FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[14]That is called a thing to which no event can be imputed as an action. Hence every object devoid of freedom is regarded as a thing.—Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics.

[14]That is called a thing to which no event can be imputed as an action. Hence every object devoid of freedom is regarded as a thing.—Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics.

The official temper of mind is by no means the only bar to wide fellowship. Exclusiveness and temperamental dislike are responsible for a great many sins against brotherly love, and must be fought down by every true follower of our Lord. When men are left to themselves, they gravitate into mutually exclusive groups composed of congenial classes or of congenial types. But Christianity steps in and breaks up these little sets, in order to blend them into one varied and splendid whole. The vision which S. John had revealed to him, was humanity in all its variety—"out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues"—but at perfect unity with itself, a complete and harmonious family.

§ 1. Probably there is no temper of mind more difficult to master than that of exclusiveness. In the evolution of society class differentiations have come into being, differentiations which, at the time oftheir appearance, may have been a necessary phase of progress, but which, in the development of Christian thought, should pass away. It would not be right or wise to contend for the immediate obliteration of all artificial distinctions in life, for conventionalities are often social safeguards and have their place in civilization. But surely the earnest disciple of Jesus must array all the forces at his command against the continuance of customs that have been separated from their usefulness, and are perpetuated only to be stumbling blocks to human fellowship.

The worth of conventionalism has for its supreme test the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. When He quieted the strife of the disciples, who were filled with the ignoble lust of domination, He inaugurated a new social order. "He that is the greater among you, let him become as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve." The old order made kings the recipients of much service, the new calls them to give much service; the old order led men to strive for honour, the new inspires them to avoid honour unless bound up with an enlarged opportunity to serve; the old order prized whatever privileges set men above and apart from their fellows, the new seeks everything that willbring them nearer to their fellows. So merit and reward, privilege and responsibility, greatness and service must never be separated. Where they have been separated in the past, as well as where they are in the present, the result is exclusiveness. Men cling to prerogatives which in common justice they have no real claim upon, beyond the flimsy plea of hereditary right and the permission of society. Out of this have grown those groups of persons who, though possessing nothing but a very common humanity indeed, would, from a sense of superiority derived from a name, or from the false prestige given by wealth and social position, withhold their fellowship from all but a select few. If men could but realize the cramping influence on character of exclusiveness, how quickly would they hasten to divest themselves of every trace of the vice of snobbishness! Dives lived in exclusive society after death because he did so before death. He was no farther from Lazarus in the other world than he was in this; the gulf created here was "fixed" there, that is all. And among the "losses of the saved" will be lack of capacity for wide fellowship.

The dignity of humanity is so great that nothing can add to its greatness, excepting what ennobleshuman nature itself. Wealth, social position, mere intellectual attainment, no more deserve deference or homage, than do the tatters of a pauper or the ignorance of a dolt. No man insults human nature or demeans his personality so much as he who bows down to these accidents, excepting only the man who receives homage on the ground not of what he is but of what he has. We may neither pay homage to, nor receive it for, any of those things which belong merely to time and of which death will strip us bare; though piety, spiritual wisdom, and all forms of moral power, always and everywhere, demand homage and reverence.

The true basis on which Christian fellowship is begun and maintained, is our common humanity—that which is essential and not that which is accidental. Our Lord drew men to Himself and had human fellowship with them, by virtue of the completeness and attractiveness of His splendid manhood. He had none of the accidents of life to use, and He was not weak without them. He was the most refined among men, and yet He found companionship among the peasant folk. Social differentiations did not enter into our Lord's reckoning. He ignored them, reaching through them and past them. It is touching to remember that oneof the earliest companionships in Paradise of the human soul of Jesus, was the resumption of almost His last intercourse on earth. As the soul of the penitent outlaw and robber, "pale from the passion of death," went into the society of Paradise, it was received and welcomed by the Man, Christ Jesus.

It is a myth that the wise and cultured must confine their fellowship to the wise and cultured.[15]By means of literature men and women of high privilege, have joined hands with those whose lives were bare of everything but character—with Adam Bede and with Uncle Tom. If this is possible with the creations of fiction, it is capable of being widely true in actual life. The richest human nature is often found in the most obscure places, as the experienceof every social worker from Edward Denison to the resident in the newest "settlement," will testify. True refinement is not the result of paltry conventionalism, the flimsy creation of an artificial society; true refinement is the inalienable possession of that character in which the Spirit of God rules, in which the material is made the handmaid of the spiritual. At first men went out into the highways of the city, armed with their privileges, thinking that they had everything to give. But they soon learned that this spirit could only end in condescension, which is fatal to fellowship, for fellowship means give and take, and that the poor and unprivileged had much to give. Unless representatives from the different classes of society are contributing their special gifts to our lives, life is poor indeed. Wealth of fellowship consists not in numbers, but in variety.

When men reach out for wider fellowship, they must not forget that no man ever yet won his fellows through his own interests. He must, by the subtle power of sympathy, dive beneath the surface of other lives and court their interests. Even God failed to win men, until He made man's concerns wholly His own by becoming Man. "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, thoughHe was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich."

§ 2. Temperamental dislike is another obstacle to Christian fellowship to be conquered. It is something found wherever human nature is. And men commonly excuse quarrelsomeness, rudeness and other unchristian conduct on this score, though the excuse is by no means valid. Probably all of us are afflicted with a natural antipathy to certain kinds of temperament, but at least we need not humour it. It was part of God's design, that human society should be enriched by variety of disposition. That is a poor garden which contains but one kind of flower, beautiful as its blossom may be. True beauty consists in variety; and monotony is the height of ugliness. It is a reason for thankfulness that human nature is so wonderfully diversified that no two human beings are exactly alike, and that there is a whole gamut of temperamental difference in the race.

Now it is a part of the work of Christianity, to reconcile dispositions that are naturally antipathetic and jarring. And the process by which this is brought to pass, is probably one of the most beneficial disciplines to which men are subjected. The Church is a great mixing bowl, in which all this vast variety is brought into close touch and blendedtogether into a harmonious whole. "The very purpose of the one Church for all the men of faith in Jesus is that the necessity for belonging to one body—a necessity grounded on divine appointment—shall force together into a unity men of all sorts and different kinds; and the forces of the new life which they share in common are to overcome their natural repugnance and antipathies, and to make the forbearance and love and mutual helpfulness which corporate life requires, if not easy, at least possible for them."[16]

That society is at once the most beautiful and the most powerful which is composed of the largest variety of temperaments, exercising their various faculties in unity and mutual helpfulness. Some persons imagine that the most desirable parochial life is where all the parishioners are of one stripe, instead of that in which there is a finely disciplined diversity. A parish of dead uniformity would be comfortable but not educative, quiet but colourless and insipid.

Unquestionably certain natures are so constituted as to irritate us every time we come near them. And unless we are very carefully on our guard we will not treat such persons justly or courteously, much less will we be ready to render them delicateservice. Quite unconsciously we exhibit our temper of mind. There may be the determination not to allow our feelings to rise to the surface, but nevertheless before we know it we have done the mischief; and somehow the bitterness we entertain has been let loose, not by a word or a look, perhaps, but by some subtle telepathic or psychic influence which opens the secret of our soul to our companion. There is nothing more infectious than a temper of mind. It seems to leap out of one soul and impart itself to another without heeding the ordinary laws of transmission. Anger, lust, suspicion, dislike, jealousy smirch not only the souls in which they lie restrained though not conquered, but others that come within the radius of their wide-reaching influence.

Fortunately this power of infection is not confined to evil passions, but belongs even in a larger degree to those which are good. And herein lies the remedy for temperamental dislike. If we stop short at choking it down, we can never make a friend of one whose disposition is naturally repugnant to us. Sooner or later our dislike will crop out and a gulf be made. If, on the other hand, the dislike is displaced by generous, full love—love that is a force and not a mere emotion—fellowship, and eventuallyfriendship, will become possible. There may be grounds often for our antipathies. Some people have the misfortune to be graceless, awkward and repellant; others are unattractive if not positively disagreeable to every one—bad-tempered, perhaps, or mischief-makers. To educate these in Christian fellowship is probably as large a public service as could be readily rendered. "It is no great matter," says Jeremy Taylor,[17]"to live lovingly with good-natured, with humble and meek persons; but he that can do so with the froward, with the wilful, and the ignorant, with the peevish and perverse, he only hath true charity."

§ 3. A third bar to Christian fellowship is what, for want of a better phrase, may be termed a weakness for interesting people. That is to say, the humanity that is within easy reach seems commonplace and uninteresting, so that men of our intimate acquaintance often appear to be hardly worth while labouring for. Hence it is a common habit to reserve our best thought, our best manners and our best service for strangers, making little positive effort to love and serve those with whom we are thrown into daily contact. Nowhere is human perversity more glaring than in the sad truth lurking behind the proverb:"A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and house." The value of those who stand nearest to us is lowered by means of their very nearness. On the other hand the persons who are outside our immediate circle, however comprehensive it may be, seem to be more interesting than the very average folk who are our ordinary companions. We long for companionship with men of this finer type.

Of course this is all a delusion. Human nature is full of interest wherever we find it, that which is nearest as well as that which is farthest removed. The men we would like to know and serve, are no more worthy of attention than the men who stand shoulder to shoulder with us. But those who have the largest claim upon our attention and service, are our immediate friends and neighbours. Indeed the only way to arm ourselves against disappointment, as the boundaries of our fellowship are enlarged, is so to attach ourselves to the people near at hand as to learn the true dignity of all human nature and the almost unfathomable depths of every personality. Otherwise an acquisition in acquaintanceship will, after the first glow of novelty has worn off, only reveal one more uninteresting person.

§ 4. There is one other duty that ought to be at least touched upon in this connection, though it has been referred to in a former chapter—the duty of praying for others. There is no more delicate service in the whole round of human action than that of intercessory prayer. It is so hidden as to have a special beauty on that account. While men are all unconscious that we are thinking of them, we fold our arms about them and bring them up before God for blessing and guidance. Intercessory prayer might be defined as loving our neighbour on our knees. The common objection, "What good can it do? Will not God bless men just as much without our prayers as with them?" seems to have a certain amount of weight. But a very little reflection shows that it does not amount to much. Even though intercessory prayer did nothing more than put us who pray in a desirable frame of mind toward those for whom we pray, it would be an exercise of great value. However, as a matter of fact, it accomplishes much more than this. Besides making our feeling of fellowship stronger, it really brings something to those for whom we offer our petitions. Human life is as closely bound up on the spiritual as on any other side of our being. It is quite certain that if we withhold the duties of servicein other ways God does not supply our lack, so far as we can see, but human life suffers through our neglect. If all else in our experience is governed by law, why should we believe that the spiritual part of life stands alone and is not affected by spiritual service? There is from analogy every reason to suppose, that those who are not prayed for suffer spiritual loss on that account.

But the immediate point to be made is that the height of Christian friendship cannot be reached without intercession. It has been pointed out by a spiritual teacher[18]that it makes a great difference in our feelings towards others if their needs and their joys are on our lips in prayer; as also it makes a vast difference in their feelings towards us if they know that we are in the habit of praying for them. There is no chasm in society that cannot be firmly and permanently bridged by intercession; there is no feud or dislike that cannot be healed by the same exercise of love.

Here, then, as in all else, if we are to come anywhere near the ideal we must lift our eyes to God. Friendship in God is possible only for those who bring society before God in prayer.

FOOTNOTES:[15]Cf. Browning's verses inPrince Hohenstiel-Schwangau,where the result of false culture, or the abuse of culture, is referred to:—Man is made in sympathy with manAt outset of existence, so to speak;But in dissociation, more and more,Man from his fellow, as their lives advanceIn culture; still humanity, that's bornA mass, keeps flying off, fining awayEver into a multitude of points,And ends in isolation, each from each.[16]Gore on Ephesians, p. 189.[17]Works: Vol. vii. 624.[18]Canon Gore.

[15]Cf. Browning's verses inPrince Hohenstiel-Schwangau,where the result of false culture, or the abuse of culture, is referred to:—Man is made in sympathy with manAt outset of existence, so to speak;But in dissociation, more and more,Man from his fellow, as their lives advanceIn culture; still humanity, that's bornA mass, keeps flying off, fining awayEver into a multitude of points,And ends in isolation, each from each.

[15]Cf. Browning's verses inPrince Hohenstiel-Schwangau,where the result of false culture, or the abuse of culture, is referred to:—

Man is made in sympathy with manAt outset of existence, so to speak;But in dissociation, more and more,Man from his fellow, as their lives advanceIn culture; still humanity, that's bornA mass, keeps flying off, fining awayEver into a multitude of points,And ends in isolation, each from each.

[16]Gore on Ephesians, p. 189.

[17]Works: Vol. vii. 624.

[18]Canon Gore.

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

In no department of life is this more true than in corporate worship. The power of public worship is dependent upon and the outcome of healthy and faithful private worship, to say nothing of the rest of the personal life. Those who have true personal religion will feel their life of devotion incomplete without common prayer; a growing desire for public worship is an index of a man's deepening spirituality. On the other hand, when we hear men saying that they do not care for church services, that they can pray just as well at home, and so on, it is safe to conclude that whatever fine-spun theories they may hold, as a matter of fact they are suffering from spiritual atrophy, praying neither at home nor anywhere else. Private devotion whets the appetite for public worship. And those who are in intention true to fundamental Christian principles will not mistake the end of the Church's corporate worship.

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

Nor is public worship a device for rousing in people a devotional frame of mind, which will enable them to pray better by themselves. Doubtless one indirect effect of the great dignity and beauty of liturgical worship, is to stimulate those who participate in it to a deeper devotion at home. But public worship is a climax, not a mere means to an end; it is the culmination of private devotion,not its starting point. Without hidden spiritual effort, it is a phantom of the real thing; with it, it is the matchless consummation of adoration, prayer and sympathy. Under the least satisfactory conditions the congregation gathered in God's house has marvellous dignity; the unity of movement, the rich variety and the rhythm of liturgical expression characterize it as the most august of human assemblies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demeanour in the congregation is a small thing to think of after the great central theme that has been holding our attention. But nothing is unworthy of consideration which bears on the perfecting of common worship; and with two simple observationson demeanour this chapter will be closed. First, regarding the self-consciousness that both distresses the soul and weakens its devotional power. The sense, while in the act of prayer, of being observed by others, is distracting. But is it not a piece of conceit to imagine that we are being observed, widely at any rate, as well as something akin to an insult to those about us? Are we not implicitly charging them with neglect of duty and with irreverence? After all they are probably occupied with their devotions as we ourselves should be. The simplest way of conquering the distraction when it arises is to take the person or persons concerned into our prayers by a conscious act. Then in the second place, as to our own behaviour, it is only common charity to avoid singularity of conduct. Most of the ordinary acts of reverence which the individual may practise, can be so unobtrusively performed as not to attract notice. But when there is a danger of causing distraction to others, as in a strange parish for instance, it is more conducive to real reverence to omit than to observe them. Sometimes the best way to be loyal to a principle is deliberately to break a rule, and if this suggestion be reasonable then why should not a person, unaccustomed to ornate ritual, fallin with any legitimate customs observed, if he finds himself at any time in a church where such customs obtain?

FOOTNOTES:[19]The writer does not hesitate to advise persons who are temporarily residing, as is often the case during the summer, where there is no Episcopal Church, to attend public worship, once a Sunday at least, at the representative Evangelical place of worship of the community. Reading the Church service at home by one's self is no substitute for public worship.[20]Ase. g.in Rev. v: 11-14.[21]See p. 7.

[19]The writer does not hesitate to advise persons who are temporarily residing, as is often the case during the summer, where there is no Episcopal Church, to attend public worship, once a Sunday at least, at the representative Evangelical place of worship of the community. Reading the Church service at home by one's self is no substitute for public worship.

[20]Ase. g.in Rev. v: 11-14.

[21]See p. 7.

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

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

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

No act of Christ was a mere personal experience. The Son of Man, as in loving sympathy He declared Himself to be, was the Universal Character whose life must needs concern and touch all other lives. It was His expressed desire that His fellows should share all that He was and did. He, the Son of God, became the Son of Man that we might become Sons of God.[25]Therefore it is not surprising that, at this the supreme moment of His life, He should bid the representative group who companied with Him, and through them all men, come in and participate in its power and joy; He did not merely lay down His life, but asked others to enter into His experience, saying, "Take, eat; this is My Body," "Drink ye all of this; this is My Blood." For what is the import of this invitation but this? "Associate yourselves with Me,—aye, be one with Me, incorporated into Me, in this great moment of self-offering; for I would present you a willing surrender in and with Myself."The idea of at-one-ment was never more intelligible than in these latter days. We are becoming more and more conscious of how close-wrought are the fibres of the human race; we recognize how the life of any one man affects the life of his fellows, and how the individual can gather into his own soul the sorrows and joys, the perplexities and aspirations of many people. If this is part of the experience ofason of man, it follows thattheSon of Man, by the extension and completion of that quality which, when found in us, is known as sympathy, if by nothing else beyond,—and the character of His personality tells us there is much beyond that is inexplicable—not only may but must take into Himself and hold there for time and eternity the whole race—except so far, alas, as men struggle from the freedom of His embrace into the slavery of a false independence. Thus the Eucharist is the divinely chosen means whereby we men are invited to enter into, and consciously to appropriate the highest points of the victory of the Cross as well as what lies beyond,—the resurrection life. Through it He shares with us His life-giving death and His deathless life, His Divine nature and His perfect humanity, and we are "accepted in the Beloved."

The various titles of the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood suggest its various aspects,[26]one of which, and that the one that happily is most common in our Church, we shall consider—the Holy Communion. This title indicates the view of the sacrament which most readily appeals to the human heart. The Holy Communion means, of course, "the Holy Fellowship"—not "a" but "the," that fellowship which above all others is holy, the end of which is to make all who participate in it holy. It is fellowship with the Father in Christ—not merely with Christ; that is not the whole of it, for Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man as He is, is the "Way" to the Father. Nor is it an ordinary fellowship, of which the fellowship of mere men is a complete image. Ordinary fellowship allows two lives to intertwine; but here so close is the relationship that "Christwithus," "wewithChrist" is inadequate to describe the intimacy, and "weinChrist," "Christinus," phrases which no one dare to apply to any other friendship, can alone tell the tale. And "we in Christ" not "Christ in us" is the grander andmore frequent phrase. "In Christ" tells of the unmeasured wealth of fellowship, divine and human, which is the Christian heritage; it is the whole parable of the vine and the branches in two syllables.[27]This is the Godward aspect of the sacrament. And in this connection three things are to be noted:—

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

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

§ 3. The result of a faithful reception of the Holy Communion should be holiness in the common, everyday life, from which an incident, the family meal, is borrowed and transformed as the symbol and means by which all other incidents may be transformed. So great a mystery demands all the majesty of a liturgy and the accompaniment ofstately worship; and a dignified ritual attached to this representative, this common act of our human life, is most valuable as indicating the majesty of all that is commonplace when it is touched by God. Just as we consecrate certain times and seasons in order that all times and seasons may become holy, so in the sacraments God has taught us to consecrate the simplest acts of ordinary life—the bath and the meal—as typical of the potential sacredness of all acts, and as a means of sanctifying and ennobling them. So the Holy Communion touches alike private life and life in society, the life of recreation and the life of business, and unless it transfigures each of these departments of human experience it falls short of its purpose. Let the business man remember that he strains to see and touch the Most Holy at the altar that he may see and touch the Most Holy in the market; let the professional man and the man of letters, the day labourer and the scientist each in his sphere be carried from the vision of God in the Eucharist to the abiding fellowship with God in his special vocation. He who comesfromGod goestoGod, whithersoever his steps may bear him. The presence of our Lord at the altar is special but not exclusive. It is not a lamp lighted for a momentand then put out, but a light which will illuminate all life, and enable us to see at every turn the vision of omnipresent Love. It is one function of the sacraments to enhance, not to dim, the reality of God's immanence in all His works; to train us to perceive and apprehend that

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