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 Dix, Morgan, 1827-1908. 
 The Sacramental system 
 considered as the extension 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM 
 
^ (* JUL 12 1922 * 
 
 THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURks{^uSffS'^^''^^,^'^y 
 
 THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM 
 
 CONSIDERED AS 
 
 THE EXTENSION OF THE INCARNATION 
 
 BY 
 
 MORGAN 'diX, S.T.D., D.C.L. 
 
 RECTOR OF TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 1893 
 
Copyright, 1S93, 
 P.Y LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
 Astor Place, New York 
 
THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES. 
 
 In the summer of the year 1880, George A. 
 Jarvis, of Brooklyn, N. Y., moved by his sense of 
 the great good which might thereby accrue to the 
 cause of Christ, and to the Church of which he 
 was an ever-grateful member, gave to the General 
 Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church certain securities, exceeding in value eleven 
 thousand dollars, for the foundation and mainte- 
 nance of a Lectureship in said seminary. 
 
 Out of love to a former pastor and enduring 
 friend, the Right Rev. Benjamin Henry Paddock, 
 D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts, he named the 
 foundation " The Bishop Paddock Lecture- 
 ship." 
 
 The deed of trust declares that " TJie subjects of 
 the lectures shall be such as appertain to the 
 defence of the religion of Jesus Christ, as revealed 
 in the Holy Bible, and illustrated in the Book of 
 Coimnon Prayer, against the varying errors of the 
 day, whether materialistic, rationalistic, or profess- 
 
VI THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES. 
 
 edly religious, and also to its defence and confir- 
 mation in respect of such central truths as the 
 Trinity, the Atonement, Jjtstifieation, and the 
 Inspiration of the Word of God; and of such central 
 facts as the ChiircJis Divi?ze Order and Sacraments, 
 her historical Reformation, and her rights and 
 powers as a pure and national Church. And oxSx^x 
 subjects may be chosen if unanimously approved 
 by the Board of Appointment as being both timely 
 and also within the true intent of this Lecture- 
 ship." 
 
 Under the appointment of the Board created by 
 the trust, the Rev. Morgan Dix, S.T.D., D.C.L., 
 delivered the Lectures for the year 1892, contained 
 in this volume. 
 
ANALYSIS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 The Basis of the Sacramental System. 
 
 I.— INTRODUCTORY: page 
 
 1. How THE Subject of these Lectures was 
 
 Suggested, 3-5 
 
 2. Two Mysteries : in the Order of Nature 
 
 AND IN the Order of Grace, ... 5 
 
 3. Their Close Relation to each Other, . 6 
 
 IL— ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE, "EXTENSION OF 
 
 THE INCARNATION," . . . . .7 
 
 III.— SACRAMENTAL DOCTRINE COEXTENSIVE 
 
 WITH HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY, . . 8 
 
 1. Witnesses to this Point: 
 
 (a) The Fathers 8 
 
 (d) Luther, and the Augsburg- and Westminster 
 
 Confessions, ....... 8 
 
 2. Its Basis must be sought in the Constitu- 
 
 tion of Things, 9 
 
 3. Its Practical and Ideal Sides, . . .10 
 
 4. Its Relations to Man and Nature, . .11 
 
Vlll LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IV.— THE NATURAL WORLD: ITS MYSTERY, . 12 
 
 1. Explanations : 
 
 {a) Manichean theory, 12 
 
 {b) Pantheistic theory, 13 
 
 ic) Transcendental notions, . . . .13 
 {d) Catholic teaching, 13 
 
 2. Materialism : 
 
 {a) Twin brother of atheism, . . . .14 
 {p) And yet rendering efficient service to the 
 
 truth, 14 
 
 3. Cardinal Principles of Catholic Doctrine 
 
 Concerning the Origin of the Universe, 15 
 
 4. Recent Scientific Discoveries have not Im- 
 
 paired the Force of the Evidential 
 Argument, 16, 17 
 
 v.— PLACE OF MAN IN THE UNIVERSE, . .18 
 
 Statement of St. Thomas on this point, . . 19 
 
 VI.— GOD, IN THE INCARNATION, TAKES HIS 
 PLACE, AS MAN, IN HIS OWN UNI- 
 VERSE 20 
 
 {a) Christ the mundi stinufta et coj7ipendiuvi, . 20 
 (<^) Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, . . 21 
 
 VII.— REMEDIAL AND RESTORATIVE EFFECT OF 
 
 THE INCARNATION IN NATURE, . . 22 
 {a) Exposition of Romans, viii. 19-23, . . 23, 24 
 {b) Relation of Christ as Man to Creation, . . 25 
 {c) Reciprocal relation of Nature to Christ, . 26 
 {d) Interchange of aid and help 27 
 
ANAL YSIS. IX 
 
 VIII.— EXTENT OF THE BENEFITS OF THE IN- 
 CARNATION, 28 
 
 {a) As wide as the universe itself, . . .29 
 {b) Brotherhood of man, and of Christ as man, 
 
 with the lower creation, . . . .30 
 {c) Consequent explanation of the influence ex- 
 erted on men by natural phenomena, . . 31 
 
 IX.— TWO FINAL CONSIDERATIONS. 
 
 1. The Permanence of the Body of Man, and 
 
 OF Man in the Body, . . . • 32, 33 
 {a) Pagan and Christian ideas on this point con- 
 trasted, . 34 
 
 2. The Final Restoration of the Heavens and 
 
 the Earth, 35 
 
 {a) Scriptural predictions, 36 
 
 ip) Views of fathers and theologians, . , 37-39 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 The Sacramental System Coextensive with the Life and 
 Experience of Mankind. 
 
 [.—DESIGN OF THE PRECEDING LECTURE TO 
 SHOW THE REAL BASIS OF THE SACRA- 
 MENTAL SYSTEM, 43 
 
 {a) No valid objection that it is hard to see and 
 
 describe, ....... 44 
 
 ip) Every edifice must stand on a basis, . . 44 
 {c) But the footings are not made to be seen, . 44 
 {d) The way now open to view the superstruct- 
 "!■£. 45 
 
LEX TEX LECTURES. 
 
 II.— POPULAR HOSTILITY TO SACRAMENTAL DOC- 
 TRINE, 46 
 
 {a) Not to be treated as a transient prejudice, . 47 
 {b) But the result of confidence in philosophic 
 
 idealism and exaggerated spiritualism, . 48 
 {c) Tendency and consequences, . . -49 
 {d) The sole remed\' is the acceptance of the 
 teachings of the Catholic religion on the In- 
 carnation, and the bonds between God, man, 
 and nature, in Christ, 50 
 
 III —TRANSITION TO THE SUPERSTRUCTURE, . 52 
 
 [a) Catholic theology has many sides, . . 53 
 
 {b) The practical and commonplace side of the 
 
 subject, ....... 53 
 
 IV.— USE OF THE WORD "SIGN" IN ANGLICAN 
 
 THEOLOGY, 54 
 
 {a) Definition in the catechism, . . . -54 
 {b) The use of signs coextensive with the visible 
 
 creation, ....... 55 
 
 {c) And all signs are sacramental in their char- 
 acter, . -55 
 
 v.— THE UNIVERSE A SYSTEM OF SIGNS AND 
 SACRAMENTS. 
 
 {a) Visible forms and invisible life, 
 {b) Impossible to tell what life is, 
 (r) Canon Mason's statement, 
 (<^ Admission of Darwin, .... 
 {e) Life a profound mystery, and the world 
 sign-system all through, 
 
 . 
 
 56 
 
 57. 
 
 .58 
 
 . 
 
 59 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 59 
 
ANAL YSIS. XI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VI.— MAN AN INSTANCE, . ... . . .60 
 
 {a) Body, soul, and spirit, . . . . .60 
 
 {b) His existence sacramental, . . . .61 
 
 (c) Daily meals sacramental, . , . .61 
 id) The alphabet, books, commercial paper, in- 
 stances of sign-system, 61 
 
 {e) Conclusions as to life of the soul, . , .62 
 
 VII.— GOD MAKES HIMSELF KNOWN, NOT DI- 
 RECTLY, BUT BY SIGNS, . . . .63 
 {a) Jesus Christ the crowning- illustration of the 
 
 sacramental principle, . . . . - ^'^ 
 {b) He was made man, that man might know 
 
 God, 64 
 
 id) God in Christ the sacrament of all sacra- 
 ments, . . 65 
 
 VIIL— FURTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SUB- 
 JECT. 
 
 {a) Man in the body cannot be reached but 
 
 through the body, . . . . .66 
 
 {b) Philological considerations ; the classical use 
 
 o{\\\Q. \\Tox6. " sacrame7itu)ii" . . .66 
 
 {c) Sacraments regarded as seals, pledges, and 
 
 witnesses, ....... 67 
 
 IX.— RECAPITULATION OF LECTURES I. AND II., 68 
 
 X.— BREADTH AND GRANDEUR OF THE SACRA- 
 MENTAL SYSTEM, 69 
 
 {a) Contrast with the narrowness and poverty 
 
 of modern thought, . . . . .70 
 
 {b) Those who style themselves broad are really 
 
 the narrow, . . . . . . .71 
 
Xll LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XL— ZWINGLIANISM THE IMPLACABLE FOE OF 
 
 SACRAMENTAL DOCTRINE, ... 72 
 ia) It has no place in our church formularies, . 72 
 ib) Confirmation of the statement from sundry- 
 sources, ....... 72 
 
 {c) Our Offices, Articles, and system absolutely 
 
 irreconcilable with Zwinglian principles, . ']■}, 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 The Lesser Sacraments. 
 
 -NUMBER OF THE SACRAMENTS, 
 {a) Latins and Eastern Churches, 
 {b) Augsburg, Luther, Cranmer, 
 \c) Article XXV., 
 {d) View held in ancient time, . 
 
 79 
 79 
 79 
 80 
 81 
 
 II.— POSITION OF ANGLICAN CHURCH. 
 
 {a) Two great sacraments, . . . .82 
 
 {b) Other rites of the same class, though inferior 
 
 in grade, 83 
 
 HI.— CONFIRMATION. 
 
 {(X) A " following of the apostles," but not a 
 
 corrupt one, 84 
 
 {b) Low notion of it held by many, . . .84 
 {c) But really a sacramental ordinance, . . 85 
 {d) And rightly called a minor sacrament, . 86 
 
 IV.— HOLY MATRIMONY. 
 
 {a) How described in Prayer-book, . . .87 
 
 {b) Called a sacrament in the Homily, . . 87 
 
 id) Low popular ideas about it, . . . .88 
 
 {d) A holy mystery in the Church, . , .89 
 
ANAL YSIS. XIU 
 
 -HOLY ORDER. 
 
 {a) Question of the ministry a burning one 
 
 to-day, ........ 90 
 
 {b) Not all ministries valid, . . . -91 
 
 {c) The grace of Ordination ; true import of the 
 
 Ordinal, 91 
 
 VI.— ABSOLUTION. 
 
 1. {a) By what names known, . . . .92 
 {b) Power of the priest to forgive sins, . . 92 
 (c) Confession implied in this, . . . -93 
 
 2. Christ Forgave Sins as the Son of Man : 
 
 (rt) Analysis of St. Mark, ii. 3-12, . . .94 
 {b) Christ's power given by Him to His ministry, 95 
 ic) Words of the Ordinal, 95 
 
 3. Testimony to the Teaching of the Church : 
 
 (a) Gray's tract on " Confession," . . .96 
 {b) Pusey's translation of Gaume, . . -97 
 (<f) Statement in ist Book of Edward VI., 
 {d) Liddon, ]Mahan, Ewer, . 
 
 VII.— UNCTION. 
 
 {a) Bishop Harold Browne quoted, 
 ib) Bishop Forbes of Brechin, 
 {c) Anglican offices for unction, 
 {d) Concordat with Scottish Church, . 
 
 VIIL— SUMMARY. 
 
 I. The Position of our Church Wise and 
 
 Reverent, 106 
 
 {a) Number of sacraments not to be precisely 
 
 stated or limited, 106 
 
 ib) Because the whole Gospel system is sacra- 
 mental, 107 
 
 99. 
 
 100 
 
 lOI, 
 
 102 
 
 
 103 
 
 
 104 
 
 
 105 
 
 
 105 
 
XIV LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2. Great Importance of the Subject, . . io8 
 {a) The battle of the day is between Christianity 
 
 and Paganism, io8 
 
 {b) Sacraments and the supernatural go to- 
 gether, . . . . * . . . 109-112 
 {c) Application of the principle to every stage of 
 human life and all the experiences of the 
 soul, . . . . . . . .112 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 Holy Baptism. 
 
 I.— THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 
 
 {a) Its original aim, 115 
 
 ib) Stress laid on the doctrine of sacramental 
 
 grace, 115 
 
 ic) Dr. Pusey's tract on " Baptism," . . .116 
 
 II.— HOLY BAPTISM NECESSARY TO SALVATION. 
 
 ia) Scripture statements, 116 
 
 {b) Opposition to the doctrine of the Church, . 117 
 ic) Permanence of the Pelagian heresy, . .118 
 {d) Christo-Pantheism a popular fad of the day, 118 
 
 HI.— THREE GIFTS IN BAPTISM. 
 
 I. Forgiveness of Sins 119 
 
 {a) Doctrine of the Church on original sin, , 120 
 
 {b) Most easily dealt with in infancy, because no 
 
 bar can then be opposed, .... 121 
 {c) Church teaching refutes the error of those 
 
 who make little or no account of sin, . . 122 
 
ANALYSIS. XV 
 
 2. Regeneration : ^^^^ 
 
 {a) Gorham case ; ultimately a blessing, . . 123 
 
 {b) Pusey's definition of regeneration, . . 124 
 {c) Man passive in the new birth ; it is God's 
 
 work exclusively, ..... 125 
 {d) Not to be confused with change of heart, . 126 
 {e) Church teachings in accord with and sup- 
 ported by science, ..... 128 
 (/) Direct connection with the doctrine of the 
 
 Incarnation, 129 
 
 3. Illumination : 
 
 {a) Statements in Epistle to the Hebrews, . 131 
 
 ib) Light, and the organ of sight, not the same, 132 
 if) Material, intellectual, and spiritual light and 
 
 sight, ^Zl) 
 
 {d) Parallels and analogies, . . . .134 
 
 {e) Light given to the spirit in baptism, . . 134 
 (/) Whereby to see divine truth, . . .134 
 i^g) And constituting a new spiritual sense in 
 
 us. 135 
 
 IV.— THE HALLOWING OF THE FONT, . . .136 
 
 {a) Sanctifying water to the washing away of 
 
 sin, 136 
 
 ib) Scriptural and historic review, . . .137 
 {c) Constant occurrence of the phrase in the old 
 
 liturgies and offices of the Church, . .138 
 {d) Tradition inviolably preserved among us, . 139 
 
 v.— BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF HOLY BAP- 
 TISM ON THREE NOTABLE ERRORS, 140, 141 
 {a) Remission of sin, a witness against Pela- 
 
 gianism, Ho. Hi 
 
XVI LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 ib) Regeneration, a witness against neo-Panthe- 
 
 ism, 140, 141 
 
 ic) Illumination, a witness against rationalistic 
 
 philosophy, 140, 141 
 
 id) Need of reassertion of Church doctrine at 
 
 the present time 142 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 Holy Communion. 
 
 I.— DEEP IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT, . . 147 
 
 {a) Exact illustration of the sacramental exten- 
 sion of the Incarnation, .... 147 
 
 ip) Unreality of modern religion a Nemesis on 
 
 the denial of the Real Presence, . . . 148 
 
 II.— THE SACRAMENT OF THE ALTAR SUMS UP 
 
 AND REFLECTS ALL TRUTH, . . .149 
 
 {a) Twofold aspect : sacrifice and sacrament, . 149 
 
 {b) Christ present, 149 
 
 {c) The presence effected, not by our act, but by 
 
 the power of the Holy Ghost, . . .150 
 
 III.— ANALYSIS OF STATEMENTS IN THE CATE- 
 CHISM, 151 
 
 1. Radical Difference in the Description of 
 
 THE TWO Sacraments, . . . .151 
 
 2. Three Terms to be Considered, . . .152 
 
 {a) Signu77i. 
 \b) Res. 
 if) Virtus. 
 
 3. These to be kept Distinct, . . , .153 
 
ANALYSIS. XVI 1 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IV.— PARALLEL BETWEEN DOCTRINE OF THE 
 INCARNATION AND THAT OF THE 
 SACRAMENT OF THE ALTAR, . .154 
 
 1. Hooker's Analysis of the Four Heresies and the 
 
 Four General Councils, . . . . -154 
 
 2. Paraphrase of the said Analysis, Showing Four 
 
 great Errors as to the Holy Sacrament, 155, 156 
 
 v.— THE REAL PRESENCE. 
 
 1. Statement of the Doctrine, . . . .157 
 
 2. Impugned by : 
 
 {a) Transubstantiation, 157 
 
 {b) Consubstantiation, ..... 157 
 
 (r) Virtualism, 157 
 
 id) The sign theory, 157 
 
 VI.— TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 
 
 {a) Article XXVIH., 158 
 
 {b) Truth of the ^/V^z^;/;^ denied, . . .158 
 
 {c) Double appeal to antiquity, . . . .159 
 {d) Permanence of the substance, . . . 160 
 (<?) And yet changed for their supernatural use, 160 
 
 VIL— ZWINGLIANISM. 
 
 {a) Theory of memorial feast, .... l6l 
 {b) Repudiated by our Church, and not to be 
 
 reconciled with her offices and formularies, 162 
 id) Disapproved by Protestant divines, . . 163 
 {d) True place of Zwinglius, .... 163 
 
 VIII.— VIRTUALISM. 
 
 {a) Higher teaching than that of Zwinglius, . 164 
 
XVlll LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ip) Yet defective as denying the truth and pres- 
 ence of the Res, ...... 165 
 
 {c) Therefore correctly described as the theory 
 
 of the Real Absence, 166 
 
 {d) Strength and weakness of virtualism, . . 167 
 
 IX.— CONSUBSTANTIATION. 
 
 {a) Doubtful whether ever held, .... 167 
 {b) Blasphemous and absurd, .... 167 
 {c) And therefore not to be imputed to any one 
 
 until he says that it is his belief, . . . 167 
 
 X.— SUMMARY, 168, 169 
 
 XL— BRIEF REFERENCE TO THE HOLY EUCHA- 
 
 RIST CONSIDERED AS A SACRIFICE, . 170 
 
 Reason for not enlarging on this point, . .171 
 
 XII.— THE DOCTRINE OF THE REAL, OBJECTIVE 
 PRESENCE AS HELD IN THE CHURCH 
 AN EIRENICON, I73-I77 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 The Outward Glory and the Inward Grace. 
 
 I._TWOFOLD MANIFESTATION OF THE SACRA- 
 MENTAL SYSTEM. 
 
 {a) Externally in Christian Worship, . . .181 
 
 {b) Internally in believing men, . . . .181 
 
ANAL YSIS. XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II.— RITUAL OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, . . 182 
 
 {a) Comprehensiveness of the term, . . . 182 
 
 {b) Permanence, 182 
 
 ic) Efforts at recovery where lost, . . .183 
 
 III.— SACRAMENTALITY, 184 
 
 (<^) John Mason Neale's use of the term, . .184 
 ib) Necessity of outward signs to express the 
 
 idea of worship, 185 
 
 IV.— RITUAL SANCTIONED BY GOD. 
 
 {a) Temple worship, 186 
 
 {b) Expanding into that of the Church, . . 186 
 {c) Iconoclasm attests the importance of the sub- 
 ject, 187 
 
 v.— USE OF SYMBOLISM, 188 
 
 ia) Absolutely necessary, . . . . .188 
 [p) Coeval with the human race, . . .189 
 
 {c) Value of the Symbol, .... 190, 191 
 
 VI.— CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE WORSHIP 
 OF THE CHURCH AND THE WORSHIP 
 OFFERED BY NATURE. 
 
 ia) Divine worship should be beautiful and rich 
 in form, ..... 
 
 {b) Nature's contributions to it, . 
 
 {c) Logical result of denial of these 
 ciples, ...... 
 
 {d) Sceptical objection answered, 
 
 VII.— PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN WORSHIP, 
 
 ia) Symbolical, ..... 
 
 ib) Pictorial, 
 
 {c) Culmination in cathedral idea, 
 
 • 193. 
 
 194 
 
 prm- 
 
 
 • 195. 
 
 196 
 
 
 197 
 
 
 198 
 
 
 198 
 
 . 
 
 199 
 
 . 
 
 199 
 
XX LENTEhr LECTURES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VIIL— DESCRIPTION OF CATHEDRAL WORSHIP, 
 
 200, 201 
 {a) Comment on Bryant's " Thanatopsis," . 202 
 
 {b) Descent from Catholic ideas, slow but sure, 
 
 to clulness and silence, 203 
 
 {c) Worship of Positivism as described by INIal- 
 
 loch, 204, 205 
 
 IX.— REVIVAL OF CATHOLIC LITURGICAL USE. 
 
 (rt) John Mason Neale's prediction fulfilled, . 206 
 {b) Danger attending the movement, . . . 207 
 {c) Ritual witliout doctrinal signification worth- 
 less and pernicious, ..... 208 
 
 X.— SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM MANIFESTED IN 
 
 THE LIFE OF THE SOUL, . . .208 
 
 ia) Christ the original and perfect type, . . 209 
 
 {b) Imitation of Him impresses a distinct charac- 
 ter on soul and body of man, . . .210 
 
 XI.— CONCLUSION, 211-214 
 
I. 
 
 BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 THE BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 
 
 On a Saturday afternoon, in the midsummer 
 of last year, I found myself by chance on the 
 southern shore of Otsego Lake, looking north- 
 ward on a scene which for quiet and soothing 
 beauty can hardly be surpassed. Before me lay 
 the mirror of the Glimmerglass ; warm lights 
 threw a flush upon the skies ; the day was going 
 away; the omens of the evening were already in 
 the clouds ; a breeze, scarcely strong enough to 
 ruffle the water, came from the western hills; the 
 woods were reflected in their native colors along 
 the silent shore. But below was more than what 
 met the eye. Through and under this exterior 
 beauty, voices could be heard, speaking of the 
 mystery of the natural world. It has been said 
 of the study of nature, "that it is hardly profane 
 to characterize it as a means of grace to man." * 
 
 * See an article in Garden and Forest^ August 12, 1891. 
 
4 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 The words are words of truth ; in nature is a 
 tonic for mind and heart. Here are depths 
 which no man has yet sounded, not philosopher 
 nor poet; here is a mystery which thus far defies 
 our search — w4ience, and how, came this won- 
 drous, beautiful world ; when it was made ; and 
 why it was made '^ subject to vanity;" how long, 
 before man appeared on the earth, his destiny 
 and doom were foreshadowed there; how he, in 
 his fortunes, is linked to what he calls " nature " ; 
 by what bond and to what extent it is so related 
 to him as to sympathize with him in his sorrows, 
 and partake of his hope — what poet, what philos- 
 opher, what theologian has told us the wdiole truth 
 on these points? Of them might one readily be 
 led to muse, while looking upon the lake, con- 
 fronted by forests and hills, and the perspective 
 of point, bluff, and mountain ; for at such times 
 and in such places men become aware of some 
 unspeakable strangeness in their life, and, keeping 
 silence before mysterious and dimly indicated 
 presences, they know that it must be possible 
 to draw its hidden meaning from God's world, 
 from hill and plain, from deep, still waters and 
 shadowy woods, from the currents of the evening 
 breeze and the outstretched shadows of ebbing day. 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 5 
 
 Hard by that lake stands an old church, shaded 
 by tall pines and other trees, and keeping watch 
 and ward over the surrounding resting-places of 
 the dead in Christ. On the following morning I 
 found myself at the early celebration in that ven- 
 erable fane. Here another mystery confronted us, 
 like the other, too deep to search out; the mystery 
 of the Coming of our Lord, in Holy Communion. 
 The church also, like the lake, was held in the 
 stillness of a holy peace. The voice of the priest, 
 as he recited the office, was the only sound that 
 broke upon the ear; the words of Christ were 
 repeated ; and then, to the eye of faith, '* came 
 Jesus and stood in the midst, and said. Peace be 
 unto you." Both the mysteries of which I have 
 been speaking were of God ; one in the order of 
 nature, the other in the order of grace. And at 
 that time it occurred to me — remembering an 
 accepted invitation to speak to you on some sacred 
 theme — that the subject had been assigned, on the 
 shore of the lake in the evening, and in the church 
 in that consecrated morning hour. Is there not a 
 parallelism, a correlation, between these two mys- 
 teries? May there not be, to other, larger eyes 
 than ours, points at which they touch or interpene- 
 trate ? May not the mystery in nature pass on- 
 
6 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 ward and upward to the mystery in grace? And 
 may not the mystery in grace be more deeply felt 
 when interpreted by the mystery in nature? Can 
 this be, that the natural world holds some relation 
 to man in his life, which is realized to him in that 
 profoundest of all wonders, the Sacram.ent of the 
 Altar? May not the same Hand which beckons 
 to us through the veil of nature be laid upon us 
 to bless as we kneel in adoration before '' those 
 holy mysteries " ? The inspired writers ascribe 
 personality to tree and mountain and hill, calling 
 on them to clap their hands, to sing, to show forth 
 God's praise. Our own poets represent the inani- 
 mate world as if it had voices and a mission to 
 men. Is this mere metaphor? Is there no truth 
 in it? The light natural and the light super- 
 natural ; the beauty of the material world and 
 the beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven : come they 
 not both of God ? And are there not relationships 
 between them more intimate than we suppose, too 
 subtile for us to comprehend ? On that line would 
 I lead you this evening, as we think of the treas- 
 ures of our inheritance in the holy Church of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 It is a high honor and privilege to lecture be- 
 fore this Seminary. The series delivered on this 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 7 
 
 " Bishop Paddock Foundation " a year ago had for 
 its subject the Incarnation. I propose, as my theme 
 this year, the Sacramental System. There is, I 
 trust, a fitness in this order. ** The fathers," says 
 Bishop Jeremy Taylor, "by an elegant expression, 
 call the blessed sacrament the extension of the in- 
 carnation." The idea was, no doubt, derived by 
 them from what St. Paul said about those " joints 
 and bands " by which grace is ministered to us, and 
 through which the whole body " increaseth with 
 the increase of God." (Col. iii. 19 ; Eph. iv. 16.) 
 And so, in accord with " Holy Scripture, and An- 
 cient Authors," our own Richard Hooker, in the 
 fifth book of the Ecclesiastical Polity, lays the 
 foundation of his teaching on the holy sacraments 
 in that full, minute, and incomparable statement 
 of the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, with 
 which you are no doubt familiar. To follow up 
 the lectures of last year on the Incarnation by 
 a course on the Sacraments seems, therefore, in 
 order ; and to this, in reliance on divine aid, I now 
 proceed. 
 
 Of sacramental doctrine this may be truly said, 
 that it is coextensive with historic Christianity. 
 Of this there is no reasonable doubt, as regards the 
 very ancient days, of which St. Chrysostom's trea- 
 
8 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 tise on the priesthood and St. Cyril's catechetical 
 lectures may be taken as characteristic documents. 
 Nor was it otherwise with the more conservative 
 of the reformed bodies in the sixteenth century. 
 Martin Luther's catechism, the Augsburg, and 
 later the Westminster, confessions are strongly sac- 
 ramental in their tone, putting to shame the de- 
 generate followers of the men who compiled them. 
 What is the basis of a system obviously coexten- 
 sive with Christianity? There are those who, while 
 holding sacramental doctrine, take their starting- 
 point in a correspondence with the twofold consti- 
 tution of man's nature, a congruity with the prac- 
 tical experience of our everyday life. But surely 
 there is a point of departure much more remote 
 than these ; we may go beyond the lower range of 
 simile, fitness, and happy adaptation to circum- 
 stances, and trace its origin far back of such obvious 
 considerations. Nay, it were well to do so, in the 
 interests of humanity, for who can tell how many 
 objectors would be silenced, how many unhappy 
 doubters convinced, could they but see the subject 
 in its fulness and depth? 
 
 The Sacramental System claims, even on philo- 
 sophical grounds, the attention of the closest stu- 
 dents of nature and the best thinkers of the age; 
 
/■ 
 
 BASIS OF THE SACRAMEiVTAL SYSTEM. 9 
 
 and where it is lightly esteemed, the reason may be 
 that it has been presented in a dry and lifeless 
 way, and commended to regard on no higher 
 grounds than those of expediency or convenience ; 
 so that it offers nothing to touch the soul, excite 
 the imagination, or challenge faith. The Sacra- 
 mental System has been given away in exchange 
 or the lucubrations of rationalism, or degraded to 
 the level of empty ceremonies, bald signs, and 
 forms without life. To quote from Robert Isaac 
 Wilberforce, referring to the low and partial esti- 
 mate of sacraments : 
 
 "It rests their use on our act only, not on that of 
 God ; it is merely subjective, human, tentative, and though 
 useful as a direction to ourselves, falls far short of the sub- 
 lime views which Scripture opens respecting- these 'holy 
 mysteries.' It is a conception such as a Socinian might 
 entertain, but with which the Christian mind could never be 
 satisfied." * 
 
 Far different is the Sacramental System when 
 presented to devout consideration as included in 
 the eternal purpose of God ; effectuated through 
 an alliance between God and His material, moral, 
 
 * " Doctrine of the Incarnation," ch, xiii. p. 405. 
 
lO LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 and spiritual creation ; having relations of some 
 kind to all the kingdoms of nature, and probably 
 extending in its influence beyond the limits of the 
 terrestrial sphere. 
 
 The system which we are about to consider has 
 two sides, a practical and almost commonplace 
 side, and an ideal and mystical side. In the latter 
 relation it is proposed to treat of it in this lecture. 
 I do not intend to make an argument in logical 
 form, but simply to present a series of considera- 
 tions which seem to bear with cogency upon the 
 subject. That nature is neither self-existing nor 
 independent, but the work of God, and constantly 
 ruled by God ; that man is a summary of nature ; 
 that there is between the natural world and our- 
 selves an intimate connection ; that the disorders 
 observable in the natural world have something to 
 do with the trouble in us men, so that relief to us 
 carries with it benefit of some sort to the world 
 outside of us ; that through the Incarnation God 
 has Himself, in person, taken a unique place in 
 the natural world, as man : these are the points 
 which shall first be presented to your thoughts. 
 And next it will be suggested, as a just inference, 
 that in the work of repairing and reconstructing 
 humanity, by the extension of the Incarnation to 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. II 
 
 individual souls, the natural world may be drawn 
 upon for help, and its elements put to use as 
 instrumental means whereby that race shall be 
 aided, in whose recovery nature herself has an in- 
 terest and a direct concern. Here may be found a 
 basis for the Sacramental System deeper than that 
 of congruity, adaptation, or convenience. The em- 
 ployment of such a system is not to be regarded 
 merely as a happy thought, a lucky hit, an appro- 
 priate idea, but it comes in because things are as 
 they are, because nature is summed up in man ; 
 because all things work together for good to them 
 that love God ; because " the creature " itself is 
 bound up in our fortunes, and may very fitly be 
 employed in the process of our extrication from 
 present evils. Such thoughts, if they prove to be 
 true and in harmony with the Catholic faith, must 
 place the subject beyond the reach of frivolous 
 objection and lift it to the height which it seems, 
 for some sufficient reason, to have held through all 
 past ages of the Church. 
 
 Let us enter, with reverence and circumspec- 
 tion, a path rendered more attractive by the mys- 
 teries with which it is encompassed on the right 
 hand and on the left. And, first, to speak of 
 nature. 
 
12 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 " To him who, in the love of nature, holds 
 Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
 A various language." 
 
 So sings a poet of our own land. But what, 
 after all our study, do we know of nature? What 
 is meant by the word ? And what progress has 
 been made in interpreting her secrets? There are 
 two great heresies relating to the natural world ; 
 one cuts it off from Almighty God, the other con- 
 founds it substantially with Him. To some nature 
 is a vast, godless phenomenon, the outcome of a 
 blind movement, directed by no intelligent ruler 
 or governor. Such persons make it a stupendous 
 fetich ; they ascribe to it personality, they talk 
 of nature's laws and nature's designs and nature's 
 acts as if nature were as God to us. In their 
 anxious interest men have run into innumerable 
 conjectures. The Manichean says that matter is 
 essentially evil ; the gnostic conceives of the natu- 
 ral world as the work of a malevolent demiurge, 
 the rival and ancient foe of God. To some, as they 
 speculate on the universe, its existence appears a 
 necessity ; God is constrained to be always a crea- 
 tor ; He can never have been without a manifesta- 
 tion exterior to Himself. To the pantheist, nature 
 and God are the same — one universal and all-per- 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 1 3 
 
 vading substance; nature is God taking form and 
 shape; God evolving and developing; God sleeping 
 in the rock, moving in the lower creation, coming 
 to thought and self-knowledge in man. The tran- 
 scendentalist runs into unintelligible talk, telling us 
 that *' Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and 
 turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and 
 gas ; that the world is mind precipitated, and that 
 the volatile essence is forever escaping again into 
 the state of free thought."'^ Such are instances 
 of the efforts of man to get at the secret of " the 
 rounded world, nine times folded in mystery." But 
 a Catholic Christian is protected by his faith from 
 such erroneous and wild opinions ; he does not 
 know all ; he does not pretend to know much ; but 
 he knows something, and what he knows is worth 
 knowing. To him nature is not a self-existing phe- 
 nomenon, nor the result of chance, nor yet 
 
 " A hollow form with empty hands." 
 
 In the creed of the Catholic Church he has light 
 on this subject ; that light comes in the sublime 
 declaration of the existence of " One God the 
 Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and 
 of all things visible and invisible ; " it comes in the 
 
 * See Emerson's essay on " Nature." 
 
14 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 further statement that God, having created the 
 heavens and the earth, " saw everything that He 
 had made, and behold, it was very good." ^ Here, 
 at all events, are starting-points ; lines on which to 
 move with some confidence in our study of the 
 mystery ; first principles to save us from the blank 
 hollowness of intuitive religionism and the unintel- 
 ligible utterances of the ideal philosopher. Even 
 the materialist renders us a not unimportant ser- 
 vice at this point of our studies. Of dogmatic ma- 
 terialism it has been well said, that 
 
 "It is the twin brother of atheism. It may well be called 
 the gospel of the flesh ; it is the absolute deification of matter 
 and of the creature. The materialists are the most danger- 
 ous enemies of progress that the world has ever seen."t 
 
 The charge is true of materialism, as a philo- 
 sophic system pretending to explain all, and to 
 account for man in his entire state. But material- 
 ism has its uses and serves a good purpose to the 
 Catholic faith. As Dr. Liddon remarks : 
 
 " Materialism has 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 
 
 * Gen. i. 31. 
 
 f Christlieb, "Modern Doubt and Christian Belief," Lecture III. ii. 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 15 
 
 spirit only as is tiie 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 independ- 
 ently 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 div^orce from the companion whose 
 presence is needed to complete its life." 
 
 The mystery of creation is not to be solved by 
 the materialist, the pantheist, the transcendentalist, 
 or the ideal philosopher. In their methods they 
 confuse matter and mind ; they sacrifice the flesh 
 to the spirit or the spirit to the flesh ; they con- 
 found the Creator and the creature ; they let go the 
 real to chase a phantom ; they deny the evidence 
 of the senses or the facts of human experience. 
 There is no escape from their errors save in the 
 acceptance of these cardinal principles of Catholic 
 doctrine : 
 
 {a) That God alone is uncreate and eternal. 
 
 (b) That He made all things by the word of His 
 power, not of His own substance, but of elements 
 created by Him for their purpose. 
 
 {c) That He made all things good. 
 
 {d) That He rules and governs all. 
 
 These statements constitute the formal contradic- 
 
1 6 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 tion of gnostic, Manichean, and pantheistic errors, 
 and of materialistic and idealistic speculations. 
 They begin by asserting the essential distinction 
 between God and nature, the supernatural order 
 and the visible universe, the material and intelligent 
 creations. They affirm that matter, the physical 
 basis of all visible things, is God's handiwork ; that 
 it is essentially good and not evil ; that the world 
 came into being through Him ; that it was the 
 product of His wisdom and love ; that it deserves 
 our reverent study as a manifestation of the divine 
 Creator ; and that by study of the wonders of the 
 universe we can come to the knowledge of ourselves 
 and God. 
 
 And here let me remark, in passing, on the failure 
 of recent attempts to discredit the evidential argu- 
 ment from nature in proof of the truths of religion. 
 What St. Paul said nearly nineteen hundred years 
 ago is as true to-day as then, that the invisible 
 things of God may be understood by the things 
 that are made, even His eternal power and god- 
 head." Against the denial of this fact, based on 
 supposed scientific discoveries, a reaction has al- 
 ready set in ; it is admitted that those discoveries, 
 
 * Rom. i: 20. 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 1 7 
 
 instead of weakening, have strengthened that 
 branch of the evidences of natural reh"gion. God 
 is more clearly revealed in His intelligence, power, 
 and love, the more closely we study His work:-. 
 To quote Mr. Gore, in his recently published 
 " Bampton Lectures : " 
 
 " If Charles Darwin and the scientific world whom he rep- 
 resents have materially altered, yet they have not fundament- 
 ally impaired the evidences in nature of divine purpose or 
 desig-n, nor have they touched the argument (to many minds 
 the irresistible argument) from the beauty of nature to the 
 spirituality of the Being which it reveals." — Lecture II. 
 
 Creation is the work of an almighty and benevo- 
 lent God ; a mirror which reveals Him. As we 
 look into that mirror we are held to it by a strange 
 fascination. What is the secret of that fascina- 
 tion ? It arises, unquestionably, from the percep- 
 tion of a relationship between nature and our- 
 selves. What is the place of man in the universe 
 of wonders? Let us proceed to consider this 
 point. 
 
 It is a striking remark of Emerson, that " the 
 roots of all things are in Man." To Catholics this 
 is a familiar thought. It is said that man, in his 
 progress from obscure embryonic rudiments to the 
 state in which he emerges from the womb into the 
 
1 8 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 outer world, passes through many a stage of lower 
 life. And nowhere is Catholic theology more bold 
 or more masterful than in its account of man in 
 this relation to the universe. Let us hear the 
 words of a great teacher on this point : 
 
 " God, in creating the lieavens and the earth, created two 
 worlds in one : a world invisible and celestial, the city of 
 spirits ; and a world terrestrial and visible, the country of 
 material bodies. Until man appeared on the earth, there 
 were sensitive life and vegetative life, but there was no intel- 
 ligent life. ... In creating man, God joined together 
 spirit and body in the unity of a single being, in such a way 
 that the being of the soul is also the being of the body ; and 
 in consequence, in this marvellous creature, the spirit has 
 a corporal being and a corporal life, while the body receives 
 a spiritual being and a spiritual life ; the intelligence has, as 
 it w-ere, a material personality, while the material is elevated 
 to a species of intelligent personality ; so that in man we find 
 this material body of ours speaking and acting as the spirit 
 speaks and acts, to which the lower is united substantially 
 without confusion. Matter and body are associated with 
 spirit in man, for the worship of God and for the service of 
 religion." * 
 
 This is man ; the minor vmndiis^ as he has been 
 called ; matter and spirit in one person ; represent- 
 
 '"^ ** La Raison Philosophiqiie et la Raison Catholique : Confer- 
 ences by Father Ventura de Kaulica." Paris, Gaume Freres, 1S54. 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 1 9 
 
 ing and including two worlds ; having the entire 
 created universe summed up in him. According 
 to St. Thomas Aquinas : 
 
 " Man is not only in touch with the intellectual order by 
 way of his intelligence, and with the material order through 
 his senses ; but also, being both spirit and body, he is in him- 
 self a summary of the conditions of all bodies and of all 
 spirits. Like God, he is independent of every other created 
 being ; he is intelligent, like the angels, and at the same time 
 he has the sensitive life of the brute, the vegetative life of the 
 plant, the augmentative life of the mineral, the inert existence 
 of inorganic beings ; and thus, uniting in himself the elements 
 of all beings, the forces of all lives in creation, he produces 
 all the effects thereof and embraces all its harmonies ; he is, 
 in short, the world in small, the summary, the abridgment of 
 the world, ' viundi siimma et compendium' " 
 
 Such is man, and this is his place in the uni- 
 verse. And here we come to that stupendous fact 
 in the history of creation which consigns to rela- 
 tive insignificance the questions so much discussed, 
 about the mode of creation, the age of the world, 
 protoplasm, evolution, and the like. The fact re- 
 ferred to is that of the Incarnation. The Creator 
 has come into His own universe, and has taken 
 it bodily {(TooMar I Jicdg)^ into Himself, in assuming 
 
 * Col. ii. 9. 
 
20 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 our humanity. We assert, as Catholics, while 
 repudiating pantheistic ideas of consubstantiation, 
 commingling, or identification, that God, the per- 
 sonal Creator, by whom all things were made and 
 do consist, was pleased to unite and join together 
 in His person two natures, absolutely diverse and 
 distinct ; and that, of these two, one was substan- 
 tially a summary of the created universe. " Homo 
 f actus csty You know that it was human nature, 
 and not a human person, through which the Incar- 
 nation was effected. Jesus Christ w^as not an in- 
 dividual of our race, one in number of Adam's 
 line, born in the natural order, and, subsequently 
 to such birth, united to God, That would not have 
 been incarnation at all in the Catholic sense of 
 the word. But a nature, and not a person, was 
 joined to the Godhead, a/iyd^)^, reXeoo^, adicxi- 
 ptTQDi, affvyx^Tf^^- And therefore, whatever rela- 
 tion man sustains towards the other orders of 
 creation and the kingdoms of nature, the same 
 does Christ, as man, sustain to them. He, being 
 perfect man, is related to the visible and mate- 
 rial creation as truly as to the intellectual and 
 spiritual world. He also may be called the micro- 
 cosm, the minor miindns, miiiidi summa et compen- 
 dium. And to think of Christ as now an abstract 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 21 
 
 and incorporeal spiritual essence would be the same 
 error as to strike out the body from the description 
 of a man, and to represent him as essentially like 
 to the angels. 
 
 In the Catholic doctrine this relation of the world 
 to God and of God to the world is presented to 
 our faith. To say that one man of our race, born 
 after the manner common to us all, was taken up 
 into unity with God, would be to throw away a 
 glorious truth, and drop to a lame and impotent 
 conclusion. If Jesus Christ had been the son of 
 Joseph and Mary, whatever might have been done 
 for Him at any period of His life would have 
 affected Him and Him only. There is an element 
 of the ludicrous and fantastical in the idea of such 
 an exaltation and glorifying of one particular man 
 out of all that ever lived, for no assignable reason 
 unless ''pour encourager les autres ; " nor could we, 
 on such a poverty-stricken hypothesis, come to that 
 magnificent conception of the alliance between the 
 universe and its Creator. Not to one human per- 
 son, not to one exceptionally favored individual 
 of Adam's line, not to a man like Moses or Gau- 
 tama or Socrates, were divine honor and the dig- 
 nity of exaltation to equality with God awarded. 
 What God assumed was human nature, and not 
 
22 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 a human person. He who is ever with His 
 creation, entered into His own world in a new 
 way ; He became man ; and thus a new relation- 
 ship was formed between Him and that creation 
 which owed its existence to Him, and which, 
 from the beginning, He had governed and con- 
 trolled. 
 
 Let us advance a step. Why did God the Son 
 become incarnate? And how far do the benefits 
 of the Incarnation extend ? In answering the first 
 of these questions we are brought face to face with 
 the trouble and sorrow in the world. It is unneces- 
 sary to discuss the question whether the Incarna- 
 tion would have taken place, though man had 
 not fallen ; it suffices to take facts as they are, and 
 to note that the work had a remedial and restora- 
 tive effect. It applied, first, to mankind in a state 
 of depression and decline ; and secondly, to the 
 whole creation, of which we are told that it is dis- 
 astrously affected by the condition of man, its head. 
 Let us take up, next, the statements of Holy Scrip- 
 ture on this mysterious subject. 
 
 The late Bishop of Edinburgh, in a work entitled 
 " Does Science aid Faith in regard to Creation? " - 
 says : 
 
 " Published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1883. 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 23 
 
 " There is one part of the Christian faith on the subject of 
 creation to which I think sufficient attention has never been 
 given by theologians. And, instructive as it is in itself, as 
 connected with our faith on redemption, it has become in 
 modern times specially important in its relation to the 
 progress of science ; and it is one in which, perhaps, more 
 than in any other direction whatever, science has proved 
 itself the serviceable handmaid of faith instead of being its 
 rival and adversary. I refer to the view of creation which 
 St. Paul sets forth in the eighth chapter of his Epistle to the 
 Romans, in which chapter he brings to its climax and 
 glorious consummation the argument which he had com- 
 menced in the fifth chapter of that epistle, as to the victory 
 through Christ of righteousness over sin, grace over wrath 
 and condemnation, and life over death." (p. 82.) 
 
 The subject, in the passage thus referred to, is 
 the creation, in the Greek nriGiZ^ in the Latin crea- 
 tura, in King James* version the creature, in the 
 Revised version (and correctly), the creation. As 
 Bishop Cotterill says: " The word is here used in its 
 ordinary sense, and includes all the material crea- 
 tion, animate and inanimate ; it answers as nearly 
 as possible to ' nature' in our modern use of the 
 word." Now as to the nriah, creation, or nature, 
 St. Paul affirms that something in it is wrong. It 
 was " made subject to vanity," not of its own will, 
 as in the case of Adam when he fell ; but by the 
 will of the Creator, who with a purpose, and in 
 
24 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 pursuance of a design, " subjected the same to 
 vanity." It is the result of that subjection that 
 "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
 together until now." Yet through that state of 
 depression runs the golden thread of hope : " the 
 earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the 
 manifestation of the sons of God." The universe, 
 with which we are connected and to which, through 
 the Incarnation, God is allied and personally 
 united, is in trouble, in long and serious trouble, in 
 some strange distress imposed on it in the far-off 
 past ; it is expectant ; it has a hope ; it is looking 
 forward to something; it is waiting for ''the re- 
 demption of our body."^ Some strange, close, and 
 intimate relationship exists between man and what 
 he calls Nature. And this seems to be the reason 
 why, as the Bishop of Durham has observed, the 
 old fathers of the Church so often led their pupils 
 to that lofty and divine and most lovely study of 
 the visible world, and found a basis for their teach- 
 ings in a rational feeling for the vast grandeur of 
 the external order, " the sacred economy of the 
 universe," as St. Gregory calls it.f True, there is 
 
 * See Appended Notes, No. I. 
 
 f "Essays in the Religious Thought of the West : " by I'rooke 
 Foss Westcott, D.D., D.C.L., p. 215. 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 25 
 
 disorder in that universe ; its sacred harmonies are 
 marred by discords ; there is sorrow on land and 
 sea, and weather casts of trouble are in the skies 
 above us. But relief is expected ; it has been 
 promised ; it shall surely come. It is coming 
 through the redemption of our body and along 
 with the manifestation of the sons of God. But 
 redemption and sonship in God are gifts to man 
 through the Incarnation of the Eternal Son ; so 
 that His work acts beyond us, and finds a field for 
 its beneficent exercise below the circle of His intel- 
 ligent creation. Christ's work cannot be limited to 
 the human race ; it cannot be exhausted in rescu- 
 ing us from sin and death ; there are ranges beyond 
 where He worketh, though in ways not revealed to 
 us ; and believing this, we are brought very close 
 to the object of our quest ; we have reached the 
 point at which we may confidently look for the 
 basis of the Sacramental System, and find out how 
 the material elements have been made to minister 
 to us in our spiritual and moral life. 
 
 For, if man be the summary of creation; if Christ 
 be truly man, and, as such, related to the material 
 universe, through His humanity, as we are to it 
 through ours ; if the " creature " is in trouble, not 
 through its own fault, but as if it were bearing our 
 
26 LENTEN LECTURES, 
 
 trouble, and subject to vanity on our account and 
 for our sakes ; if Christ is really come, and is stand- 
 ing in His place, summing up in His person all the 
 power and forces of the universe, and bringing 
 them to bear on us men for our salvation ; if our 
 rescue and redemption are helping creation already, 
 and are to help it still more in ways not yet appar- 
 ent nor fully understood ; if creation be deeply in- 
 terested and concerned in the " redemption of that 
 body" by which man touches the material universe 
 as in his intelligence he touches the spiritual realm; 
 if all these things are so, why, we may ask, should 
 it be deemed incredible — why might it not be ex- 
 pected as a matter of course — that in the work of 
 man's redemption and deliverance some powers, 
 some elements, of the natural order should be used 
 as instruments for that purpose? In connection 
 with that silent and inarticulate sympathy with 
 man, why should not nature proffer such help as 
 she may be able to give? Why should not Christ, 
 the great deliverer, use the elements of this world 
 in bringing about spiritual effects? He asserted 
 His lordship over earth, air, fire, and water, while 
 here ; He calmed the angry sea; He made clay an 
 instrument of opening the eyes of the blind ; He 
 scattered to the winds the powers of darkness ; in 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 2/ 
 
 His remedial processes He drew upon the phar- 
 macy of nature. Was this only for convenience' 
 sake, or for the purposes of a barren symbolism ? 
 Was there a deeper meaning in it? Nature, in her 
 normal condition, offers medicines for the healing 
 of the body ; vegetable and mineral helps, tonics, 
 febrifuges, anodynes. Why should not the Holy 
 Ghost, through natural elements, exalted to a 
 supernatural efficacy, minister to the diseases of 
 the soul ? Why should not earth, air, fire, and 
 water be made to help us? The element of water, 
 by which three-fourths of the globe is covered, of 
 which great part of the human body is made up, 
 why should it not be '' sanctified to the washing 
 away of sin " ? The corn, which groweth up out of 
 the earth, and is bruised and ground in the mortar, 
 and baked in the fire ; the grape, which ripens in 
 the sunshine ; why should not these be used for 
 spiritual purposes, as instrumental means of sancti- 
 fication and holy gifts, to purify, feed, and hallow 
 human life? What is there strained or repellent in 
 the idea of such ministration of the natural ele- 
 ments to Him who, though the head and crown of 
 nature, needs all the help that can be given from 
 heaven and earth ? The application of material 
 agents to spiritual uses through a consecration such 
 
28 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 as the divine power knows how to effect, is not 
 only a simple idea, it is the sequel to that act of 
 the Eternal Son of God in assuming a mortal body 
 and a human soul. Sacramental religion may 
 accordingly be considered as the purest and sim- 
 plest of all religions. It follows the line on 
 which our redemption proceeds ; on which the 
 release of the creation from vanity is now pro- 
 ceeding. 
 
 And then com.es another question : How far do 
 the benefits of the Incarnation extend ? Who can 
 say ? Who can limit the work of God the Son ? 
 Who can draw a line, and tell us how much it 
 may take in before the end ; how deeply it strikes 
 into the frame of nature ; how comprehensive it 
 may prove, when we see the full extent of the 
 mystery, as we shall by and by ? Are there 
 inhabitants in the spheres about us ? Have they 
 intelligence, and a moral nature? Is this earth the 
 only orb, in the myriads and myriads of the uni- 
 verse, where living, thinking, speaking creatures are 
 to be found ? Sooner than be content with a 
 narrow theory on these points, let us give the 
 thoughts and the imagination free play; let us 
 appropriate the language of the old Breviary 
 hymn, in which the benefits of the atonement 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 29 
 
 are boldly and thrillingly extended to all king- 
 doms of the earth and to other worlds than 
 this: 
 
 " Terra, pontus, astra, mundus, 
 Quo lavantur flumine."* 
 
 Such thoughts as these, or such dreams, if you 
 like that word better, are at all events in accord 
 with the Catholic faith, and the mind of the 
 Church. In proof of this statement, reference 
 may be made to the fathers and saints, who 
 from time to time have felt and expressed in- 
 tense sympathy with nature, and even professed 
 a sense of brotherhood with beings of the lower 
 orders of creation. If one of the enlightened, 
 highly cultured and eminently practical people of 
 our own day were to be asked which of all the 
 legends of the saints he thought the silliest, he 
 would probably mention that of St. Anthony of 
 Padua, who preached to the fishes, or that of St. 
 Francis of Assisi, calling the birds of the air about 
 him, and bidding them and other creatures unite 
 
 * Happily, we have this noble lyric in our new Hymnal ; the 
 lines are thus rendered : 
 
 " Whence, to cleanse the whole creation, 
 Streams of blood and water flow." 
 
30 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 with him in praising their Lord and ours. But is 
 there not a truth here which w^e ought to discern ? 
 Is not this one application of the doctrine of St. 
 Paul ? Who knows that birds and beasts, the fowl 
 that fiy in the firmament, and all that move in the 
 waters, -may not in their own way be more relig- 
 ious than man ? What soul so dull and cold as to 
 find no meaning in the pleasant sounds of morning 
 and noonday, of evening and night, while the sw^ift 
 earth rolls on her course, and suns and stars rise 
 and set, and moons wax and wane, and many a 
 plaintive voice seems chanting to God ; the shrill 
 cicada uttering its cry, and the cricket practising its 
 cheerful song ? Few pictures are more delightful 
 than that of the holy man who so dearly loved the 
 lower creation, and was gentle and tender to all 
 that hath breath ; whom Mrs. Jameson has charm- 
 ingly described as 
 
 "wandering over those beautiful Umbrian mountains, from 
 Assisi to Gubbio, singing with a loud voice hymns [alia 
 Francese, as the old legend expresses it, whatever that 
 may mean), and praisinj^ God for all things — for the sun 
 which shone above ; for the day and for the night ; for his 
 ?nother the earth, and for his sister the moon ; for the winds 
 which blew in his face ; for the pure, precious water, and for 
 the jocund fire ; for the flowers under his feet, and for the 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 3^ 
 
 stars above his head — saluting and blessing all creatures, 
 whether animate or inanimate, as his brethren and sisters 
 in the Lord.* 
 
 Do you ask an explanation of the influence 
 exerted over man by the aspect and phenomena 
 of the natural world ? Find it in the fact of 
 an intimate relationship between us and it ; as, 
 through our material constitution, part and parcel 
 thereof ; as having joint interests, and a commu- 
 nity in pain and hope. And in that relationship 
 find also the justification of that Sacramental Sys- 
 tem, to which such persistent objections are made 
 where the conditions of human existence are im- 
 perfectly understood. No other system addresses 
 us with such force ; none offers so much as this. 
 On other grounds also it makes appeal to the 
 enlightened reason ; but we shall not feel it for 
 all that it is, till we have gone to the heart and 
 centre of things created; to that depth and that 
 height at which man touches the material and im- 
 material orders at once ; until we see God taking 
 creation, summed up in human nature, into alliance 
 with His eternal and infinite Being, in a unity 
 in which they are to continue and abide hence- 
 
 * " Legends of the Monastic Orders," p. 241. 
 
32 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 forth and forever."^ In the person of the Son of 
 God, the Godhead and Manhood were joined to- 
 gether, never to be divided. But man is the crown 
 of creation ; and through him God draws His own 
 work lovingly to Himself. 
 
 I shall call your attention in the next lecture 
 to some other aspects of the Sacramental System 
 in which it is commended to our confidence and 
 faith. But, in conclusion, let me speak briefly on 
 two points which come in here, va the discussion 
 of our subject. 
 
 Through the mortal body is established the con- 
 nection between man and the material creation. 
 But the body is an integral part of us, not less 
 necessary to our perfection and completeness than 
 the intelligence, the spirit, and the soul. ''Perfect 
 man^ of a reasonable soul and Jinvian flesh subsist- 
 ing. . . . T/ie reasonable soul and flesh is one 
 many f A reasonable soul without human flesh 
 is not perfect man ; a man without a body would 
 not be a man. The permanence of the body and 
 the flesh, accordingly, is a truth of the Catholic 
 religion. The body is to live forever, as well as 
 
 * See Art. II. '' The Godhead and Manhood were joined to- 
 gether in One Person, never to be divided," 
 f Symbol called Quictirujue vuli. 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 33 
 
 the soul ; with the soul it is co-heir of immortality ; 
 and therefore, in preparation for its higher destiny, 
 it is now the subject of refining, purifying, and 
 restorative processes, intended to cleanse, to feed, 
 to maintain it in strength and health, and to insure 
 its rescue from the rude and awful shock of death. 
 It is to be redeemed, raised up, and made (to use 
 St. Paul's description), a(l)dapToy^ Svvarov, nvev- 
 jLiaTiHOVj incorruptible, powerful, glorious. The 
 human body is not a mere shell, which the exult- 
 ant spirit is to burst some day, glad to be rid of its 
 old companion ; it is not an empty sign, to disap- 
 pear by and by forever ; it is the permanent and 
 necessary equipment of man as man. In the sight 
 of a Christian the body is a sacred thing. The 
 Holy Ghost makes it His temple ; to profane it is 
 sacrilege."^ It is to be offered as a living sacrifice, 
 holy and acceptable to God.f Man's service is, first, 
 last, and always, a bodily service. Corporal and 
 spiritual works of mercy go on together. Grace is 
 given to the body, as well as to the soul ; our sinful 
 bodies are made clean by the touch of the Body of 
 the Lord in Holy Communion. The Sacramental 
 System accords with this conception of the place 
 
 * I Cor. vi. 19. f Rom. xii. i. 
 
34 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 and destiny of the human body ; and wherever 
 that system is rejected, we may expect to find 
 conceptions and notions of our nature and our 
 state better befitting a pagan than a Christian ; 
 perhaps a disbelief in the resurrection of that 
 Blessed Body in which our salvation was wrought 
 out ; perhaps, if not certainly, disbelief in the resur- 
 rection of our own. Philosophic idealism, pre- 
 sumptuous spiritualism, are the inevitable refuge 
 of him who misconceives the constitution of human 
 nature, and denies to the body its place and rights. 
 That man, in his death, is instantly to pass into 
 the condition of abstract and incorporeal spirit, 
 and so to remain, glad and content, forever, is an 
 idea which rests on no good evidence, and brings 
 no comfort ; it is little less disquieting and alarm- 
 ing than the thought that man must 
 
 " . . . . drop from out this universal frame, 
 Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss, 
 That utter notliingness from which he came."* 
 
 From such terrifying dreams we are saved by 
 faith in the Sacramental System, in its principles 
 and application. It deals with us, not as pure 
 spirits caged for a while in deleterious bodies, but 
 
 * " Dream of Gerontius." 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 35 
 
 as real and true men ; it gives us credit for all that 
 we are ; it asserts the worth and dignity of the 
 body ; declares it to be a sharer with the soul in 
 redemption ; predicts its survival and future devel- 
 opment in a higher state ; draws on the material 
 world for help ; and uses as instrumental means for 
 spiritual ends, things below the intellectual order. 
 There is a fitness here which can hardly be de- 
 nied. 
 
 By one more consideration is this view of the 
 Sacramental System supported. In Holy Scripture, 
 we find the positive assertion of the retention of 
 some of those things with which we are now con- 
 nected, and their continuance hereafter under new 
 conditions and in new forms. It is a consoling and 
 tranquillizing thought. Consider this beautiful and 
 wonderful universe ; the revealer of the glory of the 
 Lord, the teacher, the prophet, the treasure-house 
 of mystic symbolism ; this home of wayfaring men, 
 so dear, so pleasant ; why should its doom be, like 
 that of the wicked, complete destruction and per- 
 petual disuse and darkness ? Is there really any 
 ground for the statement that annihilation, non- 
 existence, is to be the end of these works of His 
 hands ? Are we not told the very reverse ? Why 
 should not nature, though full of disorder and dis- 
 
3^ LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 tress, be hereafter purified, restored, and brought 
 back to the state in which the Voice proclaimed it 
 good ? Are there not, in the Old Testament and 
 in the New, words to that effect ? The intimations 
 are not obscure; we look for a work of reparation 
 and renewal, as among the final purposes of the 
 Lord. " TJie earth and the zvorks that are therein 
 shall be burned up . . . the heavens being on 
 fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt 
 witJi fervent heat.'' But is this to be the end? 
 Nay, it says : " We, according to his promise, look 
 for nezv heavens and a nezu earth, zvhereifi dzuelleth 
 righteousness.'' - Prophets of old testified to the 
 same effect. " Behold, I create nezv heavens and a 
 nezv eartJi," saith the Spirit by the mouth of Isaiah. f 
 '^ And I sazv nezv heavens and a nezv earth'' responds 
 the Evangelist, in his vision, by the saine Spirit.;]: 
 Such statements present no difficulty to a believer 
 in the Incarnation. It seems reasonable to him, 
 that as man is to be raised from death and made 
 glorious, powerful, and incorruptible, so the crea- 
 tion of which he is the sum and crown may also 
 arise, glorious and beautiful, out of the flames of 
 future burnings; that this wliole creation, which 
 
 * 2 Pet. iii. 10. f Isa. Ixv. 17. % Rev. xxi. i. 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 3/ 
 
 now groaneth and travaileth in pain together, may 
 hereafter rejoice and give thanks as when the morn- 
 ing stars sang together and all the sons of God 
 shouted for joy." The creature looketh for tlie 
 redemption of the body; why, unless perceiving, 
 through some inexplicable consciousness, that its 
 own redemption is bound up in ours ? It would 
 not be, I think, profane to surmise, that as God is 
 preparing mankind for life and everlasting felicity, 
 so He may be employing other sacramental means, 
 unknown to us, by which, in other departments of 
 nature, a work is even now in progress, the results 
 of which are hereafter to appear — results which 
 may overwhelm our narrow and selfish thinkers 
 with complete confusion. 
 
 "What is this creation? "asks St. Chrysostom, in com- 
 menting on the words of St. Paul. " Not thyself alone, but 
 that also which is thy inferior, and partaketh not of reason 
 or sense, this, too, shall be a sharer in thy blessings. For it 
 shall be freed, he says, from the bondage of corruption ; 
 that is, it shall no longer be corruptible, but shall go along 
 with the beauty given to thy body ; just as when this became 
 corruptible that became corruptible also ; so, now it is made 
 incorruptible, that also shall follow it too. . . . Thou art 
 suffering for thyself; the creation for thee. ... As men, 
 
 * Job, xxxviii. 7. 
 
38 LEX TEN LECTURES. 
 
 when a son is to appear at his coming to a dignity, clothe 
 even the servants with a brighter garment, to the glory of 
 the son, so will God also clothe the creature with incor- 
 ruption for the glorious liberty of the children . . ." 
 
 And, elsewhere, the father adds: 
 
 " He partially exposes to thy view the things to come, set- 
 ting before thee the change of thy body, and along with it 
 the change of the whole creation."* 
 
 It is time to bring these remarks to a close. 
 They are mere suggestions or hints on a subject 
 so wide and so full of wonder and mystery that 
 a volume would hardly suffice for its full discussion. 
 They are left to you, for reflection, before we pro- 
 ceed to some considerations of an inferior, but, 
 perhaps, a more popular and practical character. 
 Let me close what has been said thus far, by 
 quoting the words of Godet : 
 
 "As in our present body we see the two systems, animal 
 and vegetable, which are around us, converging, and in them 
 nature, as it is on earth, in its entirety ; so will the future 
 body be the centre of a nature renewed and glorified, freed 
 from the law of vanity and death. The ideal, after which are 
 instinctively yearning, not men only, but, as St. Paul says, all 
 creatures, will be realized."! 
 
 * St. Chrys., Horn. xiv. on Rom. viii. 21-23. 
 f " Studies on the Old Testament," ii. p. 62. 
 
BASIS OF THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM. 39 
 
 And to these words let me add others of a doctor 
 and teacher of our own Church, and a professor 
 emeritus of this seminary, commending to your 
 attention the entire passage of which they form a 
 part : 
 
 " The work of redemption closely corresponded to that of 
 creation, and therefore is properly a new creation, whether 
 we regard it in its effects upon individual men, upon the 
 whole company of the redeemed, or upon all the creation of 
 which man was the crown. It will not reach its destined end 
 till the creation that has been darkened and ruined by sin 
 shall be restored to its original beauty and perfection."* 
 
 * Professor Buel : " Treatise of Dogmatic Theology," Vol. I, ch. 
 VI., of Creation and Providence : see whole passage, pp. 250-253. 
 
II. 
 
 THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM COEXTEN- 
 SIVE WITH THE LIFE AND EXPE- 
 RIENCE OF MANKIND. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM COEXTENSIVE WITH 
 THE LIFE AND EXPERIENCE OF MANKIND. 
 
 In the first lecture of this course your attention 
 was directed to what are deemed to be the real 
 foundations of the Sacramental System. Every 
 structure stands upon a basement of some sort ; 
 and it appeared to me that the first thing to be 
 done, in the defence and vindication of a system so 
 misunderstood as this, was to show that we have 
 something to allege in its behalf more weighty than 
 considerations of convenience or the perception of 
 a general agreement w^ith things in the world. The 
 Cathedral, the Capitol, the Chambers of Justice, 
 and whatever other edifices there be, stand on 
 substructures; the larger the edifice, the broader 
 spread the courses of masonry below. What shall 
 be said of the Sacramental System, whose maker 
 and builder is God, which is ample enough to gather 
 in the nations ; in whose successive stories, as they 
 rise upward, room and place are provided for all 
 people, tongues, and languages of the redeemed ? 
 
44 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 Must not a structure such as this have a foundation 
 commensurate with its proportions and adequate to 
 its design ? That is what I have already suggested 
 for your consideration, alleging that a system so 
 large and grand may be regarded as undoubtedly 
 anchored somewhere in the roots and bases of the 
 universe itself. Nor does it make against this view 
 of the case, that men protest their inability to see 
 any such foundation, and challenge us to describe 
 it accurately, and to explain how it was laid. Who 
 sees the foundation of any building, large or small? 
 "What architects call the Footings are not seen, 
 nor were they meant to be seen. With care and 
 close calculation are they laid, and then they are at 
 once hidden away ; none knows exactly their dimen- 
 sions or arrangement but the man who set them in 
 their place ; basement, story, and stage after stage 
 tower up in the air, but these are not the founda- 
 tions ; and but for those footings, they would col- 
 lapse and crumble away. So is it with the works of 
 God in nature and in grace ; we see the upper stages, 
 we do not see that underneath from which they 
 spring and on which they rest. I have sought to in- 
 dicate, by way of suggestion, the direction in which 
 v/e must look for the footings of the Sacramental 
 System ; and this, in order to lift the subject at 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 45 
 
 once from the place of expediencies, conveniences, 
 and utilitarian considerations, and to place it where 
 it belongs, among things supernatural. Having 
 done so, the way is open for a passage to the 
 simpler and more intelligible aspects of our subject. 
 As a practical arrangement it has other claims on 
 confidence. Questions about fitness, adaptation, 
 congruity, correspondence to our state and con- 
 stitution, have their importance and interest; but 
 however the system may be commended on these 
 accounts, it must be remembered that they are not 
 of the foundation, and that to study them belongs 
 to a secondary department in theology. For this 
 reason it seemed necessary, before speaking par- 
 ticularly of such rites as Holy Baptism and Holy 
 Communion, of Confirmation, of Holy Matrimony, 
 of Holy Order, of Absolution, and Unction, to 
 waive for the time the question of the intent, the 
 value, and the effect of each, and to try and find 
 the mysterious and recondite cause which makes 
 them what they are, and connects them with worlds 
 above and worlds below. There, in fact, must the 
 line be drawn — if we are to think and speak as 
 reverent students of Catholic theology — between 
 the conception of sacraments as mere signs and 
 forms, of value in the using, but devoid of intrinsic 
 
46 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 virtue, and sacraments regarded as powers of the 
 world to come, and holding within them something 
 of that mystery which surrounds man on every 
 hand. And it is the more important to begin at 
 that starting-point, because of the intense aversion 
 of the popular mind to the thing which makes the 
 Sacramental System a reality and a truth. For we 
 may at once admit, and frankly, that to the concep- 
 tion of the system as it has been presented to you, 
 the spirit of the age is decidedly and strongly 
 averse. Men will take anything from us so long 
 as we make no draft on their faith ; but as soon 
 as it comes to marvels and miracles, and results 
 transcending the natural powers of the understand- 
 ing, there is an end of their respect for our intelli- 
 gence or their confidence in us as guides. There 
 would be no objection to sacraments considered as 
 outward forms, pictorial representations, or sym- 
 bolic acts ; just as there is no objection to a creed if 
 every man is permitted to put on it what sense he 
 pleases, or to ritual so long as it means nothing ; 
 but when we speak of sacraments as channels of 
 grace, and supernatural agencies in the process of 
 man's salvation, good-by at once to trust, to re- 
 spect, and even to the use of polite language. 
 Sacraments, if that is what they mean, are mum- 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 47 
 
 mery and magic ; soul-destroying, Christ-concealing 
 inventions ; a snare, a delusion, an offence to the 
 simple ; and the teachers of sacramental religion 
 are mediaeval formalists, deceived and being de- 
 ceived. Baptism, for example, is well enough as 
 a ceremony of initiation, or a sign of profession and 
 mark of difference ; nay, as such, and as performed 
 in a particular manner, it is the badge of a sect 
 numbering in these United States some three 
 millions of adherents ; but it cannot be an instru- 
 ment of regeneration, seeing that — as the ob- 
 jector states it — regeneration may take place be- 
 fore or after the reception of baptism, but cannot 
 by any possibility occur at the moment of the 
 administration ; while in the case of the Lord's k 
 Supper the only thing to be strenuously asserted 
 is that "this is not His Body," and that "this is 
 not His Blood." 
 
 An opposition so widespread and so inveterate 
 cannot be successfully dealt with as a mere preju- 
 dice, which in time may pass away ; it is the re- 
 sult of fundamental error on the subject of the 
 sacraments. In such cases nothing comes of play- 
 ing about the edges of the question ; we must go 
 to the root of the matter. The intense hostility 
 to sacramental doctrine which characterizes the 
 
48 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 '1/^ \\[. Protestant mind appears to be the result of long 
 
 ' ' , and persistent inculcation of the principles of 
 
 / philosophic idealism and exaggerated spiritualism, 
 by teachers misinformed on the origin, constitu- 
 tion, and destiny of man, and his relations to the 
 universe ; and until people are set right on 'tliose 
 points they cannot see, and ought not to be ex- 
 pected to see, what the doctrine of the Church 
 means and how vitally it touches us. Wherever the 
 constitution of man, his place in the material uni- 
 verse, and his future destiny, bodily and spiritually, 
 / , are not rightly understood ; wherever he is regarded 
 
 ?Ui ^/t^j<j-Y . as an intelligence temporarily served by a material 
 organism which is an encumbrance, and of which it 
 were advantageous to be rid forever ; wherever the 
 permanence of the body in spiritual and glorified 
 
 2- 
 
 conditions is denied ; where God is regarded as 
 
 t>^ 
 
 '<J-C<;«a.<A*- cutting Himself off from the universe and looking 
 
 on, indifTerent and isolated, while things grind along 
 
 machine-like, without oversight or interference on 
 
 His part ; where it is forgotten that God is still a 
 
 creator, and ever working as such within the world, 
 
 in operations personally directed by Himself ; 
 
 -li wherever mind is exalted above heart, and man is 
 
 V*^''^^;'^^'^ lauded as all but a deity, and regarded as sufficient 
 
 iPjI^v^<»^>»^-*^ to himself without the need of outside aid ; wher- 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 49 
 
 ever it is taught that purity in religion depends on 
 detaching one's self from the visible and palpable, SZ - 
 
 and trusting to inner light, intuitions, rational proc- "^^'^^-^^''^ 
 esses, and subjective impressions — there, of course, 
 man must reject the Catholic teaching on the sacra- 
 ments, for it flatly contradicts every one of those j\ 
 cherished ideas of the natural heart. It needs no ' ^ 
 other schooling than that received from this ideal 
 philosophy to lead a man to reject the visible and 
 institutional in religion ; to affect severe simplicity 
 in worship ; to make him suspicious of form, sym- 
 bolism, and whatever addresses the senses and the 
 imagination ; to look askance and with unfriendly 
 eye on liturgical order, exterior magnificence in 
 worship, the visible beauty of color, ceremonial, 
 sight, and sound, as belonging to a rudimental and 
 unspiritual religion, and deserving no consideration 
 from one who, as he boasts, has outgrown baby- 
 hood and come to the full stature of the intelligent 
 and rational man. That these and the like are the 
 serious convictions of the impugners of the teach- 
 ing of the Church on the sacraments of the Gospel 
 cannot be doubted, when we consider with what .x^., . ' ^ 
 supercilious confidence they conduct themselves /i''^U>,^ •- 
 towards us, and how high an estimate they set on! 
 
 their alleged emancipation from superstition. It is 
 4 
 
50 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 a race which worldly philosophy has engendered in 
 its womb, and nurtures at its cold, unsympathetic 
 breast. 
 
 What can be done for men thus wandering afar 
 from the things belonging to their peace, under the 
 control of prejudices such as have been described, 
 it is hard to say : but as the trouble lies at the 
 base of all their thoughts, it seemed necessary, in 
 treating of the sacraments of the Gospel, to begin 
 at the beginning. For that reason I spoke to you 
 of nature, as the handiwork of God ; of creation, as 
 originally very good ; of the place of man in nat- 
 ure, and his intimate relations to " the creature," 
 as St. Paul, in our version, calls it; of the develop- 
 ment and future of man and nature, on lines 
 trending in the same direction ; of the summing 
 up of all things in the Incarnate Word, who is 
 called '' the first-born of every creature T "^ And 
 having thus reminded you that *' all things are ours, 
 and that we are Christ's, and that Christ is God's," t 
 it was suggested as natural and reasonable to sup- 
 pose that indications of the relationship between 
 man and nature maybe traceable; that practical 
 purposes may be served, by the ministration of nat- 
 
 " Col. i. 15. \ I Cor. iii. 23. 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 51 
 
 ural elements to man in his supernatural life ; that 
 through objects sanctified to a higher use, strength 
 and grace may flow from Christ to men ; that simple, 
 natural elements may be transmuted for a strange 
 and mystical ministry to us both in body and soul; 
 that such transformation and exaltation of the creat- 
 ure carries in it the prophecy of even greater 
 things than these; that as man, complete in a re- 
 covered body and a ransomed soul, is destined to 
 live on in a higher state than this, so the whole 
 creation, guided by a divine instinct, is looking 
 out anxiously and hopefully for some benediction 
 and help as coincident with "the redemption of 
 our body," '^ that great event towards which all 
 moves and on which all converges. Godet, in his 
 '' Studies on the Old Testament," has well and elo- 
 quently traced a progress and development through 
 creation, which surely has not yet reached its final 
 mark. 
 
 "On the theatre of nature unconscious life has been exer- 
 cised, a slave to the senses. On the stage of history the 
 human soul has displayed the riches of life, self-conscious 
 and free. In the Church (understanding this word in its most 
 spiritual sense) there grew up, and has since developed itself, 
 
 * Rom. viii. 23. 
 
52 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 a new thing — the life of holy love, realized in Jesus Christ, 
 and by Him communicated to us. Finally, in that supreme 
 abode which we call heaven, this perfect life, divine in -its 
 essence, human in its form, will expand and radiate through 
 matter then glorified." * 
 
 Thus does the material world minister to rts 
 terrestrial head ; thus do material elements receive 
 a present glorification and change for transcenden- 
 tal use; thus does man draw along with him the 
 whole order in which he has his place, while ad- 
 \ vancing towards completed redemption ; and here 
 we find the meaning of a divine arrangement which 
 extends the Incarnation through the ages, and links 
 us to Christ, and, in Christ, to God. Such are the 
 more recondite aspects in which this teaching chal- 
 lenges our faith and cheers us in the darkness of 
 our present life. 
 
 But now, having completed the first part of our 
 work, we may proceed to study more closely that 
 which rises on this foundation. The bases are, 
 indeed, mysterious, obscure, and hidden from the 
 sight; but it is easy to study the superstructure, 
 and note the general arrangement of the edifice, 
 its adaptation to its purposes, and its perfect cor- 
 
 * " Studies on the Old Testament," p. 63. 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 53 
 
 respondence with the order of the visible world 
 and the plan according to which we and all things 
 about us live and move and act. The region thus 
 far traversed may be, and doubtless will be, re- 
 garded by many as a place of speculation and 
 dreamery. Studies such as these do not commend 
 themselves to every mind ; and if, in saying what 
 has been said, we had spoken our last word on the 
 subject, it would have been said to no purpose in 
 the ears of the children of this generation. But 
 there is much more to come. Catholic theology is 
 broad and deep ; it fails us not, wherever we need 
 its help. Profound though it be, it is no less prac- 
 tical. It has its commonplace side, on which it 
 meets the commonplace mind, and challenges the 
 attention of that class, who, disliking abstract 
 study, want to know precisely what a thing is 
 worth, and are not interested until it is presented 
 in a business shape, under conditions in which 
 they can set to with square, line, and scales, with 
 tables of figures and a schedule of prices, and 
 bring it down to a calculation and a commercial 
 result. Even so the Sacramental System may 
 challenge study and will reward it ; for we hold 
 that it is in no sense a theory, a speculation, or 
 an invention of romantic enthusiasts, but a very 
 
54 LENTEN LECTURES, 
 
 plain, simple, and practical thing, by the help of 
 which a man may live to the glory of God and the 
 good of his fellows, if he knows the obligations 
 which it imposes and fulfils the duties which it 
 enjoins. Let us then proceed to consider it under 
 some lower points of view. 
 
 To one brought up in the Anglican Church, the 
 first thing thought of when a sacrament is men- 
 tioned is this, that it is a Sign. 
 
 "What meanest thou by this word sacrament?" 
 
 " I mean an outward and visible sign of an inward and 
 
 spiritual grace." 
 
 " How many parts are there in a sacrament ? " 
 "Two; the outward visible sign, and the inward and 
 
 spiritual grace." 
 
 Here we strike a line on which the aptness of 
 these ordinances to the wants of man comes into 
 view. For the use of signs is so extensive that 
 there is no part of the visible creation with which 
 we are acquainted in which they are not employed ; 
 they are the familiar and necessary conditions to 
 individual intercourse and combination for social 
 action. The sign system is as high as heaven, as 
 far spread as to the ends of the earth ; all-pervad- 
 ing, and everywhere in use for the purposes of 
 personal and social life. 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 55 
 
 What is a sign ? Something which stands for 
 something else ; something or other, exterior, visi- 
 ble, palpable, audible, which signifies, and usually 
 or always conceals, something invisible, intangible, 
 interior. This is the meaning of the word, and if 
 sacraments are signs, then by a sacramental system 
 is meant a system of such signs. Now we assert, 
 and challenge a denial of the assertion, that such 
 a system surrounds and hems in the entire life of 
 man. Look on the universe of which we form a 
 part. We are on the old ground again, but now 
 we are studying the subject from a different point 
 of view ; not meditating of matters occult and 
 hidden in the secret working of the Almighty 
 Creator, but taking note of the common facts of 
 daily life ; it is not now the deep mystery of nature 
 which calls our attention, but the peculiar mode on 
 which it has been organized and in which things 
 present themselves for inspection. 
 
 I. God's works in nature constitute a series of 
 products of creative power, throughout which may 
 be discerned the two parts of the sacrament, a vis- 
 ible form and an invisible life. It is a universe of 
 signs and sacraments; nature, throughout, is sacra- 
 mental. The things about us, amidst which we 
 live, move, and have our being, are subject to ob- 
 
56 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 servation by the senses ; we can explore, investi- 
 gate, experiment, but full early a point is reached 
 at which further investigation would prove useless. 
 Elementary substances, limited and few in number, 
 take innumerable forms. But each of these forms 
 is a mere exterior wrapper ; each veils what we call 
 life, and what life is no man can tell. 
 
 " Life ! Who understands it ? Who has seen it ? It is 
 like the goddess Isis, ^vhose veil may never be lifted by mor- 
 tal hand. We take life as a fact ; we ascertain its beginning, 
 development, end, but we cannot explain it." 
 
 So writes a serious author. But is he right in 
 asserting that we ascertain its beginning? Not so, 
 except that it begins with God, and that God is 
 life eternal. We know very little about life. One 
 thing we know ; it is impossible to point to any sat- 
 isfactory experimental proof that life can be devel- 
 oped save from demonstrable antecedent life ; that 
 the conditions under which matter assumes the 
 properties we call vital have never yet been artifi- 
 cially brought together." It is a settled conviction 
 that life in its essence is something beyond any 
 
 * "Winds of Doctrine: being an examination of the modern 
 theories of Automatism and Evolution." By Charles Elani, M.D., 
 pp. 78, 79. 94> loy. 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 57 
 
 combination of physical forces ; in short, that Hfe 
 has no physical correlate. In vain have philos- 
 ophers of a certain school endeavored to establish 
 the proposition that the earliest organisms were the 
 natural product of the interactions of ordinary in- 
 organic matter and force. Neither observation, 
 experiment, nor reason gives any testimony in favor 
 of such a view ; on the contrary, the conclusion is 
 an irresistible one, that life is in all cases due either 
 to antecedent life or to a power and force from 
 without that is not identical nor correlated with 
 the ordinary physical forces. 
 
 " Supposing," says Canon Mason, "that the whole fabric of 
 inorganic matter, with its wonders of light and heat and elec- 
 tricity, with its planetary systems, with the beauties of water, 
 air, and earth, were the result of an accidental play of atoms, 
 yet life, so far as we can see, cannot be accounted for in the 
 same way. It is as nearly certain as anything can be that 
 the conditions of matter were at one time such — the solar 
 system consisting of matter at a white heat — that no kind of 
 organic life such as we are acquainted with was possible in 
 it. Organic life, then, has had a beginning in the world even 
 if matter and force have not. How did it begin ? Experi- 
 mental evidence cannot establish a negative, but the re- 
 searches of men unprejudiced and competent confirm us in 
 supposing that there is no such thing as spontaneous genera- 
 tion. Science knows of no life which had not a living parent, 
 
58 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 and science teaches that once there were no living parents on 
 earth to produce a life. Yet here life is. The chasm be- 
 tween the noblest form of inorganic being and the lowest 
 form of organic — a crystal, for instance, and a cell of proto- 
 plasm — is so great that no connecting link can be found. So 
 far as we see, no evolution works gradually up to life. It is a 
 sudden, startling phenomenon, which uses matter and force 
 for its own purposes, but which is not derived from them. 
 Whence was the first life introduced into a world which had 
 once been incapable of harboring it, and which seems forever 
 incapable of producing it ? " * 
 
 Beneath the form, then, is an inner, unseen prin- 
 ciple which evades search and defies comprehen- 
 sion. It comes downward into these forms ; it is 
 never spontaneously generated ; that only which 
 has life can give life. What it is, no one can tell 
 us. The outspread heavens, the myriad orbs of 
 night, the solar system, earth, dry land, seas, valley 
 and hill, the mineral, floral, and animal kingdoms 
 all keep the secret close. What and whence is life? 
 Matter has form, shape, and extension ; it is sub- 
 ject to quantitative and qualitative analysis, but it 
 is " informed," indwelt, by something else invisi- 
 ble, immaterial, inexplicable, which no one can de- 
 scribe or explain. What is life ? No one knows. 
 
 * " Faith of the Gospel," pp. 8, 9. 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 59 
 
 Whence is life? Let us hear the conclusion of a 
 great student of nature. Charles Darwin says: '* I 
 infer from analogy that probably all the organic 
 beings which have ever lived on this earth have 
 descended from some one form into which life was 
 first breathed by the Creator." If that inference as 
 to the origin of life be just, w^e have all that we 
 need for the point in hand. Creation is one vast 
 Sacramental System ; an endless and overwhelming 
 variety of outward and visible forms or signs, quick- 
 ened by an invisible and incomprehensible vital 
 force. Life is in everything ; in everything it is 
 concealed ; it comes not from any natural source ; 
 it is a gift of the Creator who alone hath life in 
 Himself. What we hold to be true of the sacra- 
 ments of the Gospel is, in fact, no more than what 
 we trace everywhere throughout creation; and to 
 object to our claim and declaration that, although 
 visible and material in form, they contain and con- 
 vey an inward and spiritual grace and power, is as 
 unreasonable as to deny what we certainly know to 
 be true of everything about us which hath the 
 breath of life ; of the creatures which have a mate- 
 rial organism, and within it a quickening principle 
 originally derived from some region outside the 
 bounds of the natural universe. 
 
6o LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 II. A striking illustration of this universal 
 arrangement of God's universe is seen in man. 
 He is, emphatically, a sacrament, and a sacrament 
 of a very wonderful order. He has a material 
 body, an animal soul, an immaterial and immortal 
 spirit.* His body is the sign ; made of the same 
 elements which, otherwise combined, form the 
 brute, the plant, the rock ; within this frame is a 
 principle of animal life, which gives him his place 
 with the other orders of created beings ; there also 
 reside the principle of intelligence, which lifts him 
 to a higher plane, and the spark of divine fire 
 which carries him almost up to the place of the 
 angels, and makes him an heir of immortal life. 
 What then is this creature but a sacrament? 
 What is his existence but a sacramental existence? 
 Eye, tongue, hand, look, speech, are agents apt to 
 reveal what is going on within. Who has ever seen 
 a man ? W^hat we come in contact with is an out- 
 ward and visible sign ; eye answers to eye, hand 
 clasps hand, voices ask and answer questions : but 
 where or what is the real, the invisible, being, who 
 thinks and speaks and is and lives? 
 
 III. In a universe sacramental throughout stands 
 
 * I Thess. V. 23. 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 6 1 
 
 man, himself, also, a sacrament. He lives, more- 
 over, a sacramental life; his existence is prolonged 
 and continued in a manner suited to his state. 
 The elements supply what is necessary to that 
 visible frame which contains the immaterial soul 
 and the immortal spirit ; he cannot do without 
 their help. His daily food is a sacrament ; it is not 
 meat and drink, in their accidents, which support 
 our life, but some principle, which, disengaged by 
 the digestive process, goes to make up the waste of 
 muscular tissue and nerve force, maintains the vital 
 heat, insures the circulation of the blood, and, for a 
 time, wards off death. Even the daily meal is, in 
 its lower way, sacramental ; man doth not live by 
 bread alone ; but God, through the use of the 
 bread, keeps man alive and well. And so of all 
 the actions of men ; the same principle holds 
 good, whatever we think or do or say. Speech is 
 a sacrament of thought ; an audible sign to the 
 hearer, conveying what is in the mind. The eye 
 has power to express or interpret hope, fear, pas- 
 sion, love. Books and letters are sacraments ; the 
 alphabet is a sign, conveying meaning to the 
 reader; business transactions would be impossible 
 without commercial and negotiable paper ; fleets 
 and armies move on signals from the chief. Man 
 
62 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 thus leads a sacramental life. It is thus with him 
 also on the religious side ; signs and forms are 
 needed there, as everywhere else ; he cannot state 
 his faith without words, terms, and phrases proper 
 to that use; by visible acts he holds communion 
 with the powers above him ; prayer and praise, the 
 attitude of supplication, the sign of the cross, are 
 appropriate to his condition ; his soul is fed through 
 agencies adapted to his state. To say that these 
 things are unnecessary and out of place; that the 
 use of signs and sacraments, elsewhere universal, 
 must cease when it comes to our religious life, is to 
 contradict common experience, and to make con- 
 fusion where everything else is plain and clear. 
 
 IV. For it is not only a flat denial of the faith of 
 the Church, but also a contradiction of our common 
 sense to tell us that we, on our Godward side, are 
 left, and ought to be left, without sign, symbol, visi- 
 ble agency, or sensible means of communication with 
 God and access to Him. God is a spirit, without 
 body, parts, or passions. But it is not thus that man 
 knows Him, nor could He ever have been known 
 to us as we need to know Him, had He remained 
 apart from us in that eternal and incomprehensible 
 state. The highest illustration of the Sacramental 
 System is presented in the story of redemption. 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 63 
 
 God, to save man, descends from heaven ; He 
 humbles Himself to our plane ; He adapts Himself 
 to that constitution which He has given us; He 
 also is become as one of us, and wills to lead the 
 sacramental life. Man is immortal ; in knowledge 
 of God standeth that immortality; that knowledge 
 is brought to him through the material and the 
 visible. Some knowledge of God may be had by 
 study of nature, which is a visible sign, a system of 
 signs, disclosing the eternal power and godhead. 
 But to the end that the knowledge might be clear 
 and full, a more intelligible revelation was em- 
 ployed. That revelation came on the same lines 
 on which other knowledge comes ; in a mode 
 according with the analogies of the universe, our 
 own constitution, and our relations toward every- 
 thing that surrounds us. A sacrament is, first of 
 all, a visible sign. Did God need such signs to 
 make Himself known to man ? Why need he use 
 them ? He is a spirit,^ and " there is a spirit in 
 man." f Might He not — to please the idealists 
 and transcendentalists — have limited Himself to 
 spiritual communications, made directly, without 
 sign or medium of any sort, and so disclosed to us 
 
 * St, John, iv, 24. f Job, xxxii. 8. 
 
64 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 whatever He pleased ? It is not a question what 
 the Almighty could or could not have done, but of 
 what He did.* He has not communicated with us 
 in that abstract way. To have done so would have 
 been a violation of the order of the universe, an in- 
 explicable and embarrassing anomaly. He used the 
 sign method and the sign language. He became 
 a Sign and a Sacrament Himself. '* The Word 
 was made flesh, and dwelt among us." "" " God 
 sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." f 
 " God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made 
 under the law." % He came in such wise that men 
 could see Him with the bodily eye, and touch and 
 handle Him. "That which was from the begin- 
 ning," saith St. John, " we have heard, we have 
 seen with our eyes, we have looked upon, and our 
 hands have handled." § In the mystery of His 
 holy Incarnation God set His seal, once more and 
 finally, to the sacramental principle, and gave it 
 universal application and everlasting permanence. 
 God in Christ was and is the sacrament of sacra- 
 ments. In Him are the outward and visible sign 
 and the inward part or thing signified. The sign is 
 a humanity, constituted complete in body, flesh, 
 
 * St. John. i. 14. f Rom. viii. 3. 
 
 X Gal. iv. 4. § I St. John, i. i. 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 65 
 
 bones, spirit, and soul, like ours. The inward part 
 or thing signified is the divine nature, united to 
 the human in the person of the Son of God. Here 
 are the sacraiiieiituin and the res. And the inward 
 and spiritual grace is that power which, through 
 the Holy Ghost, flows out by many a visible sign 
 and sacrament, from Him to us. Virtue goes forth 
 now, as it did wdien the blind saw at His touch, 
 and the lame walked, and the lepers were cleansed 
 at His spoken word. He, as "the image of the in- 
 visible God," the first-born of the whole creation,"" 
 is the most perfect instance of a sacrament that the 
 imagination can conceive ; and in condescending 
 to take that position in His universe He tells us, 
 distinctly, the truth, that the principle is a univer- 
 sal one, and runs up and down and everywhere, 
 throughout the entire compass of the world, f 
 
 The argument from analogy and experience, to 
 which your attention has now been called, may be 
 supplemented by another, from correspondence and 
 congruity. Man, as we know, has a dual nature ; it 
 is therefore meet and fitting that the means of his 
 enlightenment and elevation should be adapted to 
 
 * Col. i. 15. 
 
 \ See *' Pearson on the Creed," Art. II., cited by Bishop Words- 
 worth on Col. i. 15. 
 5 
 
^ LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 his twofold condition. There is a singular pro- 
 priety and fitness in the Sacramental System, when 
 we consider to whom it is applied; indeed, it is not 
 readily conceivable how man, being in the body, 
 could have been reached excepting through the 
 body ; nor would a religion which declined to take 
 note of the body and made no provision for its 
 demands deserve consideration, as a religion fit for 
 us in our present state. I shall not dwell on this 
 view of the subject. Some have trusted to it, as 
 the strongest thing that could be said for our case. 
 In fact, it is the least important in the order of 
 arguments. It has its place, but that place is not 
 the first, but the last. And the same remark may 
 be made of certain philological considerations, ap- 
 parently used in recommendation of the system, 
 but really tending to restrict it. True it is that sac- 
 raments are signs, not only to the worthy receiver, 
 but also to the outside world ; as true that they 
 have their use as seals and pledges ; but these mat- 
 ters, compared with others, are of secondary impor- 
 tance. Such conceptions of the use and value of 
 sacraments are derived from the old classical mean- 
 ing of the word. The " sacrauieiituin " was, as you 
 know, the soldier's oath of allegiance and loyalty; 
 a formula of great importance in the military ser- 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 6/ 
 
 vice, announcing the intention and resolve to be 
 true to the standard and obedient to command, and 
 LJ do, in general, a soldier's duty. Such use is also 
 in sacraments, regarded simply from the human 
 side. In their administration and reception we 
 note the ideas of promise, pledge, and vow, made 
 by or for us, confirmed and ratified, and periodically 
 reaffirmed. In them we find also, considering the 
 publicity of their administration, a value as signs to 
 bystanders, intimating purpose, announcing inten- 
 tion, inviting sympathy, and suggesting imitation. 
 But these uses of sacraments are the lowest and 
 last of all ; important in their own place, they yield 
 the precedence to higher considerations of the 
 wonder-working power of God, we think first ; later, 
 of the dispositions and concurrence of man. 
 
 The first division of my work is completed. 
 Going back to the origin of things, we have sought 
 a foundation for the Sacramental System in the 
 eternal counsels and plans of the Almighty, in the 
 relation of the creature to the Creator, through 
 the foreseen Incarnation of the eternal Son of 
 God. We have found the system to be in accord 
 with the constitution of the visible universe, and the 
 nature of mankind ; we have discovered its most 
 beautiful illustration in the union of the lower and 
 
68 
 
 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 the higher natures in Jesus Christ. It is in com- 
 plete accord with us, in our present state ; it is 
 necessarily and inevitably in accord with us ; so 
 that a religion which was not sacramental could 
 not have met the wants of mankind. We find it, 
 moreover, to be of practical value, in identifying 
 our place among our fellow-beings, as confessors of 
 one holy faith, and in stamping us with a peculiar 
 impress, known and read of all men. We realize 
 the fact that it establishes and maintains a connec- 
 tion between us and the supernatural order; as 
 giving us grace, and assuring us that it has been 
 conferred; as moving us, under a sense of awful 
 obligation, to the consecration of heart, mind, and 
 will to the service of God. It exercises a strong 
 influence so long as conscience lives and acts, con- 
 straining us to the punctual discharge of assumed 
 obligations, and maintaining that sense of depend- 
 ence on the higher powers which is the character- 
 istic of tlie Catholic mind. The whole field of 
 human need and hutnan experience seems to be 
 covered, where the system holds sway. The be- 
 liever, in his reverent acceptance of sacramental 
 gifts from God, is, though he never may have real- 
 ized it, in touch with powers and forces which 
 broaden outward and upward, till the universe is 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 69 
 
 swept by them ; and this fleeting hour, with its 
 issues of life and death to the souls of men, is, in 
 sequence, one with the beginning wherein all things 
 were made. No doubt there are forces at work 
 among us with which we are not yet acquainted. 
 It has been surmised, by some reverent, though 
 perhaps enthusiastic souls, that the time may come 
 when we shall discover a particular force, long 
 active in the world, which has been applied to the 
 bodies and souls of the redeemed in Christ, through 
 the sacraments of the Church, precisely as other 
 forces, well known to us to-day, are working in the 
 physical order. 
 
 Such is the Sacramental System, in the broadest 
 light under which it can be presented to the mind. 
 It were vain to hope, at this day, for a general ac- 
 ceptance of the facts concerning this grace of God ; 
 '* the natural man receiveth not the things of the 
 Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him : 
 neither can he know them, because they are spirit- 
 ually discerned." ^ The name of sacraments may 
 be retained, and their use may continue, where the 
 life has gone out of them ; and the life does so go 
 out, as soon as the outward and inward are divided, 
 
 * I Cor. ii. 14. 
 
"JO LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 for then the outward remains a dead and lifeless 
 sign, while the inward evaporates into a volatile 
 vapor of sentiment. The principle of rationalism, 
 applied to these mystical and beneficent rites, 
 leaves them to us as mere memorials, emblems of 
 absent things, or occasions on which we are to per- 
 form something for our own advantage, instead of 
 receiving the " unspeakable gift " of God. In the 
 narrowness of sectarian religious temper and the 
 poverty and timidity of modern thought, men have 
 lost hold of what they ought to have held fast 
 forever. Some reject the sacraments altogether ; 
 some retain them under a protest that they mean 
 nothing and confer nothing; in submitting to bap- 
 tism or receiving the Lord's Supper they have no 
 thought beyond doing something for their neigh- 
 bors to look at, or signifying the vitality of what 
 they style their faith, or announcing their per- 
 sonal religious convictions, or stirring up a tender 
 recollection. The supernatural element dies out of 
 these degraded rites; "ordinances" only are left, 
 which neither convey grace nor link man and God 
 together; which are commended solely on grounds 
 of convenience or expediency ; which serve a utili- 
 tarian purpose as badges of respectability, but in 
 themselves are nothing. It is a striking feature of 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 71 
 
 the times in which we Hve, that the broadest and 
 deepest views in theology are popularly considered 
 to be narrow, while the narrowest are denominated 
 broad. So, in the days of Isaiah, men called evil 
 good and good evil ; they put darkness for light 
 and light for darkness, bitter for sweet and sweet 
 for bitter."^ The men who hold the most advanced 
 sacramental doctrine are reviled as narrow and ex- 
 clusive. It does not occur to any to ask what these 
 so-called narrow men believe, how far the applica- 
 tion of their faith extends, or how exceedingly nar- 
 row in contrast are the ideas of their opponents. 
 For, really, the man who denies the Sacramental 
 System, who says of baptism that it is a mere out- 
 ward washing, or a rite of initiation, and confers 
 no inward and spiritual grace, and that the Lord's 
 Supper, if it were intended to continue in use, is, 
 after all, no more than a memorial meal, and has no 
 power but that of affecting our feelings and deep- 
 ening our sympathies with Him who so ate before 
 He died ; this man is not really broad at all, but 
 the narrowest of the narrow, though he should call 
 all the world to come and sit down to meat with 
 him, and accept everybody to his fellowship without 
 
 * Isa. V. 20. 
 
72 LEX TEX LEC'/TRES. 
 
 regard to initiatory lavation or particular statement 
 of faith. On the other hand, that man who intel- 
 Hgently holds the belief of the Church and the 
 fathers on these great themes is the real broad 
 churchman, though he maintain, as he ought to, 
 that mysteries so sacred as these should not be 
 open to any rash foot, but must be defended from 
 profanation and reserved for those who have the 
 signed and certified pass and order to admit them 
 to the presence of the King. 
 
 A few words in conclusion of this brancli of my 
 subject. The destruction of the Sacramental Sys- 
 tem, as a wonder-working power of the world to 
 come, is at once effected by separating the sign 
 from the thing signified and leaving a bare sign and 
 nothing more. Happily we, as a Church, are pro- 
 tected from that error by the clearest declarations 
 in our standards. 
 
 " Sacraments ordained of Christ," says Article XXV., "be 
 not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but 
 rather they be certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of 
 grace and God's good will towards us, by the which He 
 doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken but 
 strengthen and confirm our faith in Him." 
 
 And so of Holy Baptism, it is declared in Article 
 XXVII. to be 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 73 
 
 *' not only a sign of profession and marl< of difference, 
 whereby Ciiristian men are discerned from others that be not 
 christened, but it is also a sign of regeneration or new birth, 
 whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive baptism 
 rightly are grafted into the Church " 
 
 And elsewhere we read : 
 
 "Thus much we must be sure to hold, that in the Supper of 
 the Lord tliere is no vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue 
 figure of a thing absent, Bu^, as the Scripture saith, t/ie 
 table of the Lord, the bread and cup of the Lord, the viem- 
 ory of Christ, the annunciation of His death, yea, the com- 
 immion of the Body and Blood of the Lord, in a marvellous 
 incorporation, luJiich by the operatioji of the Holy Ghost 
 [the very bond of our co7ijunctio7i with Christ) is through 
 faith wrought in the souls of the faithful, whereby 7iot only 
 their souls live to eternal life, but they surely trust to win 
 to their bodies a resurrection to immortality." "^ 
 
 The Zwinglian theory, that sacraments are noth- 
 ing but memorials of Christ, and badges of a Chris- 
 tian profession, is that one which can by no possi- 
 ble jugglery with the English tongue be reconciled 
 with the formularies of our Church ; the principle 
 is contradicted by the entire cast of our sacra- 
 mental offices, and by every word in them which 
 can convey an idea of their meaning. It is well for 
 
 * "An Homily of the Worthy Receiving and Reverent Esteeming 
 of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ." Part I. 
 
^/ 
 
 74 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 US that this Is the case; for the Zvvinglian theory 
 is simply rationaUsm in a religious dress ; and it 
 should be held as a matter of obligation and a point 
 of honor to maintain that we, as a Church, have 
 neither art nor part therein. Nor need it cause 
 anxiety, however painful the discovery, to find men 
 among us infected with the views of the Swiss re- 
 former, and even carried so far by admiration for 
 him as to make their compliments to him as '* the 
 clear-headed and intrepid Zwingle." After all, such 
 persons deceive no one but themselves; not only 
 within the Church, but outside it also, her position 
 is understood ; and I take occasion to acknowledge 
 our obligation to a learned and eminent Presby- 
 terian divine, lately deceased, the Rev. Henry_./1. O. 
 Van Dyke, for the good service rendered us in his / 
 free dissection of a much-admired dignitary of the 
 Anglican Church, Dean Stanley, whose views about 
 the Holy Communion he describes as " the ripest 
 and bitterest fruit of rationalizing about the Lord's 
 Supper." ''^ It is perfectly true, as Dr. Van Dyke 
 
 * " The Church ; her Ministry and Sacraments." The Stone 
 
 Lectures at Princeton, 1890, by Henry ^. Van Dyke. D.D., Pastor of 
 
 i the Second Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn (A. D. F. Randolph, 
 
 New York), pp. 175, 176. The whole passage here referred to will 
 
 be found in the Appended Notes, No. II. 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM APPLIED. 75 
 
 goes on to say, that the sign theory of the sacra- 
 ments is " the symbol of rationahsm in its bald and 
 naked shape." That theory, however strongly it 
 may commend itself to individuals here and there, 
 is foreign to the standards of the Church. It flour- 
 ishes as faith in the supernatural grows weak ; it 
 dies when that faith revives. The voice of Catholic 
 Christendom, as duly and clearly heard in our 
 Offices and Articles, reproves and rebukes it ; and 
 of late, our hold on the higher truth and the deeper 
 mysteries has strengthened, under observation of 
 the result of giving away the treasure committed 
 to our keeping. The words of Bishop Harold 
 Browne may be adopted as expressive of the judg- 
 ment and belief of the Church from which we have 
 our Orders, that "■ the sacraments of the Gospel not 
 only promise Christ, but to those who receive them 
 in faith they are means whereby God gives Christ 
 to the soul." "^ 
 
 * " Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles," Vol. II. p. 382. 
 
III. 
 
 THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 
 
 It may be said, by way of general remark upon 
 the Sacramental System, that, with a widening 
 appreciation of the nature of that system and its 
 application to us in our life, there will come a dis- / 
 inclination to restrict the number of these means i 
 of grace. On that point differences are found 
 throughout the Church. The Latins fix the num- 
 ber of the sacraments to seven ; the Eastern 
 churches follow them in that particular. The num- 
 ber was not defined in the Confession of Augs- 
 burg, but it enumerates three as " having the com- 
 mand of God and the promise of the grace of the 
 New Testament." Luther admitted three — Bap- 
 tism, the Lord's Supper, Penitence. Cranmer, in 
 his Catechism, says : 
 
 "Our Lorcle Jesus Christ hath instituted and annexed to the 
 gospel thre sacraments or holy scales, of his covenant and 
 lege made with us. And by these thre, God's ministers do 
 worke with us in the name and place of God (yea, God him- 
 selfe worketh with us) to confirme us in our faith, and to 
 asserten us that we are the lyvely membres of God's trew 
 
80 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 churche and the chosen people of God, to whome the gospell 
 is sent, and that all those things belong to us wherof the 
 promises of the gospel make mention. The first of these 
 sacramentes is baptisme, by the which we be borne again to 
 a new and heavenly lyfe, and be receaued into God's churche 
 and congregation which is the foundation and piller of the 
 treuth. The seconde is absolution or the authoritie of the 
 Kayes, whereby we be absolued from such synnes as we be 
 fallen into after our baptisme. The thirde sacramente is the 
 communion or the Lordes Supper, by the whiche we be fedde 
 and nourished and fortified in the faith of the ghospell and 
 knowlege of Christ, that by this fode we maye growe more 
 and more in newnes of lyfe, so that we maye be no longer 
 children, but maye waxe perfecte men, and ful growen in 
 Christ." 
 
 The mind of the AngHcan Church on this point 
 is to be gathered from Article XXV., the Cate- 
 chism, and the Book of Homihes. In a guarded 
 manner, and with some explanatory comment, she 
 limits the number of the sacraments to two. She 
 does not say that there are two sacraments and 
 ^'^3 fi'O more ; but that there are two only which are, 
 to mankind in general, necessary to salvation. 
 
 Precise statements such as these, with limitation 
 of the number of God's sacraments, are obviously 
 the result of constraining causes ; and chiefly due to 
 the tendency to systematize in theology, and to a 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 8l 
 
 reaction against false or exaggerated teaching. As 
 the Church was compelled, by the inroads of heresy, 
 to mark with greater exactness of definition the 
 lines of the Christian faith, so in the matter of the 
 sacraments she has been forced by circumstances to 
 make artificial limitations, and to narrow the field 
 of view. What breadth, what grandeur, in the first 
 conception of the Sacramental System ! Christ a 
 sacrament ; man a sacrament, leading, in body and 
 soul, a sacramental life ; the earth, in its several 
 kingdoms, and the vast outlying universe, all hav- 
 ing their sacramental cast and character; religion 
 sacramental throughout ; sacraments everywhere, 1)1 
 and hardly anything which is not sacramental ! li 
 Thus do the old fathers and doctors of the Church 
 appear to have regarded the subject, in the fresh- 
 ness and enthusiasm of early days, ere yet exigen- 
 cies had arisen which called for definitions and 
 restrictions. Anything in or under which divine 
 power was veiled, was, in their eyes, a sacrament ; 
 even the implements used in working great won- 
 ders were styled by that name. Speaking of this 
 wide application of the term, Jeremy Taylor says : 
 
 " When God appointed the bow in the clouds to be a sacra- 
 ment and the memorial of a promise, he made it our comfort, 
 but his own sign : ' I will remember my covenant between 
 
82 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 me and the earth, and the waters shall no more be a flood 
 to destroy all flesh.' When Elisha threw the wood into the 
 waters of Jordan — 'sacramentum ligni, the sacrament of 
 the wood,' Tertullian calls it — that chip made the iron swim, 
 not by any natural or infused power, but that was the sac- 
 rament or sign at which the divine power then passed on to 
 effect an emanation. When Elisha talked with the King of 
 Israel about the war with Syria, he commanded him to smite 
 upon the ground, and he smote thrice and stayed. Tliis was 
 •sacramentum victorije,' the sacrament of his future victory. 
 The sacraments are God's signs, the opportunities of grace 
 and action." * 
 
 To return to a consideration of the mind of our 
 Church as to the number of the sacraments. On 
 that point her teaching is wise and clear. Making 
 it a condition that a sacrament, to take the highest 
 grade, should have been " ordained by Christ Him- 
 self," she finds two only of that class, Baptism and 
 the Supper of the Lord.-f- These tower preemi- 
 nently above all other rites to which the name of 
 sacrament has been or may be applied ; these, and 
 these only, were instituted by our blessed Lord 
 Himself with reference to the wants of mankind in 
 general, without distinction of sex, race, circum- 
 
 * " Worthy Communicant," ch. i. sect. iii. 
 
 f See "Bishop Forbes on the Thirty-nine Articles," Vol. II. p. 
 445. 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS, 83 
 
 stance, or vocation. But she does not deny that in 
 
 addition to these there are sacraments of an inferior 
 
 grade. The sacrament of Matrimony is mentioned AOstii^x^^ 
 
 by that name in one of the Homihes, as ''that 
 
 which knitteth man and wife in perpetual love;" 
 
 while of Absolution and others it is acknowledged Qx^i^^CmXJ^ 
 
 that they are also sacraments, in some sense. 
 
 " Absolution is no such sacrament as Baptism and the 
 Communion are ... it lacks the promise of remission of 
 sin, as all other sacraments besides the two above-named do 
 they are not sacraments, in the same signification 
 that the two forenamed sacraments are." " Although there 
 are retained, by the order of the Church of England, besides 
 these two, certain other rites and ceremonies about the insti- 
 tution of ministers in the Church, matrimony, confirmation 
 of children, and the visitation of the sick, yet no_man ought 
 to take these for sacraments, in such signification and mean- 
 ing as the sacrament of Baptism and the Lord's Supper are." 
 
 This language clearly indicates the position of 
 the Anglican communion on the subject. There are 
 two great sacraments of the Gospel, ordained by 
 the Lord Himself, and generally necessary to salva- 
 tion. But, in a general acceptation, the name of / 
 a sacrament maybe attributed to aj2}^hing where- /K^^ ^a^^^^ 
 by an holy thing is signjfied ; and thereTore it is J 
 
 correctly applied to those other rites " commonly 
 
84 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 called sacraments, so far as they are ministered in 
 true Gospel wise, and do not imply a corrupt 
 following of the apostles." "They have not like 
 nature of sacraments with Baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper," says the Article ; but that they have no 
 sacramental nature or character whatever is not 
 affirmed in our standards. In fact, there is good 
 reason for insisting on the sacramental character 
 and quality of the ordinances now referred to, and 
 their affinity to the great "sacraments of the Gos- 
 pel ; " for they aid to keep before us, with reference 
 to some of the most important actions of life, and 
 particularly with reference to the sacred ministry, 
 the alliance between the natural and supernatural, 
 and to stamp a special seal of holiness and religious 
 obligation on our relations to the Church and to 
 each other. To deny the sacramental quality in 
 these ordinances is to do what can be done to take 
 |God out of them, and relegate them to the line of 
 ecular transactions ; to affirm that quality in them 
 is to declare our adhesion to a Supernatural Re- 
 ligion. 
 
 Take Confirmation, for instance. It cannot be 
 considered as barred out by the language of Article 
 XXV, It is retained among us on the very ground 
 that it is " a following of the apostles ; " surely not 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 85 
 
 a " corrupt " one. Deny to it the sacramental 
 character, and what is left ? A ceremony in which 
 the person confirmed is the principal, if not the 
 only personal, actor. He comes to confirmation 
 merely in order to assume obligations previously 
 incurred by others in his name ; it is now his busi- 
 ness to justify the act of his friends and relieve 
 them of a responsibility ; he comes forward under 
 a sense of duty to take his place in the Church and 
 make his oath as a soldier of Christ. This is all 
 true as far as it goes, but to stop with this is to 
 keep on our side of the line and decline to cross it 
 and get on God's side. There is no mystery in 
 such steps as these ; no trace of supernatural work- 
 ings ; the action, so far, is simply that of the man 
 admitting a duty and discharging an obligation. A 
 rite so commonplace as this would afford nothing 
 for theological analysis, and the failure to perceive 
 the sacramental quality in Confirmation is the nec- 
 essary consequence of exclusive attention to the 
 part performed by the candidate. A higher field is 
 entered the instant we turn our eyes above. God 
 the Holy Ghost : the moment He appears, the 
 scene and the conception change, and we feel the 
 throbbing of the sacramental force^ It is He that 
 confirms; by Him the sevenfold gifts are exhibited 
 
86 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 and imparted ; from Him a special benediction and 
 power descend upon the young soldier of Christ. 
 And these constitute a gracious gift conferred by 
 instrumental means, and in the act of the laying-on 
 of hands by the chief pastor of the Church ; so that 
 from the sphere above, whence at first came spirit- 
 ual life, we receive a renewal of the vital gift at a 
 special point of danger. Where these things are 
 felt and realized — and we believe that they are 
 widely felt and realized among us, and more and 
 more appreciated every day — the sacramental char- 
 acter of the ordinance can hardly be denied. Here, 
 surely, is an outward and visible sign, most tender 
 and impressive, in the imposition of pastoral hands 
 on the head of tJie child ; here also is an inward 
 and spiritual grace, in the gifts of the Holy Ghost ; 
 and though we miss the special mark in the institu- 
 tion of this rite by Christ Himself, yet it comes 
 so near it that it could hardly be nearer. This is 
 no " corrupt following of the apostles," but a true 
 and sincere following of them, '* after whose ex- 
 ample " the thing is done ; and whatever the holy 
 apostles did we must believe to have been done, if 
 not on the verbal suggestion of the Master, at least 
 under the guidance of the Holy Spirit sent to them 
 from the Father. We do not hesitate to call Con- 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 8/ 
 
 firmation a minor sacrament, a sacrament of a lower 
 class ; not such as the higher two, but precious as a 
 means of grace, apt to that perilous age when, as 
 the world exhibits its first strong allurements, the 
 child of the Church is strengthened with might by 
 the Spirit in the inner man, confirmed in all holy 
 desires and fortified with weapons by which to 
 withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, 
 and the devil. Finally, the significance of this rite 
 is shown in the fact that it is the door of entrance 
 to the altar; "there shall none be admitted to the 
 Holy Communion until such time as he be con- 
 firmed, or be ready and desirous to be confirmed."* 
 
 So with Holy Matrimony. In the case of that 1/^', 
 sacred rite we are happily able to point to the 
 authorized use of the title ; it is spoken of as '' a 
 sacrament which knitteth man and wife in perpetual 
 love." f Holy Matrimony is " an honorable estate, 
 instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, 
 signifying unto us the mystical union between 
 Christ and His Church, which holy estate Christ 
 adorned and beautified with His presence and first 
 miracle that He wrought in Cana of Galilee." 
 How appropriately, how rightly, is it called among 
 
 * Rubric at the end of the Order of Confirmation, 
 f Book of Homilies. 
 
88 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 US, ** the Sacrament of Matrimony" ! What can be 
 gained by denying its sacramental character? How 
 great is our advantage in being able to face the 
 horrible spectre of divorce with a strong affirmation, 
 supported by our formularies, that in Holy Matri- 
 inony, when rightly solemnized in the Church, God 
 gives the man and the woman divine' and supernat- 
 ural grace sufficient to enable them to be faithful 
 till parted by death ! Marriage, divested of its sac- 
 ramental character, becomes substantially a secular 
 ordinance ; there is no sacred mystery about it, and 
 no grace; it might be regarded as but a business 
 partnership, dissoluble by the contractors whenever 
 they think it desirable to separate and form new 
 alliances ; an affair wholly within the purview of 
 the civil magistrate, and to which the offices of the 
 Church confer merely a religious and edifying flavor. 
 The act of joining a man and woman together as 
 husband and wife is essentially a civil ceremony; 
 no special form is necessary ; the union is a social 
 compact . perpetual obligations are not incurred ; 
 for any one of a dozen causes the contract may 
 be broken and the union dissolved. These are the 
 results of the application of rationalistic principles 
 to that relation on which depends the purity of 
 society and tlie permanence of the state ; and from 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 89 
 
 such bald rationalism, under whose influence the 
 cancer of divorce eats ever more deeply into our 
 social system, we appeal to the principles of the 
 Church and the sanctions of a sacramental religion. 
 Holy Matrimony is the marriage in the Church ; 
 that adjective is the characteristic note of sacra- 
 mentals. It is a mystery, a sacred thing, the intro- 
 duction into '* a holy estate." It symbolizes the 
 union of the Incarnate Son of God with the Church 
 which is His Body. It makes a man and a woman 
 one flesh by a bond which cannot be broken so long 
 as they live. For the permanence of the union they 
 are not to rely solely on natural powers ; so unstable, 
 so frail, so careless of duty and obligation, are the 
 fallen beings whom God hath joined together, that 
 supernatural grace is needed to enable them to 
 live and love, in truth and loyalty to each other, 
 till death. The trials and temptations which in- 
 evitably come upon the married are many and 
 great ; domestic peace is often endangered, and the 
 union imperilled; wherefore this relation must be 
 entered into ''soberly, advisedly, discreetly, rever- 
 ently and in the fear of God." And to those who 
 thus enterprise it, there comes a special gift from 
 above, enabling them " surely to perform and keep 
 the vow and covenant betwixt them made." There 
 
90 LENTKN LECTURES. 
 
 is nothing secular and civil in these ideas; they are 
 sacramental throughout ; in this holy office there 
 are prayers and benedictions, outward and visible 
 signs and forms, the giving and receiving a ring, 
 the joining hands, the words in betrothal, the 
 solemn vow and plight of troth. Who shall say, in 
 view of the statistics of marriage and divorce 
 among us, that one word can be spared, that one 
 expression is unnecessary, which helps to realize 
 the sanctity, the divine character, the sacramental 
 cast, of the relation between man and wife? 
 ^yfs^j-Oi:::? And so, once more, of Holy Order. The title 
 implies the sacramental character. We speak of 
 Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, and Holy Matri- 
 mony; so, likewise, of Holy Order. That prefix 
 "holy" determines the place of the ordinance in the 
 Church ; it marks the distinction between a profes- 
 sion which any man may undertake of his own 
 motion, or to which one can induct another at 
 will, and a sacred office exercised among us by 
 persons duly set apart by apostolic authority. The 
 question of the ministry is the burning question 
 of the hour ; whether it is to be regarded as a 
 human calling or as a divine institution ; whether 
 all ministries are equal in validity. On this point 
 there would have been less contention among us if 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 9 1 
 
 the sacramental idea had been more distinctly kept 
 before the people; if they had been reminded, in 
 language not to be misunderstood by the most ob- 
 tuse, that a special grace and power accompany the 
 laying-on of hands in Ordination. In that solemn 
 and impressive function we find outward and visible 
 signs, in the imposition of pastoral hands, the de- 
 livery of sacred books, the recital of words denot- 
 ing the transmission of official authority; the gift 
 of the Holy Ghost is also imparted, to make the 
 deacon, priest, or bishop apt and meet for his voca- 
 tion. The men thus set apart, according to the 
 ancient form and rules of the historic Church, by 
 persons who, since the apostles' time, have been 
 thus handing down a sacred office, must be thence- 
 forth distinguished, not only from their brethren in 
 secular life, but also from all ministries pretending to 
 no sacramental or superhuman character. Experi- 
 ence has demonstrated the importance of insisting 
 on the true import of the Ordinal, in order to fore- 
 stall the efforts strenuously made, to divest the 
 Christian Ministry of its sacred quality, to lower 
 the Clergy to the level of mere presidents of assem- 
 blies or mouthpieces of congregations, and to rep- 
 resent them as only men like other men, depending 
 on their native powers and good intentions, but dis- 
 
92 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 claiming the possession of any higher qualification 
 for the work of ministry to their brethren. 
 h/y±f{jf^j(^^ Another means of grace demands our considera- 
 tion. It is variously known as Absolution, Peni- 
 tence, and Penance. The fact has been already 
 noted that, in the Confession of Augsburg, three 
 sacraments are enumerated. Baptism, the Lord's 
 
 I Supper, and Penitence. Provision of some sort, 
 for the removal of post-baptismal sin, has always 
 
 ' been made in the Church. The subject claims our 
 reverent attention, and particularly at this point, 
 because the provision referred to has always been, 
 and must as a matter of course be, sacramental. 
 "Almighty God," we are told, *' hath given power 
 
 ■ and autliority to His ministers to declare and pro- 
 nounce to His people, being penitent, the absolu- 
 tion and remission of their sins." Whenever and 
 wherever they exercise that power, they minister 
 along sacramental lines; it is an office which no 
 man under the grade of the priesthood can perform. 
 The people may indeed confess their sins one to 
 another, after the counsel of St. James; friend 
 to friend, husband to wife, wife to husband, child to 
 parent ; they may speak to one another, confidently 
 and comfortingly, of the loving kindness of the 
 Lord ; but if any desire — and no wish is more natural 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 93 
 
 or more frequently expressed — a formal and of^cial 
 declaration that his own particular sins are for- 
 given, he must go to some one duly commissioned 
 to give him satisfactory assurance on that point. 
 He may seek it in the Church ; the absolution in 
 the Matin or Evening of^ce, the more solemn abso- 
 lution in the of^ce of the Holy Communion, are 
 true absolutions, applicable and effectual to any 
 burdened soul which, by faith, appropriates the pre- 
 cious gift. Or else he may seek it in private, where ' 
 a minute confession can be made, and the particu- 
 lars of soul sickness disclosed to the physician ; 
 and, in that way, to many, the word of absolution 
 seems to come home more closely and with a more 
 direct and personal application. But wherever or 
 whenever this power is exercised it appears impos- 
 sible to divest it of a sacramental force, because a 
 gracious gift is there, well won by the sacrifice to 
 pride by w^hich it is purchased. Nay, let us observe, 
 moreover, how close is the connection between the 
 earthly priest in absolution, and the Great High 
 Priest above, and how distinctly this office bespeaks 
 an extension of the Incarnation. Let us reverently 
 consider the healing of the sick of the palsy, related 
 in St. Mark, ii. 3-12. God can forgive sins. The 
 scribes knew that ; and when they heard Jesus say, 
 
J 
 
 94 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 with authority, '' Son, thy sins be forgiven thee," 
 they raised their protest, instantly, and cried with 
 indignation, " Why doth this man thus speak blas- 
 phemies ? Who can forgive sins but God alone ? " 
 The word of Jesus, in answer, denoted, substan- 
 tially, the bringing of a new force among us. As 
 man, did He forgive. He does not speak thus: 
 " That ye may know that / have power on earth to 
 forgive sins," as if arguing, ''therefore I am God;" 
 a different point is proposed to them : " Know ye 
 that the Son of man hath that power." True as 
 the former conclusion is, something else is sug- 
 gested here. The power to absolve is now lodged 
 in Christ as man ; to Him, as the Son of man, is 
 extended a prerogative of God. There is a par- 
 allel passage in St. John, v. 2J : " He hath au- 
 thority to execute judgment also, because He is 
 the Son of man.'' We all admit and feel the force 
 of this limitation ; man shall be judged by One who 
 has man's own nature. Is it other than a preju- 
 dice which prevents us from seeing the same idea 
 in this passage in St. Mark? Jesus, in forgiving 
 sins, exercised the authority belonging to Him as 
 the omnipotent and eternal Son ; and yet He puts it 
 thus to them, that what He does, He does as man. 
 It was distinctly a part of His ministry of recon- 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 95 
 
 ciliation ; and when he committed that ministry of 
 reconciliation to men, He gave them, ministerially, 
 that power which, in its first exercise, awakened' 
 such indignation, caused such astonishment, and 
 received so ample a proof of the right of the 
 speaker to exercise it. Henceforth, the sons of 
 men on earth have power to forgive sins, subject 
 to the conditions imposed by the Incarnate Son of 
 God. Belief in the remission of sins by sacramental 
 means is an article of the Christian Faith as con- 
 tained in the Nicene Creed. The power of absolu-' 
 tion is exercised by the Holy Ghost in the sacra- 
 ment of Baptism. It is exercised by the priest, 
 when he administers to the faithful the sacrament 
 of Holy Communion. It is exercised now pub- 
 licly, and anon privately, in the absolutions declared 
 and pronounced to the penitent. To that end some 
 be made priests : " Receive the Holy Ghost for the 
 office and work of a priest in the Church of God. 
 Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; 
 and whose sins thou dost retain, they are re- 
 tained/' ''' 
 
 On this subject of Absolution, Penitence, or Pen- 
 ance, we are put on our defence, through the in- 
 
 * See " The Ordering of Priests." 
 
9^ LENTEN' LECTURES. 
 
 tense and bitter prejudices and hostility awakened 
 by the mere mention of the word. On no point 
 are men so sensitive, on none do they become so 
 speedily excited ; auricular confession is regarded 
 as a term taken from the vocabulary of the Evil One 
 himself. Therefore the theologians of the Church 
 have been at the pains to arrange and publish 
 catenae of authorities on this point, in defence of 
 their position, and in deprecation of the astonishing 
 ignorance on the subject. It is not known, or it is 
 intentionally concealed, that the practice of private 
 confession and the doctrine of absolution have 
 come down to us with the recommendation of a 
 great number of WTiters and teachers of unimpeach- 
 able Protestant character, and have the authority 
 of the most highly venerated names in the Angli- 
 can Church. On this point reference may be made 
 to a pamphlet, by the Rev. C. N. Gray, entitled "A 
 Statement on Confession,'* and reprinted in this city 
 in 1872, with an introduction by one of the most 
 learned of the professors of this Seminary, the Rev. 
 Milo Mahan.* The student who desires to pursue 
 the subject to a farther point should read Dr. 
 Pusey's preface to his translation of the Abb^ 
 
 * See Appended Notes, No. III. 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 97 
 
 Gaume's '' Manual for Confessors." In that ex- 
 haustive document, one hundred and seventy-four 
 octavo pages in length, he has demonstrated the 
 lawfulness of the practice so fully and so ably that 
 nothing further can be added or desired. I cannot 
 refrain from quoting the summary with which he 
 brings the preface to a close : 
 
 " I thought it a work of charity to bring before those who 
 would hear some portion of the evidence that the very chief 
 of our divines have recognized confession and absolution as a 
 provision of our Church for the healing of our infirmities and 
 the cure of diseases which might otherwise fester and bring 
 death upon the soul. 
 
 " It may, anyhow, startle some that v/hat they have been 
 ignorantly declaiming against, as undermining the system of 
 the Church of England, has been maintained by the most 
 zealous of her defenders ; that what they have condemned as 
 Roman has been claimed by controversialists of ours against 
 Rome ; that what they have spoken against as injurious to 
 the soul, and interfering between it and its Redeemer, has 
 been valued by some who lived in closest union with him. 
 Some may be healthfully ashamed that they have declaimed ^'-i,a>/-<^ ■^'^■-' 
 against the practice as unprotestant, when it is advocated in;' ^"^^ JX^C\ 
 all the Lutheran formulee ; some that they declaimed against j, , 
 it as undermining the Reformation, seeing that it was advo- 
 cated by reforniers such as Cranm.er, Ridley, and Latimer; / "^^ ' ^-IJ 
 some, who have been pressing upon the bishops to put down 
 it and us, may be checked in their eagerness when they see 
 7 
 
 i-y 
 
98 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 that four archbishops and twenty-one bishops, of repute as 
 writers, have more or less strongly advocated it ; that ten 
 l)ishops or more, in their visitation articles, inquired whether 
 their clergy had invited their people to confession ; some of 
 intellect may, perhaps, pause, as if they may have been mis- 
 taken — anyhow they cannot pooh-pooh it — when they see 
 such names as Berkeley, Hooker, Sanderson, Barrow, Pear- 
 son, against them ; some of unction may hesitate when they 
 see such as Bishops Hall, Andrewes, Ken, J. Taylor, Wilson, 
 G. Herbert, on the other side ; some, who conscientiously say 
 ' The Bible and the Bible only,' even while their tradition 
 overrides the plain teaching of the Bible, may be startled to 
 see 'the immortal Chillingworth ' — as some used to call him 
 — even vehemently inviting to what they themselves vehe- 
 mently condemn."* 
 
 In palliation of the temper with which many es- 
 timable persons so strenuously — might I not say so 
 viciously ? — oppose the teaching of this great cloud 
 of witnesses, it may be said that they do not appre- 
 ciate the difference between the Roman and the 
 Anglican Churches on the subject of Absolution. 
 That difference is fundamental. In the Roman 
 Church they have a '' Sacrament of Penarice'' neces- 
 sary to salvation ; it restores to the recipient the 
 perfect purity which he is supposed to have regained 
 
 * Pusey's translation of Abbe Gaume's " Manual for Confessors," 
 preface, pp. 1 51-153. 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. 99 
 
 in baptism ; it is the sole means of obtaining par- 
 don for post-baptismal sin ; it is the indispensable 
 condition to the reception of Holy Communion. 
 In the Anglican Church Absolution — for we have 
 no sacrament of Penance in the Roman sense of 
 
 
 the word — is a simple privilege of the faithful. To 
 make confession privately to a priest is not matter 
 of obligation ; it is not a general duty ; it is not 
 enforced ; it is not recommended for general use ; 
 its practice gives no right to self-laudation on the 
 ground of a higher status in duty to the Church, 
 nor may they who decline to do so be justly 
 charged with shortcoming in their duty. The 
 mind of this Church has been fully and happily 
 expressed in the well-known passage in the 1st 
 Book of King Edward VI. : 
 
 " And if there be any of you whose conscience is troubled 
 and grieved in anything, lacking comfort or counsel, let him 
 come to me, or to some other discreet and learned Priest, 
 taught in the law of God, and confess and open his sin and 
 grief secretly, that he may receive such ghostly counsel, 
 advice, and comfort that his conscience may be relieved, and 
 that of us — as of the Ministers of God and of the Church — he 
 may receive comfort and Absolution, to the satisfaction of his 
 mind, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness ; requir- 
 ing such as shall be satisfied with a general Confession not to 
 be offended with them that do use, to their further satisfying, 
 
lOO LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 the auricular and secret confession to the Priest ; nor those 
 also which think needful or convenient, for the quietness of 
 their own consciences, particularly to open their sins to the 
 Priest, to be offended with them that are satisfied with their 
 humble confession to God, and the general Confession to the 
 Church ; but in all things to follow and keep the rule of 
 charity ; and every man to be satisfied with his own con- 
 science, not judging other men's minds or consciences, 
 whereas he hath no warrant of God's Word to the same." 
 
 Such is the view of Absolution held by the great 
 divines to whom the revival of the 1<^ half-century 
 was due, and such is the view of teachers nearer 
 our own day who represent the mind of the Church. 
 According to them, Absolution is not '^ a sacrament 
 of the Gospel " necessary to acceptance with God, 
 but a privilege of those who are drawn to seek it 
 under the sense of sin, and a help to certain spirits 
 who feel a special need. It is to be regretted that 
 there is a disposition to pass beyond the Anglican 
 line and to swing far over towards that of the 
 Church of Rome ; that we have among us enthu- 
 siastic persons who, if they do not actually insist 
 on confession as matter of obligation, go very near 
 to that ; who subject timid and sensitive individ- 
 uals to a moral suasion on that point tantamount 
 to compulsion and command. To this tendency 
 may be due the strong reaction against a helpful 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. lOI 
 
 and salutary practice, of which many would have 
 availed themselves if they had been led and not 
 driven. If men had been content to follow strictly 
 the line traced out for them by our great Anglican 
 divines, and by such teachers and fathers of our 
 own communion as Mahan and Ewer, it would have 
 been better for us all. There is no doubt as to the 
 sentiments of Pusey and Liddon on this point. Dr. 
 Liddon, in a letter recently published, says : 
 
 " The question of private confession is left by our Prayer- 
 book to the decision of the individual conscience, and it is 
 difficult for any other person to settle, because it must be 
 settled in view of a spiritual history known only to the soul 
 itself and to God." 
 
 "Confession is medicine and not food, and is to be used 
 when needed, and not as merely a matter of periodical pro- 
 priety when the conscience feels that no need exists." * 
 
 * The letter from which these quotations are made was an answer 
 to one who asked Dr. Liddon's opinion on the subject of private 
 confession, the writer stating that he had been taught as a youth to 
 use confession, but that for a long time he had neglected its use ; 
 also quoting language which suggested that it was sufficient to con- 
 fess our sins to our Great High Priest in heaven, without confessing 
 them in the presence of any earthly priest as well. 
 
 "Christ Church, Oxford, March, 1883. 
 
 " My Dear : 
 
 " The question of private confession is left by our Prayer-book to 
 the decision of the individual conscience, and it is difficult for any 
 other person to settle, because it must be settled in view of a spir- 
 itual history known only to the soul itself, and to God. 
 
102 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 Our own revered Mahan — *' clariim et venerabile 
 nomeii ! " — expressed himself as follows : 
 
 " I have never taught or practised any doctrine of confes- 
 
 " I have myself used confession whenever I have needed it ever 
 since 1847, and have never regretted it. I think it braces the soul 
 as nothing else does, while the absolution that follows is a more 
 direct and peremptory application of the absolving power left by 
 Our Lord to His Church than the more general formulae of the Daily 
 and Communion Services. 
 
 " I have felt too, as regards my own case, that Bishop Butler's 
 general doctrine about the 'safer' course in questions of conduct 
 points distinctly to the practice. 
 
 " Perhaps, too, it ought to be considered that there is some risk in 
 giving up any religious practice which has once been adopted. 
 
 "In saying this, I do not forget that confession is medicine and 
 not food, and is to be used when needed, and not as merely a matter 
 of periodical propriety, when the conscience feels that no need exists. 
 But there is risk, when a person has once used confession, in neglect- 
 ing to use it if the conscience suggests it. 
 
 " I have a true affection for , whose language you quote, but 
 
 should doubt whether he has ever used confession in his life, and 
 when this is the case, a man can only look at the question from one 
 side, and make a priori guesses as to what may happen in a contin- 
 gency of which he has no practical knowledge. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the finiteness and imperfections of the eaYthly 
 minister, and the omniscience and tenderness of our Great High 
 Priest in heaven, the former does, by Christ's commission, help us, 
 if we will, to repent and make a great moral effort which is NOT 
 made so easily when we are alone. 
 
 " If you rightly quote the language, it seems to suggest that the 
 earthly priest is in place of the heavenly, whereas, if he does his 
 duty, he leads us up to Him. 
 
 " I am, Dear , 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. P. LiDDON." 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. IO3 
 
 sion without carefully guarding against the notion o{ conipiil- l/^ 
 
 sion which is the gist of the Roman doctrine. ... In all 
 my innumerable answers on confession, on which I have been 
 appealed to by all sorts of men, and for all sorts of purposes, 
 I have invariably taught, first of all, that confession should 
 always be voluntary and unforced ; I might almost say that I 
 Jiate enforced confession, believing it to be destructive of the 
 chief good of confession." 
 
 To the same effect are the following words of Dr. 
 Ewer, some time rector of St. Ignatius' Church in 
 this city : 
 
 " I hold that sins are forgiven to the faithful baptized, by 
 God, without confession to man, and, therefore, that the 
 sacrament of Absolution is not to be ' obtruded upon men's 
 consciences as a matter necessary to salvation.' But I hold 
 that such confession, previous to Absolution, although not 
 peremptorily commanded to be used by all, nor set up as a 
 matter necessary to salvation for any, is yet not only per- 
 mitted but, under certain circumstances, advised by the 
 Anglican Communion." * 
 
 To one other rite must reference be made. ^^^f^v^i*^ ^ 
 
 "Extreme Unction," says Bishop Harold Browne, "is an 
 ordinance concerning which we differ from the Church of 
 Rome more than on the other four. We admit the proper 
 
 * Correspondence between the Right Reverend the Bishop of Con- 
 necticut and the Rev. F. C. Ewer, D.D., Rector of Christ Church, 
 New York, on the Doctrine of the Church touching the Seven 
 Catholic Sacraments, p. 15. 
 
I04 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 use of Confirmation, Confession, Orders, and Matrimony ; 
 but Extreme Unction we neither esteem to be a sacrament 
 nor an ordinance of the Church at all. As used in the mod- 
 ern Church of Rome, it implies unction with olive oil, blessed 
 by the bishop, and applied by the priest to the five senses of 
 the dying man. It is considered as conveying God's pardon 
 and support in the last hour. It is administered when all 
 hope of recovery is gone, and generally no food is permitted 
 to be taken after it. The Roman Catholic controversialists," 
 he continues, "can find no primitive authority for this ordi- 
 nance : the Greeks still practice Unction, but do not consider 
 it a sacrament." * 
 
 Unction, as thus practised in the Roman Church, 
 is precisely what our Article describes as a "corrupt 
 following of the apostles." But between unction 
 more Ronianensium, and unction as described and 
 recommended by St. James, there is a difference. 
 Of the latter Bishop Forbes of Brechin has spoken 
 in words which I quote as covering the case: 
 
 " The unction of the sick is the Lost Pleiad of the Anglican 
 firmament. One must at once confess and deplore that a dis- 
 tinctly Scriptural practice has ceased to be commanded in the 
 Church of England. Excuses may be made of 'corrupt fol- 
 lowing of the apostles,' in that it was used, contrary to the 
 mind of St. James, when all hope of restoration of bodily 
 health was gone ; but it cannot be denied that there has been 
 
 * "Exposition of the XXXIX. Art.," Vol. II. pp. 317-319. 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. IO5 
 
 practically lost an apostolic practice, whereby, in case of 
 grievous sickness, the faithful were anointed and prayed over, 
 for the forgiveness of their sins, and to restore them, if God 
 so willed, or to give them spiritual support in their maladies. 
 The meagreness of tradition is replaced in some 
 measure by the agreement of the Greeks, the Armenians, the 
 Nestorians, and all the Orientals, with the Latins on this sub- 
 ject ; so that one cannot doubt that a sacramental use of 
 anointing the sick has been from the beginning." * 
 
 Faithful to the old customs, the Church of Eng- 
 land appointed a service for the Unction of the 
 Sick in her first Reformed Prayer-book. An office 
 for the same purpose appears in the Non-Jurors' 
 Liturgy of 171 8, and also in the " Liturgy for the 
 Church of England " compiled by William Whis- 
 ton, 1713. The unction of the sick was lawful, and 
 in occasional use in the Episcopal Church in Scot- 
 land, in 1784, when the Scottish bishops Kilgour, 
 Skinner, and Petrie consecrated and entered into a 
 ** Concordat " with our own Seabury ; the saintly 
 and ascetic Bishop Jolly, of Moray, was wont to 
 anoint the sick, after the example of St. James, 
 without let, hinderance, or protest. There are 
 not wanting, among the bishops of the American 
 Church, some who concur in deploring the loss of 
 
 * " Exposition of the XXXIX. Art.," Vol II. pp. 463-467. 
 
I06 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 this primitive ordinance, and predicting its restora- 
 tion among us at some propitious time. 
 
 To sum up what has now been presented to your 
 consideration, on the subject of several minor ordi- 
 nances in the Church. While there appears to be 
 no ground in Scripture or antiquity for limiting the 
 sacraments to a precise number, we must regard 
 the position of the Anglican Communion on this 
 point to be reverent and wise. Many ordinances 
 come forth to view, as we consider the relation of 
 men to the Almighty Father through the medium 
 of His Incarnate Son, and the needed application 
 of the Gospel gifts. Let it be our aim to study 
 these great mysteries with a ready will to take in 
 the whole truth ; and let the same mind be in us 
 which was in the ancient fathers and doctors of 
 the Church. A narrow rationalism should not con- 
 fine us, whether it be that bred of the innate pride 
 of the human heart, or that same temper intensified 
 by the idea of apparent growth in knowledge of 
 many things. Formal and restrictive statements, 
 though appealing to the love of systematic arrange- 
 ment, and conferring, as they do, no doubt, an air 
 of rounded finish, should, on the very ground that 
 they approach the line of the artificial, be regarded 
 with mistrust. Nothing must be allowed to conceal 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. I07 
 
 or obscure the facts, that the entire system of the 
 Gospel has a sacramental cast ; that human nature 
 was constructed on a sacramental plan ; that man's 
 life, in nature and in grace alike, is sacramental in 
 its character ; and that, if we are to accept Bible 
 teaching simply and naturally, these conditions are 
 never to change, but to be prolonged and continued 
 in our eternal state. For, though the " inward part 
 or thing signified " in our present vital union with 
 Christ will then be realized in an all-glorious and 
 inconceivably blessed fulness, yet we believe that it 
 will be realized in a form ; in the form of an im- 
 mortal, glorious, powerful, and incorruptible life,- 
 but still a corporal life ; the life of the new body 
 of the resurrection, which, like the glorious and 
 glorified Body of the Ascended Lord, shall live and 
 abide forever, never to be divided from the Godhead 
 in His Person."^ All ordinances, be they greater or 
 lesser, which help us in the establishment or main- 
 tenance of the union with Christ, have a place in 
 the Gospel, and an honor as Sacraments or Sacra- 
 mentals in His Church. 
 
 The wider the view we take of this subject, the 
 broader its application to the relations of our life, 
 
 * See Article IV., " Of the Resurrection of Christ." 
 
I08 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 as members of the family and the Church, as pil- 
 grims and strangers here, as subject to unfavorable 
 influences from every point on the horizon, the 
 better shall we be equipped for the strife to which 
 we are called to-day. It has been said, and with 
 truth, that the intellectual conflict which the 
 Church must wage to-day is no longer with this or 
 that heresy ; it is no more Catholicity versus Protes- 
 tantism, but Christianity versus Paganism. It is 
 Church or no Church ; it is faith or infidelity. 
 Modern paganism rejects the Holy Scriptures as 
 the inspired Word of God, scoffs at tradition, de- 
 spises the fathers, doctors, and theologians of the 
 Church, and takes its stand on reason alone. It 
 knows nothing of the Supernatural, will have 
 nothing of it, rules it out of all discussion. But 
 the Sacramental System is the exhibition, the ap- 
 plication, the realization of the Supernatural to 
 men ; and the wider its influence is felt, the farther 
 its salutary machinery extends, the more sensibly 
 must the Supernatural be felt and known among 
 men. 
 
 A few w^ords in conclusion. We have been look- 
 ing upon the lesser lights in the firmament of the 
 Church ; we have not yet fixed our eyes upon the 
 greater orbs which shine there. It is like w^itching 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. IO9 
 
 the Pleiades rising through the mellow shade ere 
 descr^'ing the glorious beacon-fire of Jupiter, or the 
 lamps of great Orion blazing through the night. 
 But even so, how wonderful, how precious, are 
 these minor sacraments ! What help do they con- 
 tinually minister, what cheer, what joy do they 
 bring to the children of the covenant ! By them, as 
 the instruments of God the Holy Ghost, the little 
 ones are made strong in the Lord and in the power 
 of His might; man and woman are bound together 
 by a power even greater than their mutual love, 
 and strengthened by a gift which hallows and sanc- 
 tifies their wedded life, and makes the home a 
 sacred inclosure, guarded by good angels, and beau- 
 tiful as a garden of the Lord ; earnest young spirits, 
 in the strength of opening manhood, take up the 
 cross to bear it after Jesus, with the assurance that 
 a strength above their own is given by the laying 
 on of pastoral hands, for the work of the ministry, 
 for the edifying of the Body of Christ ; souls in the 
 grief of penitence or the agony of remorse, in the 
 clouded hours of the mortal day and at the coming 
 of the death-thraw, are comforted and upheld by 
 the clear and cheerful words : '' Be of good cheer, 
 thy sins are forgiven thee ! " Who can tell how far 
 these streams of mercy flow through the careful, 
 
no LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 sorrowful world, what wealth of blessing they carry- 
 to the habitation of men ! It is hard for one who 
 comprehends the subject to understand how men 
 can consent to deprive themselves of this abundant 
 outflow of spiritual refreshment ; harder to imagine 
 what we should do without it. The harmonies of 
 nature, the music of the sphered heavens above us, 
 breathe through these mysterious ordinances as 
 winds through the chords of a lute. Everything 
 bespeaks reparation, restoration, the recovery of 
 something lost, the prophecy of something yet 
 more satisfying to come hereafter. Beautiful, in- 
 deed, is the world, as the work of God ; darkening 
 here and there, no doubt, under deep and solemn 
 shadow, while yet that very shadow adds effect and 
 brilliancy to the rays reflected from the Fount of 
 light perpetual : but when is the world, the created 
 universe, so beautiful as when we see all through it 
 the golden threads, the silvery cords, tlie broidered 
 work of a divine and sacramental life? "Two 
 worlds are ours," as Keble says, the outer and the 
 inner, and the outer is but the portal through 
 which we pass to the more glorious things within. 
 At each successive stage of mortal pilgrimage we 
 find ourselves in touch with some mysterious 
 power ; at every step are we met by something 
 
THE LESSER SACRAMENTS. Ill 
 
 which discloses God and stamps on us a fresh im- 
 pression and draws us forward, and ever nearer to 
 the unseen. Such is the use of those lesser ordi- 
 nances, which seem so arranged as to hallow the 
 morning, the noonday, the evening, to fit into the 
 several relations of man to his fellow men, to help 
 him through the rough places, to lead him on, 
 
 " O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 
 The night is gone." 
 
 Such is their use, and such the use qf__the hun/ 
 dred more of the same class, though of inferioii, 
 grade, by which, as by a sign-language, our Father 
 "addresses His children. A life ordered on a plan 
 like this must be, upon the whole, one of joy and 
 peace. It is a good thing to know that we are not 
 thrown back on ourselves ; that we must not starve 
 from all that the heart desires; that we shall not 
 go unfed, uncomforted, unhouselled, through and 
 out of this world ; that we need not make our 
 journey by a bitter path of straitness, leanness, and 
 misery, without helper or Saviour, Vvithout sign to 
 faith, or certain assurance, or gleam of spiritual 
 glory from the forms of a godless, soulless creation. 
 Joyful, indeed, must be he who sees through the 
 outer and reads within ; who finds God's image and 
 
112 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 superscription on all that we touch and all that 
 touches us; who feels Him coming forth, through 
 darkness, and making that darkness as clear as the 
 day. 
 
 " Two worlds are ours ; 'tis only sin 
 Forbids us to descry 
 The mystic heaven and earth within. 
 Plain as the sea and sky. 
 
 Thou who hast given me eyes to see 
 
 And love this sight so fair, 
 Give me a heart to find out Thee, 
 
 And read Thee everywhere." 
 
IV. 
 
 HOLY BAPTISM. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 HOLY BAPTISM. 
 
 To attempt a full and satisfactory treatment of 
 the subject of Holy Baptism in a lecture of an 
 hour's length would be to undertake what is be- 
 yond the power of man. The Oxford Movement, 
 as it is commonly called, was an instance of the 
 recovery of a Church from lethargy and weakness, 
 through faith in her own divine origin, and the re- 
 assertion of her rights as a branch of the Catholic 
 family. That movemicnt commenced, as was nat- 
 ural, with the reaffirmation of the principle of 
 Apostoj[jc_ Succes sion, as vital to the proof of legit i- 
 macy; it proceeded with the restatement of the 
 doctrines of grace and their sacramental applica- 
 tion. About the year 1835, when the movement 
 was in successful progress, Dr. Pusey prepared 
 what is described by Dean Church as " perhaps 
 the most elaborate treatise on Baptism that has yet 
 appeared in the English language." " It came out in 
 
 * "The Oxford Movement," p. 119. 
 
Il6 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 three parts, in the "Tracts for the Times," forming, 
 in the second edition, a vob.ime of four hundred 
 pages. Let a man look through that volume, 
 crammed as it is with quotations from Holy Script- 
 ure, the Fathers, the Liturgies, and the writings 
 of all kinds of dissenters and heretics, ancient and 
 modern, and he will form a just idea of the breadth 
 and importance of the subject now before us, and 
 the impossibility of doing it justice in the time at 
 my command. I must limit myself to saying a 
 few things, as concisely as possible, on the first 
 of the two great Sacraments of the Gospel, in its 
 relation to the Incarnation, and its place in the 
 extension of the benefits thereof to the human 
 family. 
 ^ And, first, be this observed, that Holy Baptism 
 is declared by the Church to be '' generally neces- 
 3!7 / / sary to salvation." The statement is made, of 
 course, on the authority of Christ, who said, '' He 
 that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; " * 
 and "except a man be born of water and the Holy 
 Ghost he cannot see the kingdom of God." f This 
 sacrament, as we understand the case, is the instru- 
 ment whereby men are grafted into the vine, and 
 
 * St. Mark, xvi. i6. f St. John, iii, 5. 
 
 \fM^Ic^. 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 1 1? 
 
 placed in direct and personal relation to Christ, the/ 
 Second Adam. In baptism they are made " mem- 
 bers of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of 
 the kingdom of heaven," "^ relations not held 
 before the administration of the rite. They are 
 " buried with Christ in baptism, wherein also they 
 are risen with Him." t The moment of baptiam is^.j 
 for them, that of a new birth into a life in God. ' 
 
 Where that sacrament maybe had, no man is, or jju 
 
 can be. In "Christ till he be baptized. These are 
 very simple statements ; they constitute the first 
 lessons taught to the children of the Church ; they 
 form the basis of Christian education. And yet, 
 notwithstanding this rudimental cast, they are state- 
 ments which it is all-important for us at this par- 
 ticular time to reiterate, and teach with diligence, 
 because the drift of popular thought is against 
 them. To watch that drift is the duty of the 
 Clergy of this Church and of all who desire to edu- 
 cate on her lines ; and I think that there is no more 
 curious or interesting subject of consideration at 
 present than the persistency of the tenets of Pela- ]i^M^^ 
 gius and his followers, and the fascination exerted ^a**"*^^ 
 by them on the modern mind. The Pelagian her- ^ kl^ 
 
 . ___ jCA^iJ^ " 
 
 * Catechism in Book of Common Prayer. f Col. ii. 12. V*v 
 
ii8 
 
 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 esy has a vitality unexampled in the history of 
 religious error; its strength to-day may be seen in 
 ^Ja.'\ the popularity of such ideas as these — that every 
 Ujil^ f^-" h'Jman being, from the fact that he is man, is 
 fAkO'^J^*^^ already in vital union with Christ, from the fact 
 ^-^^ that Christ is man also ; that the immediate effect 
 \ of the incarnation was to make Christ immanent in 
 all nations and in every individual of the race. 
 ^ This Christo-Pantheism — for it cannot be unchari- 
 table to designate it by that title — is manifestly 
 without support in the Scriptures ; it is contradic- 
 tory to the entire tenor of the teaching of the 
 apostles, and irreconcilable with their acts ; it is 
 equally irreconcilable with what we are taught in 
 the Church as to the need and the grace of Holy 
 V Baptism. For among the first principles of Church 
 I teaching are these, that in us is an innate fault and 
 
 /:^ 
 
 corruption ; that men are unable by any efforts of 
 
 . their own to help, or raise, or save themselves out 
 
 pof that natural state of depression; that fallen 
 
 ; nature has within it no recuperative power, till God 
 
 touches it from outside ; and that, generally, no 
 
 man can be in Christ except he be born again of 
 
 water and the Holy Ghost. These statements are 
 
 principles of the doctrine- of Christ, and a part of 
 
 the foundation of the Christian Religion, and we 
 
HOL Y BAP TISM. I 1 9 
 
 rnay add, as the result of observation, that wher- 
 ever they are denied the tendency soon becomes 
 evident to change rehgion into a philosophy and to 
 deny the divine and supernatural elements which 
 constitute its vital force. 
 
 It is proposed to consider the gifts of Holy Bap- 
 tism under the three heads of 
 
 1. Forgiveness of Sins, 
 
 2. Regeneration. 
 
 3. Illumination. 
 
 And, first, of the Forgiveness of Sins. That this /. 
 
 is granted in Holy Baptism to every duly qualified 
 recipient, is an article of the Christian faith. *' I 
 acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of 
 sins." And here we come at once upon the dis- 
 tinction between Sin Original and Sin Actual. It 
 has been, and is, the practice of the Catholic 
 Church to admit infants to Holy Baptism. She 
 does this on the line of the article in the Creed, on 
 the ground that there is in them a sin which needs I IjeJ^ 
 and receive s^forgiveness,; for, if it were not so, it 
 would follow that in places where the Church was 
 settled and dominant, and at times when adult bap- 
 tism was the exception, and infant baptism the rule, 
 the article of the Creed just referred to was with- 
 out significance. The Church teaches that '^ all 
 
120 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 men are conceived and born in sin;"* the words 
 are the first which the minister utters in his official 
 character whenever an infant is presented for bap- 
 tism ; the act of so presenting is justified and 
 explained by the Church's estimate of the child's 
 natural and actual condition ; to speak of a sinless, 
 / spotless infant is to describe what has never ex- 
 ' isted on the earth since the hour of the Fall, save 
 once, in Bethlehem of Judea, when Christ our Lord 
 was born. '' Original, or birth sin, is the fault and 
 corruption of the nature of every man that is natu- 
 rally engendered of the offspring of Adam . . . 
 and in every person born into this world it deserv- 
 eth God's wrath and damnation." f To mend that 
 fault is God's first work, a work which must be 
 done before anything else can be done. It is a 
 fault in the nature ; it has nothing individual or 
 personal in it at first ; it is not to be confused with 
 / act, will, or charatte-r ; the sufferer is not respon- 
 
 I^Y^^Mk^ sible. And yet it is a difficulty calling for serious 
 ^^^i» jT attention — an obstacle which must be somehow dis- 
 ^ cjM/-' posed of. The best time to deal with it is at the 
 "^f OJoJU ^? birth of the child into the world, for then no bar is 
 /^-•Vd^Av interposed to the act of the physician and surgeon 
 
 ir.i*J>\^ 
 
 "7 
 
 * Offices of Baptism in Book of Common Prayer. 
 t Article IX. 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 121 
 
 of the soul. The state of infancy is, to the soul 
 
 under treatment, what the etherized condition is to] // 
 
 a patient undergoing an operation — the subject, j^ .» 
 when passive and unconscious, is completely under \ 
 command. So with divine grace in this sacrament ; 
 the fault in our nature is the thing to be corrected, 
 helped, or removed ; wherever that fault exists the Qu^ 4^jz^ 
 sacrament is required, and may be effectual ; it will "^fouuJl^^ 
 be effectual unless man4)lace some obstac[e_in the 
 way. A child, as inheritor of the trouble common 
 to the race, is a proper subject for treatment; a 
 child, having as yet committed no actual sin, is 
 then best fitted for sacramental absolution as being i 
 unable by thought, word, or act to stay the effec- ! 
 tual working of the Holy Ghost. So do we thinlc,-"^* 
 and so believe, of the ''one baptism for the forgive- 
 ness of sins." In that sacrament original sin is for- 
 given, wherever it exists ; in infants, of course, 
 because there is in them none other to forgive ; 
 and if the subject be of riper years, his actual sins, 
 com mitted ^rior to baptism, are also washed away. 
 Thus the doctrine of Holy Baptism contains the 
 refutation of the error of those who deny the origi- 
 nal corruption of human nature. It is not to be 
 regarded as a mere external washing, similar to the 
 ablutions practised by the Jews and other ancient 
 
122 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 people ; nor is it a mere initiatory rite ; but it is a 
 power of the world to come. It witnesses, first, 
 to the absolute need of cleansing ere any one can 
 come to the presence of God ; it witnesses, sec- 
 ondly, to the atoning work of Christ, who, by the 
 shedding of His precious blood, and by His appli- 
 cation of the merits of that blood, so cleanses the 
 soul of the sinner. With singular fitness is the sign 
 of the Cross made in the administration of that 
 sacrament, since baptism refers us to the death on 
 Calvary, and derives its vitality from that sacrificial 
 act. To deny the strength and power of sin is to 
 take all serious meaning out of this sacrament ; it 
 seems to serve thenceforth no purpose sufficiently 
 important to justify its retention ; if retained, it is, 
 perhaps, as a dead form from which the spirit has 
 passed away. 
 
 Secondly, baptism is " a sign of Regeneration or 
 new birth ; " thereby, '■' as by an instrument, men 
 are grafted into the Church," which is the Body 
 of Christ.^ Here again we tread on ground worn 
 by many a bitter controversy, and deeply tracked 
 by the feet of combatants ; but it is a comfort to 
 reflect that the battle, though long, did not termi- 
 
 * Article XXVII. 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 1 23 
 
 nate in a doubtful issue. There is no reasonable 
 ground of doubt, that in the Prayer-book Offices for 
 the Ministration of Baptism, regeneration is put 
 foremost as a baptismal gift ; the fact cannot be 
 concealed ; right or wrong, that is the teaching of 
 the Church. The notorious Gorham case, though 
 its immediate effect was to sustain the clique who 
 denied regeneration in baptism, was, in its ultimate 
 result, a blessing to the Church ; as has been well 
 observed : 
 
 " The storm of controversy raised by that case so cleared 
 the atmosphere of the clouds by which the subject of baptis- 
 mal regeneration had been obscured, as practically to put an 
 end to all discussion about it ; and a later generation won- 
 ders how such a discussion could ever have arisen when the 
 language of Holy Scripture and of the Prayer-book is now 
 seen to be so singularly plain and dogmatic."* 
 
 The change to which we apply the name of l^- ^^-^^xa/^jUj^ 
 generation is not to be confounded with conversion, f l^t^fpt^St-^ 
 or alteration of any kind in disposition, mind, will, ^^'^^'^'^^'tllir 
 or heart. It goes far deeper, down to the roots of *^^'i.^-<^^ 
 the being ; it implants a spiritual seed from which 
 the whok__S2iritual_life, including the spiritual body 
 which jTian shall wear eternally, is to be evolved. 
 
 * Blunt's " Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, etc.," p. 198. 
 
124 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 As Dr. Pusey says: 
 
 "One may then define Regeneration to be that act whereby 
 God takes us out of our relation to Adam, and makes us actual 
 members of His Son, and so His sons, as being- members of 
 His Ever-Blessed Son, and if sons, then heirs of God through 
 Christ. (Gal. iv. 7.) This is our new birth, an actual birth of 
 God, of water, and the Spirit, as we were actually born of our 
 natural parents ; herein then, also, are we justified, or both 
 accounted and made righteous, since w-e are made members 
 of Him who is alone righteous ; freed from past sin, whether 
 original or actual ; have a new principle of life imparted to 
 us, since, having been made members of Christ, we have a 
 portion of His life, or of Him who is our life ; herein we have 
 also the hope of the resurrection and of immortality, because 
 we have been made partakers of His resurrection, have risen 
 again with Him." (Col. ii. 12.) 
 
 A man has no more to do with his second birth 
 into Christ, regarded in its character as a divine act 
 wrought on him, than he had to do with his birth 
 from his mother's womb. We are here directly in 
 front of the mystery of the Incarnation and its ex- 
 tension to us. There was a first Adam ; there is a 
 second. From the first we are descended carnaliter ; 
 from him, our common ancestor, we inherit that 
 disordered constitution with which we are born into 
 the world ; in that first Adam we all die ; for as 
 his descendants we are become subject to the law 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 1 25 
 
 of sin in our members, and to the wage and penalty 
 of sin, which is death. But there is a Second 
 Adam ; and what we lost by descent from the first 
 is made up to us, and more than made up, in the 
 Second. God, by His law in grace, makes us mem- 
 bers of the Second, as by the lav/ of nature we are 
 
 members of the first. Regeneration is God's giftf^^ 
 
 to man, in the sacrament of the new birth. For 
 then w^e receive the germ of a new and immortal 
 life ; we are born again, into another family and 
 household ; we come under new conditions, we en- 
 ter into a new environment ; we have a new Father, 
 we are set free from the law of sin and death. The 
 analogy between the two ancestries is complete and 
 exact. If the descent from the earthly ancestor be 
 a real and practical thing, not less real and practi- 
 cal is the relation to the heavenly Head. It is not 
 an affair of suppositions, metaphors, and figures of 
 speech, but a vital reality. This change in the (/JlM^'^Ob '* 
 natu£e ^not in the individual, and in the state — '^^^^J^i:^^^ 
 not i n the_ charactcr, is what the Church means, in 'h*^^--^'^^- 
 declaring of every person duly baptized that he is 
 thereby regenerate. Regeneration would not be 
 regeneration, if effected by ourselves ; it is brought 
 about by God the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver 
 of life. It is accomplished, not by man, in the use 
 
126 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 of any power of his own ; nor could it be, for the 
 condition in which he comes into the world deprives 
 him of the ability to make himself over on this 
 wise ; not by man, nor by blood, nor by the will of 
 the flesh ; not by wish for betterment, nor by faith 
 in himself ; not by struggle and strife and aspira- 
 tions, but by the power and grace of God the Holy 
 Ghost. To mark that fact more distinctly, and to 
 keep the man, at the outset of this new career, on 
 the line of his whole mundane existence, in which, 
 as we are never to forget, life comes down from 
 \without and not from within, it is accomplished_ bv 
 Isign and symbol, by uttered word,""by mention of 
 the name of God, the Three and One, and by the 
 use of an element of the natural world, " sanctified 
 to the mystical washing away of sin ; " and thus 
 human nature, as realized in the person of one poor 
 suffering and dying creature, is brought into union 
 with that same human nature as realized in power, 
 glory, and eternal life, in the person of the Son of 
 God. This is to be born anew of water and of the 
 Spirit ; and thus is the Incarnation extended to us, 
 man by man, in the sacrament of baptism. 
 
 I believe that this doctrine is in perfect accord 
 with the best scientific thought of the day, with 
 sound philosophy, and with the theology of the 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 12/ 
 
 Church, and that it will receive fresh confirmation 
 from study in those departments. 
 
 Holy Baptism is, for the individual, the begin- 
 ning, the starting-point, in his new creation; the 
 agon^ the battle, has not yet come on, nor the time 
 when he must do for himself. The power of the 
 sacramental system lies first in God, in nature, and 
 in the constituted order of things before it reaches 
 men. It is not an evolution in ourselves, nor an 
 outcome of our effort; and nothing is more dis- 
 tinctly narrow and contracted than the idea that 
 regeneration and conversion must be one and the 
 same thing, for that is as much as to say that it 
 is really the man who regenerates himself. 
 
 To quote again from our great master : 
 
 "No change of heart, or of the affections, no repentance, 
 however radical, no faith, no life, no love, come up to the idea 
 of this ' birth from above ; ' it takes them all in, and compre- 
 hends them all, but itself is more than all ; it is not only the 
 creation of a new heart, new affections, new desires, and, as 
 it were, a new birth ; but is an actual birth from above or 
 from God — a gift coming down from God, and given to faith, 
 through Baptism ; yet not the work ^_/ faith, but the operation 
 ^'water and the Holy Spirit,' the Holy Spirit giving us a 
 new life in the fountain opened by Him, and we being born 
 therein ^y Him, even as our Blessed and Incarnate Lord was, 
 according to the flesh, born of Him in the Virgin's womb, 
 
128 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 Faith and repentance are the conditions on which God gives 
 it ; water, sanctified by our Lord's baptism, the womb of our 
 new birth ; love, good works, increasing faith, renovated 
 affections, heavenly aspirations, conquest over the flesh, its 
 fruits in those who persevere ; but it itself is the gift of God, 
 a gift incomprehensible, and not to be confounded with or 
 restrained to any of its fruits (as a change of heart, or con- 
 version), but illimitable and incomprehensible, as that great 
 mystery from which it flows, the Incarnation of our Redeemer, 
 the Ever-Blessed Son of God," 
 
 l-i\^,A,. w . Science here comes to the aid of Catholic the- 
 ^>;yj^ $4J^ -ology ^i^d confirms her statements. Life can only 
 come by contact with life. Life must come from 
 outside ; there is no such thing as spontaneous 
 generation. It is so with natural life; it is so with 
 spiritual life. It is not the m.an who makes himself 
 to live ; who evolves himself out of matter, and so 
 becomes the author of his own act. Even so, in 
 the case of the soul, to make it alive, it must be 
 touched from without with life from above. The 
 source of that life is the glorified humanity of the 
 Son of God. It is a free gift to us, granted com- 
 plete, without cooperation or agency of ours. It is a 
 grace, a power, a vital germ, a new force, conveyed 
 to us by Holy Baptism, as by an instrument and 
 channel of importation. To fail to see this, and to 
 insist, as has been done, that the work begins in the 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 1 29 
 
 man himself, and that spiritual life is the result off 
 his prevenient action, is to take a position not only 
 destructive of the leading principle in Catholic 
 theology, but also inconsistent with the laws of 
 life in the natural and moral spheres. 
 
 The Holy Scriptures speak of men as being 
 buried with Christ in baptism ; raised with Christ 
 in that sacrament ; then and thereby planted in 
 the likeness of Christ's death, freed from the law 
 of sin, made complete in Him, and seated with 
 Him in heavenly places. These expressions indi- 
 cate, apparently, the presence and action of some 
 unknown power, some unearthly force, something 
 out of the height, coming down upon men, work- 
 ing incredible change, conveying supernatural gifts 
 and blessings ; gifts w4iich men are competent to 
 receive at any age, and do receive, to the good of 
 the soul, if they place no bar in the way. Chil- 
 dren, as has been observed, can place no bar 
 in the way, from the very nature of the case, 
 and therefore infant baptism is the normal and 
 perfect illustration ot our subject. Adults may 
 h inde r or prevent its operation by ignorance, by 
 indifference, by want of due preparation ; to their 
 own part must they look, to their duty must they 
 be urged by their spiritual guides ; but the lot of J 
 
I30 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 the children is happier, and of such is the king- 
 dom of heaven. Then, when the life has been im- 
 parted, the child having been extricated from the 
 womb of its native condition and brought into the 
 communion of the Body of Christ, we look for 
 ' the fruits of the regenerating spirit in the life of 
 I faith, the turning consciously to God, the works of 
 I righteousness, the processes of conversion and pro- 
 gressive sanctification. These are the aftergrowth ; 
 the seed was sown by the Divine Sower, and this is 
 the harvest. To fail to see these distinctions is a 
 1 calamity. It is a fatal error to confuse God's great 
 sacramental gift of regeneration with the conditions 
 required of an adult who has not yet come to the 
 holy sacrament, or with the fruits expected to fol- 
 low where that prevenient grace has been shed 
 forth upon the soul. 
 
 "Baptismal regeneration," says Dr. Pusey, "as connected 
 with the Incarnation of our Blessed Lord, gives a depth to 
 our Christian existence, an actualness to our union with 
 Christ, a reality to our sonship to God, an interest in the 
 presence of our Lord's glorified Body at God's right hand, a 
 joyousness amid the subduing of the flesh, an overwhelming- 
 ness to the dignity conferred on human nature, a solemnity 
 to the communion of saints, who are the fulness of Him 
 who filleth all in all, a substantiality to the indwelling of 
 Christ, that to those who retain this truth the school which 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. I3I 
 
 abandoned it must needs appear to have sold its birth- 
 right." * 
 
 There is yet a third gift to man in this first ^ 
 
 sacrament of the Gospel ; it is that of Illumination. 
 In two well-known passages in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews the inspired writer, referring to the bap- 
 tized, styles them the illuminated. f The term was 
 constantly used in the first age of Christianity. 
 Holy Baptism was spoken of as '' the illumination," 
 and the illuminated were the baptized. The times 
 for baptism, and the rites and ceremonies connected 
 with its administration, suggested the same idea. 
 Epiphany, Easter, and Whitsuntide were deemed 
 the seasons fittest for the great ordinance ; they 
 who came to it were clad in white and carried 
 lighted lamps or tapers in their hands. At the 
 baptism of the younger Theodosius, we are told, 
 there was a splendid procession ; all wore white 
 and carried lights, so that the street appeared to be 
 covered with snow, and the stars seemed to have 
 left the heavens and to be moving in a flood of 
 radiance upon the earth. The name, the symbol- 
 ism and ritualism, the accessories, tell one clear 
 story; they place the gifts of Holy Baptism before 
 
 * " Tracts for the Times," No. 67. 
 
 \ Heb. vi. 4 ; x. 32, (pa)Ti60£yraS, qiOondOavre?. 
 
132 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 us in another aspect ; they bear on the trying ques- 
 tion of reason and faith. We cannot for a moment 
 suppose that our ancient fathers were thus engaged 
 in childish play and empty ceremonies ; they meant 
 something, and by those significant proceedings 
 they declared a momentous truth. 
 
 Light is the medium of vision ; by means of it 
 objects become perceptible to the organs of sight. 
 The organ of sight and the medium of vision are 
 not the same ; eyes are of no use without light; in 
 the dark the most perfect eye sees nothing. So, 
 then, light is not the thing which sees, nor is it the 
 object seen, but a medium, a go-between, a some- 
 what central between the observer and the thinsf 
 observed, but not to be confused with either. And 
 illumination is the act of supplying light ; the shed- 
 ding abroad of that by means of which things be- 
 come visible which were invisible before. When, 
 therefore, the sacred writers and the primitive 
 Christians called baptism illumination, and spoke of 
 the baptized as illuminated, they expressed a pro- 
 found truth in the use of that word. 
 
 ♦We discern between material light, intellectual 
 light, and spiritual light. There is the light of this 
 world, with the aid whereof the bodily eye discerns 
 the material objects around us. There is an intel- 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 133 
 
 lectual light, derived from education and culture, 
 by which the human reason and understanding sees 
 and apprehends the subjects of thought. After 
 these there is another light. It is not material 
 light ; it is not the light of reason. These avail in 
 the natural world and in the world of intellect. 
 But above these there is a higher world ; a world 
 inaccessible to man in his own powers; a world 
 where things cannot be touched, investigated, or 
 seen by the eye of the body or the eye of the mind. 
 Light is needed before man can make out what is 
 there, or gain any certain information concerning 
 the mysteries and wonders of that higher sphere. 
 The light needed for that purpose is the illumina- 
 tion received in Holy Baptism ; a divine gift from 
 God to the eye of the soul ; a medium of vision in 
 spiritual things by which the spirit of man, which is 
 in him, becomes able to see the things of the Spirit 
 of God. 
 
 The parallels appear to be complete, the anal- 
 ogies perfect. As a denizen of the material world 
 man has the eye of the body, and the light whereby 
 to use it, and thus he sees, and that is the natural 
 light. In the intellectual sphere man has the 
 reason, and the subjects which are apt to its powers 
 and within its range ; but the reason is useless till 
 
134 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 it be provided with its proper light — a light derived 
 from training and study, shining all about us in 
 modern civilization, demanding fidelity to it, and 
 capable of increase or diminution, according to the 
 right use or the abuse of the intellectual powers. 
 In his relations to the spiritual world man has the 
 reason and the understanding as before, but now 
 he needs another light, apt to study and discovery 
 in that higher sphere. Body, mind, and spirit, 
 however perfect in themselves, must remain in 
 ignorance of their proper objects, unless light be 
 given to each whereby to see. The eye may 
 be perfect, and yet absolutely useless for want 
 of natural light. The mind may be acute and 
 clear, and yet a man may live and die in ignorance, 
 for want of knowledge and education. The spirit, 
 though capable of seeing divine truth, and ac- 
 quainting itself with God and all holy mysteries, 
 may remain in darkness and error, like that of the 
 pagan, heretic, and unbeliever, because it lacks, or 
 has rejected, the illumination whereby God shows 
 the spirit the things concerning himself. That 
 light comes to us, not from us ; it is light from a 
 world above ; it is shed abroad in the heart by 
 God the Holy Ghost ; it is conveyed to the soul, 
 together with the remission of sin and the gift of 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 1 35 
 
 regeneration, in the sacrament ordained to that end 
 by Him who said : " I am the Light of the world." 
 This is the Cathohc doctrine of Holy Baptism. 
 In it man receives a new spiritual sense given for 
 certain purposes, for supernatural ends. He has the 
 material senses; the intellectual powers; and now 
 a spiritual faculty, whereby he is able to discern 
 truths not accessible to the senses in their common 
 use, nor to the reason in its proper action. He 
 is thus equipped for every relation and every duty. 
 He can know the world of nature, the world of 
 thought, and the world of grace. He is provided 
 with what he needs, as tenant of many spheres. 
 But greatest of all these gifts is the last. Thereby 
 he sees what the eye cannot see, what the ear can- 
 not hear, what the intellect cannot comprehend; 
 things beyond the reach of touch or taste or visual 
 perception ; things more important than aught else 
 to him as heir of immortality. And in the use of 
 this new power he gains knowledge to be had in no 
 other way; not by experiment, not by argument, 
 not by logical demonstration, but a knowledge 
 imparted through a light flashing in upon the soul 
 he knows not how. This is the double gift to man 
 in the illumination at the font : outside, a broad 
 medium of revealed truth and doctrine, summed up 
 
,«>4 
 
 136 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 in the Catholic creed ; inside, an illuminative gift 
 and spiritual faculty enabling him to see it and to 
 live thereby. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that these faculties 
 depend for their maintenance on proper use. Men 
 may ruin their eyes by careless and improper exer- 
 cise or neglect ; they may ruin their intellectual 
 powers by abuse ; they may deprive themselves of 
 their spiritual sight by neglect, self-conceit, moral 
 cowardice, and sin. Nor is it necessary to observe 
 that, in the case of adults, repentance and faith are 
 the conditions antecedent to the right recepfion^Df 
 lj.,jf^ Ox^ this holy sacrament, and that the gift to every man 
 ^V uv '-- . shall be less or greater according to his consci- 
 entiousness in the use thereof. But it must be 
 always remembered that the repentance, the faith, 
 the subjective condition, are not the baptismal 
 , gift. That gift is God's; it cometh down from the"^ 
 Father of lights ; our part is to rndc e rea dy for its 
 reception as well as we can, and, having received, 
 to keep it thereafter safe from profanation, misuse, 
 and loss. 
 
 I wish now to speak briefly about a remarkable 
 phase in the office for the Ministration of Baptism: 
 " Sanctify this zvater to the mystical washing away 
 of sin!' The words may recall to your minds what 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 137 
 
 was said in a previous lecture on the relation of the 
 sacramental system to the order of the visible cre- 
 ation. And here I wish I had time to read to you, 
 by way of exposition of this part of my subject, 
 that portion of Dr. Pusey's volume on Holy Bap- 
 tism in which, in treating of the w^onder of the 
 Christian miracle and the simplicity of the outward 
 sign, he has brought together, with marvellous pa- 
 tience and fulness, the instances in the Old and 
 New Testaments in which this element of water 
 has been used by Almighty God in His dealings 
 with men, and the deductions of holy writers from 
 these acts of divine Providence. There is a 
 wealth, a fulness in these illustrations, of which 
 every mind and heart imbued with the spirit of 
 sacramental Christianity must feel the force and 
 beauty. Beginning with that epoch of the creative 
 day when the Spirit of God moved upon the face 
 of the waters ; following the course of the four riv- 
 ers which went out of Eden ; we come to the Old 
 Testament types : the flood ; the wells of the patri- 
 archs, which the Philistines stopped with earth ; 
 the well of water shown to Hagar ; the passage of 
 the Red Sea ; Elim, with its twelve wells and its 
 threescore and ten palm-trees ; the smitten rock ; 
 the water out of the well of Bethlehem, by the 
 
138 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 gate ; the cleansing of Naaman in Jordan ; the 
 transit of Elijah through that riv^er on his way 
 home to God. Then we take up the prophecies, 
 reading in Isaiah of the waters breaking out in the 
 wilderness and streams in the desert;"^ in Ezekiel, 
 of his vision of the holy waters ; f in Zechariah, of 
 the fountain opened to the house of David and to 
 the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for un- 
 cleanness.:]: And so we pass through the veil into 
 the days of Christ, and read of the well of Samaria, 
 and the water changed to wine at Cana of Galilee, 
 and the waters of baptism applied by John, the 
 forerunner of the Lord, and of the water which, 
 mingled with blood, flowed from the side of Christ. 
 The office of the types was a great one ; they pre- 
 figured the coming of an hour when to this element 
 of water was to be imparted a sanctification which 
 should lift it out of the order of natural sub- 
 stances and natural uses, and give it a mystical and 
 miraculous efficacy. We find in the old liturgies 
 the distinct recognition of this sanctifying and glo- 
 rifying of that element which, however common 
 and humble, has now acquired a more than natural 
 or material force, being made an instrument to join 
 
 * Isa. XXXV. 6. f Ezek. xlvii. 1-12. 
 
 X Zech. xiii. i. 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. I 39 
 
 man to the Incarnate Lord. The recognition of 
 this mysterious power, now imparted to it by the 
 power of the Holy Ghost, is not an individual 
 opinion nor a fanciful notion, nor a passage in a 
 romantic dream. It was found in the ancient 
 Church ; it is in every baptismal liturgy of the old 
 time; it was retained among the Lutheran bodies 
 which remained faithful to the ancient tradition; 
 it is preserved among us inviolably by that remark- 
 able phrase in our office. And it cannot be 
 doubted that the thought of the strange connection 
 between the work of God in nature and His work 
 in grace was in the minds of the fathers, and that 
 they found one of the clearest illustrations of it in 
 the institution of this holy sacrament. 
 
 "There is in the ancient Church what by moderns would 
 be condemned as realism or materialism or mysticism. Their 
 view seems to have been of this sort. Since God had ap- 
 pointed the use of water for baptism, there must have been 
 an appropriateness in it which there was in no other ele- 
 ment ; that there was an analogy between His physical and 
 moral creation, and that not only imaginative but real ; 
 that in forming the physical, He had respect also to the 
 purposes which He designed in His moral creation, and im- 
 parted to the physical agent properties corresponding to 
 its moral uses ; that in His earlier dispensations He had 
 regard to the latter, and not only taught man beforehand 
 
140 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 t 
 
 I what should be, but in a manner, b)- employing His creature 
 in the subordinate office of the former, imparted to it a fitness 
 
 ' to serve in the latter and greater. Something of this sort, as 
 derived from the ancient Church, is acknowledged by our 
 own, that the baptism of our Lord ' sanctified water to the 
 washing away of sin,' i.e., at the least, our Lord's baptism 
 in Jordan imparted to the whole element of water a capac- 
 ity of becoming the instrument of washing away sin, which, 
 apart from His baptism, it would not have had."* 
 
 With a brief reference to the opposition made 
 to the doctrine of Holy Baptism as held in the 
 CathoHc Church, I shall bring this lecture to an 
 end. Why should there be such obstinate resist- 
 ance to a teaching so profound, so consoling, so 
 sublime ? Why should men substitute for it the 
 initiatory-rite theory, the bare-form notion ? How 
 shall we explain the position of the Anabaptist, 
 who insists on immersion, but denies any spiritual 
 efficacy or sacramental grace in the rite ? What 
 shall be thought of the disciples of the Gorham 
 school, whose contention was, that regeneration 
 must occur before or after baptism, but could not 
 ^ possibly occur at the time of administration ? 
 These phenomena are merely instances of the 
 power of the doctrine and the force of the recoil 
 
 * " Pusey on Baptism,"' pp. 286, 2S7. 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. I4I 
 
 from its claim on reverence and faith. To allege 
 that God grants to men, in an exterior rite, remis- 
 sion of sin, regeneration, and illumination, is to 
 antagonize three classes of free-thinkers on religion. 
 That baptism confers remission of sin, original and 
 actual, must be denied by the Pelagian, who thinks 
 there is no such thing as original sin, and minimizes 
 our need of divine grace. That baptism is gener- 
 ally necessary as a means of grafting men into the 
 Body of Christ is denied by the neo-Pantheist, who 
 holds that all men are already in Christ, because 
 He has taken on Him the nature common to us all. 
 Finally, to say that in Holy Baptism a light is 
 given to the mind and spirit, enabling us to discern 
 things not to be seen in our natural condition, is to 
 affront the philosophic Rationalist, who relies on 
 reason alone for the discovery and investigation of 
 truth. A doctrine which thus deals its blow at a 
 trinity of errors as old as the human race itself, must 
 expect the reception which it meets with in the 
 Pelagian, Pantheistic, and Rationalistic schools. 
 No one imbued with the principles of those schools 
 can say, sincerely, and without reservation : " I 
 ACKNOWLEDGE ONE BAPTISM FOR THE REMISSION 
 OF SINS." 
 
 Thirty years have passed away since the noto- 
 
142 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 rious Gorham controversy agitated, or It may almost 
 be said, convulsed, the Church. The salutary effect 
 of the clearing of the air and the settling of the 
 mind of the community on the subject involved, 
 has been long perceived and is gratefully acknowl- 
 edged. Since that day other questions have come 
 to the front, and the minds of men have been 
 drawn off in other directions. But the doctrine 
 which was then successfully vindicated, as being 
 unquestionably that which is taught in our offices, 
 has lost no whit of its importance ; and that great 
 sacrament is still, as always, the foundation of the 
 Church system, and the bulwark against all here- 
 sies, old and new\ With the passing of the years, 
 the pendulum swings back along its arc, till now, 
 amid the din of voices, the denial of sin and its 
 results, the extravagant laudation of humanity, the 
 determined resistance to authority, and the late 
 claim to the natural birthright of every man to 
 identification with Christ as a member of His Body, 
 without the aid of rite, sacrament, or instrumental 
 means of any sort, we have reached the point at 
 which we see plainly the necessity of reaffirming 
 and maintaining against all comers, the old posi- 
 tions regarding Holy Baptism and its threefold 
 gift ; to the end that men may be brought within 
 
HOLY BAPTISM. 143 
 
 the covenant of grace, and that Christ may regain 
 His hold on the multitude who, having no faith in 
 the Gospel, and no individual relation to His Body 
 the Church, are as a flock scattered abroad upon 
 the mountains, and practically without Him in the 
 world. 
 
V. 
 
 HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 If it be deemed a task beyond the power of man 
 to speak fully, in a lecture such as this, of Holy 
 Baptism, what can be done when we come to the 
 'greatest of all sacraments? Who, indeed, is worthy 
 to speak of that Rite which has the first claim on 
 love and devotion ; in which are the highest height, 
 the deepest depth, the broadest breadth; for which 
 an adequate title w^as sought in vain by holy men of 
 old ; which is life and joy with peace to them that 
 receive it worthily, but misery and death to those 
 who profane it ? On his knees might one desire to 
 write on this subject what it should be given him 
 to say. 
 
 For now^ we are come to a strangely exact illus- 
 tration of the function of the Sacramental System 
 as an Extension of the Incarnation ; this is espe- 
 cially the ordinance w^herein men, living in Christ, 
 are fed out of the fulness of the Humanity now 
 borne by Him, and progressively fitted for the 
 heavenly realm. For here '* we spiritually eat the 
 
148 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 flesh of Christ and drink His blood ; we dwell in 
 Christ, and Christ in us; we be made one with 
 Christ, and Christ with us." And so, first, I shall 
 endeavor to show that the Mystery of His Holy In- 
 carnation, from the fourfold point of view in which it 
 invite-s our study, is so reflected in this great sacra- 
 ment, that terms apt to either seem at once to fit 
 the other. Christ, present to us by His indwelling 
 in the nature common to us all, becomes present in 
 a still more marvellous way in this ordinance. He' 
 is so realized to us therein, that what is said of 
 IJira outside this Sacrament may be said, word for 
 / word, of the Sacrament itself. In its relation to 
 Him, and in its relation to us in Him, let us proceed 
 to consider it ; not in a controversial temper, but 
 rather as citizens rejoicing in the glory of the king- 
 dom, and counting the riches of their inheritance 
 among the saints. It may be remarked in passing, 
 that the dreadful unreality of modern religion, inac- 
 curately styled Christian, seems to have come as a 
 Nemesis on unbelief in the Sacramental Presence of 
 Christ in His Church, and on the persistence with 
 which men contradict the words of the Master, say- 
 ing, *' This is not His Body, this is not His Blood," 
 though He affirmed of each its verity and its truth. 
 In the sacrament of the altar we are brought to 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 1 49 
 
 the point where the natural and the supernatural 
 come most closely together. To the eye of faith, 
 the Christian Altar appears like a headland jutting 
 into a vast and open sea ; waves roll in from the 
 eternal space, to strike upon the shores of time. It 
 is a mirror of all truth, human and divine. It has 
 a twofold_aspect, being S acrifi ce and Sacrament in 
 one; it is each in turn, in complete and matchless 
 perfection ; it is the pure and unbloody Offering, 
 the heavenly Feast. It represents the work of the 
 world's High Priest, now going on above ; it brings 
 Him, verily and indeed, into our midst with holy 
 gifts. It is pictorial, it is practical ; a grand action 
 is displayed and accompanied, a work of immediate 
 necessity is carried on. As Christ stands at the 
 mercy-seat on high, appearing before His Father as 
 our Mediator and Redeemer, and making interces- 
 sion for us, so stands the priest as His representative, 
 offering on earth the same oblation which Christ 
 offers in heaven, and sending up the liturgical 
 prayer. Christ promised to feed men with His 
 Flesh and Blood, adding, '' Whosoever eateth My 
 Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath everlasting life, 
 and I will raise him up at the last day." "^ Here, 
 
 * St. John, vi. 54, 
 
ISO LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 in Holy Communion, He meets His faithful chil- 
 dren for that purpose, and, under forms selected 
 from the natural world, and hallowed and blessed 
 for a supernatural effect, He gives them what He 
 , promised. In its double aspect, as sacrifice, as sac- 
 rament, this Rite is first in dignity, and, in power, 
 /most efificient. Nothing can be set before it, nor 
 can care, pains, or cost be too great in realizing it 
 for all that it is to our devotion and faith. And 
 f^^4^ u^, this, above all, must we be sure to hold, that it is 
 JZ<^(rZ/ /t^^^^ ourselves who make it what it is; that it 
 Wv4/v-«^* is not our subjective act, nor the moral fitness of 
 the recipient, which gives its reality to that sac- 
 rament, and effects the Awful Presence of the Lord 
 therein. Our part is to wait for the Holy Ghost 
 till He come ; and, when He has blessed and sanc- 
 tified the oblation, to draw near with faith, and take 
 the Body and the Blood, feeling that God in Christ 
 is all in all, and that it is He who giveth us the 
 bread that feedeth unto everlasting life. 
 
 Let us begin by taking up that invaluable com- 
 pendium of instruction for our children, which we 
 know so well, and observe how, in its simple yet 
 profound statements and distinctions, the Catechism 
 helps us to take in the idea of the Holy Commun- 
 ion. You all know that the fifth section of the 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 151 
 
 Catechism was added in 1604, after the Hampton 
 Court Conference, and that its authorship is ascribed 
 to Bishop Overal. Whoever it was that gave it 
 to the Church, he has a claim on our gratitude. 
 As to the sacrament of Holy Baptism, two points 
 are made ; there are an outward visible sign or 
 form, and an inward spiritual grace. No hard ques- 
 tion is raised as regards the element of water ; it is 
 indeed sanctified to a holy use, and it should be 
 reverently disposed of after serving its purpose ; 
 but there are no vexatious uncertainties about pres- ' 
 ences and absences, substances and accidents ; it is 
 an instance of the use of an element of the natural 1 
 order as an instrument whereby, without change in 1 
 the element, gifts are granted to the soul and spirif' 
 of man. gut^when we pass to the consideration of 
 the SacranTeht of the Lord's Supper, the language 
 becomes more ample ; the ideas to be presented are 
 more complex ; additional phrases are required, and 
 a more detailed description. The elements now 
 used fix our attention, as if some change had passed 
 upon, over, or through them, by which their posi- 
 tion in the world of the material and physical had 
 been modified in some wondrous way. We are told, 
 first, of an outward sign ; and such we also saw in 
 baptism. But now and next we are told of an/ 
 
152 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 inward part or thing signified; to which nothing in 
 the account of baptism corresponds. Finally, we 
 are told of benefits received in the partaking of that 
 Holy Sacrament. The description of the second of 
 the sacraments of the Gospel differs specifically 
 from that of the first. In the one there is a mys- 
 tery not encountered in the other ; the questions 
 and answers in the Catechism make this plain. No 
 Zwin^lian would need three terms such as we have 
 here to convey his barren notion of the Holy Com- 
 munion; to him they would be embarrassing and 
 useless verbiage. But, to tell us the mind of the 
 Church on this sacrament, these words and distinc- 
 tions are indispensable. They suggest something 
 very strange, and very hard to express. They pre- 
 sent a mystery so startling, and so offensive to the 
 natural mind, that dispute has been kept up inces- 
 santly about it, ever since the hour in which the 
 Lord announced it to the Jews at Capernaum, and 
 let them go, muttering, as they withdrew, '' This is a 
 hard saying : who can hear it ? " ""^ 
 
 " Quaenani est pars externa, seu sigmiin Coenae 
 Domini f 
 
 " Qiiaenam est pars interjia, sen res significata ? 
 " Quaenam stmt beneficia quae inde percipivuis ? " 
 
 * St. John, vi. 60, 66. 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 153 
 
 Three terms are to be considered : the sign, 
 signuin ; the thing signified, res; the benefit re- 
 ceived, bcncficia, or virtus. There was, undoubt- 
 edly, a motive in thus presenting the subject to 
 human thought. The words were not strung to- 
 gether hap-hazard ; they were adopted as involving 
 propositions of great interest and importance, and 
 as we study these three words, sigmun, res, virtus, 
 keeping each distinct from the rest, and noting 
 what would happen if the perfect balance among 
 them should be destroyed, we find ourselves sub- 
 stantially going over the ground traversed in our 
 study of the Incarnation of the Son of God, the 
 relations of the two natures in His one Person, and 
 the heresies which for six centuries vexed the 
 Church ; indeed, it seems impossible not to be 
 deeply impressed by the correspondence between 
 the two subjects. 
 
 First, it is to be noted that these three, the Sign, 
 the Thing signified, and the Benefits conveyed, are 
 distinct and diverse the one from the other, so that 
 no one can be confounded with or substituted for 
 any other without damage to a perfect symmetry 
 in the teaching. The sacrmnentum is not the res ; 
 the res is not the virtus. The sacr amentum and 
 the res must not be separated, neither must they 
 
 y. 
 
154 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 be confused ; the sacramcntiini must not be anni- 
 hilated by the res, nor must the res be thrown 
 away to keep the sacramentiwi. Nor yet should it 
 be supposed that wherever the sacrameiitimi and 
 the res are, the virtus must always be conferred. 
 These distinctions are vital. We see their bearing 
 the moment we place the Catholic Doctrine of the 
 Incarnation and the teaching of the Church about 
 Holy Communion side by side. 
 
 You are, of course, familiar with the luminous 
 presentation of the subject of the Incarnation in 
 the 5th Book of the " Ecclesiastical Polity : " 
 
 " To gather, therefore, into one sum all that hitherto hath 
 been spoken touching this point, there are but four things 
 which concur to make complete the whole state of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ ; His Deity, His Manhood, the conjunction of 
 both, and the distinction of the one from the other being 
 joined in one. Four principal heresies there are which have 
 in those things withstood the truth ; Arians, by bending 
 themselves against the Deity of Christ ; Apollinarians, by 
 maiming and misinterpreting that which belongeth to His 
 human nature ; Nestorians, by rending Christ asunder, and 
 dividing Him into two persons ; the followers of Eutyches, by 
 confounding in His Person those natures which they should 
 distinguish. Against these there have been four most famous 
 ancient general councils : the Council of Nice, to define 
 against Arians ; against Apollinarians the Council of Con- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. I 55 
 
 stantinople ; the Council of Ephesus against Nestorians ; 
 against Eutychians the Chalcedon Council. In four words, 
 aA?/6GL>?, r£/lf(»5, a^iocipirooi, odvyx^^^^^y truly, perfectly, 
 indivisibly, distinctly ; the first applied to His being God, 
 and the second to His being man ; the third to His being 
 of both One, and the fourth to His still continuing in that 
 One both : we may fully, by way of abridgment, comprise 
 whatsoever antiquity hath at large handled either in dec- 
 laration of Christian belief or in refutation of the aforesaid 
 heresies. Within the compass of which four heads I may 
 truly affirm that all heresies which touch but the Person of 
 Jesus Christ, whether they have risen in these later days or in 
 any age heretofore, may be with great facility brought to 
 confine themselves." * 
 
 These words of the judicious Hooker may be 
 paraphrased, and with the Hke precision may it be 
 affirmed that all the heresies which have ever arisen 
 touching the sacrament of the altar are capable of 
 arrangement with reference to the distinction al- 
 ready drawn concerning the signuin, the res^ and 
 the virtus. In that sacrament may be noted what 
 corresponds to the Deity in Christ, to His Human- 
 ity, to the perfect union of the two, and to their 
 distinction the one from the other. There is a 
 teaching which impugns the truth of the outward 
 and visible sign ; another, which takes away the 
 
 * " Ecclesiastical Polity," Book V. liv. lo. 
 
156 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 inward part or thing signified ; a third which, while 
 it retains both, divides them the one from the 
 other ; and a fourth, which commingles and con- 
 fuses them. The tenet of Transubstantiation, and 
 that of Consubstantiation ; the notion of a Virtual 
 Presence only, and the idea that this is but a 
 historical memorial of a past and finished trans- 
 action ; these stand towards the Catholic doctrine 
 of the Holy Sacrament somewhat as the heresies 
 of Arianism, Nestorianism, Apollinarianism, and 
 Eutychianism stand to the Catholic dogma of the 
 Incarnation. 
 \ According to Catholic teaching, the sacrament 
 considered in itself is complete, and, so to speak, a 
 fait accompli, as soon as jthe__p.riest__has^ done his 
 part and the Holy Spirit has descended on the 
 oblations. The priest takes the bread ; he breaks 
 it and lays his hand thereon, repeating the words 
 of institution ; he takes the cup, and, again re- 
 peating the words of the Lord, he lays his hand 
 on it and blesses it ; and then, by the power of 
 the Holy Ghost, on the official and solemn utter- 
 ance of the sacred formula, the sacrament is there 
 before the faithful. Nothing more is needed to its 
 completeness. That completeness consists in the 
 union of the outer and inner perfectly and without 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 157 
 
 confusion. The sigjtiim remains, in its verity and 
 truth ; not a shadow deceptive to the senses, but a 
 reah'ty in the material world. The res is there, 
 joined to the sigmun, for holy uses ; really and 
 truly present, under the external form ; for by the 
 Real Presence is meant, of course, the presence of 
 the res. The sign and the thing signified are both 
 present, at once and together ; jxgt^ as though the 
 sign only were there, while the thing signified, 
 absent and distant, must be realized to each man 
 by his mental act and conscious appropriation. 
 They also abide, notwithstanding their sacramental 
 union, each true to itself ; not as though the ele- 
 ments had gone as to their natural substance, and a 
 concrete or conglomerate had taken their place. 
 Even so, we assert that in the mystery of the Holy 
 Incarnation the Deity did not consume the human- 
 ity, nor did the humanity fulfil the function of a 
 mere representative and reminder of the absent 
 God ; neither was the mystery made to exist in the 
 transmission of grace from far away ; nor yet was it 
 a hybrid, neither God altogether nor man alto- 
 gether, which was beheld in Christ. 
 
 I shall now endeavor to justify the statement 
 that the leading errors on the subject of this Holy 
 Sacrament run on parallel lines with the principal 
 
158 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 heresies which assail the doctrine of the Incarna- 
 tion. In striving to penetrate what is a profound 
 myster}^ men have lost the mystery itself ; they 
 have confused themselves and their friends with 
 curious and vain distinctions ; they have robbed 
 the rite of its claim on our faith, and reduced it 
 to the level of intelligible, or commonplace, trans- 
 actions. And first let us consider the signum, and 
 note what mischief has been done by the theory 
 that the outward and visible sign has substantially 
 ceased to exist. 
 
 It is essential to a sacrament, as defined by our 
 Church, that each part be there, and that each be 
 true; there is no place for deception and illusion. 
 Now the truth of the signum is denied by the tenet 
 of Transubstantiation. 
 
 " Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of 
 bread and wine), in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved 
 by Holy Writ ; ])ut is repugnant to the plain words of Script- 
 ure, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given 
 occasion to many superstitions." (Article XXVIII.) 
 
 And therefore that tenet is rejected by our 
 branch of the Church; and rightly, for all the 
 reasons given. It is not a Catholic doctrine. Cer- 
 tainly it cannot be gathered from the Scriptures, 
 nor from the writings of the fathers of the first six 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. IS9 
 
 hundred years of the Church. There is a note- 
 worthy fact concerning the statements of those 
 fathers on this subject. They have been studied, 
 or rather ransacked, with curious results. Roman 
 controversiahsts have appealed to them for confir- 
 mation of their position that the Body and Blood 
 of the Lord are really present in the Eucharist ; 
 and with complete success, for that was unquestion- 
 ably the view of antiquity. But, on the other hand, 
 Protestant controversialists have appealed to the 
 same fathers, in confirmation of their assertion 
 that the bread and wine, as to their natural sub- 
 stance, continued unchanged after consecration ; 
 and with equal success, for a moderate acquaint- 
 ance with antiquity shows that the fathers held both 
 views, and that many, even in the Roman Church, 
 were with them down to the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries. Holy Scripture and ancient authors 
 teach the substantial permanence of the elements 
 of bread and wine after consecration. The idea of 
 the annihilation of their substance overthrows the 
 nature of the sacrament, by destroying the sigmtni, 
 in its true significance and verity, and taking it out 
 of its place in the world of nature to which it 
 belongs ; the sign becomes a deceptive apparition ; 
 it is not what the senses assert it to be; it is what 
 
l6o LEiVTEN LECTURES. 
 
 the humanity in Christ was to the Docetae, not a 
 reaHty, but a shadowy, untrue phantasm. 
 
 While men thus lose the truth on one side, 
 others, in combating- that error, work themselves 
 into a frame of mind in which they cannot assent 
 to another most important truth essential to a right 
 appreciation of the holy mystery. For though 
 the sign remains unchanged as to its substance, a 
 change does certainly pass upon it ; the elements 
 through some mysterious influence become " holy 
 gifts," and forms under which Christ is present ; 
 they undergo a change inexplicable and indefina- 
 ble ; a change on the line where material elements, 
 lifted above their natural uses, are made instru- 
 mental to supernatural ends ; a change like that 
 which may be expected when the heavens and the 
 earth shall pass away, and there shall be new heav- 
 ens and a new earth. Such a change, requiring 
 no abdication of their function by the senses, yet 
 stimulating faith to its highest point, is believed 
 in by the devout Catholic; and, in believing it, he 
 is saved from a whirlpool of dilemmas, difficulties, 
 and doubts. He need not vex his soul with subtle 
 questions of substance and accident ; he need not 
 enter into a hopeless inquiry what the substance can 
 be which goes completely, while extension, appear- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. l6l 
 
 ance, color, taste, and nutritive properties remain ; 
 or whether that deserves the name of substance 
 which stays or flits, exists or does not exist, 
 although the element, as to its natural character- 
 istics, remains unimpaired and unaltered. He has 
 no questions of that kind to settle, who, holding 
 that the elements abide and remain in substantial 
 truth, believes that a mystical change has passed 
 on them, by which they have been lifted into a 
 higher sphere for nobler uses ; just as he can con- 
 ceive how nature, without being annihilated, or 
 replaced by something not itself, may be some time 
 advanced to new conditions, and infused with new 
 powers and capacities, to the glory of God and the 
 good of men. 
 
 Next let us consider the error which denies the 
 truth of the sacrament on the side of the inward 
 part or thing signified. By the Real Presence is 
 meant the presence of the res. But this, as all 
 know, is denied under various forms of objection 
 and by men of divers sects. The flat denial of the 
 res in the sacrament is the characteristic of Zwin- 
 glianism : there is in the Lord's Supper a sign only, 
 used to refresh the memory and stimulate the 
 sympathetic nature ; it is a memorial feast, and 
 
 nothing else. This error is in its way the same as 
 II 
 
1 62 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 that of the Socinians, in whose view Christ was a 
 man, and nothing but a man, having no more deity 
 in or about Him than other men might have who 
 walked with God in their generation and attained 
 to extraordinary holiness. Of this error I repeat 
 what has been said already, that it is one with which 
 our sacramental offices cannot by any straining be 
 made to square. From beginning to end, in their 
 cast, their term of expression, their history, and 
 their natural acceptation they repudiate, they abhor 
 the notion that the Lord's Supper was only a repe- 
 tition of the feasts previously partaken of by Him 
 and His followers in Galilee and elsewhere, and 
 that it was intended to survive among us merely as 
 an affecting and impressive reminder of His death. 
 Zvvinglius is the outlaw of Christendom in his atti- 
 tude toward the sacramental system, the radical of 
 radicals, the rationalist of rationalists. His opin- 
 ions, that the Eucharist is a bare commemoration 
 of the death of Christ, and that the bread and wine 
 are mere symbols and tokens to remind us of His 
 Body and Blood, and that Christ is present in the 
 Eucharist only by the contemplation of faith, are 
 directly opposed to Scripture and the general 
 opinion of the fathers, as has been proved a thou- 
 sand times over. His ideas were disapproved by 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 1 63 
 
 the Lutherans and Calvinists of his own day ; they 
 are disapproved to-day by divines of the Protestant 
 bodies around us. 
 
 " Zwinglianism," says Dr. Henry Van Dyke, " is essentially 
 rationalistic in the evil sense of the word. Its chief effort is 
 to explain away or reduce to a minimum the mystery of the 
 Lord's Supper. It assumes that the theory which is most 
 level to our comprehension, which brings the Holy Supper 
 nearest to a common meal where Christians have sweet fel- 
 lowship together, and makes it agree most with ordinary 
 human experience, is for that reason nearest to the truth." 
 
 Dean Stanley once described this reformer as "the 
 clear-headed and intrepid Zwingle." His clear- 
 headedness was that of a man apparently unable 
 to comprehend the Catholic system, and his in- 
 trepidity was that of the thrower of dynamite 
 bombs. He could pull down ; he could not build up. 
 
 " It is not to be wondered at," says that grave and learned 
 man Bishop William Forbes, in his "Considerationes Modes- 
 tae," "that those who have such abject opinions of this most 
 august sacrament as these and other modern innovators, should 
 find nothing in it which they can wonder at. Far otherwise 
 did the pious fathers think and write, who were wont to style it 
 ' this terrible mystery,' and would never think of so great a 
 thing without a sacred and religious awe, viz., because they 
 believed most firmly that he who worthily takes these myste- 
 
164 LENTEiV LECTURES. 
 
 ries of the body and blood of Christ, truly and really takes 
 into himself the body and blood of Christ, but in a certain 
 spiritual, miraculous, and imperceptible manner. The opin- 
 ion of John Calvin," continues the writer, " is much sounder 
 and more endurable than that of Zwinglius." * 
 
 This is undoubtedly true, and it would be offen- 
 sive and injurious to set the teaching of Calvin 
 and the Westminster Confession on the same level 
 \ with that of the Swiss radical. Theologians of 
 the higher school in the Presbyterian Church of 
 I our own day assert with earnestness their belief in 
 I the Real Presence. They entertain a high and 
 spiritual idea of the Lord's Supper, and their devo- 
 tion puts to shame the carelessness of many among 
 us who boast themselves to be unswerving Catho- 
 lics. But while we honor their reverent spirit, and 
 believe that they are much nearer to the truth than 
 they suppose, we cannot but except to their use of 
 the term " Real Presence " as descriptive of their 
 belief. The word which seems to us most exactly 
 applicable to their error, as we deem it to be, is 
 " virtiialism ','' they confuse the res and the virtus, 
 making them one ; or, rather, making the virtus the 
 inward part and not the res. In short, this is the 
 
 * " Considerationes Modestse," Vol. II. p. 383. In Library of 
 Anglo-Catholic Theology. 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 1 65 
 
 doctrine not of the Real Presence but of the Real 
 Absence, or the absence of the res. And yet it is 
 not absence in the Zwinglian sense ; that system 
 rejects the res altogether, except in a historical and 
 memorial way. To the virtualist Christ is present, 'pi^ ^ /: 
 but in virtue, in power, in a grace flowing forth , ^^ P5f ^ 
 from Him on the reception of the symbols ; but the j 
 body and blood, the humanity, remain as far away I 
 as ever. To confound the res and the virtus^ as if ^ 
 they were the same, is inevitably to exile and ban- 
 ish the former. It is much the same as to say of ^y^v^ (* 
 Christ that He is God and man indeed, but God in hf^^^r^ 
 heaven only and not here on earth also ; " God with 
 us," not as though the tabernacle of God were now 
 with men, but because He sends forth from His dis- 
 tant abode grace, help, and benediction to those 
 who love Him. This appears to be the idea of the 
 virtualists, if that term may be applied to them. 
 Christ is not present ; but the virtue, strength, and 
 spiritual power of Christ are given to men ; the body 
 and blood of Christ are not present, nor are they / 
 received in the Lord's Supper ; but symbols only, ' /J}^ 
 which signify the benefits procured unto us by the ^ 
 precious blood-shedding of the Lord, and seal to 
 man the gifts of His passion and death. This 
 theory we are compelled to describe as that of the 
 
1 66 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 Real Absence ; the absence of the res or thing 
 signified ; and it has a strong attraction for those 
 who, while devout and spiritual, attach a great im- 
 portance to the exercise of the reason and private 
 judgment on the subject of religion. The addiction 
 to rationalistic methods, which is so characteristic 
 of the Protestant mind, renders it difBcult for per- 
 sons of that class to accept any doctrine, unless 
 some kind of account satisfactory to the human 
 understanding can be given ; the theory of a virtual 
 as opposed to a real presence meets this desire. It 
 is easy to think, that what makes Christ present is 
 a man's own faith, rather than Christ's word ; that 
 He is not in the sacrament, under the forms of 
 bread and wine, but absent, and waiting till faith 
 and love invite Him to enter the house of the soul; 
 and thus a deep and precious spiritual blessing is 
 expected in this reverend ordinance, at the price, 
 however, of an infinitesimally small demand on that 
 faith which believes when it cannot prove, and 
 accepts what is beyond our comprehension. There 
 may be great reverence and great devotion, where 
 this theory of the Presence is held ; we do not 
 confound it with naked Zwinglianism, nor fault it 
 as unspiritual ; our objection is this, that it lowers 
 the dignity of that holy ordinance, takes the mys- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 1 67 
 
 tcry from it, and makes it little less simple and 
 intelligible than the theory of the Memorial Meal. 
 It is, in fact, an explanation, apparently invented to 
 secure from demands on faith. Virtue is supposed 
 to descend from Christ in heaven to men on earth, 
 with the speed and directness of the electric current. 
 A spiritual force, a heavenly power, evoked by our 
 faith and love, concentrated by our obedience, be- 
 come operative at the spot at which we fulfil the 
 command ; this is applied by the Omnipotent 
 Spirit. Such a thing is at once understood ; it is 
 easy to grasp ; it is so easily grasped, that we feel 
 that it can only be a partial truth. 
 
 Of the tenet of Consubstantiation, one hardly 
 knows what to say. It is a fair question whether 
 the Lutherans really held it ; it was never accepted 
 by them, and certainly did not express their opin- 
 ion ; indeed, there is good reason for supposing 
 that the term was invented by their enemies, with 
 the intention of casting a reproach upon them. 
 The idea of a consubstantiation of the body and 
 blood of Christ with the substance of bread and 
 wine, so that an indescribable amalgam is the 
 result, is both blasphemous and absurd. Reference 
 to it is necessary in order to complete the view 
 of the subject, but I shall not impute so gross, 
 
1d8 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 SO ridiculous a notion to any man until he has dis- 
 tinctly stated that this is what he believes. 
 
 Thus far of the correspondence between the Cath- 
 olic doctrine of the Incarnation and the doctrine 
 of the Holy Eucharist. Venturing to paraphrase 
 the words of the judicious Hooker, we might say: 
 
 That there are four things which concur to make 
 the sacrament complete in itself: the Sign, the 
 Thing signified, the Conjunction of both, and their 
 Distinction. Four principal errors have withstood 
 or obscured the truth: that of Transubstantiation, 
 which denies the permanence of the sign ; that of 
 Zwinglianism, which denies the presence of the 
 thing signified ; that of Virtualism, which separates 
 the sign and the thing signified, so that the thing 
 is really absent, and only present in virtue and 
 effects; that of Consubstantiation, which so con- 
 founds the two that neither retains its reality. 
 And to all these errors we oppose the truth, which 
 accords with the words of Holy Scripture and the 
 statements of the old Catholic fathers ; which re- 
 tains the sign in its substantial integrity while 
 admitting in it a mystical and spiritual change on 
 consecration ; which declares the real, true, object- 
 ive presence of the body and blood of Christ under 
 the forms of bread and wine ; which makes the 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 1 69 
 
 virtus, the benefits of the sacrament, a result of 
 its worthy reception, and thus confers on man the 
 fuhiess of the blessing while withholding him from 
 the presumptuous claim that it is his faith rather 
 than God's act which brings to him his Saviour. 
 
 At the risk of becoming tedious, I must repeat 
 that the point on which the whole thing turns is 
 this: that the sacrament of the altar is complete 
 in itself by the act of the Holy Ghost, through jthe 
 consecrating priest, and that it is so presented as an 
 objective reality to the congregation. Exhibiting 
 the union of a higher and a lower part, each perfect 
 after its own kind, one belonging to the natural 
 order, the other to the supernatural, it is of- 
 fered to men for their edification and help. When 
 we come to Holy Communion we draw near to 
 a proffered gift of God. Whatever we bring — of 
 faith, of contrition, of the devotion of tears, or of 
 doubt, carelessness, indifference — we neither add to 
 nor detract from the mystery. It is shown to men ; 
 they w^ho partake worthily receive the benefits 
 offered, and they who receive unworthily eat and 
 drink to themselves condemnation. That appears 
 to be the simple construction of the words of St. 
 Paul about the danger of not discerning the Lord's 
 body in Holy Communion. How can a man be 
 
I/O LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 punished for not discerning what is not before him 
 or present to him at all? It is hard to understand 
 how one can be condemned, cast down, and blasted 
 before a Presence which has not yet been realized 
 to him in that sacrament — for failing to discern 
 j what was not there to be discerned. This faith, 
 that the sacrament is constituted by the Word and 
 i Holy Ghost, and not by the inner act of a human 
 \ mind and will, is the safeguard of sacramental doc- 
 trine from rationalistic perversion. It has been 
 somewhere said by Mr. Lccky, that of English 
 Christians they are all, more or less, in touch with 
 rationalism, as if it ran through all their theology; 
 and that they can never be satisfied with the Word 
 of God or the decisions of the Church until they 
 have submitted them, as critics and judges, to some 
 tests of their own. However that may be, it is 
 well to know, in this particular matter, where the 
 lines run, and that the one view of the Holy Sacra- 
 ment which contains the confutation of rationalism 
 is that of the real objective Presence. On that 
 point only is the issue squarely joined between 
 the rationalist and the Catholic. 
 
 A few words as to the Holy Sacrament in its 
 sacrificial aspect. It serves, and shall serve to the 
 end of the dispensation, a twofold purpose, as a 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 1 71 
 
 Memorial, showing forth the death of the Lord till 
 He come, and as a divine and comfortable feast of 
 life. To complete the subject it would be neces- 
 sary to go back to the Jewish times ; to watch the 
 action of the High Priest on the Day of Atone- 
 ment, and to compare it with that of Christ in His 
 Passion ; to see Him offering the sacrifice of blood 
 outside ; passing through the veil, disappearing 
 from sight, and going to the presence of God, 
 there to offer the avails of the sacrifice and make 
 intercession for us. It would be necessary, in the 
 next place, to show the correspondence of the acts 
 of those High Priests with the acts of the Christian 
 priest in celebrating the divine mysteries, and to 
 identify the action, in its profound relations, as one 
 and the same from age to age in the Church of the 
 redeemed. But the time does not suffice for this ; 
 nor would that branch of this subject be so fitly 
 considered here, where we are tracing the connec- 
 tion of the Sacramental System with the indwelling 
 of Christ in men. After the sacrifice comes the 
 feast upon the sacrifice, and to this your thoughts 
 have been particularly invited; to this most blessed 
 ordinance, the *' Esca Viatorum," the Food of 
 Angels, wherein Christ comes to His faithful, as 
 to those who were with Him on earth in Syria in 
 
1/2 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 the days of His flesh. What the Catholic Church 
 beHeves is this, that He is present with us in Holy- 
 Communion. Blessed are they that dwell in Thy 
 house, where the truth is known and received ; and 
 blessed are they who, having been fed of Thyself 
 on earth in those holy mysteries, shall eat bread 
 with Thee in the kingdom of God ! 
 
 I would close this discussion w^ith some words of 
 peace. Of the Holy Eucharist, Archdeacon Free- 
 man says : 
 
 " It was confessedly, through long ages of the Church, and 
 is by the vast majority of the Christian world at this hour, 
 conceived to be exceedingly mysterious throughout in its 
 nature and operation ; to be no less, indeed, than the highest 
 line of contact and region of commingling between heaven 
 and earth known to us, or provided for us ; a border land of 
 mystery where, by gradations baffling sight and thought, the 
 material truly blends with the spiritual and the visible 
 shades off into the unseen ; a thing, therefore, which of all 
 events or gifts in this world most nearly answers to the high- 
 est aspirations and deepest yearnings of our wonderfully 
 compounded being ; while in some ages and climes of the 
 Church it has been elevated into something yet more awful 
 and mysterious. Such an ordinance as this — challenging 
 such a position, claiming and knowm to claim such powers — 
 could never fail at any period to command the attention, if 
 not the reverence, of thoughtful humanity. Drawing tow^ards 
 it the longing vision and engaging, in measure or excess, the 
 
HOLY COMMUNION, 1/3 
 
 faith and affections of some ages and minds ; awakening the 
 jealous scrutiny and experiencing the colder construction, or 
 the eager opposition, of others ; it would be likely to give rise, 
 in ample measure, to the recorded feelings and judgments of 
 mankind concerning it."* 
 
 Bearing in mind the variations to which our 
 author refers, we recall with pain the fact that 
 tliis august and holy sacrament, instituted by our 
 Lord to be the sign of the unity of His brethren, 
 should have become the subject of contention, an 
 occasion of breaches of charity, and the cause of 
 suspicion and separation. May we not, however, 
 indulge the hope that, notwithstanding our dis- 
 putes and dissensions, there is a substantial agree- 
 ment in devotion to our Blessed Lord, as realized, 
 reverenced, or remembered in this memorial of 
 His love for sinners? May we not predict the 
 coming of a happy day when men shall come to 
 that holy ordinance, not with hard questions and 
 in a controversial temper, but with the faith which 
 is the evidence of things not seen and the charity 
 which believeth all things? Let us ask whether 
 the Eirenicon so greatly desired be not the doc- 
 trine (as held by the Catholic school in our 
 Anglican Communion) of the Real, Spiritual, Ob- 
 
 * "Principles of Divine Service," Vol. II. Introduction. 
 
174 LENTEN LECTURES, 
 
 jective Presence of Christ in that Holy Sacrament? 
 Is there any other view which can harmonize all 
 the rest and remove so many grounds of scruple 
 and objection? The formula seems to meet every 
 demand, except that of the unhappy men by 
 whom the idea of mystery and sacramental grace 
 is stiffly and absolutely rejected. The Presence 
 is real ; that saves the thing signified : it is a 
 Spiritual Presence ; that bars out material and car- 
 nal conceptions : it is an Objective Presence ; that 
 defends us from the notion that Christ is with us, 
 or absent, solely according to the force of some 
 mental act on our part. We are already ver}^ nigh 
 to those, on the one side, who accept the tenet of 
 transubstantiation, and to those, on the other, who 
 believe only in a virtual presence. What is it that 
 separates us from these earnest believers? The 
 tenet of transubstantiation, erroneous as we deem 
 it, is very widely held through Christendom. It is a 
 question whether transubstantiation, as rejected by 
 us, is the same thing as the transubstantiation now 
 believed in by Latin and Greek Christians ; whether 
 the difference in the thoughts of intelligent and 
 liberal men in the three communions under consid- 
 eration is not so slight as to be somewhat hard to 
 define. Let us consider. On one side it is asserted 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 175 
 
 that the elements remain as to their substance un- 
 changed ; on the other, it is asserted that they 
 change in substance, while it is conceded that 
 they remain unchanged in extension, figure, appear- 
 ance, taste, and physical qualities and properties. 
 What then is that substance of which these things 
 are said ? Why quarrel about the existence or non- 
 existence of an indefinable somewhat which leaves 
 the elements, in a practical point of view, the same 
 that they were? And why is the gulf impassable 
 between those who say that the elements do not 
 change and those who say that whatever change 
 they undergo it does not involve the five particulars 
 just mentioned ? Is not the point too intensely 
 refined, too metaphysical for the mind to grasp? 
 And why should not what is admitted on each side 
 satisfy the other? 
 
 Again : as for those devout and earnest souls 
 who come to the Lord's Supper full of faith and 
 love, as to a holy ordinance rich in comfort and 
 blessing, expecting to find help and strength, the 
 virtues and graces of the Redeemer, and a spiritual 
 aid for which they look particularly to that Feast, 
 what is there between us and them? Why need 
 they fear, as though some dreadful thing was to be 
 forced on them in our teaching? One thing, and 
 
i;^ LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 only one, appears to differentiate between their 
 faith and ours. We are thinking of a Christ pres- 
 ent in sacramental sign and under visible forms ; 
 they are thinking of the same Christ absent, save in 
 His omnipresent Deity. We ask no hard thing of 
 them in moving them to think of the King as here, 
 not there. We ask no surrender of the function of 
 the senses as verifiers of the truth of objects in the 
 material world ; we do not ask them to localize 
 the Saviour, or to think of Him as inclosed in the 
 elements of bread and wine ; the Presence which 
 we ask them to acknowledge is a spiritual Pres- 
 ence, while we tell them that it is not less true, not 
 less real, than it was when He dwelt here in the 
 days of His flesh, not less near than it was in the 
 upper room where he sat surrounded by His disci- 
 ples, and St. John leaned on his bosom. What 
 fuller joy, what better thing, than to know that the 
 Saviour is thus among us, in truth, and that the 
 tabernacle of God is with men? 
 
 And if there be sensitive and anxious souls who 
 fear lest, in insisting so earnestly on the truth of the 
 elements, we may slip out of harmony with the 
 mind of the Church on this subject, we have but to 
 remind them of our faith that the Presence which 
 we believe is objective first before it becomes sub- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 1 77 
 
 jective. This keeps us off the shoal on which so 
 many have gone to wreck, and secures the due pay- 
 ment of all glory and honor to Him who alone 
 worketh great marvels, and maketh weak things 
 strong. The man who firmly holds the objective 
 Presence cannot be out of line with the belief of the 
 ages and the doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church 
 — that word sufficiently announces his position. 
 
 Therefore we offer this teaching as the Eirenicon 
 which we seem to need to-day; in the guiet trust 
 that God in His good time will make us to be of one 
 mind in the house, on this as on other subjects. To 
 seek for points of agreement is surely a better work 
 than to dwell, morbidly and gloomily, on differences, 
 some of which may be differences rather about words 
 than things. We are happiest when we labor for 
 peace, though it may be that many who hear there- 
 of make them ready to battle. Be it, day by day, 
 our prayer, for ourselves and all other pilgrims and 
 strangers upon the earth : 
 
 "LET THY MERCIFUL EARS, O LORD, BE OPEN 
 UNTO OUR PRAYERS, AND ENLIGHTEN THOU OUR 
 HEARTS WITH THE GRACE OF THY HOLY SPIRIT, 
 THAT WE MAY WORTHILY APPROACH THY HOLY 
 MYSTERIES, AND LOVE THEE WITH AN EVERLAST- 
 ING LOVE, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST. AMEN." 
 
VI. 
 
 THE OUTWARD GLORY AND THE 
 INWARD GRACE. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE OUTWARD GLORY AND THE INWARD GRACE. 
 
 Two things remain to be done before bringing 
 these lectures to a close. We have traversed a 
 field of great extent, in considering the Sacra- 
 mental System as disclosed in Nature, in man, and 
 in our religion. I wish to say some words, briefly, 
 on its twofold manifestation, externally, in the 
 worship of the Church, and internally, in the life 
 of the soul, and on the development of the seed 
 sown therein unto life eternal. 
 
 The Sacramental System rests, as we believe, on 
 a basis in the natural world ; to nature, then, may 
 we look, on nature may we freely draw, for a supply 
 of whatever is necessary to convey to us, through 
 the senses, a due apprehension of the meaning and 
 value of that system. Therefore it seems to be of 
 the perpetual fitness of things that Religion should 
 be symbolical in form ; that it should wear a strik- 
 ing and appropriate garb, visible to the eye, and 
 expressive of the spirit within. Such is indeed the 
 fact, in the case of every religion which has proved 
 
l82 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 its right to the name by the effects produced on 
 its adherents ; and the Catholic ReHgion is the 
 most convincing and attractive instance of the gen- 
 eral law. To the solemn and beautiful Ritual of 
 the Church of Christ your thoughts shall now be 
 directed ; and under that term is included every- 
 thing, small or great, employed by way of rite, cere- 
 mony, or symbol, to present to mankind the truth 
 revealed by the Father of the universe and the 
 Ruler of their life. How vast is this subject and 
 how refreshing to one who is tired of the noise of 
 the world and the strife of tongues ! How satisfy- 
 ing to the soul which loves the good, the beautiful, 
 and the true ! Think of the worship of the Church ; 
 how deep the impress it has stamped upon the 
 world ; how often of old it subdued the wild bar- 
 barian by its awe and reverence ; how it has melted 
 the hearts of those who beheld it for the first time, 
 or, after long absence, saw the solemn pageantry 
 again ; how it attracts and satisfies the devout, trans- 
 forms the fierce and cruel, converts the sinner, and 
 seems to open to the toilers in this world's night a 
 gate into heaven. It is wonderful to note how the 
 Church, with her ancient Creed and her equally 
 ancient liturgical Use — in essentials the same all 
 the world through — has held her place, surviving 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 1 83 
 
 every empire of the earth, outliving assaults, falsify- 
 ing each prediction of failure, and chanting her " De 
 Profiuidis''' over the graves of the enemies by 
 whom she has been assailed from generation to 
 generation ! Nay, even when, under pressure and 
 perhaps inadvertently, men have rejected and flung 
 away their birthright in that grand traditional sys- 
 tem of faith and worship, we fail not to find them 
 growing more and more restless and uneasy, while 
 trying' to recover, if not the substance, at least the 
 shadow of what once was theirs. It is, indeed, a 
 touching sight to behold the children whose fathers 
 repudiated the old and venerable forms of Christian 
 worship, now groping their way back to the place 
 of parting, to see if anything, and if so, what, 
 could be recovered where so much was thrown 
 away. What a wonderful story is told, by compar- 
 ing the New England meeting-house of two hun- 
 dred and fifty years ago — that depressing, barn-like 
 structure, four-square, painted white, and having no 
 semblance of a house of God — with one of those 
 magnificent edifices, built in correct ecclesiastical 
 style and externally faultless, in which the descend- 
 ants of the ancient Puritans now assemble for their 
 Sunday devotions ! The principle on which sym- 
 bolical and liturgical religion rests is deeply rooted 
 
I 84 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 in human nature ; it is an instinct, a demand, 
 implying universal need. The science of Christian 
 Liturgies, based on those needs of mankind, stands 
 eminent among all sciences ; rich in material, con- 
 genial, attractive, satisfying. In Christianity, when 
 sincerely and simply taught, will inevitably be found 
 that quality referred to by John Mason Neale, in 
 his preface to his translation of Durandus, which 
 he calls Sacramentality. Types of Christianity 
 occur, no doubt, in which this element seems want- 
 ing; but are they not corruptions of our religion? 
 may they not be described as cases of emasculated 
 or desiccated Christianity ? True Christianity can- 
 not be false to the general postulate on which 
 religion is built ; to the nature of man, to the design 
 of God in making us what we are, to the drift of 
 history from the beginning of the world to this 
 day. The Sacramental System can 'be traced in 
 the heavens above and in the earth beneath, in the 
 Incarnate Word, and in ourselves ; the science of 
 Christian symbolism is its inseparable attendant ; 
 from pole to pole, and from the one sea to the 
 other, it proclaims the unity of the works of God 
 in nature and in grace. 
 
 By an ineradicable instinct, by a sense of fitness, 
 and by a sensible need, men seek and find — what- 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 1 85 
 
 ever their religion — some means of giving outward 
 expression to their faith. Let them beheve what 
 they will, be it right or wrong, false or true, they 
 must announce it in visible sign or act. The more 
 they believe, the more free will be their use of ritual 
 and symbolical helps; the purer their faith, the more 
 noble and affecting its expression. Conversely, as 
 men lose their hold on a world beyond this, believ- 
 ing less and less, the more dry and dull must their 
 worship become, till, when they reach the end, and 
 believe nothing, acts of worship cease, because the 
 motive to worship exists no more. I repeat it : all 
 nations, people, and languages, without exception, 
 so far as they have had any religion, have felt the 
 need of means to convey religious ideas to them- 
 selves and to others. God, in choosing a people as 
 His own, and making them His agents in keeping 
 the light aflame in the darkness of the earth, insti- 
 tuted a full, minute, and splendid ritual system as 
 an adjunct to that work. The Holy Church through- 
 out the world, heir of the elder branch of the 
 family, followed the indication of the Divine Will. 
 For the " Origines Liturgic^e " we go back to those 
 days when the worship of the synagogue expanded 
 into that of the Christian assemblies. What we now 
 possess and enjoy may be traced to norms in the 
 
1 86 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 sub-apostolic age. The utmost importance attaches 
 to these things; they make for help and encourage- 
 ment, for accuracy in teaching, for precision in 
 thought, for conservation of dogma, for edification 
 of believers, for signs to faith, for reminders of duty, 
 for object lessons in divine knowledge, for comfort 
 and consolation in a world of care. Even the con- 
 flicts which have raged from time to time, and often 
 with mob-fury and frenzy of fanatics, about the 
 Ritual Question, attest its importance in the eye of 
 mankind. We may count on a general consent to 
 the proposition that Symbolism is valuable only for 
 what it expresses, and that a ritual which means 
 nothing is not worth keeping up. The men who built 
 and decorated the great cathedrals, and developed 
 in them the full glory of worship, did so, not for 
 amusement or for the gratification of a dry and self- 
 ish sestheticism, but under an impulse which com- 
 pelled them to make their loyalty and devotion 
 known to the world, and to give due expression to 
 the truths to which they were devoted, heart and 
 soul; while, on the other hand, they who, roaring in 
 the midst of the congregations, set fire to the holy 
 places, brake down the carved work thereof with 
 axes and hammers, and defiled the dwelling-place of 
 God's Name, did so under the impression that they 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 187 
 
 were doing Him service as reformers of abuses and 
 exterminators of falsehood and error. On each side, 
 by friend and foe alike, is witness borne to the 
 power of ritual and its influence on the people. "^^ 
 
 Let us think of this matter, first, from what may 
 be termed an a priori point of view, and then in 
 some of its historical and practical aspects. 
 
 Two things seem so clear that they need no argu- 
 ment to prove their truth ; it is impossible to state 
 the articles of any religion without the use of dog- 
 matic terms; it is next to impossible to keep a sys- 
 tem of doctrine intact without the help of symbols 
 apt to represent and teach it. 
 
 " As thought cannot be expressed without language, or 
 some outward sign and representation, either in science or 
 religion, so it is an absolute necessity to employ signs, words, 
 or symbols, to embody and teach the facts of both. If the 
 
 * Even Auguste Comte, having swept away the Christian rehgion, 
 and substituted for it his system of philosophy, was fain to invent 
 and contrive a religion and a ritual to match his new discoveries ; he 
 has his church, his hierarchy, and his pontiff ; his mimicry of ecclesi- 
 astical rites and institutions, and his travesty of the Christian sacra- 
 ments. We also learn that the recent school of sceptics, who march 
 under the name and invocation of "Robert Elsmere," have set up a 
 church in London, wherein they carry on some kind of worship, the 
 Lord knows what, after their own peculiar ideas. So even the most 
 extreme among the enemies of the Faith attest the power of the 
 principle which underlies our ritual and liturgical service of the 
 True God. 
 
158 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 mathematician cannot do without his signs and formulce, or 
 the merchant without his figures and secret marks, so the 
 religion of all antiquity could not do without its symbols. And 
 it is difficult to know how any religion can be preserved in its 
 purity and integrity without symbols or exact and uniform 
 expressions of truth, from which there shall be no variation. 
 It is possible that, in the lapse of time, with the increase of 
 wealth and luxury and the usual degeneracy of morals and 
 decay of pure religion consequent upon such a state of 
 things, the first symbols of a people might come to lose their 
 significance or influence, and others of a more debased char- 
 acter be added to the list. And it is further possible that all 
 symbols might be taken for the things or gods which they 
 represented, at least among the ignorant and depraved, and 
 among all such as were incapable of abstract thought, or 
 were more under the influences of the senses than of faith or 
 reason. But how to have a religion and worship for a people 
 at large, without some kind of external form and expression, or 
 how to preserve and transmit such religion and worship with- 
 out symbols and records, it is next to impossible to say." * 
 
 The use of Symbolism is coeval with the human 
 race ; it is a result of the constitution of man's 
 nature ; the desire, the need, are implanted in the 
 heart from the very beginning.f Divine truth is 
 presented to man as a whole, and not to one depart- 
 
 * "Monumental Christianity, or the Art and Symbolism of the 
 Primitive Church ns Witnesses and Teachers of the One Catholic 
 Faith and Practice." By John P. Lundy, p. 4. 
 
 f See C. O. Tvliiller, quoted by Dr. T.undy, pp. 23, 24. 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 1 89 
 
 ment or function of his nature only; it has to do 
 with us as we are, complete in body, soul, and 
 spirit ; every part is concerned in and affected by 
 what God makes known. And therefore, unless 
 religion has a visible, audible, palpable side, it can- 
 not meet the entire man, much less the whole 
 human brotherhood. Men need no commandment 
 on that point ; nature tells them what must be 
 done; and just as soon as they perceive the exist- 
 ence of an object of worship, they seek and find 
 a symbolical method of rendering homage; some 
 sign, some form, is instantly appropriated to that 
 purpose. On the instincts of humanity, on needs 
 universally felt and admitted, rests the Liturgical 
 system of the Church ; nay, it is thus also with 
 every system of worship at any time or in any place 
 used among men. 
 
 But symbolism is not only indispensable to the 
 expression of the faith, it is equally necessary to 
 its preservation. Our thoughts are unstable and 
 changeful ; they are not an unerring guide ; left to 
 ourselves, without safeguard or check, we cannot be 
 trusted from day to day ; '' the Lord knoweth the 
 thoughts of man that they are vain." '^' To steady 
 
 * Ps. xciv. II. 
 
1 90 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 them, we need visibles which endure. It would be 
 tiresome to quote the '' scgiijus irritant " of the bard 
 of the Sabine farm ; you know the Hues, perhaps, by- 
 heart ; and j^ou know that the words are true. The 
 vahie of Ritual consists in its aptness to teach, and 
 its ability to preserve and transmit what it teaches. 
 A ritual which means nothing is an anomaly, the 
 melancholy shadow of something dead and gone. 
 A meagre and defective ritual is helpless to prevent 
 variation in doctrine. Truth may be held for a 
 while, without this aid to our weakness, but not for 
 long. Men of powerful intellect and strong convic- 
 tions have now and then declined the help of rite 
 and symbol, and set at naught whatever makes for 
 exterior reverence and beauty in religion ; but their 
 temporary success was due to the movement of the 
 tide of controversy ; as the combative spirit lost 
 power, and quietness and calm returned, disinte- 
 gration in thought and belief followed. Reformers, 
 inspired by a supreme conviction of the truth of 
 some pet tenet, or a sense of responsibility and im- 
 portance as guardians of a favorite line of doctrine, 
 may go on for a time without the aid of those ad- 
 juncts which in general are necessary for the defence 
 and maintenance of religion ; but when the early 
 zeal dies out, with the impulse which it gave, the 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE, igi 
 
 descent into indifference is accelerated by the re- 
 moval of the brakes from the wheel. And so with 
 the Catholic Religion. While in its ritual and sym- 
 bolism there is no value whatever apart from the 
 truths which they enshrine and disclose in their 
 characteristic way, it is impossible to see how that 
 religion could be kept up in the world without 
 their help ; as matter of experience, it has not 
 been kept up where the old and suitable forms 
 and rites have been discarded. The Symbol, de- 
 voutly and intelligently used, becomes an agent 
 in strengthening our intellectual apprehension 
 Attitudes expressive of awe and reverence devel- 
 op those feelings, and become secondary causes 
 thereof. Many persons say: "I make this sign, 
 I use that ceremony, because I need them ; if I 
 did not, I might lose my faith." And they are 
 right in their statement of the case ; for we are 
 imitative beings ; we are helped by what we see ; 
 under the law of association, conduct and opinion 
 are invariably influenced by acts, sights, sounds, 
 subjected to the senses, and carrying an impression 
 to the mind and heart. Many have owed their con- 
 version to the eye and the ear, engaged by some 
 symbolical presentment of a vital truth, who would 
 have been deaf to the most forcible appeal to the 
 
192 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 i logical faculty ; and this because they were men ; not 
 ' spirit and mind only, but body and senses also ; and 
 : because idealism was not adequate to their need. 
 How solemnly and earnestly is the case presented 
 by the apostle in describing how the human race 
 was brought to the right knowledge of God Him- 
 self ! '' That which was from the beginning, which 
 we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, 
 which we have looked upon, and our hands have 
 handled, of the Word of Life, that declare we 
 unto you." ^ God did not reveal Himself to ab- 
 stract thought ; nor is the knowledge of Him and 
 our relation to Him derivable from abstract thought. 
 He came among us, and was seen and heard in the 
 visible form of that human nature in which He 
 dwelt ; now we still see Him, in the religion of 
 Sacramentality and Symbolism, which do for us 
 what sight and touch and hearing did for those 
 who were near Him in the days of His flesh. 
 
 In accordance with these principles, the Catholic 
 Church has presented, and still presents, the truth, 
 through her solemn and beautiful ritual, to man- 
 kind. We believe, we must believe, we cannot but 
 believe, in the truth and reality of what is con- 
 
 * I St. John. i. I, 2. 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. I93 
 
 stantly spoken of as the worship of nature. We 
 gladly adopt the term, and assign to it a practical 
 value ; not using it as a rhetorical phrase but as the 
 statement of a fact. The heavens declare the glory 
 of God."^ The stars had a voice in the morning of 
 the world, f and still the entire firmament speaks 
 His praise. Nature, through all her realms, knows 
 how to express the gratitude and joy which come 
 of existence according to her Creator's will. Could 
 we but see beneath the surface, we should, no 
 doubt, find in everything that hath breath a power 
 to praise the Lord :j; and a good will thereto ; if we 
 could hear better than we do with these gross ears 
 of ours, we should, no doubt, receive the harmonies 
 of a grand anthem of gladness perpetually sung to 
 God, through kingdom after kingdom of His worlds. 
 Now the worship of the Catholic Church was meant 
 to be, and is, a response to this inarticulate and — 
 to us, but only to us — inaudible action of worship ; § 
 and whatever of breadth, of splendor, of impressive- 
 ness, of melody are in the Versicle should appear in 
 the Respond. The worship of nature is like an 
 
 * Psalm xix. i. f Job, xxxviii. 7. \ Psalm cl. 6. 
 
 § For some very interesting and valuable thoughts and statements 
 on what has been called superhuman vision and the rhythmical 
 movement in Nature, see Canon MacColl's "Christianity in Rela- 
 tion to Science and Morals," pp. 222-236. 
 13 
 
194 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 Antiphon, given out, full and clear, through earth 
 and sky and sea ; and then the psalm is taken up, 
 with that Antiphon for its suggestive inspiration, 
 and it rolls forth from the temples of the Lord, 
 wherein He dwells, and its sound goes out into all 
 lands. Why should not His worship be as rich, as 
 magnificent, as it can be made? Why should there 
 not go into it as much of beauty, majesty, and 
 refined culture as faithful souls and ardent minds 
 and reverent and devoted spirits can contribute for 
 an oblation to the Lord? What else can it be but 
 visible and symbolical ? We have seen that the 
 whole system of the created universe is sacramental 
 in its cast; that the sacramental principle is trace- 
 able everywhere in nature ; that under visible 
 \ forms spiritual and moral truths are made known 
 ito intelligent inhabitants of the world. So the 
 whole material universe becomes tributary to God's 
 Church, the constituted teacher of the nations, the 
 witness and keeper of the truth. Since God has 
 been pleased to appropriate certain elements of 
 this world, and in particular the element of water, 
 the flour of wheat, the juice of the grape, the oil of 
 the olive, and, sanctifying them to spiritual and 
 supernatural uses, has lifted them to an unheard-of 
 honor, is it not meet and right that nature should 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 1 95 
 
 continue to contribute her choicest treasures for 
 oblation in those places in which her own has thus 
 already been glorified? The rock of the mountain 
 side, the trees of the forest ; frond and flower, the 
 glory of Lebanon, the fir tree, the pine tree, and 
 the box together ; the gold, the silver, the precious 
 stones ; the products of the loom ; color, lights, 
 sweet sounds, all kinds of music ; nay, everything 
 whereby God can be praised and gratitude can be 
 expressed, and everything apt to carry a meaning 
 or present a truth, is here in place. That is a 
 healthful instinct which bids us make our churches 
 as beautiful as we can and our ritual attractive and 
 impressive. It helps us to realize that God is one 
 in nature and in the Church. It is a fatal error to 
 divorce the worship of God in nature and the wor- 
 ship of God in the Church as if they had nothing in 
 common ; for if His worship in our Christian assem- 
 blies be allowed to sink into something so cold, so 
 bald, so dull, so lifeless as we often see it, why 
 should not men turn away from that unworthy and 
 unsatisfying routine and get them to the open air, 
 crying: " Give me the light, the color, the music; 
 give me the blue of the sky, the brilliance of the 
 flovv'ers, the softness of the green sward ; the reflec- 
 tion of the clouds in lake and stream, the songs and 
 
196 LENTEN LECTURES, 
 
 carols of the birds; these lift my soul, these warm 
 my heart, these realize God to me as He never 
 could be realized within four whitewashed walls, in 
 prosy, unreal talk, in discordant droning of unmu- 
 sical verse ; the worship of nature is more true to 
 the ideal than what you ask me to offer in your 
 synagogue or auditorium." Let it ever be in your 
 thoughts, this alliance between the ritual of nature 
 and the ritual of Holy Church. Let us welcome 
 the idea of the offering of her best, by nature, to 
 the promotion of the greater glory of the Lord, 
 and of our duty to accept that gift in good faith. 
 It is of the fitness of things that this should be so ; 
 it is the expression of our conviction of the unity 
 of God's works in nature and in grace ; it is our 
 protest against the spirit which thinks that we do 
 honor to God by making His worship mean, slov- 
 enly, and contemptible. In fact, the whole system 
 of ritual splendor and magnificence lies in germ in 
 the institution of the two sacraments as necessary 
 to salvation. The Church has responded to a sug- 
 gestion which it was impossible to misunderstand. 
 She has invested the simple act of baptism, the 
 simple acts of breaking bread and blessing a cup, 
 with a rich abundance of symbolical ceremonies, 
 in order to stamp more deeply on the minds of her 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. I97 
 
 children the ideas connected with those sacra- 
 ments, the truths which they enshrine, the benefits 
 which they apply ; she shows forth, by every 
 agency adapted to the purpose, the exalted nature 
 of our first grafting into Christ, the indescribable 
 mystery of growth upward into Him and into 
 eternal life, by feeding on His flesh and blood. 
 These adjuncts are not essential to the validity of 
 the sacraments, but they have a use and a fitness 
 which place them beyond legitimate objection."^ 
 
 But it is said that these things are for the vulgar 
 only, and that men of a high order of intelligence 
 do not need them. We are not careful to reply 
 to that ancient, ill-tempered slur. What are con- 
 temptuously called the vulgar constitute, in point 
 of fact, the great mass of mankind. To the poor 
 the gospel was preached ; " to this man will I look, 
 saith the Lord, even to him that is poor and of 
 a contrite spirit and trembleth at my word." f 
 Religion is for such as these, first of all ; not for a 
 coterie of self-opinionated philosophers, nor for any 
 man, whosoever he be, who walks in pride of intel- 
 lect or heart ; and against the appeal of the poor in 
 spirit, and the unerring instinct of the mass of man- 
 
 * See Moehler's " Symbolism," vol. i. p. 311. 
 f Isa. Ixvi. 2. 
 
198 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 kind, rationalistic objections avail not. The ration- 
 alist may deny, he cannot affirm ; he may pull 
 down, he cannot build up ; he never can invent a 
 religion which will meet the want of the race. Our 
 argument against that cold idealism which makes 
 men iconoclasts is justified by common sense, and 
 even more strongly by experience. *' To confine 
 ^u i^ ^ ©'»«l/religion entirely to spirituals," says an old author, 
 /v:. . <' may perhaps have been the attempt of well-mean- 
 ing men, but certainly of bad philosophers. They 
 were unacquainted with human nature, and did not 
 foresee that their attempt must terminate in perfect 
 Quietism." As little do they perceive who throw 
 away the Christian ritual and yet hope to keep 
 Christian dogma, that the loss of the former 
 involves the loss of the latter, and that he who dis- 
 cards the sign will ultimately be forced to part with 
 the thing signified. 
 
 It was not without the highest authority that 
 the Church of the latter days developed her ritual 
 system. Almighty God was the author of that 
 order which preceded it, and out of which it grew. 
 His directions were comprehensive and minute, and 
 the result was impressive and magnificent. Enough 
 may be gathered from the Holy Scriptures and 
 from external testimony to show that the service 
 
 AX (. 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 1 99 
 
 of the ancient Church must have been stately and 
 profoundly impressive. To that, as to a norm, 
 they looked, who had the ordering of Christian 
 worship. Their reliance on symbolism, their appre- 
 ciation of the fine arts in their various branches, 
 are evident from the beginning. The pictures and 
 symbols in the Catacombs, the palm branch, the 
 Agnus Dei, the fish, the cross, are instances of the 
 desire to give visible expression to faith. That 
 Christian worship was, from the first, liturgical will 
 only be denied by those who are influenced by a 
 strong distaste for it. That the Christian converts 
 began to adorn and decorate their places of wor- 
 ship as soon as they were relieved from the fear of 
 persecution, is matter of history. More and more 
 beautiful, more and more rich and splendid became 
 the order of their worship, till it attained a cul- 
 mination in the ages when the great cathedrals of 
 the world were built. Glorious things, indeed, are 
 spoken of thee, thou city of God ! 
 
 Take the cathedral idea, as it lived in the mind 
 of the men of old and was partially realized by their 
 hands, and consider if anything be lacking to make 
 it the most splendid conception of holy symbolism. 
 Let us imagine ourselves before one of those superb 
 objects which constitute the admiration and the 
 
200 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 despair of our colder and less religious day. Here 
 stands the sacred pile, every square foot teaching a 
 lesson and expressing a truth ; addressing intellect, 
 heart, and senses together; showing man the glory 
 of God, the mystery of his own being, the wonders 
 of time and eternity. The western front faces a 
 storm-swept world, as a barrier of rock the angry 
 sea ; figures of Archangel and Angel, Apostles, 
 Saints, and Warriors seem to repel the powers of 
 darkness ; grotesque shapes here and there suggest 
 the strange, incongruous elements so warded off 
 lest they might disturb the peace of the Holy City. 
 The western towers represent the Apostolic Ministry, 
 firm and unshaken. The portals, enriched with leaf, 
 flower, and fruit, and deeply cusped and shafted, 
 welcome the approaching pilgrim, whom sweet and 
 peaceful countenances also regard as he draws nigh. 
 He sees the long sweep of the wall and roof line, 
 the transepts, the flying buttresses, throwing their 
 arms across the sky; and there, above, the spire 
 rises, and melts away into the air, catching the first 
 rays of the morning light, flushed by the sunset, and 
 holding up the everlasting cross amidst the stars of 
 night. Enter, and hushed now be soul and heart, for 
 we are in another world. Who does not know the 
 impression produced on first standing inside the 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 201 
 
 great cathedral doors? There are the calm of the 
 deep green woods, the " stillness of the central 
 sea." The arcades of the forest are before us; piers 
 and columns stand to the right and left, like the 
 monarchs of the grove ; above is the roof for a sky; 
 pictures, mosaics, colors, rainbow hues, make it *' all 
 glorious within." And then, the holy of holies 
 beyond ! 
 
 "Such trembling joy the soul o'erawes, 
 As nearer to Thy shrine she draws : 
 And now before the choir we pause. 
 
 " From each carved nook and fretted bend, 
 Cornice and gallery seem to send 
 Tones that with seraph hymns might blend. 
 
 "Three solemn parts together twine 
 In harmony's mysterious line, 
 Three solemn aisles approach the shrine." * 
 
 Lesser altars, each with its ornaments, catch the 
 eye, but it rests, finally, upon the central throne of 
 the Presence of our Lord. And now, it may be, 
 while eyes are full, and heart as though it could 
 hold no more, shall come the sound of music, which, 
 rolling in deep diapason, fills the air ; and chants are 
 heard like the voices of eternity and the songs of the 
 
 * "Christian Year : " Trinity Sunday. 
 
202 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 New Jerusalem ; and forth, in procession, with cross 
 and banner, with cope and shining vestment, come 
 figures, which approach, and ascend the grades of 
 the choir and the altar steps, and show forth The 
 Death, till He come, and make solemn memorial of 
 His Passion, interceding for the sins of the world, 
 praying for "the whole state of Christ's Church 
 militant." This is the culmination, the triumph of 
 Sacramentality and Symbolism; true to our nature; 
 perfectly adapted to the law of our constitution ; 
 precious, not in itself nor for itself alone, but for 
 the things which it teaches and for those spiritual 
 realities which it thus presents to the understanding 
 and the faith. 
 
 Bryant, in his " Thanatopsis," represents the uni- 
 verse as ministering to man in his death : 
 
 "The hills, 
 Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun — the vales 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 The venerable woods ; rivers that move 
 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
 That make the meadows green ; and poured round all 
 Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 Of the great tomb of man." 
 
 The thought of the poet, exquisitely though it be 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 203 
 
 disclosed, is depressing. There is another side to 
 this ; we may think of nature in another way ; we 
 may reahze her as ministering to us in our hfe, as 
 coming to us in shining garments rather than in 
 mourning weeds; as chanting meanwhile a^Sursum 
 Corda " rather than a ''Requiem ^ternam." Life, 
 not death, is the message of the Gospel ; beauty, not 
 ugliness, the vesture of the King's Daughter ; light, 
 not darkness, the boon of nature to believing souls ; 
 and the rays derived from her mysterious shrine 
 may better be used to kindle the sanctuary lamp 
 before the altar, than to touch to flame the candles 
 which flicker beside the trestles of the dead. 
 
 When, under some sinister influence or some 
 wrong guidance, men, rejecting all this glory and 
 beauty, turn away to their own devices, they leave 
 things which belong to their peace. They go into 
 a chilly air, they begin a long descent ; they lose, 
 in losing the sign, those things which it signifies, 
 the help which the symbol was intended to give. 
 Less and less shall they know about worship ; more 
 and more hard and intellectual shall become their 
 religion; the sanctities of the altar service shall be 
 replaced by the attraction of listening to a set dis- 
 course ; the gratification of the ear, the exercise of 
 the critical faculty on some favorite orator's elo- 
 
204 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 quent efforts, shall become the prominent motives 
 to draw them to the place of meeting. Slowly, and 
 step by step, come changes in this declining prog- 
 ress ; men bow no longer at the Sacred Name ; 
 they kneel no longer; they sit, to praise, to pray; 
 the more bare the edifice, the better it seems to its 
 purpose ; there is no font, no altar, no organ ; there 
 is no belief in regeneration or the real presence; 
 there is no priesthood ; there is no garb for ofificiant ; 
 there is no authority but that of private judgmicnt 
 and individual taste. So proceeds the evolution ; 
 and still, beyond, to more barren forms, when we 
 come to the frigid silence of Quietists, who sit wait- 
 ing for the Spirit to move them, and discard every 
 external in religion. There is no farther step, save 
 that of imperturbable agnosticism ; which, when we 
 reach, we are at the frigid pole, where the Solemn 
 Ritual of the Catholic Church is replaced by an 
 inarticulate cry addressed, none knows to what. 
 True to theory and close to fact is the picture 
 drawn by Mr. Mallock, of the logical end of the 
 rejection of the symbolism of the sacramental 
 Church. Paul will instruct Virginia in the solemn 
 and unspeakably significant worship of the Positiv- 
 ism, which admits no God, no soul, no supernatural 
 order, and, above all, no hell. He will show her 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 20$ 
 
 what true religion and true worship are ; he has an 
 audible and a reasonable liturgy which gives utter- 
 ance to the religion of exact thought. 
 
 '"Let us both join our voices,' he says, 'and let us croon 
 at the moon.' The professor at once began a long, low howl- 
 ing. Virginia joined him until she was out of breath. 
 
 "'Oh, Paul,' she said at last, 'is this more rational than 
 the Lord's Prayer ? ' 
 
 " 'Yes,' said the professor, ' for we can analyze and com- 
 prehend that ; but true religious feeling, as Professor Tyndall 
 tells us, we can neither analyze nor comprehend. See how 
 big nature is, and how little — ah, how little ! — we know 
 about it. Is it not solemn, and sublime, and awful ? Come, 
 let us howl again.' 
 
 "The professor's devotional fervor grew every moment. 
 At last he put his hand to his mouth, and began hooting like 
 an owl, till it seemed that all the island echoed to him." * 
 
 " He gave them their desire, and sent 
 leanness withal into their soul." 
 
 We have long since passed the point at which 
 the return to the old ways in our branch of the 
 Church excited anger and provoked to iconoclastic 
 rioting. The Oxford Movement began by the 
 
 * "The New Paul and Virginia, or Positivism on an Island," 
 by W. H. Mallock, pp. 124-129. 
 
206 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 recovery of doctrine and dogma, obscured and all 
 but lost in the age of latitudinarian and Protestant 
 error; the ritual revival followed as its legitimate 
 fruit. In some points it is open to criticism; we 
 may regret, perhaps deplore, the line taken in the 
 development in certain directions ; but whatever 
 mistakes have been made, the general course has 
 been right and true. John Mason Neale's predic- 
 tion, in his spirit-stirring lines, ^' The Good Old 
 Times of England," has been fulfilled to the 
 letter,"^ and each day widens the range of that 
 victorious progress. Meanwhile, the work within 
 our own borders has the sympathy and approval of 
 multitudes of friends and lovers of God, in other 
 folds than ours, who are following as fast as could 
 be expected in the path on which w^e are pioneers. 
 And often, watching these things, do men bow the 
 head, and give God thanks for the day when the 
 beauty and the glory are thus coming back, as if 
 they could hear, in the air about them, the cadence 
 of the prophet's words : 
 
 " Et aedificabbnt deserta a seculo et ruinas antiquas eri- 
 gent, et instaurabunt civitates desertas, dissipatas in genera- 
 tionem et generationem," f 
 
 * " Hierologus," ch. IV, pp 101-103. f Isa. Ixi. 4. 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 20/ 
 
 Only let this be said by way of cautel. What 
 we most need, everywhere, to-day, is reahty in re- 
 ligion ; and yet, so strangely is temptation fitted 
 to human weakness, that without suspecting it we 
 may be powerfully drawn to unreality and untruth, 
 like those wdio pursue a phantom and grasp at a 
 shadow. It is a distinct temptation to have and to 
 use things, without attaching a meaning to them ; 
 to retain creeds, and yet to put on the words what- 
 ever sense we please; to have forms, but to disclaim 
 what they naturally convey to the eye and the ear; 
 to use a ritual, but at the same time to say that it 
 is without doctrinal signification. That is the in- 
 stant danger of the hour; against that we must be 
 ever on the watch ; it is Satan's masterpiece to take 
 what ought to make for stronger faith, deeper rev- 
 erence, and more sensible apprehension of things 
 unseen and invisible, and, having extracted the 
 kernel and marrowy to leave us an empty shell, a 
 worthless husk. Unreality in religion makes unreal- 
 ity in the daily life; God forbid that we be involved 
 in the downfall to which it leads ! God forbid that 
 any one of us be found saying, or saying Amen 
 to, prayers with which the conscience does not go 
 along; reciting the Creed, yet inwardly muttering, 
 " I do not really mean it ; " making vows of obedi- 
 
208 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 ence and conformity, with a mental reservation; 
 bowing the knee in the house of God, yet saying 
 secretly, " I do not believe in this," or " I do this 
 only because I find it becoming, attractive, aesthetic." 
 Better no religion than one which amounts to no 
 more than a hollow form, a piece of decorative 
 art, a cerement wrapped around the bones of a 
 dead faith. Better no vows, than vows which a 
 man intends to keep only so long as his views re- 
 main the same ; better no plight of troth in mar- 
 riage than one which is to stand good only till some 
 new love supplants the old ; better no words than 
 words twisted into a falsehood and a lie ; better no 
 rites than rites which mean nothing. 
 
 And this leads me to my last word on the sub- 
 ject which has so long engaged our thoughts : the 
 Sacramental System finds its inward manifestatio'i 
 in the life of the soul. Here we pass from symbols 
 to what they signify, from the visible to the invis- 
 ible; we enter a region of tender, shadowed, solemn 
 thoughts, of personal experiences, of contacts with 
 the spiritual world, where one walks trembling yet 
 joyful in the presence of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 For it is the Spirit of God, the Lord and Life 
 Giver, who acts on us through externals, to renew 
 and restore the Divine Image within us and to 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE, 209 
 
 make us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of 
 the saints. We hear of Christ so constantly, He is 
 so perpetually talked about, that it reminds us of 
 His own prediction: '' They shall say, Lo, here is 
 Christ; or, Lo, He is there; behold, He is in the 
 deserts, or He is in the secret places." "^ There be 
 false Christs, and false prophets ; almost as many 
 Christs as there are persons who prate of Him and 
 pretend to have fathomed the mystery of His 
 being. His person, and His acts. But still, Christ 
 is all in all; and to live His life and to have His 
 image reflected in the heart is the conclusion of the 
 whole matter. For the knowledge of our Lord we 
 must trust to close study of such representation of 
 Him as we have ; His portrait is painted for us in 
 many a psalm of the Old Testament, in many a 
 prophecy ; in His own Beatitudes, in words of 
 Evangelist and Apostle ; it is a picture of One who 
 is with God, and in God, truly man also, humble, 
 lowly, long-suffering, meek ; poor in spirit, never 
 doubting, never disputatious; leading a life divine, 
 yet folded around in human garb, in perfect sym- 
 pathy with everything that lives ; known to the 
 spirits of the lost, fenced around by legions of 
 
 * St. Matt. xxiv. 23, 26. 
 14 
 
210 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 angels, familiar with the marvels of the invisible 
 realm. It must be pronounced impossible to re- 
 produce even any faint likeness of this consummate 
 life, this superhuman character, unless the spirit of 
 self-trust and self-will be laid aside; unless a man 
 be clothed on with deep humility ; unless he be 
 imbued with ideas and impressions derived from 
 faith in the invisible ; unless he desires that which 
 God doth promise ; unless the saints and the angels 
 and the spiritual world are as real to him as the 
 tenants of the world in which we now live. It can- 
 not be demanded of the rationalist, the agnostic, 
 the sceptic, that they should turn out of their work- 
 shop an image absolutely foreign to their concep- 
 tion of what man should be. An invincible faith 
 in things unseen ; a realization of the supernitural 
 realm with its marvellous contents ; a constant 
 tending towards God, in holding out the hand for 
 Him, feeling after Him, seeking to be where He is, 
 sure of nothing where He is not discerned, these 
 are the factors of the re-creation in Christ, and 
 these are in vital harmony and accord with the 
 system displayed under holy sacraments and sym- 
 bols apt to the work of the training of the soul, the 
 renewal of the heart. The Christian dispensation, 
 to judge of it from its description in the Holy 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 211 
 
 Gospels and the New Testament writings, was in- 
 tended to do a specific work among us. It was 
 designed to act on the heart, to form a peculiar 
 character, and to develop certain tendencies in 
 man ; to convince him of his own littleness and of 
 the greatness of God ; to bring him to God in per- 
 fect self-renunciation, and to make him very calm 
 and strong in a strength not his by nature, nor in 
 any way his own. The result, where the system 
 has its way untrammelled, is that, to the disciple so 
 instructed, the whole world becomes instinct with 
 solemn mysteries and full of things divine ; life is, 
 in its experiences, a continual lesson in the deal- 
 ings of our merciful Lord with us ; things about us 
 are more than they seem to be ; visible objects 
 stand for invisibles ; there are meanings in every 
 department of nature which the natural eye cannot 
 take in ; dreams, signs, visions, omens are not to be 
 despised; stars and flowers and mountains, rivers, 
 lakes, the ancient hills, the wide and wandering 
 sea, all have, in truth and reality, a voice for the 
 soul ; the year has its divisions, the day its hours, 
 through which the mystery of redemption is con- 
 tinually repeated ; every duty rests on a law of the 
 God of righteousness, every action should be done 
 to His glory, every work begun, continued, and 
 
212 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 ended in Him. Under this tuition men acquire a 
 readiness to admit the inexplicable, to credit the 
 'y I ' ^ improbable, to believe — as St. Augustine expressed 
 it in his noted paradox — the impossible. They are 
 not confined within the bound of flesh and sense ; 
 they do not starve on the thin scrannel straw of 
 Positivism ; they are prepared for things most mar- 
 vellous, most unaccountable; they apprehend an 
 unfathomable mystery in their own life ; they walk 
 ringed about with mystery — not such mystery as 
 leads to helpless, abject surrender of intellectual 
 effort to sound it, but a mystery to which they 
 know they have a key ; everything that occurs has 
 its meaning ; everything works together for their 
 good ; the beyond is far more real than the present; 
 the Bible is a wonder book in which every recorded 
 miracle is gladly accepted ; prayer has its answer ; 
 God is present ; in the holy places He meets them 
 and they are with Him ; angels and ministers of 
 grace surround them ; departed souls commune 
 with them ; all live to God. They know that the 
 human body is the temple of the Holy Ghost ; that 
 I it contains a germ of the spiritual body that is to 
 
 be ; they know that the whole creation is interested 
 in the destiny of man and is looking for the adop- 
 tion, the redemption, of the body. Such are the 
 
OUTWARD GLORY AND INWARD GRACE. 21 3 
 
 convictions of the men of faith, and how can they 
 be strengthened and confirmed so surely as under 
 that system of which we have been meditating in 
 these Lenten studies? Where faith is at a mini- 
 mum, and reverence for the supernatural is deemed 
 superstition, it must be impossible to develop such 
 a character and spirit as have been now hurriedly 
 sketched. Where it exists it will stamp its special 
 mark on the form, the manner, and the features, 
 according to the sincerity of its reception and the 
 completeness of its rule. To what extent soever 
 the Catholic religion acts upon us, to that extent it 
 must transform us ; if there be much of our own 
 native infirmity and imperfection, its influence will 
 be apparently diminished ; if we give ourselves up 
 to it without reserve and without fear, men will 
 perceive the fact and confess that the unseen 
 powers are with us of a truth ; if we have made 
 slow and very little progress here, we shall have 
 the more to learn in that future state where our 
 education is to be continued ; if we have advanced 
 rapidly in this lower school, the entrance shall be 
 abundant into the courts above. The visible im- 
 press of holiness is the presage of immortality, the 
 sign of the life with Christ in God, the assurance of 
 a resurrection in the new and glorious body which 
 
214 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 is to be man's heavenly dress. More of these 
 things shall we know as faith comes back ; that 
 faith which is the substance of our dreams, the 
 evidence of the truth of our convictions ; which is 
 an anchor of the soul thrown into that within the 
 veil and holding us fast to our moorings ; which 
 leads men to renounce the world, to despise its 
 promises and defy its power, to seek those things 
 which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right 
 hand of God. Come, Holy Ghost, and lift the 
 covering spread on the face of unbelief and lead us 
 safely to those blessed seats, where we shall see 
 face to face ; where the signs and symbols now 
 used shall be exchanged for the substance and 
 reality, wherein shall be no further change forever 
 and ever. 
 "And I SAW no temple there. And they 
 
 NEED NO candle, NEITHER LIGHT OF THE SUN ; 
 
 FOR THE Lord God giveth them light, and 
 
 THEY shall reign FOR EVER AND EVER." 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 
 
APPENDED NOTES, 
 
 NOTE I. (See page 24.) 
 
 Dr. Pusey has a sermon on the subject of the 
 sympathy of nature with man in his sorrow and 
 pain. (See Parochial Sermons, Vol. 11. Sermon 
 XVII., "Groans of Unrenewed and Renewed 
 Nature;" Rom. viii. 22,23.) The reader may be 
 glad to have the following extract from that won- 
 derful discourse : 
 
 "Such, then, is the first sense of this great and mysterious 
 passage, that all nature, having suffered together, shall be 
 restored together. Things animate and inanimate, as being 
 the works of God (as we see in the use of Holy Scripture and 
 even in the very works themselves), bear in themselves some 
 likeness to their Maker, and traces of His hands. Things 
 seen speak of things unseen. How does the bright gladden- 
 ing glow of light speak of the purity of Light inapproachable ; 
 that one may not scan it with too bold a gaze ; how it warms, 
 heals, lightens, directs, penetrates, transfigures into itself, 
 gladdens our inmost souls. And yet all around us and in us 
 bear also sad tokens of the fall. As then to us death is to be 
 the gate of immortality and glory, so in some way to them. 
 Whence Holy Scripture says elsewhere, 'the earth shall wax 
 old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in 
 like manner.' We are to die 'in like manner' with the 
 earth. As then we, so many as are in Christ, perish not 
 utterly, but put off only corruption, to be, by a new and im- 
 mortal birth, clothed with incorruption, so also they. 
 
2l8 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 " Again, as Holy Scripture says of us, ' the dead shall be 
 raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed,' so, in their 
 measure, of them ; 'as a vesture shalt Thou change them, 
 and they shall be changed.' It says not only ' shall perish,' 
 but be 'changed,' and renewed to good. 'The heavens 
 being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt 
 with fervent heat.' Yet the fire which burns up heaven and 
 earth shall but free them from the wrongs which they endure 
 at our hands, the bondage in which they have been held to 
 corruption and vanity ; and, cleansing them from the stains 
 and defilements of our sins, shall yield them pure, ' a new 
 heaven and a new earth,' new for us renewed, incorrupt for 
 us undefiled ; so that as our dwelling-place has, as yet, been 
 marred by our sin, then should the love of God for us over- 
 flow upon it, and the glory of His presence, which shall be 
 our joy, shall array it too with a glad brightness, in har- 
 monious sympathy with our joy. ' As our human body shall 
 be endued with a certain supernatural form of glory, so the 
 whole creation of sense, in that glory of the sons of God, shall 
 obtain a newness of glory, and the former things passing 
 away, and the oldness of decay. He shall make all things 
 new.* 
 
 " Elsewhere, too. Holy Scripture lends a voice to mute and 
 inanimate nature, saying, ' All the trees of the wood shall 
 rejoice before the Lord, for He cometh. He cometh to 
 judge the earth.' ' Break forth into singing, ye mountains, 
 O forest and every tree therein.' Wherein it speaks doubtless 
 in part in a spiritual sense, how they shall abound and over- 
 flow with joy in God, whom He hath planted in His courts, 
 filled with the life-giving, ever-flowing sap of His Spirit, and 
 made fruit-bearing trees ; or those again, eminent in light 
 and holiness, who, like mountains, are rooted deep in humil- 
 ity, pierce the clouds through faith, and catch the first beams 
 of the Sun of Righteousness. But it seems to picture too how 
 heaven and earth shall, when He cometh, wear a dress of joy. 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 219 
 
 So the prophet says again that our earth shall glow with a 
 fuller light from heaven, in that ' the light of the moon shall 
 be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun sevenfold, 
 as the light of seven days.' 
 
 "Such glorious tokens of our immortal state, such wonderful 
 signs of oneness and love, such touching lessons of our pass- 
 ing away and our abiding, does God shed all around us, that 
 the very creation which we misuse should mind us of our 
 end ; earth, sea, and sky should bid us love not them, but 
 Him who made them ; should by its very state and being, its 
 beauty and decay, tell us to long for Him for whom itself 
 seemeth to yearn, the perfection of beauty, infinite in perfec- 
 tion, who alone abideth forever. 
 
 "Yet since Holy Scripture saith 'the whole creation groan- 
 eth and travaileth in birth-pain together with' us, it, in some 
 sense, includes all created being, and tells us that all, from 
 highest to lowest, have an interest in our redemption ; all are 
 made subject, as it were, to some imperfection ; all, with long 
 and longing expectations, look ' for the revelation of the sons 
 of God,' when our life, now ' hidden with Christ in God,' 
 shall be disclosed, when 'Christ, who is our life, appearing, 
 we also shall appear with Him in glory.' " 
 
 My dear friend, William Fitzhugh Whitehouse, 
 Esq., now and for some two years past in England, 
 has recently published a monograph, entitled, " The 
 Redemption of the Body, being an Examination of 
 Rom. viii. 18-23." (London, Elliot Stock, 62 Pater- 
 noster Row, E.G., 1892.) It is well worth reading, 
 and shows research and close thought. The author 
 will not, I am sure, take exception, if I speak of his 
 work as a '• private interpretation " {idia iniXvoiZ^^ 
 considering that he not only admits but calls atten- 
 tion to the fact that his rendering of the passage is 
 
220 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 ** virtually new." Mr. Whitehouse's contention is, 
 that the word translated *' creature " or *' creation " 
 signifies the human body. He has not succeeded in 
 persuading me to alter my views as to the meaning 
 of St. Paul ; but I commend his book to the student, 
 and consider that we have reason to be thankful 
 when we find laymen interesting themselves in theo- 
 logical questions so intelligently as he has done, 
 and treating those questions in so reverent a spirit 
 and with so true an estimate of their importance. 
 Mr. Whitehouse promises us a new and greatly 
 enlarged edition of his work. 
 
 NOTE II. (See page 74.) 
 
 I cannot do justice to the words referred to with- 
 out quoting the whole passage in which they occur; 
 and I do so the more willingly, because it is well 
 for some of us to see precisely how things strike our 
 brethren who are looking on from outside, and ob- 
 serving the drift among us. The testimony of Dr. 
 Van Dyke as to the real quality of Zwinglianism is 
 particularly valuable : 
 
 "We cannot undertake accurately to define what Zwingle 
 taught in regard to the sacraments, nor to harmonize the con- 
 flicting testimony of the learned in regard to it. He does not 
 seem to have been consistent with himself. His ardent mind 
 was better qualified to pull down error than to build up the 
 truth. Admitting all that has been said in explanation and 
 defence of his teaching, it is evident that his doctrine fell far 
 below the standard of the reformed confessions. There is 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 221 
 
 historic justice in applying the name 'Zvvinglian' to such 
 statements in regard to the Lord's Supper as the following : 
 
 " I. That the bread and the wine of the Holy Communion 
 are nothing but naked and bare signs, and that the ordinance 
 itself is simply a commemoration of Christ's death, a badge of 
 our Christian profession, and a pledge of mutual love among 
 believers. 
 
 "2. That the Lord's Supper is only a sign and seal of /r^r- 
 exisfinggrsice in the communicant, and not a means or instru- 
 ment by which more grace is bestowed upon those who 
 worthily partake of it. 
 
 " 3. That Christ is present and operative for our salvation 
 in the sacrament only in His divine nature and in the appre- 
 hension of the believing communicant. 
 
 "4. That the benefits received by the believer at the Lord's 
 table are nothing more than the sacrificial virtue of the 
 Saviour's death on the cross. 
 
 " 5. That the sacramental feeding of the believing soul on 
 Christ, the eating of His flesh, and the drinking of His blood 
 in the Holy Supper, is identical with any and every exercise 
 of faith in Him, and therefore can be done as well elsewhere 
 as at the Lord's table. 
 
 "6. That the necessity for the observance of the Lord's 
 Supper is simply a necessity of precept, and not a necessity of 
 means. In other words, that we are obliged to keep the feast 
 of the Holy Communion only because Christ has commanded 
 it, and not because we are to expect any special benefit from 
 its observance. 
 
 "Each of these statements will be fully discussed as we 
 proceed. Meantime, we cannot forbear to observe that we 
 reject them not only because of their inconsistency with our 
 doctrinal standards and with the teaching of Scripture, but 
 because of the spirit which pervades them and the underlying- 
 assumptions on which they are based. Zwinglianism is 
 essentially rationalistic in the evil sense of the word. Its 
 
222 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 chief effort is to explain away or reduce to a minimum the 
 mystery of the Lord's Supper. It assumes that the theory 
 which is most level to our comprehension, which brings the 
 Holy Supper nearest to a common meal where Christians 
 have sweet fellowship together, and makes it agree most with 
 ordinary human experience, is for that reason nearest to the 
 truth. We have heard Presbyterian ministers, in administer- 
 ing it, eulogizing the absolute simplicity, not only of its sym- 
 bols, but of its whole design and efficacy ; comparing it to the 
 monument which recalls the memory of some great man, as 
 though that explained its whole meaning and effect ; and 
 dwelling with minute particularity upon Christ's physical 
 sufferings, as though our highest purpose in keeping the feast 
 was to look on a pathetic picture and be moved by it. We 
 grow weary in our reading on the subject of the reiterated 
 assertion that this or that view is incomprehensible, unreas- 
 onable, or contrary to common sense ; and the more so, be- 
 cause the same writers who use such arguments in regard to 
 the Lord's Supper repudiate and denounce them when they 
 are urged by others against the doctrine of the Trinity, the 
 sovereignty of God, the incarnation, the atonement, the resur- 
 rection and exaltation of Christ, the vital union of believers 
 with His glorified Person, and the wonder-working power of 
 His Holy Spirit, all of which revealed mysteries pervade, and 
 are embodied in, the transcendent mystery of the Holy Com- 
 munion. 
 
 "Perhaps the ripest and the bitterest fruit of this rational- 
 izing about the Lord's Supper may be found in Dean Stanley's 
 'Christian Institutions.' Adopting the idea of Renan, he 
 makes the ' Last Supper a continuation of those earlier feasts 
 in which Christ had blessed and broken the bread and dis- 
 tributed the fishes on the hills of Galilee.' He can see no 
 higher character in the communion of the first and second 
 centuries than in the festive dinner of ' a Greek club, where 
 each brought, as to a common meal, his own contribution in 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 223 
 
 a basket, and each helped himself from a common table.' He 
 identifies the Lord's Supper with the love-feasts of the Early- 
 Church. He admits, indeed, that it was intended by its 
 Founder to be 'a glorification of the power of memory ; ' but 
 in his account of what is thus to be remembered he is careful 
 to avoid any reference to Christ's death as the sacrifice for 
 sin, and insists only upon His example and teaching- as incul- 
 cating human charity. In proportion as the observance of 
 this ordinance enables us 'to move in unison ' with the par- 
 ables of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the Good 
 Shepherd ; with the Beatitudes on the Galilean mountains, 
 the resignation in Gethsemane, and the courage on Calvary, 
 he affirms that ' it is a true partaking of what the Gospels 
 intended by the body of Christ.' He denies that the Lord's 
 Supper is necessary for these ends, and insists that all who 
 move in unison with these moral precepts and" examples, 
 'whether they be Christian in name or not, whether they have 
 or have not partaken of the sacrament, have thus received 
 Christ, because they have received that which was the essence 
 of Christ — His spirit of mercy and toleration.' 
 
 "There is nothing new in these sentiments. But the 
 strange thing is that a clergyman of high position in the 
 Church of England, one accustomed to the public use of her 
 solemn liturgies, should advocate such opinions ; that he 
 should claim for them the authority of ' the clear-headed and 
 intrepid Zvvingle,' and attempt to reconcile them with the 
 Articles and Formularies of the Episcopal Church, by the 
 vague assertion that ' since the days of Elizabeth a strong 
 Zwinglian atmosphere has pervaded the original theology of 
 the Church of England, and been its prevailing hue.'" 
 
 NOTE IIL (See page 96.) 
 
 The first edition of the tract referred to was pub- 
 lished some twenty-five years ago, under the title, 
 
224 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 *' A Statement on Confession, made by request in 
 the Church of St. John Baptist, Kidderminster, on 
 Sunday, November 15, 1868, by the Rev. C. N. 
 Gray, Curate." The Rev. Milo Mahan, D.D., some- 
 time Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Gen- 
 eral Theological Seminary, and at the time of his 
 death Rector of St. Paul's Church, Baltimore, Md., 
 induced by personal considerations, prepared an In- 
 troduction to a proposed reprint of this tract, only 
 a few months before his departure out of this world. 
 It was an abridgment of a much longer document, 
 written by him under peculiarly trying circum- 
 stances while in the seminary. I have, perhaps, the 
 only existing copy, and it is possible that some day, 
 when the recollection of an old and bitter contro- 
 versy has died out, that very brilliant and telling 
 production may see the light. What we have of it 
 is so clear, so pungent, and so full of common sense, 
 that I take occasion to reprint it here in full. 
 
 " INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO THE AMERICAN EDITION OF THE REV. C. N. GRAY'S 
 TRACT, ENTITLED, 
 
 •A STATEMENT ON CONFESSION.' 
 
 " Confession to God is a necessary and commanded act, 
 which, if done at all, should be thoroughly and well done, 
 with every proper help and appliance. Confession to man is 
 not so necessary, nor so commanded. Its advantage arises 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 22$ 
 
 chiefly from human ignorance and weakness, a proper sense 
 of which will lead every sober person to get counsel and com- 
 fort from those who are best qualified to give it. For the 
 maxim, 'Confess your sins one to another, and pray one for 
 another,' does not imply promiscuous confession. It is enough 
 to confess to such as we can best confide in, conforming to the 
 rules of propriety and order. The same principle that leads 
 one to a physician for confession of bodily ailments, or to a 
 lawyer for counsel in troubles of estate, will naturally desig- 
 nate a clergyman for relief in spiritual affairs. This is a mat- 
 ter of common sense, conceded by all. The reason why it is 
 not more generally acted upon by Protestants is, the dread of 
 Rome. Where Satan cannot lead men into evil by love of a 
 false system, he deters them from good by an unreasonable 
 dread. An abuse which ceases to be an attraction is con- 
 verted into a scarecrow. 
 
 "In this way it happens that the pastoral office, instead of 
 being an easy and familiar help to our communicants and 
 young people, is becoming more and more an object of dread 
 or suspicion. When the staff of the Lawgiver was thrown 
 upon the ground, it became a serpent ; when his hand was 
 thrust into his bosom, it was covered with leprosy. Such is 
 the fate now threatening the pastoral office in the Church. 
 Our older people, sinking under weights which they are ex- 
 horted to lay aside, but with no hand helping them so to do, 
 are less and less intimate with their spiritual guides ; our 
 younger people fall insensibly, often through ignorance, into 
 besetting sins, of which no man gives them fair warning. 
 Young and old alike are afraid to see their pastors, except in 
 ' classes,' 
 
 " Diffident about recommending to others what I know to 
 have been good for myself, I have yet, in cases not a few, here 
 and there felt obliged to do for others what others have done 
 for me. And in the more perilous matter of half-confidences 
 and consultations about private affairs, where the clergy are 
 
 15 
 
226 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 frequently called to share the secret burden of their brethren, 
 I deem it always an advantage to all parties if the thing can 
 be so religiously conducted as to give the priest the benefit 
 of the CXIIIth Canon of the Church of England, by putting 
 everything confided to him under the seal of the confessional. 
 For, after all, whether we desire it or not, the clergy become 
 the repositories of many secrets. The only difference made 
 by a formal opening of one's grief is, that the spiritual adviser 
 is less tempted to blab or gossip ; and cases which I have 
 known to occur, where eloquent ecclesiastics, in the mere 
 heat of speaking, have divulged to the public things manifestly 
 spoken in confidence, could never happen if the clergy were 
 more trusted in a religious way. 
 
 " It is true, in a certain degree, that clergymen of all denomi- 
 nations are already very much trusted ; and that, going about 
 a good deal from house to house, and hearing a great deal of 
 confidential talk, they become the depositories of all sorts of 
 secrets, the sharers of all sorts of private burdens, the keepers, 
 as it were, of all skeletons in all closets, without putting tliem- 
 selves under the seal of religious silence, and witliout securing 
 very much opportunity for religious counsel or comfort. But 
 this is often an evil rather than a benefit. There is an im- 
 mense waste of time, in the first place. There is danger of 
 abuse, in the second place. One satisfactory visit to a parish- 
 ioner is gotten at the cost of a dozen mere 'calls.' Half-con- 
 fidences, gossip, tattle, controversy, and the like, take the 
 place of the opening of one's griefs. Moreover, the thing en- 
 genders among the clergy tliat worst disease in a spiritual or 
 a professional man — looseness of tongue. What men receive 
 in mere gossip they are tempted to retail as such. What is 
 uttered in real confidence, with a formal and strict under- 
 standing, and only for a religious profit, is buried and put 
 away, as though it had never been uttered. A physician sel- 
 dom blabs the infirmities of his patients. A lawyer can be as 
 still as the grave where the secrets of a client are involved. 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 2 27 
 
 Professional confidence, in fact, is protected by all laws, 
 human and divine. 
 
 " I have always, therefore, regarded it as a great advantage 
 that when a person wishes to ' see a minister' — that is, when 
 he really wishes to confer with him privately about the state 
 of his soul — there should be, first, perfect freedom so to do 
 without blame or suspicion ; and, in the second place, such 
 directions, safeguards, and helps as the Church of England has 
 provided in the Exhortation to the Holy Communion, as well 
 as in other places referred to in the following tract of Mr. 
 Gray. A pastor's office, like that of a physician, is necessarily 
 a sort of ' confessional,' though we may scruple to call it by 
 that name. While we shrink from the evils that long abuse 
 has associated with the Roman doctrine of confession, it. would 
 be mere cowardice and folly to confound the abuse with the 
 use. 
 
 "Many are averse, except in very peculiar cases, to over- 
 frequent confession. I have the same feeling. To the soul, as 
 to the body, food is better than physic ; and beyond a certain 
 point, exercise and rest are better than either. They also ob- 
 ject to what has sometimes been called ' the heresy of direc- 
 tion,' namely, the very common practice — possibly more 
 common among Romanists than among us — of walking by 
 other people's consciences rather than by one's own. I ob- 
 ject to the same. But, practically, I have little faith in con- 
 fession as a means of mere influence. One may like his 
 physician very well, if he is an agreeable man otherwise. 
 But I doubt whether any one attaches his patients to him, or 
 moulds their politics or religion by the mere goodness of his 
 medicines. 
 
 " But however this may be, I have never taught or practised 
 any doctrine of confession without carefully guarding against 
 the notion oi compulsion, in the first place, which is the gist 
 of the Roman doctrine ; or of over-frequency, direction, prob- 
 able opinions, penances in place of conversion, privity to 
 
228 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 crimes intended or perpetrated, and many other abuses war- 
 ranted by Roman authority, which I have carefully studied 
 from my youth. Nay, in dealing with persons who are dis- 
 posed to attribute too much to confession, as is often the case 
 both with penitents and with loose men of the world, I have 
 habitually underrated its importance, by showing how easily, 
 like other medicines, it loses its effects. In all my innumer- 
 able answers on confession, on which I have been appealed to 
 by all sorts of men, and for all sorts of purposes, I have in- 
 variably taught, yfri-/ of all, that confession should always be 
 voluntary aiid unforced ; I might almost say that I hate 
 enforced confession, believing it to be destructive of the chief 
 good of confession. I am also averse, except in very peculiar 
 cases, to frequent confessions, believing that over-frequency in 
 the use of such medicine is deleterious ; that for the soul, as for 
 the body, food is better than medicine, and exercise and rest 
 sometimes better than both. I have also invariably taught that 
 the Jesuit doctrine of 'probable opinions,' so-called, is im- 
 moral ; that no amount of * penance ' is a substitute for con- 
 version ; that ' absolution,' without due promise of amend- 
 ment, is sacrilegious ; that immodest and over-minute questions 
 or suggestions tend only to evil ; that the habit of confessing 
 only to priests personally unknown, is pride assuming the 
 garb of humility ; that sin alone is the subject of confession,' 
 and holiness of life alone a matter of counsel or direction ; 
 that conscience is to be enlightened, not forced ; that while 
 ' the seal of the confessional ' is inviolable in legitimate mat- 
 ters of confession, yet to appeal to it, as in the infamous Gun- 
 powder Plot, for meditated sins or crimes, is an outrage to 
 God and man ; that numbering, or weighing, or curious 
 searching out of sins is an unwise thing, if not positively in- 
 jurious ; that, in short, the rules laid down in Roman Catho- 
 lic directions, and practised more or less in Roman confes- 
 sions, are, for the most part, unwarrantable by Catholic 
 teaching ; and to these, and many like corruptions, the loose 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 229 
 
 morals of the Roman Catholic countries may be fairly attrib- 
 uted. These, and similar points, mark out a clear line be- 
 tween confession, popularly so-called, and a proper pastoral 
 care, or, in other words, between the Roman and the Catholic 
 confession. 
 
 " Yet I never refuse a sinner the privilege of opening his 
 grief to his pastor, or withhold from him any counsel or com- 
 fort I am able to give. I repel no one who comes to me as 
 the Exhortation in the Communion Office directs him. More- 
 over, I am willing to confess before God and man that the 
 few opportunities I have had of ministering in this way to 
 weak or wounded souls have been, in my judgment, the most 
 fruitful, nay, perhaps the only fruitful, parts of an unworthy 
 ministry ; and if I had my life to live over again, I would 
 preach as well as practise it more earnestly than I have done. 
 On the other hand, I am aware that this dealing with men's 
 griefs is a perilous matter, liable to abuses ; that Rome 
 especially has caused it to be beset with scandals ; that 
 whether in the study, the confessional, the vestry-room, the 
 sick chamber, or in the open church, the intercourse of priest 
 and penitent should be jealously guarded ; that every precau- 
 tion against abuse or calumny which the lawyer may need in 
 his confidential intercourse with his clients, or the physician 
 in his sacred care of his patients, requires to be at least 
 equally observed by those who deal with spiritual troubles ; 
 and that consciences had better not be medicined at all, than 
 tampered with by rash or over-timid hands. On this ground, 
 I see much to dislike in the Roman confessional ; much to 
 admire in the Greek, which ^theoretically) differs little from 
 our own ; much to approve in the Anglican ; and nothing to 
 desiderate, save only that it should be honestly carried out in 
 the spirit of the Prayer-book. For, as things go now, a man 
 may be easily enough wounded in the house of his friends, 
 and the bruised reeds may be easily broken ; but what with 
 our fear of Rome, and our readiness to devour one another — 
 
230 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 which is often only another word for our fear of men — the 
 poor, sickly sheep of the flock, if we have any such, are in a 
 sad predicament. 
 
 " I do not deny that there is a Catholic doctrine on this 
 subject of confession, and it will give me pleasure to show, 
 presently, how such a doctrine may be ascertained. But 
 meanwhile I utterly deny that any such doctrine, however 
 accurately made out, could be any compulsory authority to us. 
 We have the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles, the 
 Homilies, and the like. By them, and them only, can the 
 doctrine of our clergy be tried. But so far as our Church is 
 concerned, of which I avow myself a dutiful though unworthy 
 son ; or so far as the Catholic Church goes, in which 'I be- 
 lieve ' — though I see less of her than my poor heart craves — 
 I find no very ' accurate statement of the doctrine of confes- 
 sion,' I find in our admirable formularies, however, a very 
 beautiful exhortation to confession, where the sinner thinks 
 he needs it ; and to ' counsel, comfort, and absolution,* 
 where the priest is disposed to give it. These, with a few 
 other like points here and there, are the 'Catholic doctrine of 
 confession,' so far as I know or teach it in any real sense. 
 
 "One may not be able to distinguish, with sufficient accu- 
 racy, all points of difference between us and Rome ; but it 
 requires very little sense to see that Rome is a great fisher of 
 young people ; that she knows what food the young appetite 
 craves ; and consequently, if she baits the hook chiefly ' with 
 the benefits of confession,' it is because she knows this to be 
 a most attractive part of her system. I have had some experi- 
 ence of what are called ' tendencies to Rome ; ' and I 
 believe, as the upshot of my experience, that, with young 
 people especially, the desire to go to Rome is, in nine cases 
 out of ten, simply the desire of confession. I do not hesitate, 
 therefore, to commend such confession as our Church allows. 
 
 " But while I am unwilling to expose myself to ridicule by 
 pretending to any 'sufficient accuracy,' either in this or in 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 23 I 
 
 any other point of doctrine, yet I think I know what the 
 'Catholic doctrine of confession' may be safely affirmed to 
 be, in a general and historical way. It is a doctrine of confes- 
 sion and absolution for the relief of sinners, always the same 
 in substance, but carried out in different ways, at different 
 times, and in different places. 
 
 " In apostolic times, as we learn from a marked example, it 
 may be briefly summed up as follows : A communicant com- 
 mits a manifest or notorious sin ; by the ministry of the Church 
 the sin is brought home to his conscience ; by the same min- 
 istry, acting in the spirit of love, he is cut off from communion, 
 and moved to open confession ; by tiie same ministry he gets 
 absolution, after due repentance, and so is finally restored to 
 the communion which his sin had forfeited.* 
 
 "In the early Catholic Church the process was substantially 
 the same, though perhaps with more of severity and less of 
 love. Briefly, the sinner was turned out of the Church, and 
 was kept on a long course of prostration in the dust, with 
 weeping, mourning, fasting, supplication, howling, kissing the 
 feet of the faittiful, clutching at the garments of the clergy, 
 with exposure to the weather, and the like.f till, his heart 
 being sufficiently triturated and melted, he was finally allowed 
 to confess before the whole congregation, and to receive abso- 
 lution, and so to be restored to his former estate. 
 
 " This was pretty strict discipline ; yet it was not severe 
 enough to satisfy the great party called Puritans, who con- 
 tended that the sinner should be given over to Satan entirely, 
 so far as communion went, and be denied coji/ession and 
 absolutio7i altogetiier — at least, till the Day of Judgment. 
 
 "At a later period the Church became more courtly, if not 
 more loving ; discipline began to fall away ; and a priestly 
 official, called a Penitentiary , was allowed, in lieu of sharper 
 
 * I Cor. V. 15 ; 2 Cor. ii. 5-1 1. 
 f FzV/^ Bingham's *' Antiquities." 
 
2^2 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 measures, to receive private confessions at the sinner's 
 mouth, and thereupon to give him absolution. But a great 
 scandal having occurred in Constantinople, involving the 
 character of a lady, the office was summarily abolished, and 
 'the Catholic doctrine of confession' lay at loose ends for a 
 time. 
 
 "Afterward, the Latin Church stiffened by degrees, amid a 
 great flood of scandals, into its present way of accounting all 
 alike to be sinners, and of enforcing confession and absolution 
 upon all as a sine qua non of communion. 
 
 " The Greek Church settled into a practice much the same, 
 save that in the East, confession being made to married 
 priests, and each sinner being restricted to his own pastor, 
 there is less coarseness in the examination of penitents, less of 
 mutual underbidding among the priests, less jealousy and 
 wrangling, less disturbance of the peace of families, less casu- 
 istry, less mystery, and altogether less scandal and confusion, 
 than in the rival communion. So, at least, I have heard from 
 an eminent and intelligent Greek priest. It is a mistake to 
 suppose, however, that confession is less obligatory among 
 the Greeks than among the Latins. No man comes to the 
 communion without notice to his priest, or without some ex- 
 amination of conscience — though this examination is for the 
 most part summary, and has nothing of the formality of what 
 is called ' Auricular Confession,' and, in fact, is a different 
 sort of thing. 
 
 "In the Anglican Church the old distinction is maintained 
 between an ordinary Christian and a ' notorious evil liver,' 
 the latter term including any one known to have wronged his 
 neighbor by word or deed, or even any one betwixt whom and 
 any other ' the minister perceiveth malice and hatred to 
 reign.' Such an one must openly declare himself to have 
 truly repented and amended his former evil life, ' to the sat- 
 isfaction of the minister and the congregation,' who, being 
 satisfied, the minister ought to admit 'the penitent person to 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 233 
 
 the Holy Communion, and not him that is obstinate.' This, 
 of course, cannot be done without at least virtual confession 
 and absolution, the priest meanwhile holding the offender in 
 a state of practical excommunication, from which only him- 
 self or the Ordinary can release him. Thus ' enforced con- 
 fession' is the rule of the Church, restricted, however, as in 
 the early Church, to notorious evil livers, and to sins which 
 cause scandal, hatred, and the like. 
 
 " With regard to the large class who come not under this 
 category, but who yet are more or less conscious of sin, the 
 Church enjoins, in the first place, thorough self-examination, 
 bewailing of sin, confession to God, full purpose of amend- 
 ment, restitution, satisfaction, forgiveness ; and, in the second 
 place, if there is still a lack of full trust in God's mercy, or of 
 a quiet conscience, or of further comfort or counsel, she sends 
 the sinner to the pastor, or to some other minister, that he may 
 open his grief, and ' that he may receive the betiefit of abso- 
 lution.' I quote these last words from the English book, 
 because I am now speaking only of the Anglican Church's 
 doctrine on the subject, which is of course the same in both 
 books, our American Church having solemnly declared, in her 
 Preface, that in the verbal variations she has made, she is far 
 from intending to depart from the Church of England in any 
 essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship, or further 
 than local circumstances require. 
 
 "This doctrine I freely confess myself to have held during 
 all my ministerial life. Moreover, so far as the care of my own 
 soul is concerned, I have practised what I hold ; though, from 
 a fear of misapprehension and want of zeal, I have been far 
 too infrequent in the use of this help, as well as too slack 
 in recommending so salutary a medicine to others. Yet, in 
 cases not a few, some of them clergymen, my superiors in 
 age, piety, and zeal, I have felt obliged to do for others what 
 I have known to be good for myself. As a matter of taste, 
 however, I do not always call the thing ' confession,' much 
 
234 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 less by such a sounding name as 'Catholic confession ;' but 
 am content to regard it as a conference, a confidential talk on 
 spiritual matters. At the present day religion is choking 
 itself with names. If people would look more at things, and 
 less at words, the Church would be far better off. 
 
 "And in all this, I tliink I differ little, if at all, from the 
 ]:)ractical belief of the clergy generally, of all sects and parties 
 and views. There is a well-grounded dislike of such terms as 
 'auricular confession,' 'Popish confession,' 'confession to 
 man,' and the like ; and I must say, in passing, that where 
 Mr. Gray uses the expression, ' confession to man,' and de- 
 fends it, I think he might have employed a better phrase, 
 though his meaning is safe enough ; for when the Church 
 exhorts a person to come to uie or to some other discreet and 
 learned minister of God's Word, I do not understand her to 
 mean nie or any other minister as a mere man, but rather as 
 an ambassador for Christ, and 'as though God did beseech 
 you by us,' while 'we pray you in Chris fs stead, be ye recon- 
 ciled to God.' True confession is always to God, however 
 much the instrumentality of man may be used, for comfort, 
 counsel, and the like ; and true ' absolution ' comes only 
 from God, by whatever messenger, or in whatever form, it 
 may be conveyed. But saving some objection to phrases, 
 capable of misinterpretation, or at least of exception, I believe 
 religious men of all sects and parties would be glad to see a 
 greater readiness on the part of clergy and laity alike to con- 
 fide their spiritual griefs to some ' learned and discreet min- 
 ister,' who should feel himself under bonds, as it were, to 
 know nothing of men's secrets as a man, but only as God's 
 angel, ministering in the presence of God. 
 
 " There is a feeling among us all, that if we could know our 
 people better, our people would know us. But to know any 
 one really, in spiritual affairs, is a rarer thing by far than is 
 commonly imagined. However frank we may be in every- 
 day intercourse, no person ever carries his soul upon his 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 235 
 
 sleeve ; and if any one should be found who is an exception to 
 this rule in ordinary cases, even he will take care to have an 
 oversleeve for Sundays, or for pastoral visitations. On the 
 other hand, few persons would object to frank and frequent 
 conference wdth the clergy, if only it be done medicinally, and 
 with proper care. Hence, all that the clergy need is oppor- 
 tunity and reasonable confidence. If they could see their 
 flocks separately, in proper time and place for religious inter- 
 course ; if they could learn their griefs, scruples, struggles, 
 weights, besetments, and the like ; if they could deal with 
 sins as physicians deal with diseases, not as monsters to make 
 wry faces at, but as infirmities to be healed, the pastoral rela- 
 tion would be much more satisfactory to all parties. 
 
 "As things go now, society is to the clergy as the woman 
 of Samaria to our Lord. What she desires is a pleasant little 
 chat about religion in general — a charming little discussion 
 about Jerusalem and the mountain. What He has in view 
 is, a word of solid counsel in relation to her five husbands. 
 She wishes to hear where men ought to worship. He would 
 rather tell her how she ought to worship. So society bluffs 
 off her spiritual guides, sitting down with them most amiably 
 at any Jacob's well of wayside conversation, and ready to 
 listen eagerly to 'accurate' distinctions of doctrines, 'Cath- 
 olic' or 'Roman:' but when it comes to the point, as we 
 say — when we ask what Catholic 'confession' is, and where 
 it is to be found, and when and where and how it is tauo-jit 
 and practised — the matter is apt to end less profitably, I fear, 
 than with the woman of Samaria ; for she had too firm an eve 
 upon her to be able to escape in that way. But society evades 
 us by any colored rag she may flaunt in our faces ; and the 
 real religious question of the day, namely, how to get at our 
 people, how to bring about a real pastoral relation, is swal- 
 lowed up in controversies about forms and clothes. 
 
 " I grant that there is a real difficulty in pushing points of this 
 kind. Clothes or rags are easily converted into scarecrows; 
 
236 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 and scarecrows, of course, are calcvilated to scare. On the 
 other hand, I submit, they are meant to scare crows, not men : 
 so that while there is among us a well-grounded dislike of such 
 terms as 'confession,' or 'confession to man,' yet, I think, 
 we are reasonable creatures, and are bound to deal with mere 
 words in a liberal way. Thus, the term 'confession' I do 
 not altogether like, on account of some of its associations ; but 
 it expresses that opening of one's griefs which the Church 
 expressly sanctions, and is sufficiently Catholic in its use to 
 be easily understood. 'Auricular' confession is in a different 
 category, because custom associates it only with a particular 
 mode of confession, which is peculiar to Rome. 
 
 " A greater trust in one another, and more readiness to con- 
 fess to one another, is a thing which may exist without Rome : 
 and if it may, I think we are all agreed that it ought. 
 
 "From this brief sketch we may deduce, at least, the main 
 points of the Catholic doctrine of confession, viz., those points 
 which have been held by all such churches, ancient and mod- 
 ern, as profess to believe in the Holy Catholic Church. 
 
 " I take them to be, first, for open, notorious, scandalous 
 sins, excofnfnunication, enforced confession, in connection 
 with such discipline as changing times and places may deter- 
 mine ; absolution, in such forms and ways as from time to 
 time may be adopted ; entire restoratioji to Church commun- 
 ion. With regard to this order, however, and in the same 
 way in regard to any particular forms, words, or ceremonies, 
 or the like, I think the Catholic doctrine to be eminently 
 grounded on the ' law of liberty.' When our Lord said to 
 the paralytic, rise and walk, it was all the same, virtually, as 
 to say, ' Thy sins be forgiven thee' When a modern priest 
 says to a sinner, I admit you to the Lord's Table, he absolves 
 him as effectually, though not as solemnly, as when an ancient 
 priest laid his hands on him with all the elaborate ceremonial 
 of primitive Catholic times. 
 
 " But, secondly, for sins not notorious, scandalous, or un- 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 237 
 
 charitable, private confession is allowed or commended, but 
 not forced on any man's conscience. It is a part of one's 
 Christian liberty. And where it has come to be enforced, as 
 by the modern Roman Church, it is generally grounded on no 
 doctrine, so far as I understand ; but, like the withholding of 
 the cup from the laity, or the celibacy of the clergy, or kneel- 
 ing at the Communion, or numberless other things of the sort, 
 it is simply a matter of disciplinary law, a matter of wise — or 
 unwise — legislation. 
 
 " Where the Latin or Greek Church imposes confession upon 
 all alike, it is done by special legislation, as a matter of dis- 
 cipline, which, like the withholding of the cup from the laity, 
 or denial of marriage to the clergy, is defended on grounds 
 of expediency, or necessity, not of doctrine in the full sense of 
 the word. The Church of England, if she liked, might, on 
 the same ^xowwds, forbid private confession altogether. But 
 as she has never done so — as she has never put such an absurd 
 restriction upon the liberty of her children, but allows every 
 one 'to open his griefs ' to a minister as freely as he opens 
 his mouth, and to receive his absolution as freely as he receives 
 his 'counsel' — we can appeal to her formularies as suffi- 
 ciently accurate with regard to the Catholic doctrine of con- 
 fession. 
 
 " In short, my doctrine is, with regard to this matter, that a 
 communicant viay, and, under certain circumstances, ought, 
 to come to some suitable minister, that he may ' open his 
 grief,' which I take to be virtually 'confession;' and that 
 having thus confessed so as to satisfy his minister of the sin- 
 cerity of his repentance, he may receive, and the minister 
 ought to grant, ' the benefit of absolution,' This is the 
 length and breadth of my belief or doctrine on the subject. 
 
 "To all, whatever maybe their name or sect, who will give 
 me a fair hearing before they judge, I commend the following 
 tract ; not, of course, as an authority in itself, or as a thing 
 that I indorse in every phrase, but as a clear and honest state- 
 
2^8 
 
 LENTEN LECTURES. 
 
 ment of Anglican standards on the subject involved, and as 
 showing- that good men of all professions and schools have 
 substantially borne the same witness. 
 
 "If this is not enough, I respectfully invoke all who are yet 
 dissatisfied to explain to the Church, What is the Catholic 
 doctrine of confession ? What the Roman ? What the An- 
 glican ? What the points of difference among the three, and 
 wherein I am held to differ from all or either ? It is surely 
 time to be done with child's play — this mere game of ' bluff' 
 in matters of religious faith. Let our opponents come out 
 like men, and tell us, not what to dodge, but what to be- 
 lieve. Let us turn over a new leaf, beginning with this deeply 
 interesting subject of confession and absolution. Let us learn 
 what our Church teaches ; and if she teaches amiss, let us 
 honestly confess it." 
 
 Mr. Gray gives, in support of his thesis, the fol- 
 lowing names : 
 
 INDEX TO QUOTATIONS. 
 
 First Exhortation to Holy Com- 
 
 muiiion. 
 Office for Visitation of Sick. 
 113th Canon. 
 Luther. 
 
 Hooker 011 Lutherans. 
 Melanchthon. 
 Calvin. 
 Cranmer. 
 The Catechism. 
 First Prayer Book. 
 Ridley. 
 Latimer. 
 Turner. 
 Jewel. 
 
 Second Book of Homilies. 
 
 Parker's Visitation Articles. 
 
 The Eleven Articles. 
 
 Bacon, 
 
 Hooker. 
 
 King James I. 
 
 Williams. 
 
 Reynolds. 
 
 Hakewill. 
 
 Aylmer. 
 
 Crakan thorp. 
 
 Andrewes. 
 
 Donne. 
 
 Baily. 
 
 Downame. 
 
APPENDED NOTES. 
 
 239 
 
 Mede. 
 
 MontagTie. 
 
 Visitation Articles, Overall, etc. 
 
 Hammond. 
 
 Heylin. 
 
 Laud. 
 
 Bramhall. 
 
 19th Irish Canon. 
 
 Ussher. 
 
 Herbert. 
 
 N. Farrar. 
 
 Chilli ngworth. 
 
 James, Earl of Derby. 
 
 Hall. 
 
 Lady Capel. 
 
 Lady Anderson. 
 
 Morton. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 Sanderson. 
 
 Pierce. 
 
 Thorndike. 
 
 Nicholson. 
 
 Cosin. 
 
 Mr. Adams' Sermon. 
 
 Grenville. 
 
 Barrow. 
 
 Evelyn's Diary. 
 
 Sparrow. 
 
 Puller. 
 
 Comber. 
 
 Pearson. 
 
 Fourteen Bishops on case of 
 Friend and Parkins. 
 
 Patrick. 
 
 Dodwell. 
 
 Isham. 
 
 Beveridge. 
 
 Ken. 
 
 Bull. 
 
 Sharpe. 
 
 Hickes. 
 
 Nicholls. 
 
 Marshall. 
 
 Hole. 
 
 Fiddes. 
 
 Wake. 
 
 Seeker. 
 
 Berkeley. 
 
 Wheatley. 
 
 Wilson. 
 
 Home. 
 
 Tomline, 
 
 Marsh. 
 
 Short. 
 
 Hamilton. 
 
 Moberly. 
 
 Confessor in King's House- 
 hold. 
 
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