heart and soul that fill or ought to fill them; if they speak the truth, no one so reveres them; if a lie, they meet with no contempt like his. He sees no indestructible sanctuary but the mind itself, wherein the Divine Spirit ever loves to dwell; and whence it will be sure to go forth and build such outward temple as may suit the season of Providence. He is conscious that there is no devotion like that which comes spontaneously from the secret places of our humanity, no orisons so true as those which rise from the common platform of our life. He desires only to throw himself in faith on the natural piety of the heart. Give him but that, and he will find for man an everlasting wors.h.i.+p, and raise for G.o.d a cathedral worthy of his infinitude.

It is evident that one thoroughly possessed with this spirit could never be, and could never make, a priest; nor frame a ritual for priests already made. He is dest.i.tute of the ideas out of which alone these things can be created. His mission is in the opposite direction: he interprets and reveals G.o.d to men, instead of interceding for men with G.o.d. In this office sacerdotal rites have no function and no place. I do not say that he must necessarily disapprove and abjure them, or deny that he may directly sanction them. If he does, however, it is not in his capacity of prophet, but in conformity with feelings which his proper office has left untouched. His tendency will be against ceremonialism; and on his age and position will depend the extent to which this tendency takes effect. Usually he will construct nothing ritual, will destroy much, and leave behind great and growing ideas, destructive of much more. But ere we quit our general conception of a prophet, let us notice some characteristic sentiments, moral and religious, which naturally connect themselves with his faith; comparing them with those which belong to the sacerdotal influence.

In this faith, G.o.d is separated by nothing from his wors.h.i.+ppers. He is not simply in contact with them, but truly in the interior of their nature; so that they may not only meet him in the outward providences of life, but bear his spirit with them, when they go to toil and conflict, and find it still, when they sit alone to think and pray. He is not the far observer, but the very present help, of the faithful will. No structure made with hands, nay, not even his own architecture of the heaven of heavens, contains and confines his presence: were there any dark recess whence these were hid, the blessed access would be without hinderance still; and the soul would discern him near as its own ident.i.ty. No mean and ign.o.ble conception can be entertained of a mind which is thus the residence of Deity;--the shrine of the Infinite must have somewhat that is infinite itself. Thus, in this system, does our nature appear in alliance with the Divine, not in contrast with it; inspired with a portion of its holiness, and free to help forward the best issues of its providence. Human life, blessed by this spirit, becomes a miniature of the work of the great Ruler: its responsibilities, its difficulties, its temptations, become dignified as the glorious theatre whereon we strive, by and with the good Spirit of G.o.d, for the mastery over evil. Wors.h.i.+p, issuing from a nature and existence thus consecrated, is not the casting off of guilt and terror, but the glad unburdening of love, and trust, and aspiration, the simple speaking forth, as duty is the acting forth, of the divine within us; not the prostration of the slave, but the embrace of the child; not the plaint of the abject, but the anthem of the free. Is it not private, individual? And may it not by silence say what it will, and intimate the precise thing, and that only, which is at heart?--whence there grows insensibly that firm root of excellence, truth with one's own self. The priestly fancy of an hereditary or lineal sacredness can have no place here. The soul and G.o.d stand directly related, mind with mind, spirit with spirit: from our moral fidelity to this relation, from the jealousy with which we guard it from insult or neglect, does the only sanct.i.ty arise; and herein there is none to help us, or give a vicarious consecration. And, finally, the spirit of G.o.d's true prophet is earnestly prospective; more filled with the conception of what the Creator _will_ make his world, than of what he _has_ already made it: detecting great capacities, it glows with great hopes; knowing that G.o.d lives, and will live, it turns from the past, venerable as that may be, and reverences rather the promise of the present, and the glories of the future. It esteems nothing unimprovable, is replete with vast desires; and amid the shadows and across the wilds of existence chases, not vainly, a bright image of perfection. The golden age, which priests with their tradition put into the past, the prophet, with his faith and truth, transfers into the future; and while the former pines and muses, the latter toils and prays. Thus does the administration of religion, in proportion as it partakes of the prophetic or anti-sacerdotal character, involve the ideas of an interior Deity, a n.o.ble humanity, a loving wors.h.i.+p, an individual holiness, and a prospective veneration.

We have found, then, two opposite views of religion: that of the Priest with his Ritual, and that of the Prophet with his Faith. I propose to show that the Church of England, in its doctrine of sacraments, coincides with the former of these, and sanctions all its objectionable sentiments; and that Christianity, in every relation, even with respect to its reputed rites, coincides with the latter.

The general conformity of the Church of England with the ritual conception of religion will not be denied by her own members. Their denial will be limited to one point: they will protest that her formulas of doctrine do not ascribe a _charmed efficacy_, or any operation upon G.o.d, to the two sacraments. To avoid verbal disputes, let us consider what we are to understand by a spell or charm. The name, I apprehend, denotes any material object or outward act, the possession or use of which is thought to confer safety or blessing, not by natural operation, but by occult virtues inherent in it, or mystical effects appended to it. A mere commemorative sign, therefore, is not a charm, nor need there be any superst.i.tion in its employment: it simply stands for certain ideas and memories in our minds; re-excites and freshens them, not otherwise than speech audibly records them, except that it summons them before us by sight and touch, instead of sound. The effect, whatever it may be, is purely natural, by sequence of thought on thought, till the complexion of the mind is changed, and haply suffused with a n.o.ble glow.

But in truth it is not fit to speak of commemorations, as things having efficacy at all; as desirable observances, under whose action we should put ourselves, in order to get up certain good dispositions in the heart. As soon as we see them acquiesced in, with this dutiful submission to a kind of spiritual operation, we may be sure they are already empty and dead. An _expedient_ commemoration, deliberately maintained on utilitarian principles, for the sake of warming cold affections by artificial heat, is one of the foolish conceptions of this mechanical and sceptical age. It is quite true, that such influence is found to belong to rites of remembrance; but only so long as it is not privately looked into, or greedily contemplated by the staring eye of prudence, but simply and unconsciously received. No; commemorations must be the spontaneous fruit and outburst of a love already kindled in the soul, not the fact.i.tious contrivance for forcing it into existence. They are not the lighted match applied to the fuel on an altar cold; but the shapes in which the living flame aspires, or the fretted lights thrown by that central love on the dark temple-walls of this material life.

It is not pretended that the sacraments are mere commemorative rites.

And nothing, I submit, remains, but that they should be p.r.o.nounced charms. It is of little purpose to urge, in denial of this, that the Church insists upon the necessity of faith on the part of the recipient, without which no benefit, but rather peril, will accrue.

This only limits the use of the charm to a certain cla.s.s, and establishes a prerequisite to its proper efficacy. It simply conjoins the outward form with a certain state of mind, and gives to each of these a partic.i.p.ation in the effect. If the faith be insufficient without the ceremony, then _some_ efficacy is due to the rite; and this, being neither the natural operation of the material elements, nor a simple suggestion of ideas and feelings to the mind, but mystical and preternatural, is no other than a charmed efficacy.

Nor will the statement, that the effect is not upon G.o.d, but upon man, bear examination. It is very true, that the _ultimate_ benefit of these rites is a result reputed to fall upon the wors.h.i.+pper;--regeneration, in the case of baptism; partic.i.p.ation in the atonement, in the case of the Lord's Supper. But by what steps do these blessings descend? Not by those of visible or perceived causation; but through an express and extraordinary volition of G.o.d, induced by the ceremonial form, or taking occasion from it. The sacerdotal economy, therefore, is so arranged, that, whenever the priest dispenses the water at the font, the Holy Spirit follows, as in instantaneous compliance with a suggestion; and whenever he spreads his hands over the elements at the communion, G.o.d immediately establishes a preternatural relation, not subsisting the moment before, between the substances on the table and the souls of the faithful communicants: so that every partaker receives, either directly or through supernatural increase of faith, some new share in the merits of the cross. Whatever subtleties of language then may be employed, it is evidently conceived that the first consequence of these forms takes place in heaven; and that on this depends whatever benediction they may bring: nor can a plain understanding frame any other idea of them than this; first, they act upwards, and suggest something to the mind of G.o.d, who then sends down an influence on the mind of the believer. From this conception no figures of speech, no ingenious a.n.a.logies, can deliver us.

Do you call the sacraments "pledges of grace"? A pledge means a promise; and how a voluntary act of ours, or the priest's, can be a promise made to us by the Divine Being, it is not easy to understand. Do you call them "seals of G.o.d's covenant,"--the instrument by which he engages to make over its blessings to the Christian, like the signature and completion of a deed conveying an estate? It still perplexes us to think of a service of our own as an a.s.surance received by us from Heaven. And one would imagine that the Divine promise, once given, were enough, without this incessant binding by periodical legalities. If it be said, "The renewal of the obligation is needful for us, and not for him"; then call the rites at once and simply, our service of self-dedication, the solemn memorial of our vows. And in spite of all metaphors, the question recurs, Does the covenant stand without these seals, or are they essential _to give possession_ of the privileges conveyed? Are they, by means preternatural, procurers of salvation? Have they a mystical action towards this end? If so, we return to the same point; they have a charmed efficacy on the human soul.

In order to establish this, nothing more is requisite than a brief reference to the language of the Articles and Liturgical services of the Church respecting Baptism and the Communion.

Baptism is regarded, throughout the Book of Common Prayer, as the instrument of regeneration: not simply as its sign, of which the actual descent of the Holy Spirit is independent; but as itself and essentially the means or indispensable occasion of the was.h.i.+ng away of sin. That this is regarded as a mystical and magical, not a natural and spiritual effect, is evident from the alleged fact of its occurrence in infants, to whom the rite can suggest nothing, and on whom, in the course of nature, it can leave no impression. Yet it is declared of the infant, after the use of the water, "Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that _this child is regenerate_," &c.: at the commencement of the service its aim is said to be that G.o.d may "grant to this child that thing which by nature he cannot have,"--"would wash him and sanctify him with the Holy Ghost," that he may be "delivered from G.o.d's wrath." Nothing, indeed, is so striking in this office of the national Church, as its audacious trifling with solemn names, denoting qualities of the soul and will; the ascription of spiritual and moral attributes, not only to the child in whom they can yet have no development, but even to material substances; the frivolity with which engagements with G.o.d are made by deputy, and without the consent or even existence of the engaging will. Water is said to possess _sanct.i.ty_, for "the mystical was.h.i.+ng away of sin." Infants, dest.i.tute of any idea of duty or obligation to be resisted or obeyed, are said to obtain "_remission of their sins_";--to "renounce the Devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world"; "steadfastly to believe" in the Apostles' Creed, and to be desirous of "baptism into this faith." Belief, desire, resolve, are acts of some one's mind: the language of this service attributes them to the personality of the infant (_I_ renounce, _I_ believe, _I_ desire); yet there they cannot possibly exist. If they are to be understood as affirmed by the G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers of themselves, the case is not improved: for how can one person's state of faith and conscience be made the condition of the regeneration of another? What intelligible meaning can be attached to these phrases of sanct.i.ty applied to an age not responsible? In what sense, and by what indication, are these children _holier_ than others? And with what reason, if all this be Christianity, can we blame the Pope for sprinkling holy water on the horses? The service appears little better than a profane sacerdotal jugglery, by which material things are impregnated with divine virtues, moral and spiritual qualities of the mind are sported with, the holy spirit of G.o.d is turned into a physical mystery, and the solemnity of personal responsibility is insulted.

That a superst.i.tious value is attributed to the details of the baptismal form, in the Church of England, appears from certain parts of the service for the private ministration of the rite. If a child has been baptized by any other lawful minister than the minister of the parish, strict inquiries are to be inst.i.tuted by the latter respecting the correctness with which the ceremony has been performed; and should the prescribed rules have been neglected, the baptism is invalid, and must be repeated. Yet great solicitude is manifested, lest danger should be incurred by an unnecessary repet.i.tion of the sacrament: to guard against which, the minister is to give the following conditional invitation to the Holy Spirit; saying, in his address to the child, "_If_ thou art not already baptized, I baptize thee," &c. It is worthy of remark, that the Church mentions as one of the _essentials_ of the service, the omission of which necessitates its repet.i.tion, the use of the formula, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." By this rule, every one of the apostolic baptisms recorded in Scripture must be p.r.o.nounced invalid; and the Church of England, were it possible, would perform them again: for in no instance does it appear that the Apostles employed either this or even any equivalent form of words.

That this sacrament is regarded as an indispensable channel of grace, and positively necessary to salvation, is clear from the provision of a short and private form, to be used in cases of extreme danger. The prayers, and faith, and obedience, and patient love, of parents and friends,--the dedication and heart-felt surrender of their child to G.o.d, the profound application of their anxieties and grief to their conscience and inward life,--all this, we are told, will be of no avail, without the water and the priest. Archbishop Laud says: "That baptism is necessary to the salvation of infants (in the ordinary way of the Church, without binding G.o.d to the use and means of that sacrament, to which he hath bound us), is expressed in St. John iii., 'Except a man be born of water,' &c. So, no baptism, no entrance; nor can infants creep in, any other ordinary way."[3] Bishop Bramhall says: "Wilful neglect of baptism we acknowledge to be a d.a.m.nable sin; and, without repentance and G.o.d's extraordinary mercy, to exclude a man from all hope of salvation. But yet, if such a person, before his death, shall repent and deplore his neglect of the means of grace, from his heart, and desire with all his soul to be baptized, but is debarred from it invincibly, we do not, we dare not, pa.s.s sentence of condemnation upon him; not yet the Roman Catholics themselves. The question then is, whether the want of baptism, upon invincible necessity, do evermore infallibly exclude from heaven."[4] Singular struggle here, between the merciless ritual of the priest, and the relenting spirit of the man!

The office of Communion contains even stronger marks of the same sacerdotal superst.i.tions; and, notwithstanding the Protestant horror entertained of the ma.s.s, approaches it so nearly, that no ingenuity can exhibit them in contrast. Near doctrines, however, like near neighbors, are known to quarrel most.

The idea of a physical sanct.i.ty, residing in solid and liquid substances, is encouraged by this service. The priest _consecrates_ the elements, by laying his hand upon all the bread, and upon every flagon containing the wine about to be dispensed. If an additional quant.i.ty is required, this too must be consecrated before its distribution. And the sacredness thus imparted is represented as surviving the celebration of the Supper, and residing in the substances as a permanent quality: for in the disposal of the bread and wine that may remain at the close of the sacramental feast, a distinction is made between the consecrated and the unconsecrated portion of the elements; the former is not permitted to quit the altar, but is to be reverently consumed by the priest and the communicants; the latter is given to the curate. What the particular change may be, which the prayer and manipulation of the minister are thought to induce, it is by no means easy to determine; nor would the discovery, perhaps, reward our pains. It is certainly conceived, that they cease to be any longer mere bread and wine, and that with them thenceforth co-exist, really and substantially, the body and blood of Christ. Respecting this _Real Presence_ with the elements, there is no dispute between the Romish and the English Church; both unequivocally maintain it: and the only question is, respecting the _Real Absence_ of the original and culinary bread and wine; the Roman Catholic believing that these substantially vanish, and are replaced by the body and blood of Christ; the English Protestant conceiving that they remain, but are united with the latter. The Lutheran, no less than the British Reformed Church, has clung tenaciously to the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist, Luther himself declares: "I would rather retain, with the Romanists, _only_ the body and blood, than adopt, with the Swiss, the bread and wine, _without_ the real body and blood of Christ." The catechism of our Church affirms that "the body and blood of Christ are _verily and indeed_ taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper." And this was not intended to be figuratively understood, of the spiritual use and appropriation to which the faith and piety of the receiver would mentally convert the elements: for although here the body of Christ is only said to be "_taken_" (making it the _act of the communicant_), yet one of the Articles speaks of it as "_given_" (making it the _act of the officiating priest_), and implying the real presence _before partic.i.p.ation_. However anxious, indeed, the clergy of the "Evangelical" school may be to disguise the fact, it cannot be doubted that their Church has always maintained a supernatural change in the elements themselves, as well as in the mind of the receiver.

Cosin, Bishop of Durham, says, "We own the union between the body and blood of Christ, and the elements, whose use and office we hold to be changed from what it was before"; "we confess the necessity of a supernatural and heavenly change, and that the signs cannot become sacraments but by the infinite power of G.o.d."[5]

In consistency with this preparatory change, a charmed efficacy is attributed to the subsequent partic.i.p.ation in the elements. Even the _body_ of the communicant is said to be under their influence: "Grant us to eat the flesh of thy dear Son, and drink his blood, that our sinful _bodies_ may be made clean through his body, and our _souls_ washed through his most precious blood"; and the unworthy recipients are said "to provoke G.o.d to plague them with divers diseases and sundry kinds of death." Lest the wors.h.i.+pper, by presenting himself in an unqualified state, should "do nothing else than increase his d.a.m.nation," the unquiet conscience is directed to resort to the priest, and receive the benefit of absolution before communicating.

Can we deny to the Oxford divines the merit (whatever it may be) of consistency with the theology of their Church, when they applaud and recommend, as they do, the administration of the Eucharist to infants, and to persons dying and insensible? Indeed, it is difficult to discover why infant Communion should be thought more irrational than infant Baptism. If, as I have endeavored to show, the primary action of these ceremonies is conceived to be on G.o.d, not on the mind of their object, why should not the Divine blessing be induced upon the young and the unconscious, as well as on the mature and capable soul?

And were any further evidence required than I have hitherto adduced, to show _on whom_ the Communion is conceived to operate in the first instance, it would surely be afforded by this clause in the Service: by not partaking, "_Consider how great an injury ye do unto G.o.d._"

The only thing wanted to complete this sacerdotal system, is to obtain for a certain cla.s.s of men the corporate possession, and exclusive administration, of these essential and holy mysteries. This our Church accomplishes by its doctrine of Apostolical Succession; claiming for its ministers a lineal official descent from the Apostles, which invests them, and them alone within this realm, with divine authority to p.r.o.nounce absolution or excommunication, and to administer the Sacraments. They are thus the sole guardians of the channels of the Divine Spirit and its grace, and interpose themselves between a nation and its G.o.d. "Receive the Holy Ghost," says the Service for Ordination of Priests, "for the office and work of a priest in the Church of G.o.d, now committed unto thee by the imposition of hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained." "They only," says the present Bishop of Exeter, "can claim to rule over the Lord's household, whom he has himself placed over it; they only are able to minister the means of grace,--above all, to present the great commemorative _sacrifice_,--whom Christ has appointed, and whom he has in all generations appointed in unbroken succession from those, and through those, whom he first ordained.

'Amba.s.sadors from Christ' must, by the very force of the term, receive credentials from Christ: 'stewards of the mysteries of G.o.d' must be intrusted with those mysteries by him. Remind your people, that in the Church only is the promise of forgiveness of sins; and though, to all who truly repent, and sincerely believe, Christ mercifully grants forgiveness, yet he has, in an especial manner, empowered his ministers to declare and p.r.o.nounce to his people the absolution and remission of their sins: 'Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.' This was the awful authority given to his first ministers, and in them, and through them, to all their successors. This is the awful authority we have received, and that we must never be ashamed nor afraid to tell the people that we have received.

"Having shown to the people your commission, show to them how our own Church has framed its services in accordance with that commission.

Show this to them not only in the Ordinal, but also in the Collects, in the Communion Service, in the Office of the Visitation of the Sick; show it, especially, in that which continually presents itself to their notice, but is commonly little regarded by them; show it in the very commencement of Morning and Evening Prayer, and make them understand the full blessedness of that service, in which the Church thus calls on them to join. Let them see that there the minister authoritatively p.r.o.nounces G.o.d's pardon and absolution to all them that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe Christ's holy Gospel; that he does this, even as the Apostles did, with the authority and by the appointment of our Lord himself, who, in commissioning his Apostles, gave this to be the never-failing a.s.surance of his co-operation in their ministry: 'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world'; a promise which, of its very nature, was not to be fulfilled to the persons of those whom he addressed, but to their office, to their successors therefore in that office, 'even unto the end of the world.' Lastly, remind and warn them of the awful sanction with which our Lord accompanied his mission, even of the second order of the ministers whom he appointed: 'He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.'" That this high dignity may be clearly understood to belong in this country only to the Church of England, the Bishop proposes the question, "What, then, becomes of those who are not, or continue not, members of that (visible) Church?" and replies to it by saying, that though he "judges not them that are without," yet "he who wilfully and in despite of due warning, or through recklessness and worldly-mindedness, sets at naught its ordinances, and despises its ministers, has no right to promise to himself any share in the grace which they are appointed to convey."[6] "Why," says one of the Oxford divines, who here undeniably speaks the genuine doctrine of his Church,--"Why should we talk so much of an _Establishment_, and so little of an APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION? Why should we not seriously endeavor to impress our people with this plain truth, that, by separating themselves from our communion, they separate themselves not only from a decent, orderly, useful society, but from THE ONLY CHURCH IN THIS REALM WHICH HAS A RIGHT TO BE QUITE SURE THAT SHE HAS THE LORD'S BODY TO GIVE TO HIS PEOPLE?"[7]

Of course this divine authority has been received through the Church of Rome, so abominable in the eyes of all Evangelical clergymen; and through many an unworthy link in the broken chain. The Holy Spirit, it is acknowledged, has _pa.s.sed through_ many, on whom, apparently, it was not pleased to rest; and the right to forgive sins been conferred by those who seemed themselves to need forgiveness. A writer in the Oxford Tracts observes: "Nor even though we may admit that many of those who formed the connecting links of this holy chain were themselves unworthy of the high charge reposed in them, can this furnish us with any solid ground for doubting or denying their power to exercise that legitimate authority with which they were duly invested, of transmitting the sacred gift to worthier followers."[8]

In its doctrine of Sacraments, then, and in that of ecclesiastical authority and succession, the Church of England is thoroughly imbued with the sacerdotal character. It doubtless contains far better elements and n.o.bler conceptions than those which it has been my duty to exhibit now; and solemnly insists on faith of heart, and truth of conscience, and Christian devotedness of life, as well as on the observance of its ritual; with the external it unites the internal condition of sanctification. But insisting on the theory of a mystic efficacy in the Christian rites, it necessarily fails to reconcile these with each other: and hence the opposite parties within its pale; the one magnifying faith and personal spirituality, the other exalting the sacraments and ecclesiastical communion. They represent respectively the two const.i.tuent and clas.h.i.+ng powers, which met at the formation of the English Church, and of which it effected the mere compromise, not the reconciliation; I mean, the priestliness of Rome, and the prophetic spirit of the Reformers. Never, since apostolic days, did Heaven bless us with truer prophet than Martin Luther. It was his mission (no modern man had ever greater) to subst.i.tute the idea of _personal faith_ for that of _sacerdotal reliance_. And gloriously, with bravery and truth of soul amid a thousand hinderances, did he achieve it. But though, ever since, the priests have been down, and faith has been up, yet did the hierarchy unavoidably remain, and insisted that _something_ should be made of it, and at least some colorable terms proposed. Hence, every reformed church exhibits a coalition between the new and the old ideas: and combined views of religion, which must ultimately prove incompatible with each other; the formal with the spiritual; the idea of wors.h.i.+p as a means of propitiating G.o.d, with the conception of it as an expression of love in man; the notion of Church authority with that of individual freedom; the admission of a license to think, with a prohibition of thinking wrong. In our national Church the old spirit was ascendant over the new, though long forced into quiescence by the temper of modern times. Now it is attempting to rea.s.sert its power, not without strenuous resistance. Indeed, the present age seems destined to end the compromise between the two principles, from the union of which Protestantism a.s.sumed its established forms. The truce seems everywhere breaking up: a general disintegration of churches is visible; tradition is ransacking the past for claims and dignities, and canva.s.sing present timidity for fresh authority, to withstand the wild forces born at the Reformation, and hurrying us fast into an unknown future.

Let us now turn to the primitive Christianity; which, I submit, is throughout wholly anti-sacerdotal.

Surely it must be admitted that the general spirit of our Lord's personal life and ministry was that of the Prophet, not of the Priest; tending directly to the disparagement of whatever priesthood existed in his country, without visibly preparing the subst.i.tution of anything at all a.n.a.logous to it. The sacerdotal order felt it so; and, with the infallible instinct of self-preservation, they watched, they hated, they seized, they murdered him. The priest in every age has a natural antipathy to the prophet, dreads him as kings dread revolution, and is the first to detect his existence. The solemn moment and the gracious words of Christ's first preaching in Nazareth, struck with fate the temple in Jerusalem. To the old men of the village, to the neighbors who knew his childhood, and companions who had shared its rambles and its sports, he said, with the quiet flush of inspiration: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor: he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." The Spirit of the Lord in Galilee!

speaking with the peasantry, dwelling in villages, and wandering loose and where it listeth among the hills! This would never do, thought the white-robed Levites of the Holy City; it would be as a train of wildfire in the temple. And were they not right? When it was revealed that sanct.i.ty is no thing of place and time, that a way is open from earth to heaven, from every field or mountain trod by human feet, and through every roof that shelters a human head; that, amid the crowd and crush of life, each soul is in personal solitude with G.o.d, and by speech or silence (be they but true and loving) may tell its cares and find its peace; that a divine allegiance might _cost nothing_, but the strife of a dutiful will and the patience of a filial heart,--how could any priesthood hope to stand? See how Jesus himself, when the temple was close at hand, and the suns.h.i.+ne dressed it in its splendor, yet withdrew his prayers to the midnight of Mount Olivet. He entered those courts to teach, rather than to wors.h.i.+p; and when there, he is felt to take no consecration, but to give it; to bring with him the living spirit of G.o.d, and spread it throughout all the place. When evening closes his teachings, and he returns late over the Mount to Bethany, did he not feel that there was more of G.o.d in the night-breeze on his brow, and the heaven above him, and the sad love within him, than in the place called "Holy" which he had left? And when he had knocked at the gate of Lazarus the risen and become his guest,--when, after the labors of the day, he unburdened his spirit to the affections of that family, and spake of things divine to the sisters listening at his feet,--did they not feel, as they retired at length, that the whole house was full of G.o.d, and that there is no sanctuary like the shrine, not made with hands, within us all? In childhood, he had once preferred the temple and its teachings to his parents' home: now, to his deeper experience, the temple has lost its truth; while the cottage and the walks of Nazareth, the daily voices and constant duties of this life, seem covered with the purest consecration. True, he vindicated the sanct.i.ty of the temple, when he heard within its enclosure the hum of traffic and the c.h.i.n.k of gain, and would not have the house of prayer turned into a place of merchandise: because in this there was imposture and a lie, and Mammon and the Lord must ever dwell apart. In nothing must there be mockery and falsehood; and while the temple stands, it must be a temple true.

Our Lord's whole ministry, then, (to which we may add that of his Apostles,) was conceived in a spirit quite opposite to that of priesthood. A missionary life, without fixed locality, without form, without rites; with teaching free, occasional, and various, with sympathies ever with the people, and a strain of speech never marked by invective, except against the ruling sacerdotal influence;--all these characters proclaim him, purely and emphatically, the Prophet of the Lord. It deserves notice that, unless as the name of his enemies, the _word_ "PRIEST" (?e?e??) never occurs in either the historical or epistolary writings of the New Testament, except in the Epistle to the Hebrews. And _there_ its application is not a little remarkable. It is applied to Christ alone; it is declared to belong to him only after his ascension; it is said that, while on earth, he neither was, nor could be, a priest; and if it is admitted that he holds the office in heaven, this is only to satisfy the demand of the Hebrew Christians for some sacerdotal ideas in their religion, and to reconcile them to having no priest on earth. The writer acknowledges one great pontiff in the world above, that the whole race may be superseded in the world below; and banishes priesthood into invisibility, that men may never see its shadow more. All the terms of office which are given to the first preachers of the Gospel and superintendents of churches,--as Deacon, Elder or Presbyter, Overseer or Bishop,--are _lay terms_, belonging previously, not to ecclesiastical, but to civil life; an indication, surely, that no a.n.a.logy was thought to exist between the Apostolic and the Sacerdotal relations.[9] I shall, no doubt, be reminded of the words, in which our Lord is supposed to have given their commission to his first representatives: "Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven"; and shall be asked whether this does not convey to them and their successors an official authority to forgive sins, and dispense the decrees of the unseen world. I reply briefly:--

1st. That the power here granted does not relate to the dispensations of the future life, but solely to what would be termed, in modern language, the allotment of _church-members.h.i.+p_. The previous verse proves this, furnis.h.i.+ng as it does a particular case of the general authority here a.s.signed. It directs the Apostles under what circ.u.mstances they are to remove an offender from a Christian society, and treat him as an unconverted man, as a heathen man and a publican.

Having given them their rule, he freely trusts the application of it to them: and being about to retire erelong from personal intervention in the affairs of his kingdom, he a.s.sures them that their decisions shall be his, and that he may be considered as adopting in heaven their determinations upon earth. He simply "consigns to his Apostles discretionary power to direct the affairs of his Church, and superintend the diffusion of the glad tidings: they may bind and loose, that is, open and shut the door of admission to their community, as their judgment may determine; employing or rejecting applicants for the missionary office; dissociating from their a.s.semblies obstinate delinquents; receiving with openness, or dismissing with suspicion, each candidate for instruction, according to their estimate of his qualifications and motives."

2dly. It is to be observed, that there is no appearance of any one being in the contemplation of our Lord, beyond the persons immediately addressed. Not a word is said of any official successor or any distant age. No indication is afforded, that any idea of futurity was present to the mind of Jesus: and a t.i.tle of perpetual office, an instrument creating and endowing an endless priesthood, ought, it will be admitted, to be somewhat more explicit than this. But where the power has been successfully claimed, the t.i.tle is seldom difficult to prove.

The alleged RITUAL of Christianity, consisting of the sacraments of Baptism and the Communion, will be found no less dest.i.tute of sanction from the Scriptures. The former we shall see reason to regard as simply an initiatory form, applicable only to Christian converts, and limited therefore to adults; the latter as purely a commemoration: neither therefore having any sacramental or mystical efficacy.

For baptism it is impossible to establish any supernatural origin. It is admitted to have existed before the Christian era; and to have been employed by the Jews on the admission of proselytes to their religion.

It is certain that it is not an enjoined rite in the Mosaic dispensation; and, though prevalent before the period of the New Testament, is nowhere enforced or recognized in the writings of the Old.

It arose therefore in the interval between the only two systems which Christians acknowledged to be supernatural; and must be considered as of natural and human origin, invested, thus far, with no higher authority than its own appropriateness may confer. There seem to have been two modes of construing the symbol: the one founded on the cleansing effect of the water on the person of the baptized himself; the other, on the appearance of his immersion (which was complete) to the eye of a spectator. The former was an image of the heathen convert's purification from a foul idolatry, and his transition to a stainless condition under a divine and justifying law. The latter represented him, when he vanished in the stream, as interred to this world, sunk utterly from its sight; and when he reappeared, as emerging or born again to a better state; the "old man" was "buried in baptism," and when he "rose again,"

he had altogether "become new."[10] The ceremony then was appropriately used in any case of transition from a depressed and corrupt state of existence to a hopeful and blessed one; from a false or imperfect religion to one true and heavenly.

But it will be said, whatever the origin of baptism, it was employed and sanctioned by our Lord, who commissioned his Apostles to go and baptize all nations. True; but is there no difference between the adoption of a practice already extant,--of a practice which was as much the mere inst.i.tutional dress of the Apostles' nation, as the sandals whose dust they were to shake off against the faithless were the customary clothing of the Apostles' feet,--and the authoritative appointment of a sacrament? They were going forth to make converts: and why should they not have recourse to the form familiarly a.s.sociated with the act?

Familiar a.s.sociation recommended its adoption in that age and clime; and the absence of such a.s.sociation elsewhere and in other times may be thought to justify its disuse. At all events, a ceremony thus taken up must be presumed to retain its acquired sense and its established extent of application: and if so, baptism must be strictly limited to the admission of proselytes from other faiths. This accords with the known practice of the Apostles, who cannot be shown to have baptized any but those whom they had personally, or by their missionaries, persuaded to become Christians. Not a single case of the use of the rite with children can be adduced from Scripture; and the only argument by which such employment of it is ever justified is this: that a _household_ is said to have been baptized, and _all nations_ were to receive the offer of it; and that the household _may_, the nations _must_, have contained children. It is evident that such reasoning could never have been propounded, unless the practice had existed first, and the defence had been found afterwards.

With the system of infant baptism vanish almost all the ideas which the prevalent theology has put into the rite; and it becomes as intelligible and expressive to one who believes in the good capacities of human nature, as to those who esteem it originally depraved. "How unmeaning,"

say our Orthodox opponents, "is this ceremony in Unitarian hands, denying, as they do, the doctrines which it represents! Of what regeneration can they possibly suppose it the symbol, if not of the was.h.i.+ng away of that _hereditary sin_ which they refuse to acknowledge?

for when the infant is brought to the font, he can as yet have no other guilt than this." I reply, the objection has no force except against the use of _infant_ baptism in our churches,--which I am not anxious to defend; but of course those Unitarians who employ it conceive it to be the token, not of any sentiments which they reject, but of truths and feelings which they hold dear. For myself, I believe, with our opponents, that the _doctrine_ of original sin and the _practice_ of infant baptism _do_ belong to each other, and must stand or fall together; and therefore deem it a fact very significant of the Apostles'

theology, that no infant can be shown ever to have been "brought to the font" by these first true missionaries of Christianity. And as to the _new birth_ which baptism (i. e. recent and genuine disciples.h.i.+p to Jesus) may give to the _maturely convinced_ Christian, he must have a great deal to learn, not only of the Hebrew conceptions and language in relation to the Messiah, but of the spirituality of the Gospel, and of the fresh creations of character which it calls up, who can be much puzzled about its meaning.

In Christian baptism, then, we have no sacrament with mystic power; but an initiatory form, possibly of consuetudinary obligation only; but if enjoined, applicable exclusively to proselytes, and misemployed in the case of infants; a sign of conversion, not a means of salvation; confided to no sacerdotal order, but open to every man fitted to give it an appropriate use.

I turn to the Lord's Supper; with design to show what it is not, and what it is. It is not a mystery, or a sacrament, any more than it is an expiatory sacrifice. To persuade us that it has a ritual character, we are first a.s.sured that it is clearly the successor in the Gospel to the Pa.s.sover under the Law. Well, even if it were so, it would still be simply commemorative, and without any other efficacy than a festival, filled with great remembrances, and inspired with religious joy. Such was the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem; the annual gathering of families and kindred, a sacred carnival under the spring sky and in sight of unreaped fields, when the memory was recalled of national deliverance, and the tale was told of traditional glories, and the thoughts brought back of bondage reversed, of the desert pilgrimage ended, of the promised land possessed. The Jewish festival was no more than this; unless, with Archbishop Magee and others, we erroneously conceive it to be a proper sacrifice. So that those who would interpret the Lord's Supper by the Pa.s.sover have their choice between two views: that it is a simple commemoration; or that it is an expiatory sacrifice: in the former case they quit the Church of England; in the latter, they fall into the Church of Rome.

But, in truth, there is no propriety in applying the name "Christian Pa.s.sover" to the Communion. The notion rests entirely on this circ.u.mstance: that the first three Evangelists describe the last Supper as the Paschal Supper. But the _inst.i.tutional_ part of that meal was over before the cup was distributed, and the repet.i.tion of the act enjoined. Nor is there the slightest trace, either in the subsequent Scriptures, or in the earliest history of the Church, that the Communion was thought to bear relation to the Pa.s.sover. The time, the frequency, the mode, of the two were altogether different. Indeed, when we observe that not one of these particulars is prescribed and determined by our Lord at all, when we notice the slight and transient manner in which he drops his wish that they would "do this in remembrance of" him, when we compare these features of the account with the elaborate precision of Moses respecting hours, and materials, and dates, and places, and modes in the establishment of the Hebrew festivals, it is scarcely possible to avoid the impression, that we are reading narrative, not law; an utterance of personal affection, rather than the legislative enactment of an everlasting inst.i.tution.

However this may be, no importance can be attached to the reported coincidence in the time of that meal with the day of Pa.s.sover; for the Apostle John, who gives by far the fullest account of what happened at that table (yet never mentions the inst.i.tution of the Supper), states that this was not the paschal meal at all, which did not occur, he says, till the following day of crucifixion.