Was it not great? did not he throw on God(He loves the burthen)—God's task to make the heavenly periodPerfect the earthen[377]?
Was it not great? did not he throw on God(He loves the burthen)—God's task to make the heavenly periodPerfect the earthen[377]?
Was it not great? did not he throw on God
(He loves the burthen)—
God's task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthen[377]?
It will be the chief aim of this essay to shew that in the embodiment and presentation of Christianity by the Church of Christ there may be seen an excellence analogous, at least, to this distinctive characteristic of the work that all approve as best and truest upon earth; that in contrast with many religious systems, attaining a high degree of moral beauty and spiritual fervour, the historic Church meets human life in full front; that it has been taught and enabled, in its ministry of Sacraments, to deal with the entirety of man's nature, not slighting, or excluding, or despairing of any true part of his being. But it is necessary at the outset to define, in general and provisional terms, the nature and the principle of that element in the Church's faith and life which is here under consideration, and in which especially this amplitude and catholicity of dealing with human nature is to be sought. By the Sacramental system, then, is meant the regular use of sensible objects, agents, and acts as being the means or instruments of Divine energies, 'the vehicles of saving and sanctifying power[378].' The underlying belief, the basal and characteristic principle of this system, may be thus stated. As theinmost being of man rises to the realization of its true life, to the knowledge and apprehension of God and of itself, in the act of faith, and as He whose Spirit quickened it for that act, greets its venture with fresh gifts of light and strength, it is His will that these gifts should be conveyed by means or organs taken from this world, and addressed to human senses. His Holy Spirit bears into the faithful soul the communication of its risen Lord's renewing manhood; and for the conveyance of that unseen gift He takes things and acts that can be seen, and words that can be heard; His way is viewless as the wind; but He comes and works by means of which the senses are aware; and His hidden energy accepts a visible order and outward implements for the achievement of its purpose.
The limits of this essay preclude the discussion of the larger questions which beset the terms of these definitions. Previous essays have dealt with those truths which are necessarily involved in any declaration of belief about the Christian Sacraments. The Being of God, the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, the Atonement, the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, the Person and Mission of the Holy Ghost, these are indeed implied in the Sacramental system of the Church, not simply as component and essential parts of the same building, nor as mere logical data, but rather as the activities of the bodily life are pre-supposed in the exertion of the body's strength. But these cannot here be spoken of: it is from preceding pages of this book that thoughts and convictions must be gathered, without which much that is here said will seem either unsubstantial, or merely technical. It must be owned that the severance of any subject from its context entails not only incompleteness, but also a certain disproportion and obscurity in its treatment; since the lines of thought which run out into the context are lines down which light comes, light that is lost if they are closed. Indeed anything like a full presentation or a formal defence of a detached part of Christian teaching and practice seems intrinsically very difficult, and within the limits of an essay impossible. There are, however, two questions which must beasked concerning each several part of the whole structure, and in regard to which something may here be said. The first is: Does this part match with its surroundings in Christianity; is it a harmonious and congenial element in the whole order, in the great body of doctrine to which it claims to belong? The second is: Does it match with the surroundings on which it claims to act, with its environment in human life; is it apt for the purpose to which it is addressed and the conditions among which it comes? It is here proposed, as has been said, to consider in regard to the Sacramental system the second especially of these two questions: but its consideration will involve some thoughts which may perhaps be a sufficient answer to the first. And thus something may also be gained beyond the range of the present inquiry; for it seems fair to hold that any part of Christian teaching in regard to which both these questions can be answered in the affirmative, has a strong tendency at all events to commend the claim of the whole scheme with which it is inwoven and essentially continuous. For the perfection of inner coherence in a structure whose main lines, at least, were projected in the world under circumstances which preclude the thought of scientific or artificial elaboration, and the perfection of adaptation, not to the wishes and tastes of men, nor to the arrangements of society, but to the deepest, fullest, surest truth of humanity; these are characteristics which we should expect to find in a revelation from God to man, and be surprised to find elsewhere.
I. Probably there come to most men who have got beyond the happy confidence of youth, and the unhappy confidence of self-satisfaction, times at which they seem to themselves to be living in a somewhat perplexed and dimly lighted world, with tasks for which their strength is insufficient, among problems which they cannot solve. And Christianity is held out to them, or has been received by them, as a way of life under these circumstances, as a method and a means of living rightly; a system which does not indeed take all the perplexity out of the world, or all the difficulties out of their course, but which will give them light and strength enough to keep in the righttrack, to use their time well, to take their proper place, and do their proper work, and so to move towards the realization of all the many parts and possibilities of their nature; a goal which may seem to grow both larger and more distant the more one thinks about it. Christianity professes to be that Divine word, which was faintly surmised of old[379], and in due time was sent forth to bear men wisely and surely through this world. Plainly one of the first and fairest questions which may be asked in regard to it is, whether it shews a perfect understanding of the nature with which it claims to deal, and the life which it claims to guide.
Now when we set ourselves to think what we are for whom a possible and satisfactory way of life is sought, what that nature is, whose right principles and conditions of development are to be determined, one of the first things which we discern is an apparently invincible complexity. The life we have to order is a twofold life, it moves through a twofold course of experience: the facts, the activities in which we are conscious of it, are of two kinds; and men ordinarily distinguish them as bodily and spiritual. Some such distinction is recognised and understood by the simplest of us: it is imbedded beyond possibility of expulsion in all language: stubbornly and successfully it resists all efforts to abolish it. We know for ourselves that either of the two groups of facts may stand out in clearer light, in keener consciousness, at certain times: we may even for a while, a little while, lose sight of either of them and seem to be wholly occupied with the other: but presently the neglected facts will re-assert their rights: neither the one group nor the other may long be set aside without risk of the Nemesis which avenges slighted truths:—the Nemesis of disproportion and disease. We may confuse our sense of the distinction; we may shift or blur or bend whatever line had seemed to mark it: we may insist on the qualifying phenomena which forbid us to think of any barrier as impenetrable; but we cannot so exalt or push forward either realm as utterly to extrude, absorb, or annihilate the other: we cannot, with consistency orsanity, live as though our life were merely spiritual or merely bodily. It is as impossible steadily to regard the spirit as a mere function or product of the body, as it is to treat the body with entire indifference, as a casually adjacent fragment of the external world. But further, as the distinction of the two elements in our being seems insuperable, so does their union seem essential to the integrity of our life. Any abstraction of one element, as though it could detach itself from the other and live on its own resources, is felt to be unreal and destructive of our proper nature. So it has been finely said, 'Materialism itself has here done valuable service in correcting the exaggeration of a one-sided spiritualism. It is common, but erroneous, to speak of man's body as being related to his spirit only as is the casket to the jewel which it contains. But, as a matter of fact, the personal spirit of man strikes its roots far and deep into the encompassing frame of sense, with which, from the first moment of its existence, it has been so intimately associated.... The spirit can indeed exist independently of the body, but this independent existence is not its emancipation from a prison-house of matter and sense; it is a temporary and abnormal divorce from the companion whose presence is needed to complete its life[380].' If we try to imagine our life in abstraction from the body we can only think of it as incomplete and isolated; as impoverished, deficient, and expectant. And certainly in our present state, in the interval between what we call birth and death, the severance of the two elements is inconceivable: they are knit together in incessant and indissoluble communion. In no activity, no experience of either, can the other be utterly discarded: 'for each action and reaction passing between them is a fibre of that which forms their mutual bond[381].' Even into those energies of which men speak as purely spiritual, the bodily life will find its way, will send its help or hindrance: sickness, hunger, weariness, and desire: these are but some of its messengers to the spirit, messengerswho will not always be denied. And in every conscious action of the bodily life the presence of the spirit is to be discerned. The merely animal fulfilment of merely animal demands, devoid of moral quality, is only possible within that dark tract of instinct which lies below the range of our consciousness. When once desire is consciously directed to its object, (wherever the desire has originated and whatever be the nature of the object,) a moral quality appears, a moral issue is determined: and the act of the body becomes an event in the life of the spirit[382]. The blind life of brute creatures is as far out of our reach as is the pure energy of angels: we can never let the body simply go its own way; for in the essential complexity of our being, another sense is ever waiting upon the conscious exercise of those five senses that we share with lower animals:—the sense of duty and of sin.
Thus complex are we,—we who crave more light and strength, who want to find the conditions of our health and growth, who lift up our eyes unto the hills from whence cometh our help. It would be interesting to consider from how many different points of view the complexity has been recognised, resented, slandered, or ignored; and how steadily it has held its own. It may need some exercise of faith (that is to say, of reasonable patience amidst half-lights and fragments) to keep the truth before one, and to allow it its just bearing upon thought and conduct, without exaggeration, or self-deception, or one-sidedness; but there is neither health of body nor peace of mind in trifling with it.
To us, then, being thus complex, Christianity presents a plan, a principle, a rule of life. And that primary and inevitable question which has been already indicated may therefore take this definite form:—Does the scheme proposed to us acknowledge this our complexity? does it provide for us in the entirety of our nature, with all that we feel to be essential to our completeness? or must a part of our being be huddled out of sight as we enter the precinct of the Church?
II. (1) Certainly the whole history and character of the Christian Revelation would encourage us to hope that itsbearing upon life would be as broad as the whole of human nature; and that no true part of our being would be excluded from its light, refused its welcome, or driven from its feast. When we consider how Christianity came into the world, it would seem strange and disappointing if its hold on human life were partial and not inclusive: if, for instance, the body found no place prepared, no help or hope provided for it. This was excellently said by Alexander Knox: 'The gospel commenced in an accommodation to man's animal exigencies which was as admirable as it was gracious; and which the hosts of heaven contemplated with delight and wonder. The Incarnation of the co-eternal Son, through which S. John was enabled to declare what he and his fellow Apostles "had seen with their eyes, what they had looked upon, and their hands had handled, of the Word of Life," was in the first instance, so to consult human nature in its animal and sensitive capacity, as to give the strongest pledge that a dispensation thus introduced would, in every subordinate provision, manifest the same spirit and operate on the same principle. For could it be thought that the first wonderful accommodation of Godhead to the sensitive apprehensions of man should be wholly temporary? and that though that mystery of godliness was ever to be regarded as the vital source of all spiritual benefits and blessings, no continuance of this wise and gracious condescension should be manifested in the means, whereby its results were to be perpetuated, and made effectual[383]?' It would be possible to follow this mode of thought to a remoter point, and to mark in the revealed relation of the Eternal Word to the whole creation a sure ground for believing that whensoever, in the fulness of time, God should be pleased to bring the world, through its highest type, into union with Himself, the access to that union would be as wide as the fulness of the nature in which He made man at the beginning: that the attractive and uplifting bands of love would hold and draw to Him every true element ofthat nature. But it is enough for our present purpose to look steadily at the Advent and the Life of Christ: to see how carefully and tenderly every fragment of the form He takes is disentangled from the deforming evil which He could not take: how perfect are the lineaments of the humanity He wears, how freely and clearly all that is characteristic of our nature is displayed in His most holy life; where 'the hiding of His power,' the restraining of the beams of Deity[384]leaves room for the disclosure in Him of whatever weakness and limitation properly belongs to us. Surely it would be strange if the grace and truth which came among us thus, proved partial or restricted in their later dealing with our manhood: if any tract of our life were unvisited by their light and blessing: if anything which He took were slighted in His kingdom, forgotten in His ministry, precluded from His worship. The Incarnation was indeed in itself a great earnest of the recognition which would be accorded in the Christian life to the whole of our complex nature. But there are, more particularly, two points in the coming and work of our Lord which seem peculiarly intended to foreshow some abiding elevation of the material and visible to share the honour of the spiritual element in our life. They are so familiar to us that it may not be easy to do full justice to their significance.
(2) For it does seem deeply significant that when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, He took up the lines of a history replete with forecasts of the consecration of material things: He met the truest aspirations of a people trained to unhesitating exultation in a visible worship, encouraged by manifold experience to look for the blessings of Divine goodness through sensible means, accustomed and commanded to seek for God's especial presence in an appointed place and amidst sights on which their eyes would rest with thankful confidence. That Church and nation 'of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came,' must have seemed indeed irrevocably and essentially committed to the principle that when man is brought near to God it is with the entirety of his manhood: that God is to be glorified alike inthe body and in the spirit: and that His mercy really is over all His works. Doubtless barriers were to be broken down, when the time of prophecy and training passed on into the freedom of realization: limitations were to be taken away, distinctions abrogated by Him in Whom is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female: but religion would surely have grown in realitynarrowerand not wider, if the body had been dismissed from its duty and gladness in the light of God's countenance, if the spirit alone had been bidden to draw near, to worship, to taste and see how gracious the Lord is. Through all the amplitude of the Christian dispensation, there would have been a sense of loss, of impoverishment, of expectation encouraged and unsatisfied, had this been so; for in the preparatory system of Judaism, whatever had been lacking, still the whole nature of man had felt the Hand of God and heard His Voice. It would have seemed strange if with the wider extension of God's light to all the world there had been a narrowing of its range in the life of each several man[385].
(3) And then, again, it is to be marked that our Lord Himself by repeated acts sustained and emphasized this acceptance of the visible as the organ or vehicle of the Divine. His blessing was given by the visible laying on of hands, and His miracles were wrought not by the bare silent energy of His Almighty will, not even in many cases by the mere utterance of His word, but through the employment of acts or objects, impressive to the bodily element in man, and declaring the consecration of the material for the work of God. Alike in the blessings bestowed and in the manner of their bestowal men must have felt that there was with Him no disparagement of the body, no forgetfulness of its need, no lack of care for its welfare, its honour, or its hope. Perhaps it may even be that had we watched the scene in the Galilean town as the sun was setting, and in the cool of the evening they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto Him; as He moved about among those wasted, suffering forms, and on one after another laid His hands and healed them; it mayeven be that what would have struck us first of all would have been the bringing in of a better hope for the bodily life of man and the replenishing of a familiar act, a common gesture, with a grace and power that it had but vaguely hinted at before.
We have, then, (1) in the Incarnation of the Son of God, (2) in the essential character of the history ordered as an especial preparation for His coming, and (3) in certain conspicuous features of His ministry on earth, a strong encouragement to expect that in the life thus brought into the world, in the way thus opened out, there would be evinced a large-hearted care for the whole nature of men: that no unreal abstraction would be demanded, and no part of humanity be disinherited: that in the choice of its means, in the scope of its beneficence, and in the delineation of its aim, Christianity would deal with us as we are, and prove that God has not made us thus for nought. An endeavour will be made to shew how this great hope is greeted in the Sacramental system, and uplifted and led on towards the end of all true hope. But it seems necessary first to adduce the grounds for saying that that system has been from the beginning an integral part of Christianity.
III. When we turn to look at the presentation of the Sacramental principle in the Gospels, our first impression may be that the place it holds there is less than that which is given to it in the teaching and practice of the Church: that it is by a disproportionate growth that the doctrine of Sacraments has gained so much space and so great prominence in Catholic theology. But the impression certainly ought not to be lasting. For it is due to our forgetfulness of the conditions under which Christianity came into the world: the characteristics and habits of religious thought with which it had to deal. We can draw no reasonable inference from the brevity or length with which a truth is enunciated in the Gospels until we have inquired what were the previous convictions of those to whom our Lord spoke: what preparation had in that particular regard been made for His teaching. We ought to look for some difference in the manner of revelationcorresponding to the difference of need when a wholly new principle of thought has to be borne into unready minds, and when a fresh direction has to be given to an expectation already alert and confident, a new light to be thrown on the true worth and meaning of an existing belief about God's ways towards men. Amplitude and iteration would indeed have been necessary for any teaching which was to dislodge the Sacramental principle out of the minds of those among whom our Lord came—to preclude them from seeking the mercy of God through visible means. But if the Divine purpose was not to destroy but to fulfil; not to discredit as mere misapprehensions the convictions men had received, but to raise and purify them by disclosing the response which God had prepared for them: to disengage them from that which had been partial, preparatory, transient, and to fasten them on their true satisfaction: then we might reverently expect that the method of this teaching would probably be such as in the New Testament is shewn to us in regard to the doctrine of Sacraments.
(1) For, in the first place, we find abundant and pervading signs that the general principle is taken up into Christianity and earned on as a characteristic note of its plan and work. The regular communication of its prerogative and characteristic gift through outward means: the embodiment of grace in ordinances: the designation of visible agents, acts, and substances, to be the instruments and vehicles of Divine virtue:—this principle is so intimately and essentially woven into the texture of Christianity that it cannot be got out without destroying the whole fabric. As our Saviour gradually sets forth the outlines of His design for the redemption of the world, at point after point the Sacramental principle is affirmed, and material instruments are designated for the achievement of His work. 'He proclaims Himself the Founder of a world-wide and imperishable Society,' 'the Kingdom of Heaven' or 'the Kingdom of God[386];' and while the claims and energies of this kingdom penetrate the hidden depths of life, so that it is indeed 'a moral empire,' and 'a realm of souls,' yet none the less is it openly to take its place in humanhistory. It is not an unsubstantial haze of vague spirituality, precarious and indistinct, hovering or said to hover half way between earth and sky, with no precise attachment to either. At once, it is the kingdom of Heaven, and it is to have all the apparel of a visible society: it touches this earth with a definite and inclusive hold; it ennobles material conditions by a frank acceptance. As in the Incarnation, so also in the preparation of the Church to be the ever-present witness to Christ, the guardian of His truth, and the home of His people, the principle was sustained that, in the redemption of the world, God would be pleased to take the instruments of His work out of that world which He was renewing: that the quickening Spirit would not repel or destroy the material order, but would assume, pervade, and use it.
(2) And, in the second place, the particular expressions of the general principle thus reaffirmed were authoritatively appointed: the approved anticipation of men was left in no uncertainty as to its response and sanction; men were told plainly what were the outward and visible signs which God had chosen in this world to be the means whereby His inward and spiritual grace should be received. It is difficult indeed to imagine any way in which more weight and incisiveness could have been given to the appointment of the two great Sacraments than in the way which Christ was pleased to use:—any way in which Baptism and the Eucharist could have been more firmly and impressively designated as the vital and distinctive acts of the Christian Church. We can hardly wonder at their pre-eminence in Christian thought and life when we remember how they were fastened upon the consciousness of the Church. Their antecedents lay in that long mysterious course of history which Almighty God had led on through the strange discipline of the changeful centuries to the coming of Christ. And then, there had been in Christ's teaching certain utterances which seemed to have a peculiar character: which were plainly of essential importance, concerning things necessary for all His disciples, bearing on the primary conditions of their life: and yet utterances which were left unexplained, however men might be troubled,offended, overstrained, discouraged by them: left as though their explanation was impossible, until the occurrence of events which could not be forestalled[387]. But such utterances, if they could not be understood, could still less be forgotten: they lived in the memory, they haunted the imagination, they sustained expectancy: they were as a prophetic conviction in the mind, strong, deep, fragmentary, and unsatisfied. Who can measure the consilient force with which, in moments of intensest thought and feeling, moments when all the besetting conditions seemed quick with some imminent disclosure, the Divine commands, meeting, illuminating, establishing those former utterances, would be riveted upon the hearts of men and clenched for ever into the faith and practice of the Church, with a dominance never to be forgotten or infringed, as a very primal law of life? In the unique, controlling awe of His impending agony and crucifixion:—in the heralded majesty of His appearance to the disciples upon the mountain where He had appointed them, and with the proclamation of the absolute authority given to Him in heaven and in earth: so did our Lord enact the ordinances to which His earlier words had pointed, and in which at length their meaning was made clear: so did He institute His two great Sacraments: so did He disentangle the Sacramental principle from all that had been temporary, accidental, disciplinary, accommodated, in its past embodiment, and determine what should be the form of its two main expressions, for all ages and for all men in His Church 'until His coming again,' 'even unto the end of the world.'
It may be in place here briefly to suggest a few thoughts with regard to that which was secured by this authoritative designation of the outward sign in each great Sacrament, beyond all that could have been attained by the general enunciation of the Sacramental principle.
Much might be said—and much more, doubtless, be still left unsaid—about the especial fitness of the very elements thus chosen from the material world to be the vehicles of saving grace:—for the water and the bread and wine arecalled to their place in the Divine work with deep and far-reaching associations already belonging to them. Again, the very simplicity and commonness of the elements taken into God's nearest service may have been a part of the reason why they were appointed: for in no other way could the minds of men have been more surely and permanently hindered from many of the mistakes to which in the past they had been prone: in no other way could the Sacramental principle have been more perfectly disengaged from the misconceptions which had confused its purity: in no other way could men have been more plainly taught that in no expense of this world's goods, in no labour of their own hands, in no virtue of the material elements, but only in the sustained energy of His will, who took and penetrated and employed them, lay the efficacy of the Sacrament. The very plainness of the element hallowed in the Sacrament was to urge up men's thoughts from it to Him. But, above all, the decisive appointment of particular signs and acts may seem to have been necessary in order that the Sacraments might take their places as acts emanating from, upheld by, and characteristic of the Church's corporate life, and not merely concerned with the spiritual welfare of the individual. So S. Paul appeals to Baptism and to the Eucharist as both effecting and involving the communion of saints[388]. By Sacraments men are to be taken out of the narrowness and isolation of their own lives, out of all engrossing preoccupation with their own state, into the ample air, the generous gladness, the unselfish hope of the City of God: they are to escape from all daily pettiness, all morbid self-interest, all preposterous conviction of their own importance, into a fellowship which spans all ages and all lands. By Baptism and the Eucharist the communion of saints is extended and sustained: they are the distinctive acts of the Body of Christ: and as such He designated their essential form, to abide unaltered through all that changed around them. And even those who stand aloof from them and from the faith on which they rest, may feel the unmatched greatness of an act that has held its place in human lifethrough all the revolutions of more than 1800 years: an act that in its essential characteristics is to-day what it was when imperial Rome was venerated as eternal: an act that is every day renewed, with some measure, at least, of the same faith and hope and love, in every land where Christ is owned.
(3) The Sacramental principle had been most plainly adopted by our Lord: the spiritual forces with which He would renew the face of the earth were to be exerted through material instruments: and He Himself had secured the principle from uncertainty or vagueness or individualism in its expression by appointing, with the utmost weight and penetration of His authority, the definite form of two great ordinances, which were to begin and to advance the supernatural life of His members, to extend the range of His Church, and to maintain its unity. In the acts and letters of His apostles we see how His teaching and bidding had been understood: how promptly and decisively His Church declared its life, its work, its mission, to be Sacramental. The meaning and emphasis of His commandment appear in the obedience of those to whom it was given: in the first words of authoritative counsel uttered by an apostle: in the first act of the Spirit-bearing Body: and thenceforward in the characteristic habits of the Christian life[389].
From the first the prominence of Sacraments and Sacramental rites is constant. In the teaching of later ages their prominence may have been relatively greater, in contrast with the poverty of faith and life in those who insisted on their power while they forgot their meaning; but absolutely it would be hard to devise a higher place for them than that which they hold in S. Paul's Epistles. To be living a life received, nourished, and characterised by Baptism and by the Eucharist—this is the distinctive note of a Christian—thus does he differ from other men. The Sacrament by which he became a member of Christ's body must determine throughout the two distinctive qualities of his inner life: its severance from all forms of worldliness, all dependence on natural advantages, or natural strength, all confidence in thesatisfaction of external rules; and its unfailing newness, as issuing from Him who, being raised from the dead, dieth no more, and as carrying through all its activities the air and light of heaven[390]. And the Sacrament which continually renews in him the presence of his Lord, meeting with unstinted wealth the demands of work and growth, assuring and advancing the dominance of the new manhood in him: this in like manner must determine the sustained simplicity of his bearing towards those who with him are members of the one Body, quickened and informed by the one Life[391]. That men may receive eternal life through Jesus Christ: this is the end of all labours in His name: to this all else is tributary and conducive: and there is no hesitation as to the visible means by which God will effect this end in all those who have 'faith to be healed.' And in this sense it may perhaps be said that in Christianity even doctrine holds not indeed a subordinate but (that which involves nothing but dignity) a subservient place; since it is the strength and glory of Christian doctrine that it essentially 'leads on to something higher—to the sacramental participation in the atoning sacrifice of Christ[392].'
IV. Thus then there appears at the beginning the dominance of that note which has sounded on through all succeeding ages; thus may we trace from the first days the dispensation of Divine energy through agents and acts and efficacious symbols gathered out of this visible world. It remains to be shewn with what reason it can be alleged that herein the Church evinces its recognition of the complexity of human nature, and guards the truth, that in the entirety of his being man has to do with God, the Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier of his soul and body. Along three lines of thought this may in some degree appear; and if the evidence that can be indicated is recognised as in any measure real, it would be unphilosophic to set it aside because it may be fragmentary and inconclusive: since fragments are all that in such a matter we are likely as yet to see.
(1) First, then, there is a profound far-reaching import in the bare fact that material and visible means are thus hallowed to effect the work of God, to bear His unseen grace. For it must not be thought that in this Sacramental union of the visible and the invisible we have only an interesting parallel to the twofold nature of man, a neat and curious symmetry, a striking bit of symbolism or accommodation. Nor is the deepest significance of the Sacramental principle brought out when it is said quite truly that 'it has pleased God to bind His invisible operations to outward and visible methods,' 'lest that which is thus invisible should for that reason be disbelieved or counterfeited or in any of the various ways in which human incredulity or human enthusiasm might do it wrong, abused to the injury of man[393].' We may see in this aspect of the system that it has indeed secondary advantages of the highest worth; but its surpassing glory is in its primary and essential character, as the regular employment of visible means for the achievement of Divine mysteries. For thus our whole estimate of this world is affected. Its simplest objects have their kindred, as it were, in the court, in the very presence chamber of the Most High; and actions such as we see in it day after day have been advanced to a supreme distinction.
And so through Sacramental elements and acts Christianity maintains its strong inclusive hold upon the whole of life. The consecration of material elements to be the vehicles of Divine grace keeps up on earth that vindication and defence of the material against the insults of sham spiritualism which was achieved for ever by the Incarnation and Ascension of Jesus Christ. We seem to see the material world rising from height to height; pierced, indeed, and, as it were, surprised at every stage by strange hints of a destiny beyond all likelihood; yet only gradually laying aside the inertness of its lower forms, gradually seeming to yield itself, not merely to the external fashioning of spirit, but also to its inner and transforming occupation: till in humanity it comes within sight of that which God has been preparing for it, even thereception of His own image and likeness. And yet this is but the beginning: and though sin delays the end, and holds back the crown of all, it is but for a time; in due season there is made known that absolutely highest honour to which God has been leading on the work of His hands, even that in its highest type it should be taken into God; that the Eternal Word should be made man, and from a human mother receive our nature, so that a material body should be His body; His in birth, and growth, and death; His in all its relations with the visible world; His for suffering, for weariness, for tears, for hunger; His upon the cross and in the tomb; His to rise with; and, at length, His at the right hand of God. Thus was the visible received up into glory; thus was the forecast of spiritual capacity in the material perfectly realized; and by the body of the ascended Saviour, an entrance for the whole being of man into the realm of spirit is assured. 'There is a spiritual body[394]:' no part of the material order can be quite untouched by the light that issues from those astounding words, and from the triumph they record. And that truth, that triumph, that possibility of unhindered inter-penetration between the spiritual and the material is pre-eminently attested upon earth by the two great Sacraments of the Christian Church. In those mysteries where water is sanctified to the washing away of sin, and where material substances are made spiritual food, there is a continual witness of the victory that has been won, a real earnest of that which shall hereafter be achieved, a vivid declaration that the barrier between the spiritual and the material is not absolute or eternal.
Nor is this deep truth without practical and far-reaching consequences in human life. For immediately it thus appears that the unreal spirituality which consists in a barren and boastful disparagement of ritual observance or of outward acts[395], of earthly relationships or of secular life, of natural feelings or of bodily health, clashes with Christian teaching as sharply as it does with human nature and with commonsense. And then, in perfect accordance with this principle, the spiritual energy of the Church is sacramentally conveyed for the hallowing of stage after stage in the due order of a human life, as body, soul, and spirit are advanced towards the end for which they were created. Not only in the initial act whereby all are bidden to enter into the kingdom of God, and, at the dawn of consciousness, the onset of evil is forestalled by the cleansing and regenerating work of God the Holy Ghost—not only in the ever-needed, ever-ready mystery of glory whereby, amidst the stains and sorrows of the world, all may again and again be 'filled with the very essence of restoration and of life[396];' but at other moments too, when the soul of man rises up towards God in the divinely-quickened venture of faith, the strength of the Most High is perfected in human weakness, and in Sacramental acts the things that are not seen enter into the history of the things that are seen. It is most unfortunate that the associations of controversy should hinder men from frankly and thankfully recognising the wide range of Sacramental action in Christian life. The dispute as to the number of the Sacraments is indeed 'a question of a name[397];' and it ought to have been acknowledged all along that the name was being used with different and shifting meanings. That men knew that it did not designate an essentially distinct class of exactly equivalent units is shewn on all sides; S. Thomas Aquinas seems to doubt, at least, whether there are not more than seven Sacraments, divides the seven into groups with very important notes of difference, and decides that the Eucharist is 'Sacramentorum omnium potissimum[398]:' Calvin was not unwilling that the laying on of hands should be called a Sacrament, though he would not reckon it 'inter ordinaria Sacramenta[399];' the Council of Trent has an anathema for anyone who says that the seven Sacraments are so equal that none is more worthy than another[400]: Richard Baxter distinguishes between 'three sorts of Sacraments;' in the second sense of the name,in which it is taken to mean 'any solemnInvestitureof a person by ministerial delivery, in a state of Church-privileges, or some special gospel-mercy,' he grants 'that there are five Sacraments—Baptism, Confirmation, Absolution, the Lord's Supper and Ordination;' and elsewhere he declares that 'they that peremptorily say without distinguishing that there are but two Sacraments in all, do but harden them (the Papists) by the unwarrantable narrowing of the word[401].' There is indeed no reason why anyone should hesitate to mark the Love of God meeting in Sacramental ordinances the need of man at point after point in the course of his probation. Differences in the manner of appointment or in the range of application may involve no difference at all in the reality of the power exercised and the grace conveyed. And so we may see the Spirit-bearing Church, with whole-hearted recognition of all the elements and wants of human life, proffering to men through visible means the manifold gifts of grace needed for their progress and welfare in the way until they reach the Country. As temptation grows more complex and severe, and the soul begins to realize the warfare that it has to wage, the Personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost, vouchsafed by the laying on of hands, completes the preparation of Christ's soldier: as the desolating sense of failure threatens to unnerve the will and to take such hold upon the soul that it is not able to look up, the authoritative message of forgiveness brings again the strength of purity and the light of hope, and recalls the scattered forces of the inner life to expel the encroaching evil and to regain whatever had been lost. For special vocations there are special means of grace; by ordination God vouchsafes to guilty men the glory of the priesthood: and in Christian marriage He confers the grace that hallows human love to be the brightness and the safeguard of an earthly home, and the earnest of the home in Heaven. And thus in the manifold employment of the Sacramental principle there again appears that characteristicexcellence of Christianity which is secured in the very nature of Sacraments: namely, its recognition of the whole problem with which it claims to deal. It speaks to us as we are: there is no true need of which it will not take account: it will lead us without loss to the realization of our entire being.
(2) Secondly, Sacraments are a constant witness against our readiness to forget, to ignore, or to explain away the claim of Christianity to penetrate the bodily life, and to affect the body itself, replenishing it here with powers which are strange to it, lifting it out of the reach or mastery of passions which falsely boast that they are congenial with it, leading it on towards its everlasting rest, beyond all weakness and dishonour, in the glory of God. This claim, with the deeply mysterious but wholly reasonable hope which it engenders, has been set forth by Hooker, with his unfaltering strength of thought and words: 'Doth any man doubt that even from the flesh of Christ our very bodies do receive that life which shall make them glorious at the latter day, and for which they are already accounted parts of His blessed body? Our corruptible bodies could never live the life they shall live, were it not that here they are joined with His body, which is incorruptible, and that His is in ours as a cause of immortality, a cause by removing, through the death and merit of His own flesh, that which hindered the life of ours. Christ is therefore, both as God and as man, that true Vine whereof we both spiritually and corporally are branches. The mixture of His bodily substance with ours is a thing which the ancient Fathers disclaim. Yet the mixture of His flesh with ours they speak of, to signify what our very bodies through mystical conjunction receive from that vital efficacy which we know to be in His: and from bodily mixtures they borrow divers similitudes rather to declare the truth, than the manner of coherence between His sacred and the sanctified bodies of saints[402].' The body, as well as the spirit, is accessible tothe Divine life: there are avenues by which the energy of Christ's perfect and glorified manhood can penetrate, inform, affect, transfigure our whole being, bodily and spiritual. His prevalence in the life of the body and the change He works in it, may be very gradual, discerned in incoherent fragments, interrupted by surprising disappointments, hampered by limitations which it would be unlike Him now to overbear: but the change is real. The body is not left inert and brutish and uncheered, while the spirit is being carried on from strength to strength, with growing light and freedom and majesty: it also rises at its Saviour's touch, and finds from Him the earnest of its liberation and advancement.
The work of grace upon the bodily nature of man may indeed be a matter of which we ought not to think save very humbly and tentatively: it is easy and perilous to overstate or to mis-read the evidence: but there is peril also in ignoring it. The language of our Blessed Lord; the clear conviction of His apostles; the intrepid quietude of His martyrs; the patience of the saints; their splendid and unrivalled endurance in His service; the change that may be marked in the looks and voices and instinctive acts of some who seem to be most nearly His:—here is such guidance for thought and hope as we ought not to dismiss because we cannot make up a theory about it. There are real facts—though they may be fragmentary, and require very careful handling—to warrant us in praying that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His body, as well as that our souls may be washed by His most precious blood.
It is this truth, with the higher aspirations, the more venturous hopes and efforts which it suggests, that the Sacramental system of the Church keeps in its due prominence. It is at all events not incongruous to think that the spiritual grace which is conveyed by visible means may pass throughour spiritual nature to tell upon that which is visible. He who comes spiritually under a visible form may well be believed to work spiritually upon a visible nature. It is not, of course, to be thought for a moment that our bodies can at all after their own manner receive that Food which is wholly spiritual: nor that the visible element in a Sacrament gives to our bodies any hold upon the invisible grace, any power to appropriate to themselves by their own proper energies that which is incorporeal and supra-sensuous. 'Only the soul or spirit of man can take in and feed upon a spiritual nutriment[403]:' it is only (so far as our thoughts can go) through the avenue, by the medium of the faithful soul that the spiritual force of the Sacrament can penetrate to the body. But the fact that the spiritual virtue comes to us under a form of which our bodily senses take cognizance is at least a pledge that the body is not forgotten in the work of sanctification. And it is something more than this:—it is an assurance of that invasion and penetration of the material by the spiritual which is the very ground of all our hope for the redemption of the body. There is in the very nature of a Sacrament the forecast of some such hope as this:—that He who said of the material bread 'This is My Body,' may, in His own time, through changes which we cannot imagine, take to Himself and lift into the transfiguring realm of spirit our material bodies as well as our souls; seizing, disclosing, perfecting capacities which under their present conditions we hardly suspect in them. And, perhaps, yet more than this may be said: for there would seem to be warrant for trusting that, in spite of all hindrance and delay, His word of power even now goes forth towards this work, and in the holy Eucharist has its efficacy throughout our whole nature. It is the thought to which Hooker points in words of endless import: 'there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soul and body, an alteration from death to life;' words which rest on those of S. Irenaeus: 'As bread from the earth receiving the invocation of God is no longer common bread but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and aheavenly; so our bodies also receiving the Eucharist are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the Resurrection[404].' Alike in us and in the Sacrament the powers of the world to come invade the present, and already move towards the victory which shall be hereafter.
(3) And thus, in the third place, the ministry of Sacraments is a perpetual prophecy of the glory that shall be revealed in us; the glory that shall pervade and transfigure our whole being. 'Till He come;' 'until His coming again;' that note of expectancy, of looking towards the east and watching for the return of a great light, discloses a deep truth about the Christian Sacraments. They sanction and confirm, as ever-present witnesses of a Divine assent, certain thoughts which will not let men rest in any low contentment with the things of time—with the approval, the success, the gratification, or the systems of this world. They declare with a perpetual insistence the mysteriousness of our present being: they have a certain fellowship with those strange flashes and pulsations we have felt of a life which seems astray and alien here, which yet somehow suggests the thought that could we commit ourselves wholly to its guidance, could we be replenished with its power, we should not walk in darkness, but rather, even in this world, be as the children of light:—and so they take the side of faith and patience against the attractions of completeness and security and achievement and repose. For they offer to guide into the way of peace, to welcome into an ordered, hallowed, course of loving service and of steady growth, those passing thrills of an intenser life, which if they be forgotten, denied, misunderstood, or surrendered to the abuse of wilfulness and vanity, may so subtly and terribly be unto us an occasion of falling.
It is given sometimes to a poet to sink a shaft, as it were, into the very depths of the inner life: to penetrate its secret treasuries, and to return, Prometheus-like, with a gift of fire and of light to men. The venturesome words that record such a moment of penetration and insight never lose their power: they seem to have caught something of the everlasting freshnessof that world of which they speak: and one man after another may find in them, at some time of need or gladness or awakening, the utterance of thoughts which else he might have been too shy or too faint-hearted to acknowledge even to himself. There is such a splendid venture of courage for the truth's sake in those lines of Wordsworth which surely no familiarity can deprive of their claim to reverence and gratitude; the lines in which he tells his thankfulness,