otf 
 
 •/ 
 
THE 
 
 CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RIGHT REV. WM. INGRAIIAm'kIP, D.D., LLC, 
 
 BISHOP OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 " "Within these walls each fluttering- guest 
 Is gently lured to one safe nest — 
 Without, 'tis moaning and unrest." 
 
 Keble. 
 
 •'0 
 
 b^> Pf'~ 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 
 
 549 & 551 BROADWAY. 
 
 1877. 
 

 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 D. ArPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 1S77. 
 
TO 
 
 THE EIGIIT REV. JOSEPII P. B. WILMER, D. D., LL. D., 
 
 BISHOP OF LOUISIANA, 
 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBES THIS VOLUME, 
 
 IN REMEMBRANCE OF 
 
 THEIR EARLY STUDENT DAYS. 
 
PRAYER OF THE ORIENTAL CHURCII. 
 
 " Grant, my Lord, that the ears which have heard the voice of Thy 
 songs, may never hear the words of clamor and dispute ; that the eyes 
 which have seen Thy great love, may also behold Thy blessed hope ; that 
 the tongues which have sung the Sanctis, may also speak the truth ; that 
 the feet which have walked in the church, may tread the region of light ; 
 that the bodies which have tasted Thy living Body, may be restored to 
 newness of life." 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In this little volume the writer has endeavored to 
 give a picture of the Church of the Apostles in the 
 days of its purity, in some cases following it down 
 until its brightness was dimmed by the errors and 
 superstitions of Medieval times. Taking the brief 
 description of St. Luke, he has attempted to fill up 
 the outline, so as to enable those now living to realize 
 how the men of that day believed and acted. The 
 four points brought forward, he thinks, will cover much 
 of the ground necessary for ordinary readers to know 
 with regard to the Primitive Church. 
 
 Each of these articles might have been expanded 
 into a volume, and, indeed, has furnished the text for 
 many learned works in the past ; but the writer's wish 
 has been to present these subjects in a popular shape, 
 to inform those who have neither time nor taste to 
 enter deeply into theological discussions. He has there- 
 fore avoided controversies — like that on the Eucharist — 
 which seemed to come naturally in his way, and which 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 have for centuries awakened the bitterness of polemical 
 disputants. His object has been to make these articles 
 more historical than theological. 
 
 In discussing the Council of Mce, he has acknowl- 
 edged, in. several places, his indebtedness to the Yery 
 Rev. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Dean of West- 
 minster. His work on " The Eastern Church " can 
 have no rival for picturesque effect, as the author had 
 advantages possessed by no other writer on this sub- 
 ject. He had himself visited these scenes of Eastern 
 Ecclesiastical History, and, uniting the descriptions of 
 the tourist with the narrative of the historian, he has 
 been enabled to impart an interest to his pages which 
 nothing else could have given them. 
 
 The writer has, however, carefully studied the 
 works of Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, and Thcodoret, 
 the original sources of the history of that Era in the 
 Church ; but he found that the Dean of Westminster 
 had already selected every salient point from these old 
 chroniclers to weave the narrative for his own fascinat- 
 ing pages. When, therefore, the writer may some- 
 times seem to be following in the steps of Dr. Stan- 
 ley, and drawing his facts from him, he is in reality 
 quoting from the original authorities, the study of 
 which was common to them both. 
 
 The materials for a picture of the Early Church, 
 even slight as that presented by the following pages. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 are scattered widely through, the works of those cen- 
 turies. They exist, too, in most varied forms. After 
 leaving the sure record of Inspiration, which closes its 
 history of the Church in suffering and persecution, we 
 come to the narratives of Eusebius of Csesarea, and 
 the other historians of that day whom we have men- 
 tioned above. Then, in some cases, facts and points of 
 doctrine have to be gleaned from sermons, and homi- 
 lies, and controversial writings, or they are spread be- 
 fore us in the glowing eloquence of St. Cyprian, as he 
 sends his Epistles from the Church at Carthage. And 
 so, here and there, we gather up the story of the early 
 faith, until the review of this era ends, perhaps, in St. 
 Augustine's " City of God," as he calls up the history 
 of the past, and sends forth his shout of triumph over 
 the fall of the " Eternal City " by the hands of the 
 half-civilized Goths. When the crash startled the na- 
 tions in terror, their ancient reverence for Rome as 
 the Mistress of the world prepared them to unite in 
 her solemn requiem ; but to St. Augustine she was 
 only the "Mystical Babylon," and the fiery African 
 recorded his loud gratulation that her power over the 
 Church had passed away forever. 
 
 There could not, indeed, have been selected a sub- 
 ject which afforded less opportunity for originality than 
 an attempt to portray the Church of the early centu- 
 ries. Since first the Christian Church became " a pres- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ence and a power " in the world, countless writers, for 
 various and often widely-different objects, have been 
 gleaning the field, and all that now can be attempted 
 by any one is to select the facts, and so arrange them 
 as to answer whatever purpose he may have in view. 
 The explorer of the present day is " last of all, as one 
 that gathereth after the grape-gatherers." ' 
 
 As the drama of this world is drawing to its close, 
 while the coming of our Lord seems to be delayed, the 
 scoffing spirit of the times is heard with greater bold- 
 ness questioning the solemn verities of our faith. But, 
 at the same time, the earnest and inquiring are asking 
 with deeper interest, Where is that Church which was 
 constituted " the pillar and ground of the truth V It 
 is to answer this question that this volume is partly 
 intended, that men may see for themselves how our 
 Lord and His apostles originally organized His Church, 
 and then, as they look on the conflicts which are wast- 
 ing the strength of so many who "profess and call 
 themselves Christians," they may recognize in the One 
 Apostolic Church, in its different branches, the linea- 
 ments of that likeness which has come down to us, still 
 existing through all the intervening centuries. 
 
 The writer has endeavored not to make a mere de- 
 tail of history, but to point out the practical lessuns 
 taught by these events. As his readers follow the nar- 
 
 1 Ecclus. xxxiii. 16. 
 
PREFACE. 9 
 
 rative of the progress of the faith " through the ages all 
 along," he would have them imbibe something of the 
 spirit of those who then, even at the cost of life, gave 
 form and impress to the Church, and endeavor, in this 
 waning period of the world — " this setting part of 
 Time " — to revive in their own hearts the lofty devo- 
 tion of those who, in far by-gone centuries, first chant- 
 ed the anthems and uttered -the prayers which are now 
 our precious inheritance. 
 
 San Francisco, May, 1877. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Creeds . . . . . . . .13 
 
 Fellowship . . . . . . .61 
 
 Eucharist . . . . . . . .91 
 
 Liturgies . . . . . . .113 
 
 Conclusion . . . . . . . .109 
 
I. 
 
 OEEEDS. 
 
 Who goeth in the way that Christ hath gone, 
 Is much more sure to meet with Him, than one 
 That travelcth by-ways." 
 
 George Herbert. 
 
I. 
 
 CREEDS. 
 
 It was a declaration of one of the patriarchs of the 
 olden time : " Inquire, I pray thee, of the former age 
 and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers (for 
 we are bnt of yesterday, and know nothing, because our 
 clays on earth are a shadow). Shall not they teach thee 
 and tell thee and utter words out of their heart \ " * 
 
 And in this sentence he reveals but a natural im- 
 pulse of the human mind. We are tempted ever to 
 turn from the harshness of present realities to the dis- 
 tant past. We indulge in fond regrets for all that time 
 has swept away, and gaze with longing eyes upon the 
 landscape which lies far behind us, because it is clothed 
 in a mellow light and rests there in dimness and si- 
 lence. The tones of the living fall upon our ears with 
 a harsh reality, and we look back with regret to the 
 dead of ages past as their voices float gently u down 
 through the corridors of time," and swell about us 
 with solemn melody. We believe that theirs was the 
 happy age which was freed from the evils of this pres- 
 ent time. 
 
 The feeling, therefore, is a natural one, and seems 
 deeply implanted in the mind of man. It is founded 
 
 1 Job viii. 8. 
 
1G THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 on the belief that the early history of the human family 
 was one of peace and purity, while, as time advanced, 
 each passing century caused the shadows to darken 
 more deeply over the pathway of our race and the glory 
 which had rested on its birth — 
 
 " .... to die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day." 
 
 The classic poets love, therefore, to dwell on the 
 Golden Age, which they represent as gradually changing 
 till it became the Iron Age in which they lived. There 
 is, too, a strange universality about this tradition. We 
 recognize its existence among all the nations of the 
 East. They all look back to some Elysium in the past, 
 the reality of which is gone, and the remembrance only 
 survives in the legends they have inherited. They 
 turn instinctively to the birthplace of the human race, 
 and the Arab now, as he sits beneath his tent, narrates 
 to his children wild and romantic stories of the early 
 Eden. Even now, he declares, there is a guardian 
 sanctity resting on it ; that there the wild beast may 
 not wander, or the wild bird pause in its flight ; but 
 the eye of God rests upon it, and the holiness of its 
 early day still guards its hallowed precincts. 
 
 , The Church has also its Golden Age to which it looks 
 back. It is an age of primitive purity, when the Apos- 
 tles had just received the commission from their Lord, 
 and were going forth to " inherit the earth." Small, 
 indeed, was the band to which this mighty work was 
 committed, and a single " upper room " was able to 
 contain all who in the Holy City had professed the faith 
 of the despised Xazarone. And against them were ar- 
 
CREEDS. 17 
 
 rayed the sacred learning of Judea, as taught by its 
 ancient priesthood ; the brilliant philosophy of Athens, 
 where men had bowed to the glorious dreams of Plato 
 and the intellectual teaching of Aristotle; and that 
 wide-spread Oriental system, which could scarcely count 
 its proselytes, as its influence stretched from the shrines 
 of Memphis and Heliopolis, far Eastward over the plains 
 of Asia, till it reached the cavemed temples of India. 
 
 Yet the faithful were all of one heart and one voice, 
 and therefore the infant Church went forth iearlessly 
 to proclaim its authority over the systems of this world. 
 And so it was that it triumphed, bowing down every 
 false creed before it, infusing a new life into the wasted 
 forms of Eastern thought, and spreading a lofty tone 
 through all the literature of the world, whether its 
 utterance was heard in the Christianized Platonism of 
 Alexandria, or it spoke out in the fantastic musings of 
 the Fathers of the Desert. 
 
 "It was a religion of visible self-denial and holiness, 
 that willingly took on itself the sorrows which to the 
 multitude were inevitable, and lightened their sufferings 
 by its own pain and privation. It was not, then, that urn- 
 bratile thing, that feeble exotic, shut up in churches, par- 
 sonages, and parlors ; but walked abroad, made the mul- 
 titude both the receivers, the collectors, and distribu- 
 tors of her bounties ; compelled cities to wear her livery, 
 and dared to inherit the earth. She then provided 
 homes and forms of operation for the heroic virtues, 
 for lofty aims and firm resolves, making their torrents 
 flow in the manifold channels of mercy, instead of suf- 
 fering them to waste the land with a baleful magnifi- 
 cence. She then gave names, and methods, and ancient 
 
18 THE CnUECH OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 sanctions, and solemn order, and venerable holiness, 
 and ev r ery quality men love and obey, to the pious bear- 
 ers of spiritual and temporal aid to the ignorant and 
 poor, as even the many sacred titles, which in the Old 
 World the streets, and gates, and bridges, are still suf- 
 fered to bear, do testify. She then did so combine and 
 temper these works of benevolence with other holy em. 
 ployments, with frequent daily prayer and oft-heard 
 choral praise, that the social acts of temporal and ghost- 
 ly relief seemed no separate and adventitious work, no 
 petty craft of artificial goodness, but rather flowing 
 from a something holy, natural, and complete in all its 
 parts. She then had officers and employments for all ; 
 that all, however humble in rank, or wealth, or mental 
 culture, might be personally interested in the Church's 
 work. She then could claim her own from every rank, 
 teach all her holy character, make all acknowledge her 
 claims to sacredncss and authority." l 
 
 Such is the picture of the ancient Church; and in 
 this clay, when its glory seems to have faded, and its 
 majesty to be blighted by the atmosphere of this work- 
 ins world — when we look about us in vain for the hero- 
 ism and the earnest convictions which characterized 
 those distant days, when the seamless garment of Christ 
 is rent asunder, and they who bear the Christian name 
 have turned their weapons against each other — should 
 we wish to call up this vision of beauty and to array 
 before us a true representation of the Holy Catholic 
 Church, we are obliged to look back through the clouds 
 and mistiness of centuries that are gone. 
 
 In endeavoring, then, to lead our readers to survey 
 
 1 British Critic, No. Ivi., p. 3T0. 
 
CREEDS. 19 
 
 tlie Church in the peace and purity of its early day, we 
 would turn to the very fountain-head — to the descrip- 
 tion which the inspired writer has left of the fold of 
 Christ, as it appeared before it had lost the fervor of 
 its first love, or its early zeal had faded away. He 
 sums up all in a single sentence, " And they continued 
 steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and 
 in breaking of bread, and in prayers." l Let us look, then, 
 at these different points, as each develops the Church 
 in a new phase. Let us unroll the records of the past, 
 and, taking the history of the Church as pictured by the 
 Ecclesiastical writers of that day, we shall see how well 
 in each particular it merited the commendation of St. 
 Luke. The first point, then, brought before us is, the 
 
 STEADFASTNESS OF THE CHURCH IN THE APOSTLES' DOC- 
 TRINE. 
 
 What was that doctrine, and where are we to look 
 for it ? At first the Church needed no formal profes- 
 sion of its faith, as was afterward embodied in its 
 Creeds. It was too early for the memory of its Lord's 
 teaching to be lost, while His blood still crimsoned the 
 heights of Calvary, and the earth was yet fragrant with 
 His footsteps. The first teachers, too, were men of 
 simple hearts and no worldly learning ; and it was re- 
 served for another age, when philosophy had begun its 
 endeavors to warp the faith to agreement with its own 
 lessons, to witness the perversion of those primary 
 truths on which the first generation rested its hopes. 
 Few and simple, we believe, were at that time the tests 
 of faith, for error had not yet crept into the fold. 
 When the Ethiopian eunuch applied for baptism to 
 
 1 Acts ii. 42. 
 
20 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Philip the deacon, his answer was, " If thou believest 
 with all thy heart, thou may est." And when the eu- 
 nuch had declared, " I believe that Jesus Christ was the 
 Son of God," he was admitted by that rite into the 
 Christian Church. This simple profession of faith in 
 the Divinity and Messiahship of our Lord included ev- 
 erything which in that day was necessary. There is, 
 therefore, in this point of view, a philosophical truth 
 in that sentence of Newman's, " Freedom from symbols 
 and articles is abstractly the highest state of Christian 
 communion." ' 
 
 But soon there was evidence of the necessity for a 
 more formal declaration of the Christian faith, as the 
 restless intellect of man began to frame doctrines not 
 in accordance with the teachings of the Apostles. The 
 first inspired teachers left behind them no complete 
 system of Christian doctrine. The Epistles we now 
 have were addressed to persons already instructed, al- 
 ready put in charge of the sacred deposit of Christian 
 truth, before they received the Sacrament of Baptism. 
 " It is true, indeed, that they were so directed by the 
 Holy Spirit in writing these apparently casual and un- 
 connected pieces, that no portion of the mass of divine- 
 ly-revealed truth should lack written proof in confirma- 
 tion from some part or other of their writings ; but 
 that truth is nowhere exhibited entire, nowhere system- 
 atically or theologically stated, as in a Creed or a Cate- 
 chism, nowhere so stated as it was used for purposes of 
 instruction or profession." a 
 
 But scarcely had these early laborers entered into their 
 
 1 Newman's "Arians of the Fourth Century." 
 
 2 Mobcrly's "Forty Days," p. 78. 
 
CREEDS. 21 
 
 rest, and the Church thus been deprived of the power 
 of reference to men who had seen their Lord in the 
 flesh, when those who survived them felt the need of 
 something more. As the Church, too, extended into 
 heathen lands, it became of essential importance that 
 the leading points of Christian doctrine they were to 
 receive should be placed before them compressed into 
 a small compass. 1 Experience soon demonstrated how 
 useless it was to bring before the minds of the uncul- 
 tivated and the barbarous vague or indefinite views of 
 the faith. It was a necessity, therefore, in dealing with 
 the heathen tribes with whom they were soon brought 
 into contact, that the great verities of Christianity should 
 be inculcated in brief and emphatic propositions, which 
 the mind could grasp and the memory retain. The 
 teachers of the faith began, therefore, to state the great 
 outlines of the Apostles' teaching — the doctrines they 
 had received from them — and these they required to 
 be professed by all who came forward to baptism. 
 
 Thus arose what is called the Apostles' Creed — that 
 form which now, at the distance of eighteen centuries 
 from its origin, is repeated each time we assemble for 
 the worship of God. Though probably not composed 
 by the Apostles 'themselves, yet it was acknowledged 
 in the Church throughout the world to contain a general 
 summary of all the great and fundamental truths they 
 taught. 
 
 We cannot but mark its perfect simplicity — how it 
 deals with nothing but the primary doctrines of our 
 faith. This characteristic alone would be sufficient to 
 show the age in which it had its origin. According to 
 
 1 Milman's "History of Christianity,*' ii., 115. 
 
22 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 the summary of it given in the Church Catechism, it 
 teaches the great facts of " God the Father, who hath 
 made ns and all the world ; God the Son, who hath re- 
 deemed us and all mankind ; God the Holy Ghost, 
 who sanctifieth us and all the people of God." It is 
 evidently not intended — like the later Creeds — to guard 
 against any particular errors. It is therefore the most 
 ancient and the simplest expansion of the doctrines of 
 our Lord as they were handed down in the profession 
 made at baptism. " Just outside of the Canon of actual 
 Scripture, and not claiming a literal inspiration like that 
 of actual Scripture, it is nevertheless the earliest his- 
 torical record of the systematic doctrine of the Apos- 
 tles." l 
 
 But, were all other proofs of the antiquity of this 
 Creed wanting, we should draw the inference that it had 
 existed in the days of the Apostles, from the fact that 
 we so often meet with its expressions incorporated in 
 the writings of that period. It tinged the religious 
 firmament, and, in treating of the faith, its early de- 
 fenders seemed insensibly to adopt the phraseology 
 of the Creed as expressions with which they were fa- 
 miliar. 
 
 When St. Paul is charging St, Timothy to " hold 
 fast the form of sound words which he had heard," he 
 must have been alluding to some well-known formulary 
 of doctrine which had been delivered to them. And 
 what more probable than that it should have been this 
 earliest Creed, which must have been widely spread 
 even at that day ? And so, in writing to the Corinth- 
 
 1 Moberly's " Forty Days," p. 79. See King's M History of the Apos- 
 tles 1 Greed," and Bingham's " Grig. K ; .vies.," h. xi., chap, vii., see. 8. 
 
GREEDS. 23 
 
 ians, in enforcing the doctrine of the resurrection, he 
 seems to be quoting from the Creed which he had pre- 
 viously taught them. " I delivered unto you first of 
 all that which I also received, how that Christ died for 
 our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that he was 
 buried, and that he rose again the third day, according 
 to the Scriptures." : 
 
 And, if we pass beyond the Canon of Holy Script- 
 ures to the writings of men in the next generation, we 
 find the most evident use of the language of the Creed. 
 So it was with St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who 
 was a disciple of St. John. In writing to the Trallians, 
 at the close of the first century, he says : " Turn a deaf 
 ear to any man who departs, in what he says, from 
 Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David and born 
 of Mary ; who truly was born, did eat, and did drink ; 
 truly was persecuted under Pontius Pilate ; truly was 
 crucified and died, being seen of them that are in 
 Heaven, of them that are on earth, and of them that 
 are under the earth ; who truly also was raised from 
 the dead, His Father raising Him ; in the likeness 
 whereto we also who believe in Him shall His Father 
 raise up through Jesus Christ, without whom we have 
 no real life." 2 
 
 So, again, Justin Martyr, in the year 140, in his 
 " Apology for Christianity," in describing the rite of 
 Baptism, uses this language : " We lead them to a place 
 where there is water, and there they are regenerated in 
 the same manner as we also were ; for they are then 
 washed in that water in the name of God the Father 
 and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour, Jesus 
 
 1 1 Cor. xv. 3. 2 " Records of the Church " (Oxford), No. V. 
 
24 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. . . . He who is so illu- 
 minated is baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, who 
 was crucified under Pontius Pilate ; and in the name 
 of the Holy Spirit, who, by the prophets, foretold all 
 things concerning Jesus." * 
 
 The fullest adoption, however, of the words of the 
 Creed, is that shown by Irengeus, Bishop of Lyons, in 
 France, who died in the year 202. In the formulary 
 which he set forth, he says : " The Church, although 
 extended through the whole world, even unto the end 
 of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their 
 disciples the belief in one God, the Father Almighty, 
 maker of heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in 
 them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who 
 was made flesh for our salvation ; and in the Holy 
 Ghost, who, by the prophets, proclaimed the merciful 
 dispensation, and the coming, and the birth from a Vir- 
 gin, and the Passion, and the Resurrection, and the 
 Ascension into heaven, in our flesh, of the beloved 
 Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His appearing from heaven 
 in the glory of the Father, to gather together all things 
 in one, and to raise from the dead all flesh of human 
 kind ; that to Christ Jesus, our Lord and God and 
 Saviour, and King, according to the good pleasure of 
 the Invisible Father, every knee may bow, of things in 
 Heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, 
 and every tongue may confess Him, and that He may 
 recompense just judgment upon all, sending into ev- 
 erlasting fire wicked spirits and angels that trans- 
 gressed and became apostates, and irreligious, unjust, 
 lawless, and profane men, but upon the just and holy, 
 
 1 Justin Martyr's " Second Apology." 
 
CREEDS. 25 
 
 who have kept His commandments and persevere in 
 His love, whether serving Him from the first or turn- 
 ing by repentance, may bestow immortality by the free 
 gift of life, and secure for them everlasting glory." 1 
 
 These are the words of the disciple of Polycarp, who 
 had known the Apostle John. But, one remove from 
 the Apostles, he bears his witness to the Catholic faith, 
 such as the Church holds to this day. 
 
 Three centuries rolled by, during which the Chris- 
 tian Church had no need of any other profession of its 
 doctrines. And we see the reason why Creeds and Con- 
 fessions of faith during that period were short and sim- 
 ple. " While there were no heretics, there was no need 
 to guard against heresy. Antidotes are only given to 
 persons who have taken poison, or who are likely to 
 take it. Neither do we use precautions against con- 
 tagion when no disease is to be caught. The case, how- 
 ever, is altered when the air has become infected and 
 thousands are dying all around us. It is then necessary 
 to call in the physician, and guard against danger. The 
 case was the same with the Church when she saw her 
 children in peril from new and erroneous doctrines. 
 When a member wished to be admitted, it was her 
 duty to examine whether he was infected or not. The 
 former tests were no longer sufficient. Words and 
 phrases which had hitherto borne but one meaning 
 were now found to admit of several ; and the Bishops 
 and clergy were too honest to allow a man to say one 
 thino; with his tongue while in his heart he meant an- 
 
 1 " Records of the Church " (Oxford), No. XIV 
 
 2 
 
26 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 other. It was thus that Creeds became lengthened and 
 clauses were added to meet the presumptuous specu- 
 lations of human reason. But the fault was with the 
 heretics, not with the Church. Her great object from 
 the beg inning had been unity." * 
 
 There was something, too, in the changing character 
 of the age which produced this result. It had been an 
 era of self-denial, and devotion, and active labor, when 
 the great truths which it taught were regarded as themes 
 for adoration, not for dispute. At length, when the 
 hand of persecution was withdrawn, men turned to the 
 deeper and more abstruse doctrines of our faith, and 
 made them the points of irreverent inquiry. The East 
 was always the fatal and prolific soil of speculative con- 
 troversy, and, on this occasion, the question of the Trin- 
 ity was the one destined to give birth to the element of 
 disunion in the Christian world. 
 
 It was caused by the rashness of Alexander, Bishop 
 of Alexandria, who, preaching in the Church of St. 
 Mark, in the presence of the Presbytery and the rest of 
 his clergy, attempted to explain, with perhaps too philo- 
 sophical minuteness, that great theological mystery. 2 
 Anns, one of his priests, thinking that the Bishop was 
 verging into the Sabellian heresy, opposed him with 
 great logical acumen, while, in doing so, he ran into 
 the opposite extreme. He had been the competitor of 
 the Bishop for the Episcopate, and failed by a very few 
 votes. The tradition is, that on the Sunday after this 
 discussion Arius was appointed to preach in St. Mark's, 
 while the Bishop officiated in the Baucalis. The Bishop, 
 
 1 Burton's "History of the Christian Church," p. 428. 
 
 2 Socrates's "Ecclesiastical History," b. i., chap. v. 
 
CREEDS. 27 
 
 in his sermon, made no reference to the controversy, 
 while Arius availed himself of the opportunity to give 
 a full exposition of his views. The consequence was a 
 tumult, some of the congregation crying out, " This is 
 not the faith we have received from our fathers ; " 
 others, " Out with the second Cerinthus ! " " Anathema 
 to the new Basileides ! " This commenced the contest. 
 
 The view of Arius was, that " there was a time, be- 
 fore the commencement of the ages, when the parent 
 Deity dwelt alone in undeveloped, undivided unity. At 
 this time, immeasurably, incalculably, inconceivably re- 
 mote, the majestic solitude ceased, the Divine Unity was 
 broken by an act of the Sovereign Will, and the Only- 
 Begotten Son, the Image of the Father, the Yicegerent 
 of all the Divine Power, the intermediate Agent in all 
 the long-subsequent work of creation, began to beP 1 
 The Arian doctrine was summed up in the single sen- 
 tence, " There was, when He was not." 2 
 
 At this day, it seems to us like the highest irrever- 
 ence thus to dissect, as it were, the nature of the Su- 
 preme Being, or to endeavor to deprive it of that vague- 
 ness which, to the ordinary mind, constitutes its sub- 
 limity. The dispute, indeed, owed its existence to that 
 exquisite subtil ty of the Greek language which enabled 
 them to draw distinctions which in other tongues could 
 not be expressed ; and while for three centuries they 
 had bowed with awe before this great truth, looking on 
 it only as a fact to be received with the most profound 
 reverence, it was now to be subjected to what a writer 
 calls " the anatomical precision of philosophic Greek." 
 
 1 " Milman's History, 1 ' vol. ii., p. 68. 
 
 2 Theodoret gives Arius's letter in full, lib. i., chap. v. 
 
28 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 It is strange that this metaphysical question, so en- 
 tirely abstract, which had no relation to anything which 
 concerned man's spiritual interests, but referred only to 
 " the ineffable relations of the Godhead before the re- 
 motest beginning of time," should have awakened an 
 excitement which stirred up the most violent passions 
 to their highest exercise. " Beginning in the Schools of 
 Alexandria, the dispute," says Socrates, " ran through- 
 out all Egypt, Libya, and the Upper Thebes, and at 
 length diffused itself over the rest of the provinces and 
 cities." l It became the absorbing topic of the day, en- 
 listing all classes of the people. 2 It excited popular tu- 
 mults, leading to conflicts in the streets and in the am- 
 phitheatre, which it required the utmost exertions of the 
 military authorities to quell. The subject was parodied 
 in the theatres by the pagans, who rejoiced to exhibit 
 the manner in which the Christians u loved one an- 
 other." Verses composed by Arius, and setting forth 
 the disputed doctrine, were sung by all classes through 
 the whole East. Perhaps nothing so much shocked 
 every feeling of reverence in the orthodox mind as 
 these doggerel pieces which were called " Thalia." The 
 most sacred mysteries of our faith were ridiculed in 
 language which had previously been used in the lowest 
 ballads, and appropriated to subjects of disgraceful im- 
 
 1 Socrates's " History," chap. vi. 
 
 2 " You know what a hair-splitting, logioizing, philosophical set the 
 citizens are — how they hold a logomachy dearer than anything else ; and 
 the seed sown by Arius was now bearing most deadly fruit. Merchants, 
 lawyers, officers, seemed as much interested in the question as divines, 
 and the shops of Alexandria were full of debate on the deepest mysteries 
 of religion. Business seemed in abeyance ; polemical reasoning took its 
 place." — ("The Quay of the Dioscuri," p. 19.) 
 
CREEDS; 29 
 
 parity. We give a modern version of some of the most 
 innocent of these stanzas, that our readers may judge of 
 their character : 
 
 " A greater set of nonsense 
 
 Was surely never heard ; 
 Incredible and silly, 
 
 Preposterous, absurd! 
 Such stuff as is rejected 
 
 By very boys at school ; 
 Such mysteries as can only 
 
 Be handled by a fool. 
 
 "Be men, be men, Egyptians! 
 
 Or, rather than such lore, 
 Turn back again to Apis 
 
 And Isis as of yore. 
 They never, in the old times, 
 
 That saw King Pharaoh's court, 
 Bowed down before the folly 
 
 That Catholics support." 
 
 At the close of the Council of Nice, the book was 
 burned by authority, and became so rare that Sozomen 
 had never seen it, though he had heard of it. 1 
 
 The dispute seems, indeed, to have excited a perfect 
 popular furor. As an historian of the fourth century 
 describes the excitement in Constantinople, so was it 
 through every city of the East : " Every corner, every 
 alley of the city was full of these discussions — the 
 streets, the market-places, the drapers, the money- 
 changers, the victual ers. Ask a man, ' How many 
 oboli \ ' he answers by dogmatizing on generated and 
 ungenerated being. Inquire the price of bread, and 
 you are told, ' The Son is subordinate to the Father.' 
 
 1 Sozomen's " History," L, 22. 
 
30 THE CHURCH OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 Ask if the bath is ready, and you are told, ' The Son 
 arose ont of nothing.' " * 
 
 We might, perhaps, expect some excitement among 
 the versatile, imaginative children of the East, but the 
 strangest feature in the history of this doctrine was its 
 spread through the distant West, among those whose 
 more practical character of thought would have saved 
 them, we should suppose, from such fine-drawn the- 
 ories. This difference in the mental constitution of 
 the East and the West had been noticed as far back as 
 the days of Aristotle, who speaks of the contrast be- 
 tween " the savage energy and freedom of Europe and 
 the intellectual repose and apathy of Asia." 2 The Ori- 
 entals were the successors of the Greek Sophists, who 
 in the Garden and the Porch once disputed on the re- 
 fined theories of Plato, and, now that Philosophy had 
 given place to the doctrines of our Faith, they subjected 
 them to the same intellectual crucible. They cared 
 more for accuracy in the minute tenets of Christianity 
 than for that wide-spread hold upon the world which 
 was the object of the Latin Church. There was a sig- 
 nincancy, therefore, in the title assumed by the Eastern 
 Church, " Orthodox," while the West prided itself upon 
 the title of " Catholic." 
 
 Egypt and Syria were always the homes of that 
 dreamy repose which was developed into the monastic 
 system of Oriental Christendom, and which, though 
 transplanted into the West, found its most congenial 
 soil in the caves of the Nile, or on the mountain-ranges 
 of Lebanon. The bold energy and commanding action 
 
 1 Grog. Xyss., quoted by Stanley, "Eastern Church," p. 175. 
 s Aristotle, Fol. vii., 1. 
 
CREEDS. 31 
 
 of Ambrose and Ilildebrand seem the natural results 
 of the atmosphere of the West, but in the Latin Church 
 we look in vain for the passionless musings of the her- 
 mit Anthony in the burning desert of the Thebiad, or 
 the lonely devotion of Simeon Stylites on his pillar. 
 
 So, too, was it with that prolific brood of heresies — 
 Eutychianism, Nestorianism, and Sabellianism — which 
 for centuries convulsed the East, and in their ever- 
 changing forms called for Council after Council and 
 Synod after Synod, to define their shadowy divergence 
 from orthodoxy. In the West they obtained no foot- 
 ing, and their names were only known through the 
 writings of the Greek controversialists. No Western 
 mind could have originated the disputed points of Ori- 
 ental metaphysics — " bubbles forming and bursting on 
 every wave of human life." Of the swarm of heretics 
 who flit across the page of history, almost all are from 
 the East. The only distinguished name which comes 
 to us from the West is that of Tertullian, when in his 
 latter days he became a Montanist. 
 
 Arianism was the only strange exception to this 
 rule of national character ; it spread widely through the 
 West, and, when the torrent of Gothic invasion poured 
 down upon Italy, the Romans found to their surprise 
 that their conquerors were not only nominal Christians 
 like themselves, but had adopted also the heresy of 
 Arius. " These rude nations fell off from the faith of 
 the Church, as from a system too exalted for them, into 
 the impieties of Arianism." 1 St. Augustine, in his 
 " City of God," pays his tribute to the clemency of 
 Alaric and his followers in sparing the Churches dur- 
 
 1 Bowden's " Life of Gregory VII.," vol. i., p. 30. 
 
32 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 ing the sack of Borne. " The name of Christ rose 
 swelling above the wild dissonance of the captured 
 city." It was, however, owing to the fact that they 
 shared in the same faith with the conquered Romans. 
 But Ulfilas, the Apostle of the Goths, who first trans- 
 lated the Scriptures into their tongue, was an Arian, 
 and from him they had received their belief. 
 
 So was it with Genseric, the conqueror of Africa. 
 The North of Africa bowed to this heresy, and even 
 from the Churches of Carthage, built in memory of St. 
 Cyprian, the orthodox were expelled by the Vandal 
 King Honoricus, and the Arians put in possession. Nor 
 were they recovered until nearly a century had passed, 
 and Belisarius took Carthage and drove the Vandals 
 out of Africa. The fierce Lombards, too, shared in 
 that heresy, as did Theodoric the Great, King of Italy ; 
 and it is not saying too much to state that the strongest 
 hold of Arianism was in Spain and Southern France. 
 At one time, indeed, the greater part of the Western 
 world acknowledged that belief. 
 
 But, in thus narrating the triumphs of Arianism in 
 Western Europe and Northern Africa, we have antici- 
 pated its history in the following century. We return, 
 therefore, to its origin. 
 
 The anathemas of the Church at once expelled Arius 
 from its fold, because, in the language of that doeu- 
 ment, " he had dared to utter his blasphemies against 
 the Divine Redeemer." But his doctrines, as we have 
 shown, lived and found a congenial atmosphere through 
 the East, until at length an appeal was made to the 
 Emperor to heal the wounds of the divided Chinch. 
 He attempted the work, but his envoy to Egypt, Hosius 
 
CREEDS. 33 
 
 of Cordova, the most eminent of the Spanish Bishops, 
 met with no success, thongh he bore a letter from the 
 Emperor, entreating them to "cease vain contentions 
 about words, and to return to the harmony which be- 
 came their common faith." 1 
 
 But Constantine was a late convert from Paganism, 
 and the first Christian Emperor found himself unable 
 to settle the disputes of the fold to which he had joined 
 himself. We may believe, too, from his own expres- 
 sions, that it was with bitter - disappointment he. found 
 the Christian Church rent asunder by what to him 
 seemed empty controversies. " You, Alexander,'- he 
 says in his address to the contending parties, " mooting 
 a subject improper for discussion ; you, Arms, rashly 
 giving expression to a view of the matter, such as ought 
 either never to have been conceived,. or if, indeed, it had 
 been suggested to your mind, it became you to bury in 
 silence." And then he makes the appeal to them : " Re- 
 turn again to a state of reconciliation, and by so doing 
 give back to me tranquil days and nights free from 
 care. If this should not be effected, I must necessarily 
 groan and be wholly suffused with tears." 2 
 
 But one resource, therefore, remained ; and this, for 
 the first time since the birth of Christianity, was adopt- 
 ed. By Imperial mandate, a General Council of the 
 heads of the different Christian communities through- 
 out the Roman Empire was summoned, to establish, on 
 the united authority of assembled Christendom, the 
 true doctrine on these contested points ; and to this we 
 
 1 Socrates, lib. i., chap. vii. 
 
 2 Socrates, lib. i., chap. vii. Euscbius gives the whole letter in " Yit. 
 Const," ii., 68. 
 
3i THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 owe the second Creed in our Service, which still from 
 this Council bears the name of the Nicene Creed. 
 
 It was in the month of May, a. d. 325, that this 
 Great Council met at Nicaea, in Bithynia. There seemed 
 a special wisdom in the choice of place. It was but 
 twenty miles from Kicomedia, which shortly before 
 had been selected as the Capital of the East. Near 
 enough, therefore, for easy access of the Emperor, so 
 that, to use his own words, " he might be at hand as a 
 spectator and participate in what was done," it was not 
 so near that the influence of the Court could overshadow 
 their deliberations. Perhaps the name itself may have 
 had some influence in determining the place. " It is a 
 city," said the Emperor, " fitting for the Synod, called 
 after Victory, ' the City of Victory,' or ' Nicaea. 5 " ' 
 
 Fifteen centuries have passed away, and still the 
 ancient city of Nicsea stands, a monument of the Great 
 Council, yet how changed from what it once was ! 
 Then, high above all other buildings, rose the great 
 dome of the Church of the Eternal Wisdom, and on 
 each side of it were the remains of the old heathen 
 temples of Victory, and Juno, and Apollo, their broken 
 porticoes still beautiful in ruin. But time has swept 
 all these away. At the close of the thirteenth century, 
 on the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, Nicaea 
 fell before the arms of Orchan, the Ottoman leader, 
 and he at once transformed it into a Moslem city. The 
 Church of the Council was turned by him into a mosque, 
 the symbol of Islam was substituted for the mosaic 
 images on its walls, and, amid the rubbish which now 
 marks its site, Orchan's name appears sculptured over 
 1 Eusebius, "Vifc Const.; 1 Iii., 0. 
 
CREEDS. 35 
 
 the doorway. Attached to this mosque, the first Otto- 
 man college was founded. " In this place," says Yan 
 Hammer, " where the Bishops had been compelled, on 
 pain of deposition and exile, to renounce their heresy 
 and subscribe the Nicene Formulary, Christian children, 
 destined to recruit the ranks of the Janizaries, were 
 now forced to forswear their faith." 
 
 Nature, indeed, is unchanged, and, as the traveler 
 now approaches the ruined city, he sees the same grand 
 features of the landscape which must have arrested the 
 gaze of those who had then gathered from every part 
 of Christendom — above the city, the wooded slopes 
 of the mountains covered by the chestnut-forests ; at 
 their base, the Arcanian Lake communicating with the 
 Sea of Marmora ; and, in the distance, the classical 
 Olympus, with its snowy peaks looking down on the 
 wide stretch of hill and valley. Around the city still 
 remain the same ancient rectangular walls, which seem 
 the inclosure of a w x ild and forsaken chase, for within 
 all is ruin and desolation. Prostrate columns and shat- 
 tered walls, which Nature is covering with her rich verd- 
 ure, and tangled vines twining over the broken arches, 
 fill the space. No sound of human life is heard, till 
 with toil and labor the centre of the city is reached, 
 and there is Isnik, a miserable Turkish village, " stand- 
 ing within the walls, which form a circuit of four miles 
 around it." 1 Near it, surrounded by ruined mosques, 
 is the only monument of old Christian times, the de- 
 serted Church dedicated to " the repose of the Virgin." 2 
 Here the Moslem pilgrims search for the tombs of some 
 
 1 Sir Charles Fellows's " Travels in Lycia," p. S3. 
 
 2 Stanley's "Eastern Church," p. 172. 
 
36 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 of the heroes of their early history, or the traveler 
 from the West endeavors to trace the faint memorials 
 of the city once so famous in Ecclesiastical History. 
 
 Yet that was a scene of stirring life when the first 
 Great Council gathered there. More than three hundred 
 Bishops were present, and presbyters and deacons with- 
 out number. They came from all parts of the world, 
 from the distant East and the scarcely-known West. 
 John the Persian stood side by side with Theophilus the 
 Goth, from the extreme Korth. Alexander of Alexan- 
 dria was there, to aid in allaying the tempest his own 
 rashness had raised ; and there, too. was Arius, ready 
 to defend his doctrine. He was marked by his Asiatic 
 dress and the wildness of his appearance, as if he was 
 " in the world, yet not of the world." And face to 
 face with him was Athanasius, then a young deacon, 
 yet showing in that early day the same intellectual force 
 and energy which in after-years made him the Great 
 Defender of the Faith. Probably, notwithstanding his 
 youth, he was the master-mind of the assembly, and in 
 the Iberian convent at Mount Athos is an ancient fres- 
 coed picture of the Council, which represents him seated 
 on the ground in his deacon's dress writing out the 
 Creed. Perhaps this painting embodies the idea which 
 was entertained through the East of his share in this 
 great work. The hermit Bishops came from their Egyp- 
 tian caves to meet the astute logicians from Alexandria 
 and Antioch. Many of them bore the marks of having 
 suffered for the faith, for the days of martyrdom had 
 not long since ceased, and there were those still living 
 who had passed through the great persecution of Dio- 
 cletian. 
 
CREEDS. 37 
 
 " There were among the Bishops," says Socrates, 
 " two of extraordinary celebrity : Paphnutius, Bishop of 
 Upper Thebes ; and Spiridon, Bishop of Cyprus." The 
 former had lost an eye in the persecutions, and was 
 esteemed for his wonderful sanctity. The latter was 
 taken from his sheepfold to be made a Bishop, and " on 
 account of his extreme humility he continued to feed 
 his sheep during his prelacy." To both were ascribed 
 the power of working miracles. 1 But the time would 
 fail us to mention even the prominent members of that 
 body. Their names are written in the chronicles of the 
 times, yet they sound strange to us as they come down 
 through the intervening centuries. 2 
 
 Socrates likens the Council to that great multitude 
 which, on the day of Pentecost, listened to the preach- 
 ing of St. Peter, composed of " devout men of every 
 nation under heaven ; except," he says, " that congre- 
 gation was inferior in this respect, that all present were 
 not ministers of God, whereas in this assembly, besides 
 the Bishops, was an almost incalculable number of pres- 
 byters, deacons, and acolyths, attending them." 3 
 
 The historian Eusebius 4 describes the scene, at which 
 he was present, as being himself deeply impressed with 
 
 1 Socrates, lib. i., chap. x. and xi. 
 
 2 It is perhaps a great loss that the Church history of Philostorgius 
 has not been preserved. It was favorable to the Arians, but nothing re- 
 mains except a few fragments copied in Photius. 
 
 3 Socrates, lib. i., chap. viii. 
 
 4 There were two of the most prominent members of the Council bear- 
 ing this name. This one, Eusebius the historian, Bishop of Cassarea, 
 acted with the orthodox party, though he was said to be a semi-Arian. 
 The other Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, was an Arian, and, as will be 
 seen in the further pages of this narrative, was one of the most active 
 partisans on that side. 
 
38 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 its solemnity. At its first meeting the assembly sat in 
 profound silence, while the great officers of state and 
 other dignified persons entered the hall and awaited " in 
 proud and trembling expectation " the appearance of 
 the Emperor of the world in a Christian Council. At 
 length he entered, wearing the Imperial diadem — a light 
 crown of gold, set with rubies and sapphires alternately — 
 and his dress of purple blazing with gold embroidery and 
 precious stones. The whole assembly at once rose to do 
 him honor. He advanced to a low, golden seat prepared 
 for him, but did not take it till a sign of permission 
 had been given by the Bishops. u Such," says Socrates, 1 
 " was the respect and reverence which the Emperor en- 
 tertained for these men." On the one side of him sat 
 Hosius of Spain, who had been his legate to Egypt in 
 the vain attempt to settle this difficulty, and on his right 
 was his Eastern favorite, Eusebius of Cresarea, " the 
 father of ecclesiastical history." 
 
 1 Socrates, " Hist.," lib. i., chap. viii. This was a reverence which the 
 Church in that age always claimed from civil rulers. Gibbon says : " In 
 the Christian Church, which intrusts the service of the altar to a, perpetual 
 succession of consecrated ministers, the monarch, whose spiritual rank is 
 less honorable than that of the meanest deacon, was seated below the 
 rails of the sanctuary and confounded with the rest of the faithful multi- 
 tude. The Emperor might be saluted as the father of his people, but he 
 owed filial duty and reverence to the Fathers of the Church." — (" History," 
 chap, xx.) 
 
 When the Emperor Theodosius had entered the chancel to present of- 
 ferings, he remained. St. Ambrose asked him what he wanted, and on 
 his replying that he remained for the purpose of partaking of the Holy 
 Mysteries, he directed the deacon to address him in the following words : 
 " The priests alone, Emperor, are permitted to enter within the pali- 
 sades of the altar ; all others must not approach it. Retire, then, and 
 remain with the rest of the laity. A purple robe makes Emperors, but 
 not priests." — (Theodoret, lib. v., chap, xviii.) 
 
CREEDS. 39 
 
 One of the leading prelates — probably Eusebius — 
 commenced the proceedings with a short address to the 
 Emperor, followed by a hymn to God. Constantine 
 then delivered an exhortation to unity in the Latin lan- 
 guage, which was interpreted to the Greek Bishops. It 
 displayed a Christian spirit which it would have been 
 well for them to have imitated. " The moment," he 
 says, " which I shall consider the chief fulfillment of 
 my prayers will be when I see you all joined together 
 in heart and soul, and determining on one peaceful har- 
 mony for all, which would well become you who are 
 consecrated to God, to preach to others." l 
 
 The Council sat for more than two months, and, 
 as we before stated, the Nicene Creed was the result 
 of its solemn deliberations, while the anathema of the 
 Church was pronounced against Arius and his adher- 
 ents. In the midst of the excitement of their debates, 
 Eusebius proposed a Creed which had " existed before 
 the rise of controversy." It was one which, he subse- 
 quently said, in an Epistle to his diocese, when describ- 
 ing the proceedings of the Council, " he had received 
 from the Bishops who were his predecessors, in the rudi- 
 ments of which he was instructed when he was baptized, 
 and which, both as a presbyter and when placed in the 
 Episcopal office, he had believed and taught." 2 Of this, 
 as an historical fact, there can be no doubt, since all to 
 whom he made the statement in his Diocese of Csesarea 
 must have been acquainted with the existence of this 
 Creed and able to confirm this assertion. It was adopted 
 with some slight alterations, and, therefore, was almost 
 
 1 Eusebius's "Vit. Const.," iii., 12. 
 
 2 Theodoret, lib. i., chap. xii. 
 
40 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 identical with the Nicene Creed as we have received 
 it. It must have been an early formulary of doctrine 
 adopted in the cradle of our faith — the land of Pal- 
 estine. The Mcene Creed, therefore, has an antiqui- 
 ty far beyond the date of its formal adoption at jSTi- 
 ceea. 
 
 The Creed was intended, as we can at once perceive, 
 to guard the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity by all that 
 language can effect. It declares that he is " God of 
 God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, 
 not made, being of one substance with the Father." 
 Three hundred and eighteen Bishops confirmed the 
 Creed by their signatures, and thus was recorded the 
 united voice of the Christian Church. 
 
 The Creed is that we still use, except that for the 
 last division, which was afterward added at the Council 
 of Constantinople, a. d. 3S1, there originally stood the 
 words : " But those who say that there was a time when 
 He was not, and before His generation He was not, and 
 He was formed out of nothing, or that He was of an- 
 other essence or hypostasis, or that the Son of God is 
 created, or is changeable, or is mutable, the Holy Catho- 
 lic and Apostolic Church anathematizes. " 
 
 Another change is the insertion of the word filioque 
 to declare the procession of the Holy Ghost, "from the 
 Father and the Son." When this was done, it would 
 be difficult to tell. Its adoption grew up gradually in 
 the West of Europe, but it was certainly not until the 
 eighth century that it received any authoritative in- 
 dorsement. Creeping into the Creed in this way, it is 
 now, unfortunately, the most serious obstacle to the 
 communion of the Greek Church with our own. They 
 
CREEDS. 41 
 
 say, and justly, that it should not have been added with- 
 out the direction of an (Ecumenical Council. 
 
 The difficulty of coming to some agreement in the 
 Council arose not from open antagonism of opinion, for 
 this could have been met by argument. It was caused 
 by the dishonest ingenuity of the Arians in professing 
 their willingness to accept the orthodox language, while 
 they secretly gave it a different meaning. In a work 
 of fiction, whose object is to picture the proceedings of 
 those times, 3 there is a most truthful view given of these 
 ceaseless evasions of the adherents of Arms in offering 
 to subscribe to articles of the Creed which, with a men- 
 tal reservation, they held in a different sense. We will 
 give a scene from this work to illustrate this point. 
 
 " It was now wished to draw up a Creed which 
 should serve to express the faith of the Church, and 
 which should yet be accepted — if it might be so — by 
 all the Prelates. The only difficulty was that which 
 concerned the Son of God, to use language which could 
 not be distorted, and which yet, in its declarations, 
 should be simple and short. 
 
 " Alexander had been speaking, and he now con- 
 cluded by proposing that the Council should simply de- 
 clare the Son of God to be God. 
 
 " There was a great shout of applause. ' It is the 
 faith of Peter ! It is the faith of Paul ! Anathema to 
 him that gainsays ! ' 
 
 " ' My brother of Mcomedia,' said the President, £ has 
 
 1 " The Quay of the Dioscuri," London, 1860. Although this account 
 is given in the form of fiction, yet it is entirely based on the statements 
 made by Athanasius, where all these evasions and references to texts are 
 narrated. — (" De Decret. Nic.," sec. 19.) 
 
42 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 it your approbation that this sacred Council, inspired by 
 the Holy Ghost, should declare the Son to be God?' 
 
 " ' I would so declare it with pleasure,' said Euse- 
 bius ; ' but, before I commit myself farther, I would, 
 with your Brotherliness's permission, consult with those 
 with whom I usually act.' 
 
 " Accordingly, he and several other of the Arian 
 leaders formed a circle toward the left-hand upper cor- 
 ner of the hall, and seemed very eager in debate. Arias, 
 Theonas of Marmarica, and Menophantus of Ephesus, 
 appeared the most emphatic speakers. At the end of 
 about a quarter of an hour, Eusebius of ^sicomedia 
 came forward, and the others resumed their seats. 
 
 " ' We are content,' said he, ' that this should be so 
 expressed in the Creed : " I believe in the Son of God, 
 God Himself.'" 
 
 " There was great applause, and I really thought 
 that the two parties were coming to an agreement. 
 But Athanasius seemed very ill at ease ; he passed be- 
 hind the golden throne, and spoke hastily to the leg- 
 ates. In another minute Hosius said, ' Have I your 
 Brotherliness's leave to ask Arius a question I ' 
 
 " ' Surely,' replied Eustathius. 
 
 " i Arius,' said he, i do I understand you also to af- 
 firm that the Son of God is God ? ' 
 
 " ' I am ready to swear my belief in it,' replied he. 
 
 " ' And you would repeat the words as I have re- 
 peated them 1 ' 
 
 " ' Surely — why not ? Is it not written in your 
 law, " I said, ye are gods \ " If he then called them 
 gods—' 
 
 " Eusebius of Caesarea darted an indignant glance 
 
CREEDS. 43 
 
 at Arius. So this was what they meant, this the grand 
 truth so carefully to be embodied in the Creed, that, as 
 they were called gods, so was the Eternal Word God — 
 so, and not otherwise ! 
 
 " ' Out with the Egyptian ! Out with the heretic ! ' 
 was the cry. 
 
 " ' This will not do,' said Hosius ; ' in the same 
 sense we may affirm any holy man to be God.' 
 
 " ' Say,' said Leontius of Csesarea, ' that He is al- 
 ways God.' 
 
 " ' I do say so,' replied Arius. 
 
 " ' Nothing clearer,' cried Menophantus. 
 
 " ' Does this great and holy Synod adopt that ex- 
 pression % ' asked the president. 
 
 " ' Remembering,' said Arius, ' that it is written, 
 " We which live are always." x Our Lord is, as I have 
 expressed it, God ; He lives God, therefore He is al- 
 ways God.' 
 
 " ' I affirm,' said Alexander, ' that He is very God 
 of very God.' 
 
 " ' I affirm the like,' retorted Eusebius of Nicome- 
 dia ; ' if He has verily been so made, verily He so is. 
 Why, the majority would be satisfied with nothing less 
 than calling Him consubstantial with the Father.' 
 
 " ' Let us say so ! ' cried Athanasius. 
 
 " ' The Holy Ghost speaks by Athanasius ! ' was the 
 cry. ' Athanasius a second Peter ! ' ' Athanasius an- 
 other Paul ! ' ' Let us worship the consubstantial ! ' " ' 
 
 The great point of dispute ultimately turned on an 
 i in the word which was used to assert the inherent 
 Divinity of our Lord. The word for which the ortho- 
 
 1 2 Cor. iv. 11. 
 
4± THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 dox contended was homousios (of the same substance), 
 while that put forward by the Arians was homoiusios 
 (of like substance). The former was expressed by the 
 word consubstantial, adopted by the Council, but bit- 
 terly opposed by the Arians. It had been unwittingly 
 suggested by the Arians themselves, and caught up and 
 used by the orthodox. In the English version of the 
 Creed it is expressed by the phrase, u Being of one sub- 
 stance with the Father." The tradition always has been 
 that Eusebius of Nieomedia first altered the document 
 by secretly inserting the i before he signed it. The 
 scene is thus pictured in the work to which we have 
 before referred : 
 
 " On the next morning Constantine, who had in the 
 mean while received warning that if he were not there 
 the session was likely to be a stormy one, was present. 
 At first matters proceeded tranquilly enough. The 
 Creed was produced, read over, and then the signatures 
 were called for. And, for two hours, Metropolitan 
 after Metropolitan, and Bishop after Bishop, came up 
 to the little table of signature, took pen in hand, and 
 affixed his name. The recusants held back to the last. 
 
 " There were seventeen. Eusebius of Xicomedia 
 was their spokesman. 
 
 " After much disputing, ' I entreat you,' he cried, 
 ' august Emperor, not to drive us to stand at bay. AVe 
 have done good service to your throne ; we have ever 
 prayed for your life and that of your august family ; 
 we have labored for the propagation of the true faith ; 
 and now, for a word unknown to — unknown to ? — 
 rather rejected by, our fathers, we are to be made of- 
 fenders.' 
 
CREEDS. 45 
 
 " Hosius was about to reply, but the Emperor rose. 
 ; Tins great and oecumenical Synod,' said he, ' has been 
 the mouth ; I am but the hand. What it confirms with 
 the sword of the Spirit I will ratify by the carnal 
 weapon. I pronounce no theological judgment, but the 
 Bishop that signs not the symbol is sent into exile.' 
 The resolute manner in which he spoke showed that no 
 entreaties could move him. 
 
 " After an hour's weary discussion twelve more 
 signed. And now there were but five dissentients, 
 Ensebius of Nicomedia, Theognius of Mcsea, Maris of 
 Chalcedon, and Secundus and Theonas of Lybia. 
 
 " For some time I thought that these five would 
 have remained firm, but the love of the world was too 
 strong in Eusebius. Just as the Emperor was about to 
 declare the session at an end, he advanced to the table. 
 For a moment his hand was held over the symbol it- 
 self, as if he were diligently perusing it ; he then signed 
 hastily, and Maris and Theognius followed his example. 
 
 " Eusebius had inserted an i, thus turning homousios 
 into homoiiisios ; * as if they could thus cheat the 
 
 Searcher of hearts. But the guile answered in this 
 world." 
 
 It shows the Oriental character of the Council, that, 
 of all the Bishops who signed the Creed, only eight 
 were from the "West. The Greek, too, in which it was 
 written it would have been impossible to translate into 
 the Latin or Teutonic languages. The expressions are 
 too subtile to be represented in any other tongue, and 
 the fine-drawn distinctions (like the i on which the 
 
 1 As a matter of history, this change is mentioned by Philostorgius, 
 i, 3. 
 
46 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 contest turned) with regard to our Lord's union of na- 
 tures defied the attempts of the "Western theologians to 
 explain them in their language. They were obliged, 
 therefore, to coin new forms of speech, Greek in their 
 character, which often were but an approximation to 
 what had been fully set forth in the delicate idioms of 
 the original text. " The West," says Milman, " accept- 
 ed the Creed, which its narrow and barren vocabulary 
 could hardly express in adequate terms." ' 
 
 There was one point of difference between the con- 
 tending parties at Nicsea so marked, that it deserves 
 our serious attention. The orthodox Fathers did not 
 reason from their own interpretation of Scripture, or 
 base their arguments upon it. They bore witness to a 
 simple matter of fact, that the doctrine they avowed 
 had been received by them from the generations before 
 them, and they knew of no other as ever existing in 
 their respective Churches. On the contrary, the handful 
 of men at the Council who advocated Arianism made 
 no appeal to uninterrupted tradition ; they only argued 
 from their own views of Scripture. They might have 
 been included among those to whom Shakespeare re- 
 fers, who live — 
 
 " As the world were now but to begin, 
 Antiquity forgot, custom not known."* 3 
 
 The contrast is strikingly referred to in one of the 
 treatises of Athanasius, when he points out to the Ari- 
 ans the fact that they had dated one of their confes- 
 sions of faith by the consulate of the current year. 
 
 1 " Latin Christianity," i., 59. 
 
 2 " Hamlet." act iv., scene v. 
 
CREEDS. 47 
 
 " Having composed," he said, " a creed according to 
 tlieir tastes, they headed it with mention of the Consul, 
 and the month, and the day, as if to suggest to all men 
 of understanding that now, from the time of Constan- 
 tius, not before, their faith dates its origin. . . . On 
 the other hand, at Mcsea, many as were the framers of 
 the Creed, they ventured nothing such as these three 
 or four men have ventured. They did not care to head 
 it with consulate, month, and day, but said, ' Thus be- 
 lieves the Catholic Church ; ' nor had they any delay 
 in stating what they believed, in proof that their views 
 were not novel but Apostolical. And what they set 
 down was no discovery of theirs, but the doctrine which 
 was taught by the Apostles." 1 
 
 And this principle on which they acted was not a 
 mere vague and floating opinion. On the contrary, 
 they regarded their interpretation of the doctrine which 
 they embodied in the Creed as one fixed and recog- 
 nized, formally committed to the guardianship of every 
 Bishop everywhere, and by him made over to his suc- 
 cessor. And we know that such a deposit did exist ; 
 and such a traditio or transmission, with regard to fun- 
 damental doctrines, was formally observed in and from 
 the Apostolic age. Each Bishop appointed to watch for 
 the welfare of the Christian Church " marked well her 
 bulwarks, and set up her houses, that he might tell them 
 that come after P 2 
 
 There can be no doubt but that each branch of the 
 Church had its own distinct line of traditionary teach- 
 ing from the Apostles. It is to this, perhaps, that St. 
 
 1 " De Synod.," 3-5. 
 
 2 Psalm xlviii. 12 (Prayer-Book version). 
 
43 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Jude refers, when he urges the duty of " earnestly con- 
 tending for the faith which was once delivered" We 
 may believe, then, that the unanimity which prevailed 
 in the Council of Nice was something higher than a 
 mutual sacrifice of differences for the sake of peace. 
 It had more weight than the mere decision of a major- 
 ity, no matter how large. It was the joint testimony 
 of the many branches of the Church represented by 
 their Bishops as independent witnesses, to the separate 
 existence in each of them, from time immemorial, of 
 the doctrine in which they found they all agreed. 1 
 
 For many reasons the Council of Nice was the most 
 remarkable body which had ever met in the Church. 
 It proclaimed to the world a startling announcement. 
 For three centuries the Church and the Roman Empire 
 had been growing up side by side, engaged in a cease- 
 less struo-o'le for the direction of the human mind. 
 Here we have the first public and acknowledged con- 
 fession that the Church had conquered. " The weak 
 things of this world had confounded the strong ; " and 
 when at Nicaea the Emperor of all the known world 
 bowed before the spiritual authority of the Council, we 
 may feel that ths victory, to achieve which so many 
 had laid down their lives, had been won at last. 
 
 During these passing centuries, too, filled as they 
 were with striking incidents in those days of heroic 
 faith and bitter persecution, nothing stands out promi- 
 nent. In every part of the world to which the Gospel 
 had gone, whether amid the palaces of the Imperial 
 City, on the plains of India, or in the forests of West- 
 ern Europe, there is the same story : on the one hand, 
 
 1 British Critic, vol. xx, p. 192. 
 
CREEDS. 49 
 
 the attempt to crush the Faith, and on the other, the 
 sublime endurance of its followers — the ceaseless strug- 
 gle between the Old World and the New-born Church. 
 
 But there is no central point of interest or influence. 
 At Mcssa a new era was inaugurated. For the first 
 time the Church, as it were, emerges from the chaos, 
 and, uniting its voice with that of the Empire, points 
 out the path its followers were to tread in coming cen- 
 turies. There was a significance, therefore, in the title 
 it assumed, " The Great and Holy Synod." 
 
 And to this day, in the Eastern Church, this Creed 
 retains the power it had when first announced by the 
 mandate of the Roman Emperor. Among the many 
 millions of the Greek Church it is the one bond of 
 faith. " It is still recited in its original tongue by the 
 peasants of Greece ; its recitation is still the culminat- 
 ing point of the Service in the Church of Russia. The 
 great bell of the Kremlin Tower sounds during the 
 whole time that its words are chanted. It is repeated 
 aloud in the presence of the assembled people by the 
 Czar at his coronation ; it is worked in pearls on the 
 robes of the highest dignitaries of Moscow. The an- 
 niversary of the Council is still celebrated on special 
 days. Every article of the Mcene Creed is exhibited, 
 according to the fashion of the Russian Church, in little 
 pictures, and thus familiarized to the popular mind." 1 
 
 And so through the West. Wherever the Church of 
 England is planted — in India and Australia, in Africa, in 
 the isles of the Southern Ocean, and over the wide ex- 
 panse of this continent — this Creed is incorporated in the 
 Liturgy, and looked upon as the measure of faith. It is 
 
 1 Stanley's " Eastern Church," p. 148. 
 
50 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 the tie which, more than anything else, unites us to 
 the distant East — to the Churches of Constantinople 
 and Antioch. The Greek Church has never formally 
 received the Apostles' and Athanasian Creeds as a 
 part of its ritual. The Mcene alone is common to all 
 Christendom. The very place it occupies in the Com- 
 munion Service, and the direction to recite it before the 
 administration of the Eucharist, is derived from the 
 Greek Church, " to guard that ordinance against Arian 
 intruders." * There was, therefore, a prophecy, which 
 fifteen hundred years have verified, in that declaration 
 of Athanasius, " The word of the Lord, which was 
 given in the (Ecumenical Council of Xicsea, remaineth 
 forever." 
 
 And now, in concluding this sketch, will some of 
 our readers ask, " What was the future history of 
 Arms ? " Though condemned by the Council, the evil 
 he had done lived after him. His heresy spread, as we 
 have shown, and had its strongest hold in the West of 
 -Europe, where the Gothic tribes had received it from 
 their earliest teachers. And so it continued for nearly 
 two centuries after the adoption of the Creed at Nicaea ; 
 nor did it end in France until Clovis, on the field of 
 Youille, struck down the power of the Arian Visi- 
 goths, and their leader died by his hand. In Spain it 
 was dominant until, in the sixth century, King Recared, 
 in the Cathedral at Toledo, professed his submission to 
 the Catholic Church. 2 Thenceforth Arianism seems to 
 
 1 In the Communion Service of the Church of England it is so pre- 
 scribed. In the American Church the choice is allowed in the Communion 
 Service between the Xicene and the Apostles' Creeds. 
 
 8 Stanley's "Eastern Church," p. 152. 
 
CREEDS. 51 
 
 have lost its vitality, until it gradually ceased to be 
 numbered among the recognized heresies of the day. 
 
 But Arius himself had passed the culminating point 
 of his notoriety. For a while he remained in Alexan- 
 dria, vainly striving to be received once more into com- 
 munion with the Church by Athanasius, who had suc- 
 ceeded Alexander in his Episcopal office. Thence, about 
 ten years after the Council, by the advice of Eusebius 
 of Nicomedia, he removed to Constantinople. There 
 the influence of his friends was exerted in his behalf 
 with the Emperor, and on his being admitted to an in- 
 terview, Arius so earnestly avowed his belief in the 
 Catholic faith, " deceitfully imitating," says Theodoret, 
 " the language of the Holy Scriptures," that the scru- 
 ples of the Emperor were swept away, and he com- 
 manded Arius to be received again to the communion 
 of the Church. The words in which he delivered his 
 decision were characterized by an anxiety and earnest- 
 ness which subsequent events almost elevated to the 
 dignity of prophecy. " Arius," said he, " has well 
 sworn, if his words had no double meaning ; otherwise, 
 God will avenge." Unceasing, indeed, were the en- 
 treaties of the Bishop Alexander, that the Emperor 
 would not inflict this disgrace upon the Church ; but 
 all were without effect, and the day was appointed for 
 his reception, which his friends were to celebrate by a 
 triumphal procession through the streets. 
 
 The previous night was passed by the aged Bishop 
 in prayer in the Church of Peace, accompanied by two 
 other Bishops, Hermogenes of Cappadocia and James of 
 Nisibis. There, before the holy doors of the altar, 
 they knelt, while twenty-four priests were kneeling be- 
 
52 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 hind them, and the multitude which filled the Church 
 kept a solemn silence, as hour after hour their prayers 
 ascended on high. The night went on, and the morn- 
 ing light stole in, and still Alexander, though fourscore- 
 and-eight years old, kept his vigil, and the ceaseless pe- 
 tition of the aged man was, " If Arius is to be joined to 
 the Church to-morrow dismiss me Thy servant ; or cut 
 off Arius, lest, if he enter into communion with Thy 
 Church, heresy enter also I" 1 
 
 The day broke, and over the whole city was heard 
 the music of trumpets, and flutes, and hautboys, as the 
 procession wound around through the streets. Prom 
 the Emperor's palace it was to make the circuit of the 
 city to the Great Church. On the procession swept, 
 through the long street of St. Irene, till it reached the 
 Great Square and wound around the Porphyry Pillar of 
 Constantino. 
 
 Arius, Eusebius, Euzo'ius, and other leaders, came 
 almost at the end. The church was nearly reached, and 
 the moment of their triumph was at hand, when Arius 
 complained of sudden illness, and had to be taken into 
 a house near by. Then the procession halted, and a 
 strange hush and silence fell upon the square, until in 
 a few moments the announcement went forth, " Arius 
 is dead ! " And so it was. " Immediately," it is written, 
 " he fell down and burst asunder and expired." 2 Thus 
 he died the death of Judas Iscariot. 
 
 That night hymns of praise ascended in the Church, 
 and the aged Bishop returned thanks to God that his 
 prayer had been answered, the Church been freed from 
 
 1 Theodoret, lib. i., chap. xiv. 
 
 2 Athanasius, lib. L, p. 670. 
 
CREEDS. 53 
 
 its threatened disgrace, and lie who so long hindered the 
 truth " had been taken out of the way." " This was 
 not," says Theodoret, " because he rejoiced at the death 
 of Arius — far from it, for all men must die ; but it was 
 because his mode of death surpassed the judgment of 
 man." x They glorified God, because so evidently " lie 
 had visited His people." 
 
 A few years later and another Creed was put forth, 
 rather as the amplification and explanation of the M- 
 cene. Probably that refinement of Eastern dialects to 
 which we have before alluded, in many cases allowed 
 the heretical to repeat the Nicene Creed, while men- 
 tally they affixed a different meaning to its words. 
 This, therefore, was placed beyond a doubt by the 
 Creed called the Athanasian, which gradually made its 
 way into the Church and became an acknowledged 
 Creed of the West. It is a portion of the Ritual of the 
 Church of England, though not retained in the Ameri- 
 can Church. For many centuries, through the Middle 
 Ages, it was believed to be the work of Athanasius 
 himself. Even the English Reformers supposed it to 
 be from his hand. But this is disproved by internal evi- 
 dence. The phraseology is often that which Athanasius 
 would not have used, while the assertion of the Double 
 Procession of the Spirit — " the Holy Ghost is of the 
 Father and the Son " — would have been disowned by 
 him, as it has been by the great body of Oriental Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 The learned have now united in the belief that this 
 
 1 Theodoret, lib. i., chap. xii. 
 
54 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 ancient Hymn, " Quicunque vult," is of a later date. It 
 was probably composed by Hilary, 1 Bishop of Aries, in 
 Gaul, not earlier than the year 426, nor later than the 
 year 430. It was written, therefore, but little more 
 than half a century after the death of Athanasius. 2 
 
 And so it has come down to us in its pristine pu- 
 rity, unmutilated among all the changes and heresies 
 which arose. Martin Luther called it " the bulwark of 
 the Apostles' Creed ; " and Calvin, " a sure and fitting in- 
 terpreter of the Xicene Creed." It bears the name of 
 the great Defender of the Faith, not because it was writ- 
 ten by him, but because it is a faithful exposition of 
 the doctrines for which he so bravely contended, when 
 he stood almost alone — what Milton calls " the sole ad- 
 vocate of a discountenanced truth " — when his motto was 
 obliged to be, "Athanasius contra mundum," and (in 
 the striking words of Hooker) " he had no friend but 
 God and death." 3 Hooker, indeed, sums up the history 
 of this Creed in a single sentence : " Both in the East 
 and West Churches it was accepted as a treasure of in- 
 estimable price, by as many as had not given up even 
 the very ghost of belief." * 
 
 Such are the three acknowledged Creeds of the Cath- 
 
 1 The authorship of this Creed has of course been the subject of great 
 dispute among theologians, but the whole question seems to have been 
 exhausted by Waterlaud, vol. iv., p. 21S, u Ed. Van Mildert." His argu- 
 ment in behalf of Hilary, once Abbot of Lerins, afterward Bishop of 
 Aries, seems to be conclusive. In the historical notice of this point we 
 have adopted the argument contained in the Charge of the Archbishop 
 (Beresford) of Armagh in IST-i. 
 
 2 According to Socrates, " Eccles. Hist," lib. iv., chap, xx., this took 
 place in 371, but Jerome states it to be in 373. 
 
 3 "Eccles. Polity," book v., chap. 42. 4 Ibid. 
 
CREEDS. 55 
 
 olic Church. Ludolph of Saxony, in his " Life of Christ," 
 says : " There are three symbols : the first of the Apos- 
 tles, the second of the Mcene Council, the third of St. 
 Athanasius ; the first for instruction in the faith, the 
 second for explanation of the faith, the third for de- 
 fense of the faith." In these, then, the doctrine of the 
 Church is contained. They declare the sum of what we 
 are to believe concerning the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Ghost. " Enlarged and unfolded during four 
 centuries, according to the needs of the Church and the 
 various assaults of heresy, these Creeds have been, 
 throughout the history of the Church, her possession, 
 her sum of truth, her sacred deposit." 1 These the early 
 Christians repeated when they met together ; these we 
 now profess when we have gathered on each occasion 
 of public worship ; these the Church has maintained 
 against her adversaries ; these she holds out to her chil- 
 dren ; and with these she hopes to meet her Lord when 
 He returns to judgment. 
 
 Let us look, then, at the reverence with which these 
 Creeds were regarded by the early Church ; how " stead- 
 fastly " its members " continued in the Apostles' doc- 
 trine." They considered an agreement on these points 
 to be fundamental ; as essential to the very being of a 
 Christian and his union with the Church. The Creed 
 was called the " Eule of Faith," 2 because it was the 
 standard and rule by which orthodoxy and heresy were 
 
 1 Moberly's " Forty Days," p. 80. 
 
 2 Bingham's " Orig. Eccles.," lib. x., chap. iii. 
 
50 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 known and examined. Its profession was esteemed 
 necessary to the admission of members into the Church 
 of Christ by Baptism. He who deviated from it in any 
 point was regarded as one who had cut himself off and 
 separated from the communion of the Church. 
 
 Irenseus called it " the unalterable Canon and Rule of 
 Faith," and adds, in a passage so truly eloquent that we 
 cannot forbear quoting it entire : " This is the message, 
 and this the Faith, which the Church has received, and 
 which, though dispersed throughout the whole world, she 
 sedulously guards, as though she dwelt but in one place, 
 believes as uniformly as though she had but one soul 
 and the same heart, and preaches, teaches, hands down 
 to posterity, as harmoniously as though she had but 
 one mouth. 
 
 " True it is, the world's languages are various, but 
 the power of the tradition is one and the same. There 
 is no difference of faith or tradition, whether in the 
 Churches of Germany, or in Spain, or in Gaul, or in the 
 East, or in Egypt, or in Africa, or in the more central 
 parts of the world ; but as the sun, God's creature, is 
 one and the same in all the world, so also the preach- 
 ing of the truth shineth everywhere, and lighteth every 
 one who will come to the knowledge of the truth. 
 Among the rulers of the Church, neither he who is 
 powerful in words speaks other doctrine (for no one can 
 be above his Master), nor does the weak in the word 
 diminish the tradition. For, whereas the faith is one 
 and the same, neither he who has much to say concern- 
 ing it hath anything over, nor he who speaketh little 
 any lack." * 
 
 1 Ircnrcus, lib. i., chap. iii. 
 
CREEDS. 57 
 
 These were what we have referred to as the golden 
 days of the Church ; but now, alas ! — 
 
 " The world is very evil — 
 The times are waxing late. 1 ' 
 
 We have fallen upon " the last clays " foretold by 
 the Apostle, 1 when scoffers are found to deny each of 
 these truths in which the early Christians trusted, and 
 what to them were subjects of faith and adoration are 
 now flung from lip to lip with irreverent blasphemy. 
 Yet, as thus we look out on a world rent by conflicting 
 beliefs, where the waves of popular opinion toss wildly 
 about, and unity of doctrine is remembered only as 
 something belonging to far-distant centuries, is it not 
 more necessary than ever that we should cling to these 
 ancient forms, which thus have come down to us sanc- 
 tioned by the reverence and love of ages ? Is it not a 
 blessing that they have been preserved to us, thus to be 
 professed when we gather in God's House, so that if the 
 living minister should teach anything not sanctioned by 
 the faith, the words of the Creed which he is obliged 
 to repeat would at once give in their denial ? The 
 members of our Church have, therefore, ever before 
 them the doctrine of the Apostles — the " old paths " 
 are plain in their sight — and in all the essential points 
 of faith he who errs must willfully wander from the 
 truth. 
 
 The history of the world, indeed, has demonstrated 
 the necessity for fixed creeds, to embody doctrine and 
 preserve it unimpaired from age to age. Wherever 
 they have been abandoned it seems as if all landmarks 
 
 - l 2 Timothy iii. i. 
 
58 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 had been given up, errors have crept in, and their prod- 
 uct has been those thousand forms of heresy which 
 now distract the world. The mind of man needs some- 
 thing on which to lean — something to relieve it from 
 the vague and the indefinite — something fixed and cer- 
 tain — and this can only be furnished by these ancient 
 formularies, which have come down to us from " our 
 fathers' days and the old times before them." Dealing 
 only with the essentials of faith, they place before us 
 those things which are necessary to salvation — those 
 which he who abandons, denies the Lord who bought 
 him, and ceases to be a Christian. 
 
 And is it not of importance what we believe ? Does 
 the Gospel anywhere indorse that false liberality of 
 modern days which would esteem all creeds alike, and 
 make all opinions on religion matters of indifference ? 
 ~No. A Christian disciple is bound to revere and main- 
 tain the doctrines of his Divine Master. lie belongs to 
 the school of Christ. The truths in which he rests 
 have had their origin in Heaven. They are not specu- 
 lative refinements, which are matters of fancy, but the v 
 constitute the living principles of action in a Chris- 
 tian's heart ; and, in proportion to the freeness of their 
 action, the}' give a coloring to his whole life, and form 
 the character of his future destiny. 
 
 If, indeed, we receive but half of the truth, the de- 
 ficiency to us will be made up by a corresponding half 
 of error. 1 Would we be safe, therefore, we must go to 
 
 1 " Doctrinal errors ever produce corresponding errors in habits of 
 thinking and acting ; and the professor of a corrupted theology, strenu- 
 ous as may be his efforts and pure his desires, in vain attempts to reach 
 the moral exaltation of him to whom it is permitted to make similar 
 
CREEDS. 59 
 
 the full extent of all the knowledge which Grod has 
 seen fit to communicate. We mnst drink the whole of 
 the cup of salvation which He has so bounteously put 
 into our hands, and not rest satisfied with a taste on the 
 lips, of that which He designs to pervade the whole 
 body with life and vitality. And if the Apostle has 
 solemnly declared that the heathen are inexcusable in 
 neglecting to derive a knowledge of the Godhead from 
 His visible works, 1 how much more inexcusable are they 
 who refuse to learn truly His revealed will, when it is 
 written as with a sunbeam on the pages of His word, 
 and the Church, " the pillar and ground of the truth," 
 is daily teaching them what it was that Apostles believed, 
 and for which confessors and martyrs were willing to 
 endure the fire and the stake ! Happy, then, will be 
 the blinded heathen — happy the rejecting Jew — com- 
 pared with the enlightened Christian, who " continues 
 not steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine ! " The truth 
 is with him, but he prizes it not, and with light pour- 
 ing upon his pathway he treads onward in darkness. 
 
 But is not this one of the trials of our probation % 
 In this mingled state we see nothing clearly, but in 
 every case something is left to faith ; and thus it is we 
 are to select the truths to which we cleave, and while 
 error in a thousand forms is seeking to entrap us, we 
 are to " prove all things," and then " hold fast to that 
 which is good." Difficult, indeed, would be the task — 
 
 efforts under the guidance of a clearer light. In the Papal schools of the 
 Middle Ages we may find devotion, zeal, charity ; but we should not look 
 to them for that completeness, that holy consistency of character, which 
 was the ornament of earlier and purer times." — (Bowden's "Life of Greg- 
 ory VII," vol. i., p. 12.) 
 1 Romans i. 20. 
 
60 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 nay, often impossible, were we left to ourselves ; but 
 there are voices coming to us from the distant past. 
 They are those formularies which have grown up amid 
 blood and persecution, when holy men were compelled 
 to concentrate all their powers, and give up all their 
 hearts and minds, to that word in whose truth alone 
 they could find rest or happiness. To those, then, let 
 us cling, until the time comes when all doubt is over, 
 and faith gives place to certainty. As the redeemed 
 enter the Paradise of God, the last shadow which dark- 
 ens their spirit will fade away, and they find themselves 
 in the presence of Him who is " the Father of lights." 
 
 And then, too, the Lord Himself shall be the teacher 
 of His Church, and lead His people into all truth. With 
 minds no longer straitened by human infirmity, as cen- 
 turies go by they will be learning more deeply the lore 
 of Heaven, and be ever acquiring wider views of those 
 doctrines of which the lessons of the Church on earth 
 were but the rudiments and first beginnings. 
 
II. 
 
 FELLOAVSHIP. 
 
 <{ blest communion, fellowship divine ! 
 We feebly struggle, they in glory shine ; 
 Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. 
 And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, 
 Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song, 
 And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong." 
 
 W. W. How. 
 
II. 
 
 FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 To "continue steadfastly in the Apostles' fellow- 
 ship " was a necessary consequence of remaining stead- 
 fast in their doctrine. Those who revered their teach- 
 ing and wished to conform to the faith they preached, 
 could not abandon the Unity of the Church. St. Paul 
 had indignantly asked, " Is Christ divided ? " And 
 when the Apostles had gone to their rest, and the 
 Church found the necessity of embodying its faith in 
 Creeds, one article which it always held prominently 
 forward was, u I believe in one Holy Catholic Church." 
 Even heretics acknowledged this truth, and when they 
 wandered from the faith, they still clung to the Apos- 
 tolic ministry. The Arians attempted to form no new 
 Church ; and even the schismatic Donatists and Nova- 
 tians never gave up their claim to be a portion of the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 The early Christians knew no other doctrine ; they 
 recognized no other faith. Looking back to the last 
 solemn petitions of their Lord, when He prayed that 
 His followers might be one, as He and the Father were 
 one, 1 they realized that grievous was the sin of him 
 who should break this holy fellowship, and introduce 
 
 1 John xvii. 21. 
 
61 TEE CEURCH OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 dissensions into that Church which is to be on earth 
 a type of the Church in Heaven. 
 
 The subject, then, of this chapter will be, that fel- 
 lowship with the Apostles which was the privilege 
 of the early Christians, and which they have be- 
 queathed to us who are now members of the Catholic 
 Church. It was the privilege of all who, in every pe- 
 riod of the world, remained steadfast in the Church 
 which God founded. It was synonymous with mem- 
 bership in the true Yisible Church. The view we shall 
 attempt to give will necessarily be historical. Looking 
 back through all ages of the former dispensations, we 
 shall see that everywhere the plan of God was one 
 which, as in the Apostolic days, recognized the Unity 
 of the Church, and that every infringement of this 
 Unity was the result of man's evil passions alone. 
 
 The first Church was necessarily the Patriarchal. 
 We behold its worship in the earliest sacrifice which 
 was offered, when, in the morning of the world, Cain 
 and Abel presented their gifts before God. It was 
 seen again when Noah stood with a single family upon 
 Ararat, and there, looking out over a world baptized 
 by the flood, and with the bow of promise stretching 
 over his head, he consecrated it anew by sacrifice to 
 God. In those days there could be no separate and ap- 
 pointed priesthood. The patriarch ministered in holy 
 things to his own family, thus invested with the double 
 title of earthly and spiritual father. 
 
 But as the human race extended, and men " vrent 
 out from the presence of the Lord," it became neces- 
 sary to confine the Yisible Church within narrower lim- 
 its, to preserve it from influences which led men off to 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 65 
 
 idolatry. Therefore, Abraham was called to come out 
 from his kindred, and in this world to be the repository 
 of Divine Truth for the benefit of those who should 
 come after. Then the Church of God was restricted to 
 such as had gathered beneath his tent on the plains of 
 Mamre ; and while the Syrian shepherds worshiped 
 God in those mighty solitudes where they dwelt, they 
 were often the sole possessors of His truth in the world. 
 
 The Church then had its duty to discharge, and we 
 see plainly what it was. It was to preserve unimpaired 
 the doctrine of God's Unity, resisting that tendency 
 which everywhere was leading men to polytheism, as 
 the untutored mind craved some visible symbol of the 
 Deity, and turned, therefore, most naturally to the 
 Hosts of Heaven — to the sun coming forth in his glory 
 and " the moon walking in brightness." This, then, 
 was the charge of the Patriarchal Church, and thus it 
 can be traced down the stream of history in the sacred 
 records. Its unity is always clearly marked, for the in- 
 spired historians confined themselves almost entirely to 
 its fortunes as being alone worthy of narration, while 
 occasional and incidental: only are the notices of those 
 beyond its pale. 
 
 Few and simple, therefore, were the revelations of 
 that early day. To the patriarchs the past teemed not, 
 as it does to us, with countless monuments of God's 
 wondrous doings, which had their influence on the 
 question of man's salvation. Tradition, indeed, told 
 him of the blissful clays of Paradise, and of the sor- 
 rowful fall which had eclipsed its glory, and made man 
 a wanderer over the earth which his sins had cursed. 
 To them but one single promise lightened up the dark- 
 
66 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 ened pathway of the human race, while it spake of a 
 conflict to be waged — a victory to be gained ; and a 
 distant Redeemer vaguely shadowed forth, as the one 
 who was to restore to man his lost inheritance. 1 But 
 with us, who read the history of those ages, there is no 
 hesitation as to which were the true people of God. 
 The existence of the One Church is evident. 
 
 The time at length came when there was to be a 
 plainer manifestation of the Church. The Jewish Dis- 
 pensation succeeded the Patriarchal. Then the Chmch 
 stood forth even more prominently before the world. 
 Its members were cut off from the nations around them, 
 and hedged in by countless rites, so as to create an im- 
 passable barrier between them and the impure services 
 of the heathen with whom they were brought in con- 
 tact. The worshipers then stood upon. a higher ground 
 than they did under the former system. Before their 
 eyes was a long series of signal and glorious mercies, 
 and prophecies without number, growing more specific 
 every age, while the very land in which they lived was 
 a testimony and pledge of God's favor. 
 
 Then there was a priesthood constituted by God 
 Himself, and, we are told, at the altar none had a right 
 to minister but " he that was called of God, as was 
 Aaron." 2 Then membership in the one Church was a 
 known and acknowledged privilege, and to be cut off 
 from it, to be regarded " as a heathen man," was looked 
 upon with trembling, as a punishment which debarred 
 the offender from all spiritual hopes in this world and 
 the next. The Jew turned with horror from the schis- 
 matic Samaritans, and even our Lord declared to the 
 
 1 Gen. iii. 15. 2 Hob. v. 4. 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 67 
 
 woman of that nation : " Ye worship ye know not 
 what : we know what we worship : for salvation is of 
 the Jews." * There was no donbt in that day with re- 
 gard to the Unity of the Church. All the true wor- 
 shipers were " of Israel," and " to them," the Apostle 
 declares, " pertained the adoption, and the glory, and 
 the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the ser- 
 vice of God, and the promises." 2 
 
 Twenty-live centuries passed away, and the Church 
 assumed another form, or rather was developed at last 
 into the fullness of which the former Dispensation gave 
 only the promise and the germ. The Jewish polity 
 had performed its office in preserving the prophecies 
 of the Messiah, and by the array of types and sacrifices 
 familiarizing the world with all those great principles 
 which were to meet their reality on the heights of Cal- 
 vary. Then came the " fullness of time," and our Lord 
 sent forth His Apostles with authority to found that 
 spiritual Church which was to be His last gift to men. 
 And we have already remarked how earnestly He peti- 
 tioned in His last prayer that its unity might be pre- 
 served. Nowhere, indeed, through the whole of Script- 
 ure, is there any intimation given that varying Creeds 
 and differing folds were to meet the requirements of 
 Him who is " not the author of confusion, but 
 peace." 3 
 
 Then the faithful had not only fellowship with God, 
 but also " fellowship one with another." Whether St. 
 Peter preached the Gospel to the Babylonian colony on 
 the Euphrates, or St. Thomas in distant India, or St. 
 
 1 John iv. 22. 2 Rom. ix. 4. 3 1 Cor. xiv. 33. 
 
68 TEE CEURGE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 Paul in the scar eel y-known Britain, everywhere they 
 founded but one Church. 
 
 " From many an ancient river, 
 From many a palmy plain " — 
 
 in strange tongues prayers went up to Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, and professions of faith were made, as the Chris- 
 tians gathered on their Holy Day, yet everywhere the 
 doctrine was the same, and all were bound together in 
 one chain of brotherhood. They were different portions 
 of the same Church, like different branches of the same 
 vine, all tracing upward through the same Apostolic 
 Ministry. " There is one Church," says St. Cyprian, " di- 
 vided by Christ throughout the whole world into many 
 members, and also one Episcopate diffused through a 
 harmonious multitude of many Bishops." ' The Chris- 
 tian of Antioch, when he sojourned in Spain or Gaul, 
 found there, too, the Altars of his Church, and united 
 with a free heart in all her worship. 2 This was its out- 
 
 1 Epistle li. 
 
 2 We see this intercommunism everywhere through the Acts. " The 
 Churches of Christ " saluted the faithful of Rome (xvi. 16). The Churches 
 of Asia " saluted" that of Corinth (1 Cor. xvi. 19). " Letters of commen- 
 dation " are alluded to as being common (2 Cor. iii. 1). The Epistles 
 written to the Corinthians and Laodiccans are directed to be read in 
 both Churches (Col. iv. 15, 16). 
 
 At a later day, Eusebius in his " History " (iv., 23) gives many in- 
 stances of this. The Church of Rome sends aid to that of Corinth. St. 
 Clement, the Bishop of Rome, writes to the Corinthians to exhort them 
 to unity. Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, and Dionysius, Bishop of 
 Corinth, wrote many Epistles to other Churches, as noticed by Eusebius. 
 When Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, came to Rome, the Bishop allowed 
 him to consecrate the Eucharist in his presence, to show their union. 
 And Bingham (" Orig. Eecles.," v., 1, s. 3) shows that the use of commen- 
 datory letters was universal. The seventh Canon of the Council of Car- 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 09 
 
 ward unity — that unity after which the heart of man 
 is always now sighing, which alone presents the Church 
 before the world as it should be, in all its strength, to 
 prosecute its warfare against the powers of evil. 
 
 Take any branch of the Apostolic Church, and how 
 striking is the view it gives us, stretching onward from 
 age to age, as it rides over every changing form of gov- 
 ernment, contends through passing centuries with every 
 kind of idolatry and error, and rises unharmed above 
 the torrents of persecution which sweep around it ! 
 As an illustration of this, look at the history of the 
 Great Oriental Church. " Uninterrupted successions of 
 Metropolitans and Bishops stretch themselves to Apos- 
 tolic times; venerable Liturgies exhibit doctrine un- 
 changed and discipline uncorrupted ; the same sacrifice 
 is offered, the same hymns are chanted, by the Eastern 
 Christians of to-day, as those which resounded in the 
 Churches of St. Basil or St. Firmilian. In the glow 
 and splendor of Byzantine glory, in the tempests of the 
 Oriental Middle Ages, in the desolation and tyranny of 
 the Turkish Empire, the testimony of the same immu- 
 table Church remains unchanged. Extending herself 
 from the Sea of Okhotsk to the palaces of Yenice, from 
 the ice-fields that grind against the Solevetsky Monas- 
 tery to the burning jungles of Malabar ; embracing a 
 thousand languages, and nations, and tongues, but bind- 
 ing them together in the golden link of the same faith ; 
 offering the sacrifice in a hundred Liturgies, but offer- 
 ing it to the same God ; and with the sames rites fixing 
 her patriarchal thrones in the same cities, as when the 
 
 thage, and the forty-first Canon of the Council of Laodicea, render these 
 letters indispensable both for clergy and laity. 
 
TO THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Disciples were called Christians first at Antioch, and 
 James, the brother of the Lord, finished his course at 
 Jerusalem, oppressed by the devotees of the false 
 Prophet, as once by the worshipers of false gods — she 
 is now, as she was from the beginning, multiplex in 
 her arrangements, simple in her faith, difficult of com- 
 prehension to strangers, easily intelligible to her 
 sons, widely scattered in her branches, hardly beset 
 by her enemies, yet still and evermore what she de- 
 lights to call herself, One, Only, Holy, Catholic, and 
 Apostolic. . . . 
 
 " For eighteen hundred years this venerable Com- 
 munion has fought the good fight, and borne about in her 
 body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Since she armed 
 Athanasius against Arius, and sent forth Cyril against 
 Kestorius, unnumbered heresies have assailed her: foes 
 in every shape have surrounded her ; without have 
 been fightings, within fears ; her existence itself has 
 oftentimes been a very agony; yet the gates of hell 
 have never prevailed against her. Idolatry and Apos- 
 tasy have attempted her subjugation and confessed her 
 invincible ; Kings and Caliphs, Emperors and Sultans, 
 have stood up against her, but the King of Kings and 
 Lord of Lords has been on her side. Sapor and the 
 fire-worship ers were vanquished by the victories of the 
 innumerable Martyrs of Persia ; Tiridates and the 
 idolaters of Armenia were overthrown by the miracles 
 of St. Gregory the Illuminator ; Abreha and Atrbeha ? 
 with their Ethiopic subjects, repented at the preaching 
 of St. Frumentius. . . . 
 
 " The Impostor of Mecca poured out his hordes from 
 Arabia, and taught them to look for a type of the cool 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 71 
 
 shades of Paradise in the shadows of the clashing cime- 
 ters. Persia fell before his generals ; Abubekr and 
 Omar poured their legions into Syria. Antioch, and 
 Jerusalem, and Aleppo, and Alexandria, bowed them- 
 selves before the accursed crescent. The Empire of the 
 Csesars was vanquished, and limited, and contracted : 
 the spiritual dominion of the Eastern Church stooped 
 not to the victor. Many a noble victory was won for 
 Christ ; many a glorious athlete was sent to martyrdom. 
 The Church rode out this storm : as little did she quail 
 before the successive billows of devastation that poured 
 in around her. The Caliphates, Ommiad, Fatimite, and 
 Ayoubite, rose and fell ; she, hated, despised, persecuted 
 by all, mocked at their destruction ; the Seljukian Sul- 
 tanate glared, and was extinct like a meteor ; the Mon- 
 golian hordes filled Asia and half Europe with devas- 
 tation and dismay ; and finally the Turks overwhelmed 
 Constantinople itself, and closed the annals of the East- 
 ern Empire. But the Eastern Church survived : dis- 
 pirited, persecuted, humbled to the very dust, from 
 generation to generation she handed clown the power 
 of the keys and offered the mystic sacrifice. . . . And 
 it may well be, that in the great regeneration of the 
 Church, in the second and more blessed Pentecost, the 
 (Ecumenical Throne of the East will bear no small 
 part." 1 
 
 Is it strange, then, that we love to linger on this 
 scene ; that in a world rife with contentions, and where 
 the voice of controversy ever strikes upon the ear, we 
 should gladly turn to those glorious exhibitions of the 
 Apostolic Church, as it won its triumphs, which, begin- 
 
 1 Neale's " History of the Holy Eastern Church," Introduction. 
 
72 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 ning in the earliest times, have even now not ceased : 
 showing from age to age that unquenchable life which 
 is the result of its divine organization ! It mattered 
 not what were the persecutions without, while within 
 they were called by but one name, and answered to but 
 one tribunal. Its unity gifted it with a power which 
 nothing else could have done ; and even when, in after- 
 centuries, differences arose between the Latin Church 
 of the West and the Greek Church of the East, yet 
 neither severed itself from the Apostolic Ministry, and 
 their Bishops, as we have seen at Xice, sat together in 
 Council. It was reserved for the last three hundred 
 years to present to the world the picture of a religious 
 community utterly divided, and those who should be 
 members of the same household arrayed against each 
 other under different names. 
 
 Such is the view of " fellowship with the Apos- 
 tles" which history gives us from the earliest times. 
 We turn to the writings of Ignatius, the disciple of St. 
 John, and we find that he, when speaking of the three 
 orders of the Ministry in his day, could assert, " With- 
 out these there is no Church." ' Then fifteen hundred 
 years pass by, during which the organization of the 
 Church is unaltered. Amid the commotions and changes 
 of the Reformation, the learned Hooker could send 
 forth the challenge to those who had renounced the 
 Apostolic Ministry : " We require you to find but one 
 Church upon the face of the whole earth that hath 
 been ordered by your discipline, or hath not been or- 
 dered by ours, that is to say, by Episcopal regiment, 
 sithence the time that the blessed Apostles were here 
 
 1 Epistle to Trallians, sec. 3. 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 73 
 
 conversant." * This challenge, given in 1594, has never 
 been answered. 
 
 It was in the beginning of the sixteenth century 
 that a religions convulsion, known as the Reformation, 
 shook the world, and parted into many folds those w T ho 
 professed and called themselves Christians. With 
 many on the Continent of Europe who followed Luther 
 or Calvin, the chain of the ministry which bound them 
 to Apostolic times was broken, and a self-constituted 
 authority took its place. Then, division followed divi- 
 sion, until the ecclesiastical historian feels as if looking 
 down upon a wild scene over w T hich chaos broods, as he 
 endeavors in vain to record the narrative of its cease- 
 less changes, unable to explain or even count the ever- 
 varying fantasies. 
 
 With our own Church it was not so. Turning 
 away from those who were " emulous of change," the 
 Church of England merely threw off the corruptions 
 which ages had been gathering about it, and clinging 
 to " the treasure of hereditary belief," she retained the 
 succession of the Apostolic Ministry, and altered noth- 
 ing that was fundamental. Thus she preserved her 
 primitive character, and, while others wandered away 
 into the endless subdivisions of Augsburg and Geneva, 
 she " continued steadfastly in the Apostles' fellowship." 
 
 This, then, is the historical view of the subject. 
 We perceive how, through all the centuries which have 
 passed, it was the plan of Providence to present but 
 one Church before the world, and that, when this unity 
 at last was broken, it was but a repetition of the sin of 
 Korah in the wilderness. 3 And now, will the question 
 
 1 Freface to " Eccles. Polity," sec. 4. 3 Numbers xvi. 
 
 4 
 
74 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 be asked by any one, What is the worth of this Unity ? 
 It would not be strange if it were, for there are those 
 who, looking over this scene of disorder and conflict, 
 can even rejoice that these things are so, as if competi- 
 tion was a necessary element of the Church of Christ, 
 and our Lord could not accomplish His plans for the 
 renovation of the world but through the weakness and 
 failings of His followers. But we will meet this argu- 
 ment by referring to the Church in early ages, and 
 showing its influence on the world, when it stood forth 
 one single, united body, which all everywhere could 
 recognize, contrasted with the evils which, in these lat- 
 ter days, have gathered about us. 
 
 While, then, there was but one Church throughout 
 the world, it possessed the power of discipline. We 
 know no better way to illustrate this than by a com- 
 parison with the Roman Empire, which then stretched 
 its sway over the whole known world. There were 
 different provinces, and rulers, and languages, yet over 
 all brooded one mighty power, which was felt from 
 the extremity of Western Europe to the confines of In- 
 dia. Whither, then, could the offender flee ? Eor a 
 crime committed in any part of that vast Empire, the 
 world itself furnished no refuge. In Gaul, in Egypt, 
 or in Persia, the grasp of the law was upon him, and 
 the might of Roman justice seemed to possess ubiquity. 
 Should he flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, even 
 there its hand would seize him and its right hand hold 
 him. Wherever he went she claimed him as her citi- 
 zen, and he was within the reach of her power. He 
 could not, as in this day, flee from the land in which 
 his crime was committed, and then feel that he could 
 
FELLOWSHIP. Y5 
 
 laugh at the arm of justice, for it would be paralyzed 
 were it to stretch beyond the frontier. 
 
 And thus it was, in some degree, in the Church. 
 For the heretic or the offender there was no spiritual 
 home in Christendom. When, for instance, excommu- 
 nicated from the Church of Antioch or Damascus, he 
 could not find admission even into those of Western 
 Europe, where men spoke a different tongue, for with- 
 out the commendatory letters of his Bishop he could 
 gain no entrance into any other fold. With what pow- 
 ers, then, were the censures of the Church armed, 
 when he who was subjected to them was thrown at once 
 beyond the pale of Christendom, and driven, as it were, 
 into heathenism ! For him there was no longer a Gos- 
 pel or an altar. There were no promises to cheer him 
 during life, no Holy Offices to wait upon his last mo- 
 ments, no consecrated burial to commit his remains to 
 the dust. His only choice was between this One Church 
 which stood before him in all her grandeur, and the 
 total absence of every religious privilege. St. Cyprian, 
 in his day, wrote, not as a matter of controversy, but as 
 an acknowledged truth, "Whoever he may be, and 
 whatever he may be, he who is not in the Church of 
 Christ is not a Christian." 1 And again, " If any one 
 could escape who was outside the Ark of Noah, then 
 he also may escape who is outside of the Church." 2 
 
 A striking instance of this discipline is related by 
 the historian Gibbon. Under the reign of the younger 
 Theodosius, Synesius filled the Episcopal seat of Ptole- 
 mais, near the ruins of the ancient Cyrene. The civil 
 ruler was Andronicus, " the monster of Libya, who 
 
 1 Epist. li. 2 Cyprian, on " Unity of the Church." 
 
76 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 abused the authority of a venal office, invented new 
 modes of rapine and torture, and aggravated the guilt 
 of oppression by that of sacrilege. After a fruitless 
 attempt to reclaim the haughty magistrate by mild and 
 religious admonition, Synesius proceeds to inflict the 
 last sentence of ecclesiastical justice, which devotes 
 Andronicus, with his associates and their families, to 
 the abhorrence of earth and heaven. The impenitent 
 sinners are deprived of the name and privileges of 
 Christians, of the participation of the sacraments, and 
 of the hope of Paradise. The Bishop exhorts the 
 clergy, the magistrates, and the people, to renounce 
 all society with the enemies of Christ, to exclude them 
 from their houses and tables, and to refuse them the 
 common offices of life and the decent rites of burial. 
 The Church of Ptolemais, obscure and contemptible as 
 she may appear, addresses this declaration to all her 
 sister Churches of the world ; and the profane who re- 
 ject her decrees will be involved in the guilt and pun- 
 ishment of Andronicus and his impious followers." l 
 
 And this interdict was not in vain. The Christian 
 Church everywhere received it, and Andronicus was 
 obliged in penitence to implore the mercy of the Church 
 and submit to her authority. 
 
 It is to this, then, we must ascribe the Church's power 
 of discipline, when years of penitence and self-denial were 
 willingly endured ,at her command, and the Bishop of 
 Milan could keep even the Emperor Theodosius a sup- 
 pliant for admission at the Church's door, and not receive 
 him till a long probation had testified to his repentance. 3 
 
 1 Gibbon's " History," chap. xx. 
 
 - Theodoret's "EccL Hist," lib. v., chap. 18. 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 77 
 
 But how. could this be done now, when the Church 
 is surrounded by jealous and discordant communities, 
 each ready to welcome a proselyte, while he himself, 
 as he takes refuge in their fold, feels that he still bears 
 the name, of Christian, and therefore calms his fears, 
 and derides the censures which should have humbled 
 him into penitence? The discipline of the Church, 
 therefore, is now confined to those who voluntarily re- 
 main within her fold. 
 
 Again, another consideration was, the certainty of 
 the faith. In those ancient days of unity, as the Chris- 
 tian set out in life, he had no doubts as to the faith he 
 should adopt. On the one side was, the world of hea- 
 thenism—on the other, Christianity was represented by 
 the One Church ever before him, sanctioned by apos- 
 tles, and martyrs, and confessors, and he had only to 
 remain subject to her teaching. The past arrayed be- 
 fore him a mighty company of the holy dead who had 
 held these doctrines ; their graves were about him, and 
 the fragrance of their holiness still lingered in the 
 Church where they had worshiped. He realized, there- 
 fore, that he had " come to the spirits of just men made 
 perfect," and he would cleave to the faith which upheld 
 them in their mortal day. He not only felt it would 
 be wronging their sacred memory to abandon the in- 
 heritance they had bequeathed to him, but he knew 
 that if he went out from the Church he must become 
 an alien and a stranger. Whither could he go, for she 
 only had the words of eternal life ? In the bosom of 
 the Church alone could he realize the calm feeling of 
 home, for she only bore the Christian name. There 
 was nothing, therefore, to distract the mind. The great 
 
78 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 principles of the faith were commended to him by the 
 example of the holy saints who had gone, and of the 
 mighty multitude of the living who were gathered into 
 the fold. ~No discordant voices perplexed him ; no 
 siren tones lured him into error ; but he passed along 
 through life with the path plainly marked before him. 
 His days glided quietly and soberly on in the infolding 
 arms of his spiritual mother, till at last he went to 
 dwell with his Lord in the perfect bliss of the Church 
 triumphant. 
 
 And such, too, were his feelings wherever he wan- 
 dered over the earth. Touching, indeed, was the illus- 
 tration given of this by a Venetian traveler in the thir- 
 teenth century, when in one of the cities of distant 
 England he met a funeral train: " There was nothing 
 new or strange, or singular, about the burial procession, 
 particularly calculated to excite the attention of Marco 
 Polo. The De Profimdis of the stoled priest spake 
 the universal language adopted by the most sublime of 
 human compositions, the Liturgy of Western Christen- 
 dom. Yet, though no objects appeared which could 
 awaken any lively curiosity in the traveler, there was 
 much in their familiarity to excite the sympathy of a 
 wanderer in a foreign land. With an altered tone he 
 said to the friar: ' Saddened is the spirit of the pilgrim, 
 by the dying twilight and the plaining Yesper-bell. 
 But he who braves every danger for himself may feel 
 his heart sink within him when the pageant of tri- 
 umphant death brings to his mind the thought that 
 those for whom, as he weened, he parted for a little 
 time only, may have been already borne to the sep- 
 ulchre. Yet there is also a great and enduring comfort 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 79 
 
 to the traveler in Christendom. However uncouth 
 may be the speech of the races among whom the pil- 
 grim sojourns, however diversified may be the customs 
 of the regions which he visits, let him enter the portal 
 of the Church, or hear, as I do now, the voice of the 
 minister of the Gospel, and he is present with his own, 
 though Alps and oceans may sever them asunder. There 
 is one spot where the pilgrim always finds his home. 
 We are all one people when we come before the Altar 
 of the Lord.' " x 
 
 In a later age, indeed, until this Unity was broken, 
 the Eeligious Houses which were scattered through 
 Europe kept alive this feeling of fellowship in the 
 mind of the wanderer from distant lands. " The trav- 
 eler rose with the Religions men, beneath whose roof 
 he had found shelter for the night; with them he 
 sought, first of all, the House, oftentimes the Altar of 
 God, and joined in the Matin Service of the Western 
 Church./ He went forward on his road with prayer and 
 benediction. Prosperum itur was the kindly monks' 
 farewell. And from field, and brook, and bush, the 
 salutation still for miles came forth, haunting his ear, 
 Procedas in pace, in nomine Domini! A cloud of 
 good wishes accompanied and guarded him from mon- 
 astery to monastery, while the Courts of Bishops and 
 the cloisters of learned men were opened to him, by 
 the commendatory letters of his native prelates. . . . 
 There were a hundred little needs, interesting the af- 
 fections and laying hold on the imagination, which we 
 remember, and with fond envy many times recapitulate, 
 satisfied to the full for those who traveled in Christen- 
 
 1 Sir Francis Palgrave's " Merchant and Friar," p. 138. 
 
80 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 dom when at unity with itself, but now utterly unsatis- 
 fied for modern wanderers, amid the jealous and dis- 
 jointed Churches. The traveler of those times was sure 
 of a home for Easter or Whitsuntide ; the continual 
 haunting of sacred places was, as it were, a safeguard 
 against the fresh shapes and daily-transformed tempta- 
 tions of sin, to which a traveler is exposed ; he had holy 
 Houses everywhere, as refuges in times of weariness or 
 pestilence, and a certainty, in case death should inter- 
 cept him, of a consecrated resting-place among the Chris- 
 tian dead, when he had passed through the narrow gate, 
 aided by the offices and absolutions of the Church." ' 
 
 But how different is now the picture since this 
 Unity has been swept away ! How sad the contrast 
 given by a living poet, as he portrays the feelings of 
 an English Churchman visiting Spain ! — 
 
 " Before the shrine of some blest saint, 
 
 While loud the organ peals, 
 In unsuspecting faith and love 
 
 Each Spanish maiden kneels. 
 Three Sundays now have passed since we 
 
 On Spanish land first trod ; 
 And never have 1 dared to seek 
 
 The presence of my God. 
 My fainting soul in solitude 
 
 Seeks for relief in vain : 
 Blue hills, and glorious bright green tiling;., 
 
 Do but augment my pain. 
 I seem, 'mid sighs and sounds of prayer, 
 
 That o'er these mountains swell, 
 To be — it is a fearful thought — 
 
 An outward infidel." - 
 
 1 Fabev's "Foreign Churches and Peoples," p. 13. 
 
 2 Lord John Manners^ " Outcast." 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 81 
 
 The traveler finds, too, that the general name of 
 Christian is not sufficient to win the confidence of those 
 among whom he sojourns, and the inquirer is forced to 
 listen to a hundred warring Creeds which claim his at- 
 tention, until he asks in despair : " What is truth % " 
 He knows not which way to turn or on what to rest. 
 Thousands of dissenting voices are around him, audi 
 " after the way which they call heresy," he is obliged 
 to "worship the God of his fathers." Thus, life is 
 often passed in a state of uncertainty as to whether or 
 not he has embraced the right, or, what is worse, his 
 judgment becomes warped, and he is enlisted in a war- 
 fare against the truth, because he believes it to be false- 
 hood. Deep and lasting is the perversion to his mind 
 from thus imbibing delusion and error ; and at last, per- 
 haps, he is led into an involuntary apostasy, by which 
 he inflicts a grave injury upon his moral being. Of 
 how many is this the unfortunate history ! How sad 
 the contrast to those earlier days, when the faithful 
 everywhere realized that God had " knit together His 
 elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical 
 body of His Son Christ our Lord ! " 
 
 We will look at one more argument in behalf of 
 this Unity — the impression the Church was thus enabled 
 to malce upon the world. Why is it that the Church, 
 in former ages, did so much more to Christianize the 
 world than it is now doing ? It is because then it pre- 
 sented itself before men as one body, and therefore 
 there was unity of action. JSTow, its efforts are desul- 
 tory and feeble, when put forth by disjointed and rival 
 communities. Then, there was but one Spirit animat- 
 ing all. Wherever there was an individual who bore 
 
82 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 the Christian name, lie felt he was no solitary comba- 
 tant. He was acting in concert with his brethren 
 through the wide world, and the Christians on the 
 Western shore of Europe and on the distant coast of 
 India rejoiced together in every advantage gained by 
 the Cross. 
 
 The very spectacle they presented to the heathen 
 was an imposing one. They saw the Christian Church 
 gathered as one body out of all nations, bound together 
 by one spirit, and living in one enduring fellowship. 
 Earthly kingdoms were ever at war, and committed in 
 deadly strife with each other. One was crushed by the 
 weight of a mightier kingdom, and others rent asunder 
 by internal convulsions. But the Church gave to the 
 world the first display of permanence and unity. Man- 
 kind stood in need of some common basis, and to fur- 
 nish this was one Mission of the Church. It presented 
 before them the one choice between Christianity and 
 Paganism. It stood alone amid the countless forms of 
 Idolatry and Schools of Philosophy — " a great visible 
 phenomenon, as one vast, overspreading shadow, cast 
 from the one invisible Mercy-seat, in the shelter of 
 which alone there was salvation for mankind." ' They 
 had to receive it or reject it as a whole, to be Christians, 
 or have no part or lot in this redemption. If they 
 turned away from it, the solemn explanation given was, 
 "If our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." 
 So it was the Chinch passed down the stream of time 
 in all the grandeur of its Unity, claiming the homage 
 of the world, enshrining that One "Name under heaven 
 given among men whereby they must be saved/' 
 1 Manning on "The Unity of the Church." 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 83 
 
 We might ask, By whom were the mightiest tri- 
 umphs of the faith won ? Not by these discordant and 
 changing sects, but by the Apostolic Church, which, 
 strong in its divine Unity, went forth to challenge the 
 control of man's spiritual interests. Let ns turn, then, 
 for an illustration, to the cradle of our faith, and see 
 how even from the earliest times to the present day, 
 the Church in that region — that Great Oriental Church, 
 so little understood by us — has gone on, fighting hand- 
 to-hand with every opponent, saying to the East, Give 
 up ! and to the West, Keep not back ! 
 
 " Eastward, from the Great School of Edessa, the 
 envoys of Christianity went forth. They pitched their 
 tents in the camps of the wandering Tartar ; the Lama 
 of Thibet trembled at their words ; they stood in the 
 rice-fields of the Punjaub, and taught the fishermen by 
 the sea of Aral ; they struggled through the vast des- 
 erts of Mongolia ; the memorable inscription of Siganf u 
 attests their victories in China ; in India the Zamorin 
 himself respected their spiritual and courted their tem- 
 poral authority. From the Black Sea to the Caspian, 
 the Monks of Etchmiadzine girded themselves for this 
 holy warfare ; they braved alike the Pagan and the 
 Fire-worshiper, the burning suns of Tiflis, and the 
 feverish swamps of Imeritia ; they subjugated the bor- 
 der-lands of Europe and Asia, and planted a colony half- 
 way up the Great Ararat. 
 
 " Southward, Alexandria sent forth another army 
 of Missionaries. Steering through the trackless deserts 
 by sun and stars, they preached the Gospel as far as 
 the fountains of the Nile, and planted flourishing 
 Churches in Nubia and Abyssinia. Solitary Monks 
 
8i THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 ventured farther into the kingdom of Satan ; through 
 the savage Gallas they passed to Melinda or Zanguebar ; 
 others, committing themselves to the merchant-vessels, 
 preached the way of salvation to Cape Guardafui, So- 
 cotra, and distant Ceylon. Here the two great armies 
 of Christian warriors met, having embraced a quarter 
 of the then known world in their holy circle. 
 
 " Northward, latest but most victoriously, Constan- 
 tinople sent out her envoys; Constantine convinced 
 Vladimir by the Icon of the last judgment of the ' good 
 to those at the right hand, the woe to those at the 
 left ; ' the idol Peroun was carried by the Dnieper to 
 the sea ; farther and farther the pioneers of the truth 
 pushed their way ; Moscow, and KiefT, and Vladimir, 
 owned their Metropolitans ; tribes unknown to the 
 ancients received spiritual illumination. Undeterred 
 by Sarmatian forest or CEsticean swamp, the soldiers of 
 the Cross went on conquering and to conquer, till they 
 stood on the barbarous shores of the ' sluswish sea.' 
 Thence their holy chivalry bore them Eastward ; over- 
 leaping the Ural Mountains, they forced their way into 
 Siberia ; slowly and painfully they advanced toward the 
 rising sun, preaching the glad tidings of the Son of 
 Righteousness ; at Irkutsk, and Sitka, and Tomsk, 
 after centuries of warfare, they have placed a Vicar of 
 Christ for the feeding of His Hock ; and thus, on the 
 borders of Chinese Tartary, they hailed the disciples of 
 the early teachers that went forth from Edessa. And, 
 even now, missionary zeal has not abated. On the un- 
 known shores of the Aleutian Islands, a band of faith- 
 ful priests have sealed with their labors the faith they 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 85 
 
 taught, and thus have raised the standard of the East- 
 ern Church in the Western "World." ' 
 
 How noble this picture, as we see the serried and 
 unbroken ranks of the Apostolic Church going on its 
 course of triumph ! But, as a contrast, let us look at a 
 single scene which is often witnessed. The Missionary 
 of the Cross goes to a heathen land, and calls the dwell- 
 ers there to repentance. But he finds that others also 
 of a different name are preaching there a different Gos- 
 pel, and the unlettered savage knows not whom to be- 
 lieve. His efforts, therefore, are thwarted by one who 
 is a disciple of the same Master with himself. It was, 
 therefore, the natural answer of an Indian chief, who 
 had listened to the claims of these conflicting Creeds, 
 " First settle among yourselves what is right, and then 
 I will determine whether to receive your religion." 
 The energies of the Christian world are, therefore, di- 
 vided in fruitless efforts, or, what is worse, their weap- 
 ons are turned against each other, and thus " the Prince 
 of this World " still triumphs and rejoices over a divided 
 and powerless Church. 
 
 But does it seem to any of our readers that we have 
 made of too much importance the subject of Church 
 Unity ? So thought not the early Christians ; and 
 strange, therefore, in the ears of a modern Churchman 
 would sound the advice which St. Augustine gave the 
 teacher of his day to guide him in instructing those 
 ignorant of Christian doctrine. " If," he says, " the 
 Catechumen be slow of understanding, and have neither 
 hearing nor heart for the sweetness of truth, he must 
 be borne with tenderly, and, after a short and cursory 
 
 1 Neale's " History of the Holy Eastern Church," Introduction, 3, 4. 
 
86 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 statement of other points, those things which are chiefly 
 necessary are to be inculcated with much awe — such as 
 the Unity of the Catholic Church, the nature of tempta- 
 tion, and of the Christian life, by reason of the judg- 
 ment to come." * Thus it is that this Early Father 
 treats the Unity of the Church as one of the first princi- 
 ples of faith, and, if it sounds strange to us, it is because 
 in our habits of thought we have wandered far from the 
 tone of feeling and belief which prevailed in primitive 
 times. 
 
 And St. Cyprian, in his Epistle to Cornelius, the 
 Bishop of Rome, says : " For this, my brother, we espe- 
 cially both labor after, and ought to labor after, to be 
 careful to maintain, as much as we can, the Unity de- 
 livered by the Lord, and through His Apostles to us, 
 their successors, and, as far as in us lies, to gather into 
 the Church the dispersed and wandering sheep which 
 the willful faction and heretical temptation of some is 
 separating from their Mother." 2 
 
 But still it is this Unity which links together in 
 holy fellowship those who are separated by far-distant 
 ages. The living have an interest in the past as fully 
 as in the present. The long record of departed saints 
 is the roll of the treasures of the Church, and it is pre- 
 served to animate the courage of those who after them 
 shall be called to " fight the good. fight." 
 
 In that familiar story of the Progress of the Pilgrim 
 to the Celestial City, he tarried for a night by the way- 
 side at " the Palace of which the name was Beautiful. " 
 When morning came, they told him " he should not 
 depart till they had shown him the rarities of that place. 
 
 1 St. Augustine, " Do Catering. Rudibus," cap. xiii. e Epis. xli. 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 87 
 
 And first they led him into the study, where they 
 showed him records of the greatest antiquity ; in which 
 they showed him the pedigree of the Lord of the Hill, 
 that He was the Son of the Ancient of days. Here 
 also were more fully recorded the acts that He had 
 done, and the names of many hundreds that He had 
 taken into His service, and how He had placed them in 
 such habitations that could neither by length of days 
 nor decays of nature be dissolved. Then they read to 
 him some of the worthy acts that some of His servants 
 had done ; as how they had subdued kingdoms, wrought 
 righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of 
 lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of 
 the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed 
 valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the 
 aliens." 
 
 Thus he saw how " God, at sundry times and in 
 divers manners, spake in times past to our fathers, 1 ' and, 
 as a member of " the goodly fellowship " of those for 
 whom all these marvels were shown, the Pilgrim was 
 armed with courage to sustain him when he passed 
 through the Yalley of Humiliation. 
 
 We learn from the memoirs of the sainted Henry 
 Martyn, that, on his voyage to his missionary field in 
 India, when everything which surrounded him was un- 
 congenial, and with no living voice to speak words of 
 comfort or encouragement, he sustained his sinking 
 spirit by reading the records which Milner, in his 
 Church History, has given of those ancient saints, " of 
 whom the world was not worthy." He writes in his 
 Diary : " I love to converse, as it were, with those holy 
 Bishops and Martyrs, with whom I hope, through grace, 
 
88 THE CHURCH OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 to spend a happy Eternity. The example of the Chris- 
 tian Saints in the Early Ages has been a source of sweet 
 reflection to me. The holy love and devout meditations 
 of Augustine and Ambrose I delight to think of. Ko 
 uninspired sentence ever affected me so much as that of 
 the historian, that to believe, to suffer, and to love, was 
 the primitive taste." 1 
 
 To us, then, this subject bears the lesson that, while 
 rejoicing in the privilege of being members of this fold, 
 we should seek to imbibe more of its spirit, and, amid 
 the distractions of the world without, cleave to the 
 Church which possesses fellowship with the Apostles, 
 lifting up our hearts and voices to God, that peace may 
 once more return to His chosen flock, and the time 
 come when brethren shall no more " fall out by the 
 way." There only can the mind have rest amid the 
 endless tossings of an unquiet generation. There only 
 " in quietness and confidence can be our strength." In 
 her green pastures and by her still waters we shall not 
 need to hew out cisterns for ourselves. 2 And even 
 when the end of our mortal pilgrimage comes, we shall 
 not leave the Church. 
 
 " There is no death ; what seems so is transition ; 
 This life of mortal breath 
 Is bnt a suburb of the life Elysian, 
 Whose portal we call Death." 3 
 
 The souls of which the Apostle speaks 4 as being 
 " under the altar " are as earnest now for the welfare of 
 the Church as when in life they took part in the war- 
 
 1 "Memoirs of Henry Martyu," p. 127. 
 
 2 Jer. ii. 13. 3 Longfellow. 4 Rev. vi. 0. 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 89 
 
 fare. More deeply than ever do they feel their union 
 with it as they look forward to the ages that are com- 
 ing, and anticipate its future glory. 
 
 And thus at last the Judgment comes, and the Ce- 
 lestial City opens its golden gates and the righteous 
 meet in one holy fellowship, whose Unity shall never be 
 broken — "the general assembly and Church of the 
 First-born, whose names are written in Heaven." 
 
III. 
 
 EUCHARIST. 
 
 Sit down and take thy fill of joy — 
 At God's right hand a bidden guest ; 
 
 Drink of the cup that cannot cloy — 
 Eat of the bread that cannot waste." 
 
 Christian Year. 
 
III. 
 
 EUCHAKIST. 
 
 " Akd they continued steadfastly in the breaking of 
 bread." As we read these words of the Evangelist, our 
 thoughts involuntarily turn back to the institution of 
 this rite — to the last sad night when our Lord was be- 
 trayed. In that " upper room " at Jerusalem was gath- 
 ered a little group, to partake once more of the Passover 
 with their Lord. Within the walls of the Holy City 
 were almost countless thousands who had come up to 
 that Festival, and now in gladness were partaking of 
 the Feast which recalled their deliverance from the iron 
 bondage of Egypt. Yet with the little band of the 
 Disciples it was not so. A shadow seemed to rest upon 
 them. Sorrow had filled their hearts, for their Lord 
 declared He was about to leave them, and what could 
 the scattered sheep do when the Shepherd was taken 
 from them ? 
 
 Perhaps the one who apparently showed least emo- 
 tion was our Lord Himself. To Him there was no un- 
 certainty in the future. He knew perfectly what the 
 coming hours were to bring forth. Looking down the 
 vista opening before Him, He saw it terminated by the 
 Cross, and He knew it was not " possible that this cup 
 could pass from Him." He spake, therefore, to His 
 
94 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 followers of His approaching fate with a calm and un- 
 alterable compos ire, which, must have impressed then- 
 hearts with the deepest melancholy. Yet He wonld 
 not leave them without some memorial of His love, and 
 what more appropriate than symbols which should recall 
 to their minds those terrible sufferings which, though 
 they knew it not, were now close at hand ? He takes, 
 therefore, the bread before Him and breaks it, as sig- 
 nificant of the breaking of His body, and pours out the 
 wine, to show the shedding of His Wood ; and as He 
 thus institutes that significant rite — the most hallowed 
 and solemn in the Christian Church — His command is, 
 " This do in remembrance of me." 
 
 The Festival closed, and when they had sung the 
 Illllel — the Psalm always used on this occasion — the 
 Master went forth to that death which was to be the 
 pledge of the world's redemption. Yet His parting 
 words had been too deeply impressed upon the hearts 
 of His followers to be ever forgotten. As soon, then, 
 as the infant Church had been organized — as soon as 
 they could gather once more into one assembly — when 
 they offered prayers to their newly-risen Lord, they 
 never failed, at the same time, to commemorate His 
 death in this solemn rite. They met — we are always 
 told — " for prayer and the breaking of bread." It is 
 thus that this rite is everywhere mentioned in the Acts 
 of the Apostles as if it invariably constituted a part of 
 their Service. 1 Except, however, in one single instance, 
 it is only referred to by allusion in the Scriptures. To 
 the Corinthians the Apostle gives an elaborate discus- 
 sion of this subject. 3 They had perverted it into a com- 
 
 1 Acts ii. 42, 40 ; xx. 7. - 1 Cor. xi. 
 
EUCHARIST. 95 
 
 mon feast, and St. Paul, therefore, reproves them, and 
 states its sacred origin and import, and bids them keep 
 it as a holy Festival to the Lord. 
 
 Passing, then, from the Sacred Volume, we will 
 turn to the records of Ecclesiastical writers in the next 
 age, that we may see the manner in which they re- 
 garded it. 
 
 We begin with an account by Justin Martyr, in the 
 second century, of the form in which this rite was then 
 administered, and we quote his own words, that our 
 readers may hear this early Christian, who afterward 
 poured out his blood in martyrdom rather than sacrifice 
 to idols, describe for himself the scene he so often wit- 
 nessed : 
 
 "After baptism," he says, "we lead him who hath 
 expressed his conviction and professed the faith, to the 
 brethren, where they are gathered together, to make 
 common prayers with great earnestness, both for them- 
 selves and for him who is now illuminated, and for all 
 others in all places, that having learned the truth, we 
 may be deemed worthy to be found men of godly con- 
 versation in our lives, and to keep the commandments, 
 that so we may attain to eternal salvation. When we 
 have finished our prayers we salute one another with a 
 kiss, after which there is brought to the brother who 
 presides bread and a cup of wine mixed with water, 
 and he, having received them, gives praise and glory to 
 the Father of all things, through the name of the Son 
 and of the Holy Spirit, and gives thanks in many words 
 for that God hath vouchsafed to them these things ; and 
 when he hath finished his praises and thanksgivings, 
 all the people who are present express their assent, 
 
96 TEE GEURGE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 saying Amen, which means in the Hebrew tongue, ' So 
 be it.' 
 
 " He wdio presides having given thanks, and the 
 people having expressed their assent, those whom we 
 call * deacons ' give to each of those who are present a 
 portion of the bread which hath been blessed, and of 
 the wine mixed with water, and carry some away for 
 those who are absent ; and this food is called by us the 
 Eucharist (thanksgiving), of which no one may partake 
 unless he believes that what we teach is true, and is 
 washed in the Laver, which is appointed for the forgive- 
 ness of sins and unto regeneration, and lives in such a 
 manner as Christ commanded. 
 
 " For we receive not these elements as common 
 bread or common drink. . . . These solemnities being 
 finished, we afterward continually remind one another 
 of them, and such of us as have possessions assist all 
 those who are in want ; and we all associate one with 
 another, and amid all our sufferings we bless the Creator 
 of all things, through His Son Jesus Christ and through 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
 " And on the day which is called Sunday there is 
 an assembly in one place of all who dwell either in 
 towns or in the country, and the lives of the Apostles 
 or the writings of the Prophets are read, as long as the 
 time permits ; then, when the reader hath ceased, the 
 head of the congregation delivers a discourse, in which 
 he reminds and exhorts them to the imitation of all 
 these good things. We then all stand up together and 
 offer up prayers ; then, as we have already said, when 
 we cease from prayer bread is brought, and wine and 
 water, and our head, in like manner, offers up prayers 
 
EUCHARIST. 97 
 
 and praises with all the earnestness in his power ; and 
 the people express their assent by saying ' Amen.' The 
 consecrated elements are then distributed and received 
 by every one, and a portion is sent by the deacons to 
 those who are absent. 
 
 " Each of these also who have abundance, and are 
 willing, according to his choice, gives what he thinks 
 fit ; and what is collected is deposited with him who 
 presides, who succors the fatherless and the widows, 
 and those who are in need from sickness or any other 
 cause ; those also who are in bonds, and the strangers 
 who are sojourning among ns, and, in a word, takes 
 care of all who are in want. 
 
 " We all of us assemble together on Sunday, because 
 it is the first day in which God changed darkness and 
 matter and made the world. On the same day also 
 Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead." * 
 
 It will be noticed that this explanation of some of 
 the rites of the faith being written for heathen readers, 
 Justin Martyr seems studiously -to have avoided ecclesi- 
 astical words and titles, which he might have used if 
 writing to his own brethren, by whom they would be 
 understood. We learn, however, from the passage we 
 have quoted, what was the nature of the Service by 
 which in that day this rite was celebrated. 
 
 We can imagine the scene, when the faithful in the 
 midst of trials and persecutions had gathered in their 
 assembly, thus in secrecy to eat the bread of life and to 
 mingle the water of life with bitter, tears. They had 
 solved the enigma of the grave, and discovered that 
 immortality for which the soul is ever yearning. And 
 
 Austin, " Apol.," 2. 
 
98 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 now they were sacrificing everything in this world for 
 the sake of that world of which they had so lately 
 heard. As pilgrims they were ready to depart to the 
 farthest confines of the earth, if new realms might be 
 won to their Lord. The fire and the sword were week- 
 ly thinning their ranks, and the survivors were in jeop- 
 ardy every hour, realizing that they were " baptized for 
 the dead," and not knowing when they should be called 
 to seal their profession with their blood. To them, 
 then, each recurrence of this rite must have been in- 
 vested with a solemnity which they can scarcely realize, 
 whose lot is to dwell in peace by the still waters and 
 in the green pastures. 
 
 And now, let us look at the frequency with which 
 the Holy Communion was then received. "We have 
 seen, from the allusions in the Acts of the Apostles, 
 and from the account by Justin Martyr, that it was, in 
 that day, always a part of public worship ; and so it 
 continued to be after the Apostles' times. Ignatius, 
 the disciple of St. John, exhorts the Ephesians to be 
 " diligent in assembling frequently to celebrate the 
 Eucharist 1 and glorify God. Eor when ye often meet 
 together, ye dissolve the power of Satan, and the har- 
 mony of your faith destroys the destruction which he 
 meditates against you." 2 
 
 In the same century Pliny, the Proconsul of Bithyn- 
 ia, who was contemporary with Ignatius, on the confes- 
 sion of some Christians whom he examined, writes 
 home to Rome, that " they were accustomed to meet 
 before it was light, by reason of the persecutions, and 
 
 1 as ivxo-p^icnav. 
 
 2 Ignatius, "Epis. to Ephesians," 13 (Bingham, vi., 900). 
 
EUCHARIST. 99 
 
 there they sang hymns to Christ their God, and bound 
 themselves by a sacrament against the commission of 
 every kind of wickedness." ? 
 
 And one of the Apostolical Canons prescribes, " If 
 any of the faithful come to Church to hear the Script- 
 ures read, and stay not to join in the prayers and re- 
 ceive the Communion, let them be excommunicated as 
 the authors of disorder in the Church." And the next 
 Canon repeats the same with reference particularly to 
 the clergy : "If any Bishop, Presbyter, or Deacon, or 
 any other of the clergy, does not communicate when 
 the Oblation is offered, let him show cause why he does 
 not, that if it be a reasonable cause he may be excused ; 
 but if he show no cause, let him be excommunicated, 
 as giving scandal to the people and raising suspicion 
 against him that offers." s 
 
 The Early Fathers, indeed, speak everywhere of the 
 Communion being received on each Lord's-day, as a 
 custom which was universal. So much was this the 
 case, we learn from St. Chrysostom, that Sunday was 
 anciently called " the Day of Bread " {Dies Panis), be- 
 cause the breaking of bread was so invariably the cus- 
 tom of Christians on that day. 3 
 
 But it was not on the first day of the week only 
 that this rite was administered. Those were days when 
 religion was not confined to Sundays and Churches, but 
 went with them .through the week, influencing men 
 everywhere and at all times. Tertullian says that in 
 his time they not only received the Eucharist on Sun- 
 days in their morning assemblies before clay, but also 
 
 1 Pliny, lib. x., Epis. 97. 2 " Can. Apost.," 8 and 9. 
 
 3 Chrysostom, Horn. 5, "De Resur." 
 
100 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 at other times, on other days, particularly on the anni- 
 versary festivals of the martyrs, and the fifty days be- 
 tween Easter and Pentecost, which were bnt one con- 
 tinned festival, bnt also on the Wednesdays and Fridays 
 in every week throughout the year. 1 
 
 He says expressly of those two days, that they were 
 always observed by receiving the Eucharist ; for, when 
 some scrupled to receive it on those days, because they 
 were fast-days, and they would thus break their fast, 
 he takes away this objection by telling them that their 
 receiving the Eucharist, so far from breaking their fast, 
 would the more recommend them to God, and by doing 
 this they would perfectly perform both duties 'together. 2 
 
 St. Basil agrees with Tertullian in making these 
 days not only fast-days, but days of Communion ; and 
 in reckoning four days of the week in which they re- 
 ceived the Communion, he counts Wednesdays and Fri- 
 days, Saturdays and Sundays. 3 
 
 In some places, we are informed, they received the 
 Communion every day. " Thus," St. Augustine says, 
 " the Sacrament of His Body, the Church, and its 
 unity, is in some places prepared and taken every day 
 at the Lord's table.'' 4 In the Church of Carthage this 
 seems to have been the case at a very early clay : there- 
 fore, St. Cyprian tells us, " He gives this as one sense 
 of that petition in our Lord's Prayer, ' Give us this day 
 our daily bread,' as if it might be understood in the 
 spiritual sense, as well as in the natural, as a petition 
 to be daily fed with the ilesh of Christ in the Eucha- 
 rist, which was the bread of life." b 
 
 1 Tertullian, "De Coron. Mil.," chap. 3. a Bingham, vi.. 
 
 3 Basil, Epis. 219. 4 Bingham, vi., 010. 5 Cyprian, Epis. xxxvi. 
 
EUCHARIST. 101 
 
 We do not believe, indeed, that this was the general 
 custom of the Church. When this rite was daily ad- 
 ministered, it seems to have been in times of persecu- 
 tion, when they were in constant danger of martyrdom. 
 Thus, in another passage, St. Cyprian exhorts " the mar- 
 tyrs to prepare themselves for the fight of persecution, 
 considering that they therefore drink the cup of Christ's 
 blood every day, that they may be able to shed their 
 blood for Christ." And a little after he says, " There- 
 fore, let that hand which has received the body of the 
 Lord embrace the Lord Himself, being afterward to re- 
 ceive the reward of an eternal crown from the Lord in 
 Heaven." And in another place he adds, that "the 
 priests who celebrated the daily sacrifices of God, did 
 also prepare the martyrs to offer themselves as victims 
 and oblations nnto God." 
 
 These last passages may give an explanation of the 
 frequent Communion customary at some times. We can- 
 not, however, in any way enter into the feelings of those 
 who were then called to wage the Christian warfare ; 
 but in that age of martyrdom they felt that they were 
 ever standing on the brink of the Infinite, and the 
 morning snn which rose so fair to their view might 
 cast its declining beams upon their ashes, as the wind 
 wafted them from the stake. The hour of death ap- 
 peared not to them, as it is too often regarded by us, as 
 seen through the vista of many coming years. It might 
 be just at hand, and therefore they endeavored each 
 day to be cleansed from their sins, and preparation 
 made for their solemn change ; therefore, St. Ambrose 
 says, " I ought always to receive that which is shed for 
 the remission of sins, that my sins may always be for- 
 
102 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 given me : I that am always sinning ought always to 
 have my medicine at hand, as he that has a wound 
 seeks without delay for a cnre." ' 
 
 There was one custom in that early day which 
 showed in a most striking manner the reverence of the 
 Church for that solemn mystery ; it was the practice of 
 excluding, even from a sight of its administration, those 
 who were catechumens and not yet prepared to receive 
 it, or those who were unworthy to do so. "When they 
 were ready to begin this portion of the Service, the 
 deacon made solemn proclamation: "Ye that cannot 
 communicate, depart. Let no catechumen he present, 
 no hearer, no infidel, no heretical person." 3 And 
 among the homilies of St. Chrysostom, in one imputed 
 to SeverianuSj Bishop of Gabala, is a passage which 
 shows the part of the Service in which this was done : 
 " Ye have seen the deacons traversing the Church and 
 crying, ' Let no catechumen be present ; none of those 
 who may not see the Heavenly Blood shed for remis- 
 sion of sins.' Ye remember after this how the angels 
 from Heaven sing the hymns and praises, saying, ' Holy 
 is the Father, holy is the Son, holy is the Holy Ghost.' " 3 
 From which it is evident that it was before the Trisa- 
 (/ion, " Therefore with angels and archangels," etc., and 
 preparatory to the Oblation. 
 
 AVe can imagine that this exclusion must have 
 heightened the reverence of those who were thus de- 
 barred. With what veneration must they have thought 
 of those sacred emblems upon which they were not 
 esteemed worthy to look ! It was appealing to a known 
 
 1 Ambrose, " De Sacra™.," lib. iv., chap. 6. 
 
 2 Bingham, lib. xv., chap. 3. 3 Chrysostom, lib. vi., Ilom. 37. 
 
EUCHARIST. 103 
 
 principle of the human mind, which forces it to invest 
 with a higher regard anything which is enveloped in 
 mystery. And St. Augustine tells us that this was 
 done " to inflame their zeal, and make them more ear- 
 nest and solicitous in hastening to partake of them." It 
 rendered them diligent in their preparation for that 
 hour when they too should be admitted with the faith- 
 ful to their Master's feast. They realized that until 
 then they were only " Proselytes of the Gate," dwell- 
 ing in the outer courts of the sanctuary, and their de- 
 sire was kindled to hear the voice which bade them 
 " Come up hither ! " and enabled them to approach the 
 Altar itself. 
 
 But what a solemnity must have been impressed 
 upon an assembly of the early Christians when they 
 had gathered for this rite ! The world, with its carp- 
 ing doubts and questionings, was excluded. JSTo care- 
 less and irreverent spectator looked upon the sacred 
 mysteries, but the faithful and the believing alone, 
 with one heart and one voice, knelt around the Altar. 
 Their very nearness to the time of the solemn sacrifice 
 which they commemorated added to its impressiveness. 
 They were not separated from their Lord by long in- 
 tervening centuries, and there still lingered in the 
 Church traditions of what He had said and done, and 
 what those had reported who had seen Him in the 
 flesh ; * and these they repeated to each other when 
 
 1 The only traditional saying of our Lord which has come down to us 
 and is not quoted in the histories of His life, is that given by St. Paul in 
 his address to the elders at Miletus, " Remember the words of our Lord 
 Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive " (Acts 
 xx. 35). 
 
104 TEE CHURCH OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 gathered in remembrance of Him. Iso gorgeous cere- 
 monies as yet adorned that rite — no perversions of its 
 primitive meaning had yet crept into the Church ; but 
 all partook of it with the same simplicity of spirit which 
 had marked that little band of disciples who had first 
 gathered in an " upper room " in Jerusalem. 
 
 As centuries rolled by, there gradually grew up a . 
 change of feeling in the Church with regard to this 
 sacrament. At first, as we have shown, it was looked 
 upon with a shadowy vagueness — as an inexplicable 
 mystery, and this was often the very characteristic 
 which so deeply impressed the minds of the partici- 
 pants. It was with a solemn awe that they came for- 
 ward to receive the sacred symbols of the Crucifixion ; 
 it was the central point of the service ; but by a transi- 
 tion so gradual that it was almost imperceptible, they 
 imparted new characteristics to the elements, and con- 
 centrated upon the Altar that feeling of veneration for 
 the invisible presence of the Lord which the early wor- 
 shipers felt for the whole Church. 1 
 
 And this seems to have been the natural result of 
 that warmth of Oriental eloquence with which the 
 preachers of the faith endeavored to illustrate this mys- 
 tery. All that the poetry of religion could inspire in 
 those who dwelt near the cradle of our faith, or the 
 glow T ing phrases of an Eastern tongue could frame to 
 set forth the dignity of this rite, were lavished upon it. 
 A\ r e see this in the bold imagery of St. Chrvsostom, 
 when he appeals to his hearers in Constantinople, and 
 uses, as figures of rhetoric, illustrations which he him- 
 self never intended to be interpreted by the strict rules 
 
 1 Milman's " Ecclcs. Hist,," ii., 316. 
 
EUCHARIST. 105 
 
 of argument. Perhaps a couple of passages from one 
 of his homilies may convey an idea of his style to our 
 readers, and enable them to see how dangerous were 
 such glowing pictures when placed before the fervid 
 imagination of Greeks or Asiatics : 
 
 "When you see this body before you," says the 
 " golden-mouth " preacher, " say to yourself, this is the 
 body which was nailed to the cross, but which death 
 could not confine. It was this which the sun beheld 
 fixed to the accursed tree, and instantly veiled his light. 
 It was this that rent the veil, and burst the rocks, and 
 convulsed the earth. Do you wish to comprehend the 
 full extent of its powers ? Ask the daughter of afflic- 
 tion, who touched the hem of the garment that encir- 
 cled it. Ask the sea which bore this body on its sur- 
 face. Ask Satan himself, 6 What has inflicted on thee 
 this incurable wound ? What has robbed thee of thy 
 strength ? Whence these chains and this captivity \ ' 
 lie will answer, that this crucified body is the foe 
 that hath broken his weapons, and hath bruised his 
 head, and hath exposed to shame and defeat the princi- 
 palities and powers of his kingdom. Ask Death, and 
 say unto him : ' How hast thou been rifled of thy 
 sting, and how hath thy victory been wrested from 
 thee % How is it that thou hast become the laughing- 
 stock of youths and maidens — thou that hast been the 
 terror both of the ungodly and the righteous % ' They 
 will both answer by accusing this mysterious body of 
 their discomfiture and disgrace ; for when this body 
 was crucified, then the dead arose, and the prison of the 
 grave was burst open, and the tenants of the tomb were 
 set free, and the wardens of hell were terror-stricken." 
 
106 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 And again, in another place, he speaks of the ele- 
 ments still more strongly : " Behold, I show you, not an- 
 gels, not archangels, nor the heaven of heavens, but the 
 Master of all these ! Behold, the most precious of all 
 things is exposed to your gaze ; and, not only so, but 
 you are allowed to touch it and to handle it ; nay, not 
 merely to touch it, but actually to feed upon it." ' 
 
 But the evident anxiety to avoid any view of this 
 rite which might lower its dignity, necessarily betrayed 
 them into an opposite extreme. " Their language is 
 frequently such as to identify the hallowed elements 
 with the sacrifice they represented. When speaking 
 with didactic caution, they would indeed carefully sep- 
 arate the symbol from the object signified ; but when 
 endeavoring to elevate the devotion of their hearers, 
 they often forgot this watchfulness and discretion, and 
 expressed themselves in terms which, frequently re- 
 peated, would naturally familiarize the hearers with the 
 notion that the body of our Saviour was actually and 
 really present in the consecrated bread and wine." a 
 
 In all ages, indeed, under every form of faith, the 
 mind turned to these elements with an awe produced 
 by a belief in the invisible presence of the Lord, and 
 this the devout, through the whole Church, could not 
 but feel. But this mysterious feeling, realized indeed 
 by the mind, was one which it would have been very 
 difficult to reduce to language. It was something widely 
 different from the acknowledgment of that material and 
 corporeal change which at length began to be asserted. 
 Yet thus it was, that what at first was only the im- 
 
 1 Chrysost., Horn, xxliii., Ed. Bouedic. 
 
 2 Lc Bas's " Life of Wiclif." 
 
EUCHARIST. . 107 
 
 passioned eloquence of the preacher, as years went by, 
 became the customary language of the pulpit, and grad- 
 ually grew to be the settled doctrine of the Church. It 
 passed even beyond the sanction given by Oriental 
 metaphors, and " that which the earlier Fathers, in 
 their boldest figure, called only a bloodless sacrifice, be- 
 came at last an actual oblation of the body and blood 
 of Christ." ' 
 
 Thus it was that, from the mere warmth of Oriental 
 imagery, and the perversion of the language of the early 
 writers, there grew up the doctrine of Transubstantia- 
 tion, or the corporeal presence of the body and blood 
 of Christ in the Sacrament — a doctrine which has now 
 become a point of faith with the Church of Rome, and 
 which forms the greatest barrier which separates us 
 from it. Deeply as we reverence these sacred symbols 
 of our Master's death, we cannot, as they do, bow in 
 worship before them, for we cannot realize that they 
 have been changed into our Incarnate Lord, and there- 
 fore in us it would be idolatry. 
 
 We have thus given briefly the historical account of 
 this Sacrament, showing its origin — the manner of its 
 administration in that early day — and the changes it 
 underwent, as the superstition of men gradually per- 
 verted it, until, instead of a symbol of peace, showing 
 the love and union of our Lord's followers, it has be- 
 come a theme of contention, dividing those who should 
 be called by the same name, and debated with irrever- 
 ent warmth by multitudes who might better copy the 
 example of the Early Christians, and meditate and wor- 
 ship in solemn silence. 
 
 1 Milman's " Eccles. Hist.," ii., 316. 
 
108 THE CEUECn OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 It is indeed a sorrowful view thus to trace it down 
 the stream of time — to leave, as it were, the atmosphere 
 of those early days, when all was simplicity and purity 
 of faith — and to pass away from the first followers of 
 our Lord, men who were raised above death, and could 
 defy the darkness of the grave, realizing that what to 
 the world was the ending of every hope, to the Chris- 
 tian was but the opening of eternal blessedness. Tor 
 each century that we descend, we find a deeper shadow 
 gathering over the Church, and the Sacraments of its 
 early day sharing in the perversion which had affected 
 every part. " The great mysteries of religion were 
 hardened and distorted by a gross and carnal compre- 
 hension of them." ' The converts of primitive times 
 were men with the heroic and unbending faith of mar- 
 tyrs, yet with the meekness of little children. Their 
 hearts were bound together, their hopes centred in the 
 single wish, to obtain an entrance into the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. They were cheered and elevated by the sub- 
 lime doctrines they had lately learned ; they had freed 
 their minds from the damps and shadows of the sys- 
 tems from which they had come out ; and the air they 
 breathed seemed that of the Celestial City. To them 
 there was a reality in this Sacrament. It awakened 
 memories of Calvary ; it bound them to their fellow- 
 Christians; it pointed them forward to the marriage- 
 supper of the Lamb, of which they should one day 
 partake with Him in Heaven. 
 
 And then, when centuries of superstition had clouded 
 this rite and perverted it, as we have seen, it was its 
 Primitive meaning that our Church endeavored to revive. 
 1 Bourdon's " Life of Gregory TIL," v., ii., p. 24 '. 
 
EUCHARIST. 109 
 
 It has been stripped, therefore, of all the additions which 
 had been gathered about it ; and it is presented to us, 
 as it was to the Christians of the first century, a symbol 
 of our Lord's crucifixion, and a means of grace and 
 spiritual strength which He has designed to strengthen 
 His children's hearts, and to keep them in remembrance 
 of Him till He come again. 
 
 This rite then connects us in spirit with the myriads 
 of our Lord's followers who have gone before us ; with 
 the holy and the just whose names, in ages past, were 
 written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Like the Early 
 Christians, then, let us "continue steadfastly in the 
 breaking of bread." To us everything about the Sacra- 
 ment of our Lord's death should be consoling. It 
 should not be invested with the gloom with which so 
 many array it. It is not like that Mount about which 
 the thousands of Israel' gathered with trembling; the 
 Mount that "burned with fire," whose. top was envel- 
 oped in " blackness, and darkness, and tempest," and 
 from which issued thunders and voices so terrible, that 
 even good men "exceedingly feared and quaked." x 
 This holy ordinance was not designed to be a fiery or- 
 deal, through which none but the sinless could safely 
 pass. It was intended for the edification of the fol- 
 lowers of Christ, yea, even of the feeblest. It is to 
 strengthen within them every Christian grace, and to 
 be to them a channel of living power while, like the 
 Magi of old, they are passing through the clouds and 
 darkness of earth to their God at last. 
 
 There is, indeed, no mysterious, physical efficacy in 
 the mere act of eating that consecrated bread ; and yet, 
 
 1 Heb. xii. 18. 
 
110 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 if we come forward with proper feelings, with " honest 
 and good hearts," onr spiritual strength will be in- 
 creased, our Christian views enlarged and purified, and 
 invigorated, and we shall find that for a time Ave have 
 passed away from the strife and conflict of this lower 
 world, and stand upon the Mount of Transfiguration, 
 where our Lord reveals Himself, and glimpses are grant- 
 ed to us of that world of joy, where we shall eat of the 
 Tree of Life, and drink of those bright waters which 
 flow from the throne of God forever. 
 
 And when the dream of this life is over, and hope 
 has given place to full fruition, it is thus that Banyan 
 describes the reality of the Pilgrim's hopes : 
 
 " Now I saw in my dream that they went in at the 
 gate of the Celestial City, and lo ! as they entered, they 
 were transfigured ; and they had raiment put on that 
 shone like gold. There were also that met them with 
 harps and crowns, and gave them to them — the harps to 
 praise withal, and the crowns in token of honor. Then 
 I heard in my dream that all the bells in the city rang 
 again for joy, and that it was said unto them, ' Enter 
 ye in to the joy of our Lord.' 
 
 " I also heard the men themselves, that they sang 
 with a loud voice, saying, 'Blessing and honor, and 
 glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the 
 Throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever.' 
 
 " Now, just as the gates were opened to let in the 
 men, I looked in after them, and, behold, the city shone 
 like the sun, the streets also were paved with gold, and 
 in them walked many with crowns on their heads, palms 
 in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises withal. 
 
 " There were also of them that had wings, and they 
 
EUCHARIST. HI 
 
 answered one another without intermission, saying, 
 
 ' Hoi j, holy, holy is the Lord ! ' And after that they 
 
 shut up the gates, which, when I had seen, 1 wished 
 myself among them." 
 
IV. 
 
 LITURGIES. 
 
 Though Babel's curse rests on the world forlorn, 
 And language, clime, and heart asunder rends ; 
 
 Yet in the unfailing Church, by age unworn, 
 
 Thy blessing still is fresh, thou Pentecostal morn ! 
 
 One soul, one tongue is there ; th' Eternal Son 
 
 Dwells in her living courts, forever one." 
 
 The Cathedral 
 
IV. 
 LITTJEGIES. 
 
 With the early Christians, living under the awaken- 
 ing impulse of their new-born hopes, Time was noth- 
 ing — Eternity was everything. So absorbed were they 
 in the contemplation of a future world, that we find it 
 was necessary for their teachers to recall them to their 
 daily duties, and to inculcate the lesson that this life 
 also had its claims upon them. They felt that they 
 stood in jeopardy every hour, and must "die daily." 
 The sands of the amphitheatre were red with the blood 
 of their slaughtered brethren, and often they were forced 
 to gaze upon the ruddy glare of the martyr's fires, in 
 which so many of their fellow-confessors were wafted 
 up to Heaven. Life with them, therefore, became 
 valueless, because they knew that its light must soon 
 vanish, and be lost in the brighter glory of the coming 
 world. Is it strange, then, that thus nursed in vicissi- 
 tudes, and beaten by the rough winds of life, they were 
 bold and fervent — men of mailed and impervious forti- 
 tude, ready to defy the world, prepared for torments 
 and armed for death ? 
 
 And whence could they derive this courage but 
 from another world ? To it, then, they constantly as- 
 pired, and every wish and hope were merged in the 
 
116 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 single desire to wage well their warfare here, so that 
 the j might win the prize of immortality. To them 
 the gates of Eternity seemed ever open. They listened 
 to the anthems of the blessed, and shrank with trem- 
 bling from the wailings of the lost. They prayed with 
 an earnestness which brought every sense into unison 
 with the heart-felt petitions rising from the very depths 
 of their souls. They realized the chain which bound 
 them to the throne of the Eternal. It was to them a 
 living reality — and therefore " they continued stead- 
 fastly in prayer." 
 
 We see from the Xew Testament record how un- 
 ceasing was the intercourse of the first Christian con- 
 verts with the Saviour who had lately parted from 
 them and gone into Heaven ; how often they came to 
 that mercy -seat, to which they had just learned their 
 right of access through the sacrifice of their risen Lord. 
 When St. Peter returned to them, miraculously re- 
 leased from prison, it was in the words of prayer and 
 praise that their joy found utterance. In the dungeon 
 Paul and Silas sang praises and raised the voice of 
 prayer, till the astonished prisoners heard them. This 
 became, indeed, the characteristic mark of the Christian 
 —the trait by which he was known— and when, there- 
 fore, Saul had turned to the faith, and a vision from 
 God informed Ananias of the change, he is not told 
 directly that the most bitter enemy of the Christians 
 had himself become a convert, but the news is conveyed 
 to him in the announcement, " Behold, he prayeth ! n 
 
 This characteristic did not expire with the first gen- 
 eration of Christians. We recognize it also as the trait 
 of their successors, and it took long years for faith to 
 
LITURGIES. 117 
 
 grow dim and zeal to be quenched before the spirit of 
 prayer also failed. As long as persecution continued, 
 and they were obliged, in preaching the Gospel, to con- 
 front a dark and lowering world ; so long as their testi- 
 mony was delivered before those who might " turn again 
 and rend them," they felt the impotency of an arm of 
 flesh, and looked only to Heaven for aid and strength. 
 
 In some cases their prayers have been preserved to 
 us, caught as they fell from their lips in the hour of 
 suffering and death, and treasured up by their brethren 
 as a precious legacy — the martyr's last bequest to those 
 he left behind, still contending in the struggle of this 
 lower world. Such was the prayer of the martyr Poly- 
 carp, the disciple of St. John, as he was bound to the 
 stake. Through almost eighteen centuries it has come 
 down to us, valuable not only for the ardent devotion 
 which breathes through every sentence, but also for its 
 testimony to truths which the impiety of later days has 
 called in question. How earnestly, for instance, does 
 he recognize the divinity of our Lord, when thus he 
 makes his appeal to the Father ! — 
 
 " Father of Thy beloved and blessed Son, Jesus 
 Christ, through whom we have received the knowledge 
 of Thee, God of angels and powers, and of all the 
 creation and of all the generations of the righteous who 
 live in Thy presence, I bless Thee, because Thou hast 
 thought me worthy of this day and this hour, to take 
 part in the number of Thy martyrs, in the cup of 
 Christ, to the resurrection of soul and body in the in- 
 corruptible felicity of the Holy Spirit, among whom 
 may I be received this day into Thy presence, as a 
 rich and acceptable sacrifice, as Thou hast before or- 
 
118 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 dained and hast now fulfilled ; Thou, who art the faith- 
 ful and true God. For this, and for all things, I praise 
 Thee, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, through the Eternal 
 High-Priest Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, through 
 whom be glory to Thee, with Him, in the Holy Spirit, 
 both now and unto all ages to come." * 
 
 But it is to the more public and stated worship of 
 the Christians in those ages that we would particularly 
 refer. Of the prayers they offered as individuals we 
 can know but little. Then, they were most often alone 
 with God, and when they wrestled with Him in the 
 deep agony of their souls, none but He heard them, and 
 it was left for their Father who seeth in secret to re- 
 ward them openly. But of their public and common 
 prayers the record has come down to us, preserving 
 even the words in which these ancient Christians en- 
 shrined their petitions. We still have the ancient litur- 
 gies, which in that day were heard in every church 
 from the plains of India to the shores of Western Europe. 
 
 Beginning at the earliest day, we can see by allu- 
 sions in Scripture, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in 
 the Epistles, that some system of ritual must have been 
 established in the Churches. We may say it was coeval 
 with the organization of the Church itself. We can- 
 not, of course, expect plain directions on these points, 
 for the Epistles were not written to enforce or prescribe 
 the ritual of religion. All we can expect is, if it ex- 
 isted in the Apostles' days, to find some allusions show- 
 ing an acquiescence in it. In most cases it must have 
 rested on unwritten directions from the founders of 
 these Churches. When, for instance, St. Paul went 
 
 1 Euselmis, "Eecles. Hist.," lib. iv., chap. 15. 
 
LITURGIES. 110 
 
 from city to city, and everywhere gathered congrega- 
 tions into the infant Church, he must at the same time 
 have given them some system of worship or ritual. Their 
 very existence depended on their having this to take 
 the place of their old Jewish or heathen rites ; and in 
 the next generation these rules rested only on tradition. 
 
 We can find, indeed, in St. Paul's writings, illustra- 
 tions of the fact that there were traditions of Church 
 regulations and customs handed down, which were not 
 prescribed in Scripture, but which they were bound to 
 observe. He writes to the Thessalonians, " Therefore, 
 brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye 
 have been taught, whether by word or our Epistle." * 
 It is on this principle that he settles the question with 
 the Corinthians, that men should wear their hair short, 
 and that women should have their heads covered dur- 
 ing divine service. Here is a point on which Scripture 
 gives no direction, but the Apostle begins by implying 
 that it was one of many rules or traditions (Trapa&ocreLs) 
 which he had given then, and which they were bound 
 to observe. " Keep the ordinances as I delivered them 
 to you." 2 The word here translated ordinances, in the 
 margin of the English Bibles is rendered traditions. 
 In conclusion, he refuses to argue with one who cavils 
 at or rejects this rule. " If any man seem to be con- 
 tentious, we have no such custom, neither the Churches 
 of God." 
 
 The truth which this opens to us should prevent 
 any surprise on our part at many rites which were in 
 use in the Primitive Church, but which are not men- 
 tioned in the New Testament. It was the spirit of that 
 
 i 2 Thess. ii. 15. 2 1 Cor. xi. 2. 
 
120 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 early day which St. Chrysostom has embodied in a sin- 
 gle sentence, " He who is dnly strengthened in faith 
 does not go so far as to require argument and reason 
 for what is enjoined, but is satisfied with the tradition 
 alone." 1 
 
 There was evidently in that day a wide system of 
 unwritten discipline, the multitude of whose details it 
 was impossible for St. Paul to enumerate in writing to 
 the Corinthians, and he could, therefore, only remind 
 them of his ways while he was among them. He 
 writes, " I praise you that ye remember me in all 
 things." These matters could only be inculcated by 
 the voice of the living minister, and, as he could not 
 visit them in person, he sent Timothy in his place, 
 whose special object was to remind them of the Apos- 
 tle's teaching. He says, "For this cause have I sent 
 unto you Timotheus, who shall bring you into remem- 
 brance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every- 
 where in every Church." 
 
 Tertullian has well illustrated the duty of obedience 
 to tradition, when, referring to some rites, he says : 
 " Though this observance has not been determined by 
 any text of Scripture, yet it is established by custom, 
 which doubtless is derived from Apostolic tradition. 
 For how can a usage ever obtain which has not first 
 been given by tradition 1 But you say, ' Even though 
 tradition can be produced, still a written (Scripture) 
 authority must be demanded.' Let us examine, then, 
 how far it is true that an Apostolic tradition itself, un- 
 less written in Scripture, is inadmissible. Xow, I will 
 give up the point at once, if it is not already determined 
 
 1 In 1 Cor., Horn. 26. 
 
LITURGIES. 121 
 
 by instances of other observances, which are maintained 
 without any Scripture proof, on the mere plea of tradi- 
 tion and the sanction of consequent custom. To begin 
 with baptism. Before we enter the water, we solemnly 
 renounce the devil, his pomp, and his angels, in Church, 
 in the presence of the Bishop. Then we are plunged 
 in the water thrice, and answer certain questions over 
 and above what the Lord has determined in the written 
 Gospel. . . . The Sacrament of the Eucharist, though 
 given by the Lord to all, and at supper-time, yet is 
 celebrated in our meetings before daybreak, and only at 
 the hand of our presiding ministers. . . . 
 
 " If you demand a Scripture rule for these and such 
 like observances, we can give you none ; all we say to 
 you is that tradition directs, usage sanctions, faith obeys. 
 That reason justifies this tradition, usage, and faith, you 
 will soon yourself see, or will easily learn from others ; 
 meanwhile you will do well to believe that there is a 
 law to which obedience is due. . . . These instances are 
 enough to show that a tradition, even though not in 
 Scripture, still binds our conduct if a continuous usage 
 be preserved as the witness of it." x 
 
 And this is exactly the ground taken by our own 
 Church in the Thirty - nine Articles. In Article 
 XXXIV., " Of the Traditions of the Church," it says, 
 " Whosoever, through his private judgment, willingly 
 and purposely, cloth openly break the Traditions and 
 Ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to 
 the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by 
 common authority, ought to be rebuked openly." 
 
 Now, the object of this argument has been to show 
 
 1 Tertullian, "De Coron. " sec. 3. 
 
122 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 that there must have been a system of Rites and Ser- 
 vices in the Early Church, which claimed the obedience 
 of its members, but did not exist in their written law. 
 If, therefore, we do not find this Ritual plainly devel- 
 oped in Scripture, it is no proof that it did not exist. 
 
 There is another consideration. Christians in that 
 day were surrounded by unbelievers, and we may im- 
 agine, therefore, that, in their intercourse with each 
 other, they would exercise a prudent caution with re- 
 gard to their mode of worship. This reserve would be 
 exhibited particularly by their teachers ; and the more 
 regular and uniform was the administration of Divine 
 Service in the Infant Church, the less likely would the 
 Apostles treat of it, particularly in their written com- 
 munications to the Churches. 
 
 This reason, indeed, is plainly given by St. Basil : 
 " Of those articles of doctrine and preaching, which 
 are in the custody of the Church, some come to us in 
 Scripture itself, some are conveyed to us by a continu- 
 ous tradition in mystical depositories. Both have equal 
 claims on our devotion, and are received by all — at least 
 by all who are in any respect Churchmen. For should 
 we attempt to supersede the usages which are not en- 
 joined in Scripture as unimportant, we should do most 
 serious injury to Evangelical truth — nay, reduce it to a 
 bare name. 
 
 " To take an obvious instance : Which Apostle has 
 taught us in Scripture to sign believers with the cross \ 
 Where does Scripture teach us to turn to the East in 
 prayer I Which of the Saints has left us recorded in 
 Scripture the words of invocation at the consecration of 
 the bread of the Eucharist and of the cup of bles^ i 
 
LITURGIES. 12< 
 
 Thus we are not content with what Apostle or Evan- 
 gelist has left on record, but we add other rites before 
 and after it, as important to the celebration of the Mys- 
 tery, receiving them from a teaching distinct from 
 Scripture. . . . After the example of Moses, the Apos- 
 tles and Fathers who modeled the Churches were accus- 
 tomed to lodge their sacred doctrine in mystic forms, as 
 being secretly and silently conveyed. . . . This is the 
 reason why there is a tradition of observances indepen- 
 dent of Scripture, lest doctrines, oeing exposed to the 
 world, should he so familiar as to oe despised." 1 
 
 He adds another reason for the Ritual not being 
 given in Scripture: that the Rites were memorials of 
 doctrines not intended for publication except among 
 baptized Christians, whereas the Scriptures were open 
 to all men. This, at least, is clear, that the Ritual could 
 scarcely have been given in detail in Scripture without 
 imparting to the Gospel the character of a burdensome 
 ceremonial, and withdrawing our attention from its 
 doctrines and precepts. 2 
 
 Again, these Rites must necessarily have been grad- 
 ual in their growth, until they developed into the full 
 Ritual System of later years. The Christians in their 
 concealment in hidden retreats, where alone they could 
 hold their services, could not be expected to have a per- 
 fect system of Ritual. They could only illustrate the 
 simplest points of their faith, and their symbolism — as 
 we now see in the Catacombs at Rome — was confined 
 to these. It may be admitted, therefore, that the con- 
 struction of a Liturgy by the Apostles was a progressive 
 
 1 St. Basil on " Holy Spirit," sec. 66. 
 
 2 Tracts (Oxford), No. 34. 
 
124 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 work. But the New Testament itself was thus formed 
 step by step, for even between the writing of the Gos- 
 pels of St. Matthew and St. John fifty years elapsed. 
 We may imagine, too, that the work of Christian in- 
 struction would naturally so engross the time of the 
 Apostles that much less could be devoted to that of 
 the Liturgy. Such was the case at Troas, where the 
 " breaking of bread " — that is to say, the celebration of 
 the Eucharist — was delayed till midnight, in conse- 
 quence of the length of the Apostle's preaching, which 
 he resumed again after the celebration of the Mysteries, 
 and continued till daybreak. But as soon as the Chris- 
 tian Church was founded in any city, with the estab- 
 lishment of the Ministry, the external forms received 
 enlargement, and the performance of Divine Service 
 became more solemn. 1 
 
 Thus St. Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthi- 
 ans, represents that Church as already performing the 
 Service of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, yet he con- 
 siders it necessary that he should repeat his visit, to ar- 
 range all things in a more perfect way. This is the 
 interpretation invariably given by the Fathers to the 
 concluding words of the passage in which he speaks of 
 the Eucharist — " The rest will I set in order when I 
 come." St. Jerome, in his commentary on this passage, 
 refers it to the Eucharist, and St. Augustine, in his 
 Letter to Januarius, more fully says, " These words 
 give us to understand that in the same way as he had, 
 in the course of his Epistle, made allusion to the usages 
 of the Church Catholic (on the matter and essence of 
 the Sacrament), lie afterward himself instituted (at 
 
 1 " Institutions Liturgiques," par l'Abbe Gu6 ranger, Paris, 1840. 
 
LITURGIES. 125 
 
 Corinth) those Kites, the -universality of which is unaf- 
 fected by any difference of manners." l 
 
 And now, having show T n the probability of there 
 being a Ritual, though not specifically set forth in the 
 writings of the Apostles, let us pass on one step further, 
 and show the positive existence of this Liturgy by trac- 
 ing allusions either in the Scriptures or the early writers 
 which have a reference to the forms, which are substan- 
 tially those we now use. 
 
 We might draw some Scripture sanction from the 
 minuteness of the Jewish Ceremonial, for it would be 
 difficult to affirm that w T hat was once the subject of a 
 Divine command, given with so much particularity, 
 could be at any time unsuited to human nature, or im- 
 proper for w r orship. The revelations of Christianity 
 have not changed man's spiritual nature. The very 
 object which all this u pomp and circumstance " was 
 designed to promote then is as important with us now — 
 that is, the realizing of the greatness and awfulness of 
 God. In fact, it applies with so much more force to 
 us, as the Christian has a more solemn nearness to God, 
 through His Son, than had the Jews. 2 But we have 
 actual intimations in the New Testament of the same 
 principle being continued. 
 
 That noble, supplicatory Hymn, to which we have 
 before alluded, in which the first Christians uplifted 
 their voices in praise w T hen St. Peter was miraculously 
 released from prison, proves, by the technical nicety of 
 its construction, that it was an anthem of the Church 
 with which they were well acquainted, and not an effu- 
 sion of the moment. 
 
 1 Ibid , p. 31. 2 " British Critic," vol. xxx., p. 444. 
 
126 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 In the opening of the Acts of the Apostles, we have 
 the " breaking of bread," and then, in the First Epistle 
 to the Corinthians, St. Paul points out the Liturgical 
 importance of this rite. And even in the first estab- 
 lishment of the Church, how grand was the Service, 
 as we learn from early writers, in which it was cele- 
 brated ! " We have an altar," ' says St. Paul, and at 
 this the rites were administered. Around it were ar- 
 ranged, in accordance with the picture of the celestial 
 worship given by St. John, 2 first, in front, the Apostle 
 or Bishop ; on the right and left were the Priests, sym- 
 bolizing the four-and-twenty elders ; and near the altar, 
 the Deacons and other Ministers, suggesting the idea 
 of the Angels who wait, in the attitude of servants, 
 about the Heavenly Throne. This is the picture given 
 by early writers, and this arrangement of the seats is 
 still observed in the Apses of Churches in the East. 
 And if, in the West, this primitive custom has fallen 
 into disuse, the Church of Eome has maintained the 
 tradition in the arrangement of the choir of several of 
 the ancient Churches, and follows it precisely when- 
 ever the Pope celebrates, or assists pontifically, in any 
 one of the Patriarchal Basilicas. 3 
 
 The faithful being assembled, the Service began. 
 The celebrant, precisely as he now does, read from the 
 Apostolical Epistles, and recited a portion of the Holy 
 Gospel. This in the early day was the Catechumen's 
 Service, being that portion in which he was permitted 
 to take part. St. Paul says to the Colossians, "When 
 this Epistle is read among you, cause that it be read 
 also in the Church of the Laodiceans," and in writing to 
 
 1 Heb xiii. 10. 2 Rev. iv. 3 Abbe Gueraiiirer. 
 
LITURGIES. 127 
 
 the Tliessalonians he adds, " I charge you by the Lord 
 that this Epistle be read unto all the holy brethren." 
 And we learn that this injunction had the force of law 
 from the first, for, in the latter part of the second cen- 
 tury, St. Justin, in his description of the Service, says, 
 " The Epistles of the Apostles are read." As to the 
 reading of the Gospel, Ensebius informs us that the 
 narrative of our Lord's actions, from the pen of St. 
 Mark, was approved by St. Peter, to be " read in all 
 the Churches." 
 
 The salutation to the people — " The Lord be with 
 you ! " — was one with which all were familiar before 
 Christian times. Itw T as in use under the Ancient Law. 
 With these words Boaz addresses the reapers, 1 and un- 
 der the new Dispensation it holds its place in all the 
 Liturgies of the East and West. 
 
 The Collects, according to St. Augustine, were in all 
 the ancient Liturgies. The conclusion of the prayers — 
 " for ever and ever " — has likewise been used from the 
 remotest antiquity. So, the custom of responding, 
 "Amen," can be traced to the Apostolic Age. St. 
 Paul himself alludes to it in his First Epistle to the 
 Corinthians. 3 
 
 Before the consecration, St. Cyprian tells us, came 
 the Preface. We can trace it back to the very cradle 
 of the Church. Then the Priest gave the Exhortation, 
 " Lift up your hearts ! " and the people responded, 
 " We lift them up unto the Lord." Then comes the 
 form of thanksgiving, which St. Cyril, in addressing the 
 Catechumens of Jerusalem, a Church certainly of Apos- 
 tolic foundation, explains to them, " Gratias agamus 
 
 1 Kuth iv. 4. 2 1 Cor. xv. 16. 
 
128 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Domino Deo nostro ! Dignum et justum est." (We 
 give thanks unto the Lord our God ! It is right and 
 meet.) How entirely have we retained this in the 
 ascription : "It is very meet, right, and our bounden 
 duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give 
 thanks unto Thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, 
 Everlasting God ! " 
 
 Next comes the Seraphic Hymn, " Sanctus, Sanctus, 
 Sanctus Dominus." (Holy, holy, holy, Lord God.) 
 Isaiah, under the Old Dispensation, heard it chanted at 
 the foot of the throne of Jehovah ; ' under the New, 
 the prophet of Patmos repeats it as he heard it snng 
 before the Throne of the Lamb. 3 This chant of sur- 
 passing praise, thus revealed to the world, found its 
 echo in every Christian Church. Every Liturgy recog- 
 nizes it, and nowhere is there any form in which the 
 Eucharist was offered, which does not include it. 
 
 Then comes the " Protracted Prayer," as St. Jerome 
 terms it, and it was to this the Early Fathers say that 
 St. Paul referred, when he writes to Timothy, that 
 " supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of 
 thanks, be made for all men." 3 Thus it is that St. 
 Augustine comments on this passage : " In these words, 
 we understand, with the whole or nearly the whole 
 Church, by supplications, those which we use in the 
 celebration of the Sacraments, before the Benediction of 
 what is on the Lord's Table ; by prayers^ those in the 
 Benediction and Sanctification, and breaking for distri- 
 bution, the whole of which act of supplication is, in al- 
 most every Church, concluded by the Lord's Prayer ; 
 by intercessions , or, as our manuscripts have it, cn- 
 
 1 Isaiah vi. 3. 9 Rev. iv. 8. 3 1 Tim. ii. 1. 
 
LITURGIES. 129 
 
 treaties (postulations), those used in blessing the people. 
 For then it is that the Priests, in their character of ad- 
 vocates, present their clients to the Heavenly clemency. 
 Finally, when all is over, and the ' so great sacrifice ' 
 has been participated, the whole is concluded by giving 
 of thanksP 
 
 After the Consecration, and while the elements are 
 on the Altar, this " Canonical Prayer " having been 
 brought to a conclusion, the Lord's Prayer is pronounced. 
 " For," says St. Jerome, " Christ Himself taught His 
 Apostles to say daily in faith, with boldness, at the offer- 
 ing of His Body, our Father," etc. 1 
 
 The celebrant then proceeds to the breaking of the 
 Bread, whereby he imitates the action of our Lord Him- 
 self, who took the bread, blessed and brake it. In the 
 distribution, the same form was always used, even from 
 the first Institution of this Eite, that which St. Paul 
 recorded in his account of the celebration of this Sacra- 
 ment. 2 
 
 Thus it is that we trace, 3 even in Apostolic times, 
 the outline of our Eucharistic Office, and we find that 
 all the solemn prayers and ceremonies we now enjoy, 
 have come down to us from the earliest centuries. 
 
 The testimony, indeed, of all tradition is, that even 
 from the first, as soon as the Church was organized so 
 as to regulate its public worship, stated forms were 
 used, in which all could join. Four of these Liturgies 
 which are still extant, and bear the names of different 
 
 1 " Adv. Pelag.," 1, 18. 2 1 Cor. xi. 24. 
 
 3 For many of these points we are indebted to the Abbe Gueranger. 
 His " Institutions Liturgiques" is written indeed from a Romish point 
 of view, but his array of historical facts is valuable. 
 
130 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Apostles, are evidently those from which all subsequent 
 Liturgies were derived. Of their origin we know not, 
 except what the traditions of the different Chinches 
 have given us, but they can be traced back to that 
 period when the words of our Lord still lingered in the 
 memories of His followers, and men were yet living 
 who had known Apostles, and talked with those who 
 had seen their Master in the flesh. 
 
 The first of these — the Great Oriental Liturgy — 
 bears the name of St. James, and seems to have prevailed 
 in all the Churches of the East, from the Euphrates to 
 the Hellespont, and from the Hellespont to the southern 
 extremity of Greece. 
 
 The second — the Alexandrian — attributed to St. 
 Mark, from time immemorial has been the Liturgy of 
 Egypt, Abyssinia, and the country extending along the 
 Mediterranean Sea toward the AYest. 
 
 The third was — the Roman — bearing the name of 
 St. Peter, which prevailed throughout the whole of 
 Italy, Sicily, and some of the Dioceses in Africa. 
 
 The fourth was — the Gallic an — called after St. 
 John, and derived originally from the Church at Ephe- 
 sus. It was used in Gaul and Spain, and throughout 
 Western Europe. 1 
 
 There is one circumstance connected with these four 
 Liturgies which deserves our notice. It is the striking 
 similarity between them all, not only in doctrine, but 
 also in expression and arrangement. Mr. Palmer as- 
 serts, 2 that all the ancient Liturgies now existing, or 
 which can be proved to have existed in those early days, 
 
 1 For the best discussion of the Ancient Liturgies, see Xeale's " His- 
 tory of the Holy Eastern Church." - " Oi ig. Liturg." 
 
LITURGIES. 131 
 
 resemble one another in all essential features. This, of 
 course, strengthens the argument for their antiquity and 
 their derivation from the same origin. For among the 
 changes which were going on through so many ages, 
 in the formation everywhere of new Dioceses, nothing 
 but a reverence for the Apostolical source from which 
 these original Liturgies were believed to be derived, 
 could have prevented an infinite variety of formularies, 
 and preserved the substantial uniformity which we find 
 to have prevailed in vast districts of the Primitive 
 Church. Separate Liturgies were indeed often used in 
 Provincial Churches, for each Bishop had the right to 
 compose one for his own diocese as long as he did not 
 violate the unity of the faith. Changes, therefore, were 
 made, adapting it to local circumstances, and the Calen- 
 dar was usually constructed to introduce Festivals in 
 honor of the Saints and Martyrs who had lived and 
 died among them. Still, as we have remarked, there 
 was no material difference from the Great Liturgies 
 which they copied. " The order of the parts was always 
 preserved, the same rites and ceremonies continually 
 repeated, the same ideas and language without material 
 variation, transmitted from generation to generation." x 
 And so, *for eighteen hundred years, these Great 
 Liturgies have gone on in different parts of the world, 
 yet gradually altering and becoming more unlike each 
 other and the early forms which have come down to 
 us, as through passing centuries they were adapted to 
 the changing exigencies of particular Churches. And 
 here again we are called to mark that contrast of Ori- 
 ental and Western character to which we have before 
 
 1 Palmer's " Orig. Li tuig.,'' Preface, p. 9. 
 
132 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 referred in the sketch of Arianism. In the changes of 
 the Ritual we see the same influences at work. 
 
 " The East is more uniform and unchanging ; the 
 West more multiform and variable. Witness the sin- 
 gle, changeless Invitatory and Benediction of the one 
 Church, and their endless variations in the other. While 
 the West rings countless changes, according to the 
 season, on the same essential idea, the East prolongs it 
 in one unvaried and majestic toll, from the beginning 
 to the end of the year. The East, again, is more rapt, 
 the West more intellectual. The East loves rather to 
 meditate on God as He is, and on the facts of Christian 
 doctrine as they stand in the Creed ; the West contem- 
 plates more practically the great phenomena of Chris- 
 tian psychology, and the relations of man to God. 
 Hence, Psalms and Hymns in more profuse abundance 
 characterize the Eastern, larger use and more elaborate 
 adaptations of Scripture the Western Offices. The East, 
 by making the Psalms all her meditation, seems to de- 
 clare her mind that praise is the only way to knowl- 
 edge ; the West, by her combined Psalm and Lection 
 system, that knowledge is the proper fuel of praise. 
 While the East, again, soars to God in exclamations of 
 angelic self-f orgetfulness, the West comprehends all the 
 spiritual needs of man in Collects of matchless pro- 
 fundity, reminding us of the alleged distinction between 
 the seraphim, who love most, and the cherubim, who 
 know most. Thus, the East praises, the West pleads ; 
 the one has fixed her eye more intently on the glory- 
 throne of Christ, the other on His cross. Finally, the 
 East has been more inquisitive and inventive in the de- 
 partments both of knowledge and praise ; the West, 
 
LITURGIES. 133 
 
 more constructive, lias wrought up, out of scattered 
 Eastern materials, lier exhaustive Athanasian Creed and 
 her matchless Te Deum." 1 
 
 And strange is it that the Anglican Kitual, while it 
 may fail in largeness and beauty in comparison with 
 other Rituals, yet possesses more fully the spirit of these 
 early services than any other. Of the ancient forms 
 how few are now heard in the Churches of Europe ! 
 The Gallican and the Spanish have been extinct for 
 centuries, or survive only in the merest fragments. Oth- 
 ers, as the Roman and the Milanese, are used only for 
 the devotions of the clergy. In truth, the Offices of the 
 Western Church, from the sixth to the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, were, by their origin and their general cast and 
 scheme, monastic, and bear this deeply impressed upon 
 their structure. The study, therefore, of these Western 
 Offices in their old form is an antiquarian one, like the 
 study of a dead language. As public Services of the 
 Church these ancient and grand Offices nowhere exist. 
 The exquisite harmony has ceased. Lauds and Prime, 
 Antiphon and Responsory, are heard no more as they 
 were in the ancient Church. 2 
 
 In our own Liturgy alone the ancient Western Offices 
 really survive. " Psalmody, Scripture, responsive Can- 
 ticles, Preces, Collects, the media of Europe's ancient 
 worship, banished from all other lands, have taken ref- 
 uo-e in the Churches of the English Communion. The 
 English Church is in this matter the heir of the world. 
 She may have diminished her inheritance, but all other 
 Western Churches have thrown it away." 3 
 
 1 Freeman's " Principles of Divine Service," p. 273. 
 
 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 219. 
 
134: THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 . . . . " Quod (piserinius, Lie est, 
 Aut nusquam." 
 
 The Liturgy of the Church of England was derived 
 from the Gallican, and introduced into that country by 
 St. Augustin ; it has thus an Oriental, not a Roman 
 origin. The venerable Bede has preserved the letter 
 of St. Gregory the Great to St. Augustin, in answer 
 to one in which he announced that Britain had received 
 the faith, and inquires as to the different Bituals. But 
 St. Gregory tells him he need not follow the Roman 
 Ritual, as such, in which he had been brought up, but 
 to select what he found best in the Roman, Gallican, 
 or other Churches. " Choose, therefore," he writes, 
 " from every Church those things which are pious, re- 
 ligious, and upright, and having, as it were, made them 
 up in one mass, let the minds of the English be accus- 
 tomed thereto." ' 
 
 Now, St. Augustin, while on his journey to Eng- 
 land, spent some time at Marseilles, and between his 
 two visits to England he went to Aries, and there it 
 was he received consecration. lie probably, therefore, 
 adopted the Gallican Ritual, in accordance with the ad- 
 vice of St. Gregory. It is in consequence of this Gal- 
 lic descent that we can trace a greater resemblance in 
 the old English Services to the Oriental than to the 
 Roman forms. 
 
 The Reformation, in the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century, found the Chmch of England still in posses- 
 sion of this precious legacy, though deformed by the 
 additions it had received during ages of superstition. 
 These were swept away, and it was restored again to 
 Rede's "Eccles. Hist," p. 47. 
 
LITURGIES. 135 
 
 its primitive simplicity. So clear were the revisers on 
 this point, that Cranmer (as Jeremy Taylor has record- 
 ed) offered to prove that " the order of the Chnrch of 
 England, set out by authority by Edward VI., was the 
 same that had been used in the Church for fifteen hun- 
 dred years past." Her children now, therefore, utter 
 the same prayers which in the earliest centuries of our 
 faith, on each returning Sunday, were uplifted at Ephe- 
 sus, at Antioch, in the north of Africa, and through 
 Western Europe. 1 How impressive is the thought of 
 the wide-spread use of these ancient forms, as they are 
 now repeated in many a strange tongue over the whole 
 earth ! " The fullness of the stream is the glory of the 
 fountain ; and it is because the Ganges is not lost 
 among its native hills, but deepens and widens until it 
 reaches the ocean, that so many pilgrimages are made 
 to its springs." 2 
 
 Each one of us may adopt the words of the poet 3 : 
 
 "Mine is no solitary choice, 
 
 See here the seal of saints impressed ; 
 The prayer of millions swells my voice — 
 The mind of ages fills my breast." 
 
 It is this which gives so great an historical interest 
 
 1 The present Duke of Argyll, in referring to the fact that so many 
 leading Scotch families had "left the communion of Presbytery and 
 joined that of the English Church," says: "Very few have been induced 
 to do so by any previous conversion to Church principles. . . . The 
 deeper source of the extensive alienation which has taken place, is to be 
 found in the superior attractions of a more Ritual worship, in the weak- 
 ness of a predominantly dogmatic and informal system, to keep up per- 
 manent attachment in times of religious peace." — Edinburgh Review, vol. 
 xcv., p. 477. 
 
 2 "Bishop Thirwall's Charge," 1857. 3 Cunningham. 
 
136 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 to our Service, increasing as we become better ac- 
 quainted with the origin of its prayers. They connect 
 us with important eras of the Church in far-distant 
 ages, and with saintly and heroic men, whose names 
 have been wafted down to us as leaders in the troublous 
 times in which they lived. The Prayer-Book has, 
 therefore, been truly called " a long gallery of Ecclesi- 
 astical History." As, for instance, we chant the Te 
 Deum — it carries us back to the days when St. Ambrose 
 first uplifted it in the Church at Milan. The Litany 
 was given to the Latin Church by Gregory the Great. 
 It was when troubles were gathering about the " Eter- 
 nal City " — when it was devastated by " war, pestilence, 
 and famine" — that it seemed good to him to gather 
 from the ancient existing Litanies all that could best 
 call forth the penitential devotion of the Church, thus 
 " drawing the flower of them all into one." ' From the 
 great Patriarch of the Byzantine Church, the eloquent 
 St. Chrysostom, we derive the last prayer with which 
 our Service closes. The " Veni, Creator Spiritus," 
 brings up again the remembrance of St. Ambrose, 
 among whose works it was placed as a Hymn for Pente- 
 cost, and always used in the Roman Church in that day, 
 till it was transferred to the Office for the Consecration 
 of a Bishop. 2 
 
 And then with what added interest can we utter the 
 Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity when we re- 
 member the circumstances under which it was first in- 
 corporated into the Service — that it was amid the expir- 
 ing agonies which marked the closing days of the Roman 
 Empire, when " men's hearts were failing them for 
 1 Ilooker's "Eccles. Pol," lib. v., sec. 42. - Dean Comber. 
 
LITURGIES. 137 
 
 fear " lest the mighty edifice which was tottering to its 
 fall might crush, too, the Church with which it was so 
 intimately connected ! Then, indeed, the true-hearted 
 might well pray, " Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, 
 that the course of this world may be so peaceably or- 
 dered by Thy governance that Thy Church may joy- 
 fully serve Thee in all godly quietness, through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord." 
 
 We have gathered, indeed, into this Liturgy the 
 treasures of the olden time, reaching back even to the 
 far -distant Hebrew Church, and appropriating its 
 Hymns of penitence and triumph, so that the Songs of 
 the Kingly Poet of Israel have become the Anthems of 
 the Christian Church. And with these strains from 
 the ancient Tabernacle may be made the utterance of 
 every feeling, whether of sorrow for sin, of thanksgiv- 
 ing for the past, or of prayer for the future. They 
 speak the voice of Humanity, no matter what are the 
 circumstances which call it forth. They are adapted to 
 every exigency of our changing life — to joy and sorrow 
 — to the petition for pardon and the Psalm of thanksgiv- 
 ing — and they who have attempted to improve on them, 
 or to find more fitting words in which to clothe their 
 devotions, have discovered that nothing else could equal 
 their fullness and variety. And now let us give a 
 single instance of this, which History furnishes. 
 
 More than two centuries ago, on a wild December 
 day, a band of pilgrims landed on the rock-bound coast 
 of New England. For months they had been storm- 
 tossed upon the ocean, while the land to which their 
 hopes were directed receded in the distant horizon. 
 Yet now they were safe from the perils of the sea at 
 
138 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 least, and we are told, on the bleak and inhospitable shore 
 they offered up their gratitude to the Power which had 
 rescued them from the deep. The language of poetry 
 has consecrated their worship, as it recorded the fact 
 that— 
 
 "They shook the depths of the desert's gloom 
 With their hymns of lofty cheer. 
 Amid the storm they sang, 
 
 And the stars heard and the sea, 
 And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 
 To the anthems of the free." * 
 
 We know not in what words they presented their 
 thanksgivings, yet they were probably phrases suggested 
 by the feelings of the moment, for such was their creed 
 on this subject. Yet had they taken that old, familiar 
 Prayer-Book in which their fathers had worshiped, but 
 which they had discarded, and turned to the very Ser- 
 vice which on that day and horn* was being read in many 
 a Church in their ancient homes in England, where 
 could words more appropriate to their own condition 
 have been found ? It was the twenty-second day of 
 the month, and thus the Psalm for the day describes the 
 perils through which they had passed : 
 
 " They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their 
 business in great waters ; 
 
 These men see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the 
 deep. 
 
 For at His word the stormy wind ariseth, which lifteth up the 
 waves thereof. 
 
 They are carried up to the heaven and down again to the 
 deep ; their soul melteth away because of the trouble. 
 
 They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and are 
 at their wits' end. 
 
 1 Mrs. Hemans. 
 
LITURGIES. 139 
 
 So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivereth 
 them out of their distress. 
 
 For He niaketh the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof 
 are still. 
 
 Then are they glad, because they are at rest ; and so He bring- 
 eth them unto the haven where they would be. 
 
 O that men would, therefore, praise the Lord for His good- 
 ness, and declare the wonders that He doeth for the children of 
 men ! " 
 
 And then how nobly does the same Psalm, in a pro- 
 phetic spirit, go on to sketch the happy destiny which 
 awaited them in the land of their adoption ! — 
 
 " He maketh the wilderness a standing water and water-springs 
 of a dry ground. 
 
 And there He setteth the hungry, that they may build them a 
 city to dwell in ; 
 
 That they may sow their land, and plant vineyards, to yield 
 them fruits of increase. 
 
 He blesseth them, so that they multiply exceedingly, and suf- 
 fereth not their cattle to decrease. 
 
 And again, when they are minished and brought low through 
 oppression, through any plague or trouble ; 
 
 Though He suffer them to be evil-entreated through tyrants, 
 and let them wander out of the way in the wilderness ; 
 
 Yet helpeth He the poor out of misery, and maketh him 
 households like a flock of sheep. 
 
 The righteous will consider this and rejoice, and the mouth of 
 all wickedness shall be stopped." 
 
 And now let us briefly look at the Witness which 
 this Service bears, and it will be an inducement to us to 
 " continue steadfastly 1 ' in these Prayers which the 
 Church used in the Apostles' days. 
 
 The Church then, in its Services, witnesses against 
 the world, to claim from it our time. As days pass by 
 
140 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 us, they are marked in the outward world by those 
 changes which God Himself has ordained. The sun 
 rises and sets, and the moon is " established as a faithful 
 witness in heaven." Thus day and night, light and 
 darkness, succeed each other, and man labors and rests 
 as they prescribe. The seasons, too, pass by — Spring 
 and Autumn, Summer and Winter, Seed-time and Har- 
 vest. To these changes men are compelled to conform 
 — to adapt themselves to them. But all this is of the 
 outward world. It regards the way in which Time 
 should be distributed in its service — how man should 
 rise and sleep, and " go forth unto his work and to his 
 labor until the evening" — how he should plod along 
 the path of this world's business. 
 
 Now, the Church comes in, and by her Services 
 claims an interest in this Time. Her Calendar is the 
 ceaseless witness that it belongs not to us — not to the 
 world — but to our Lord. She has her appointed Pray- 
 ers for Morning and Evening, that devotion may go 
 with us into our worldly business. She takes the first 
 day of the week, and sanctifies it by a peculiar conse- 
 cration. And then how admirably does she lead us 
 through the year with our Lord ! Advent and Christ- 
 mas, Good-Friday, Easter, and Ascension, with their 
 intermediate Festivals, trace the course of His solemn 
 pilgrimage from the manger of Bethlehem to the ago- 
 nies of Calvary, and thence again to the heights of Oli- 
 vet, where He parted from His disciples, and " a cloud 
 received Him out of their sight." She has her alterna- 
 tions of Yigils and Fasts — of Abstinence and Feasts — 
 her voice of warning to the living, and her commemora- 
 tion of the dead who have passed away, that those who 
 
LITURGIES. 141 
 
 still linger in their earthly homes may imbibe their 
 spirit and tread in their footsteps. And then, once in 
 each year, she calls us to times of peculiar sadness. 
 She has her Lenten Season of forty days of fasting and 
 mortification and self-denial and weeping for sin, that 
 her children may free themselves more entirely from 
 this world's influences. Thus the Holy Seasons to 
 which her Ritual calls us are scattered through the year, 
 sanctifying each part of it. Like low and solemn 
 sounds, they appeal to the spirit, now in notes of sad- 
 ness and now of joy, making the heart, as it were, the 
 dwelling-place of a perpetual echo of heavenly sounds, 
 realizing those words of the Apostle, " There are, it 
 may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none 
 of them are without signification." 1 
 
 Thus it is that the Church endeavors to consecrate 
 the time which otherwise would pass by us without 
 leaving any valuable lesson. She breathes a new spirit 
 into it, and makes what is interfering with our happi- 
 ness minister to our spiritual progress. For is it not 
 an unhappy influence which Time produces, with resist- 
 less authority wearing away our love and our affections, 
 and forcing us to be forgetful and cold, when we ear- 
 nestly desire to be otherwise ? " There are many of us 
 who have lost parents or children, or friends, who would 
 fain have kept alive within our. hearts the same keen 
 and lively memory of them, as we had when first they 
 died. But Time will not let us ; it hurries us along ; 
 and our impressions grow fainter and fainter, till at last 
 they almost die away. Then in our friendship, and our 
 loves, time grievously interferes with us. It will not 
 
 1 1 Cor. xiv. 10. 
 
142 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 allow the glow of our affection to continue. "We cease 
 to love friends we have loved before for no other reason 
 than that the lapse of time has cooled our love, and we 
 are not able to withstand its power." x 
 
 And how often are we forced to feel that we, too, 
 mnst be subjected to this Lethean power, and be for- 
 gotten as are those who have trodden the path of life 
 before us ! As we take our place in the toil and busi- 
 ness of this lower world, and endeavor to play our little 
 part in the warfare which is waging about us, how often 
 are we forced to feel that one day all this will be going 
 on as now, unabated in its earnestness, when we are 
 gone, and the places which now know us are to know 
 us no more forever ! " Men will have our houses and 
 our gardens, and will be glad and happy therein. They 
 will walk about the same streets, and have the same 
 joyous meetings, when we shall be slowly and neglect-' 
 edly falling back into the cold earth out of which we 
 came ; and they who loved us will have laid us therein, 
 shed a few slight tears upon our coffin, gone to their 
 pleasure or their toil, and straightway forgotten all 
 about us. And yet they are not unfaithful or unaffec- 
 tionate. It is Time's fault, not theirs." 2 
 
 Now this is what the Calendar does, when it takes 
 this flight of time and teaches us from it the lesson of 
 our own immortality. From this craving within us 
 which nothing here can satisfy, this shrinking back 
 from forgetfulness, this fleeting current which goes by 
 us, and which we cannot arrest, the Church proves to 
 us that Time is nothing, but everything is leading us 
 on to the Eternity beyond. 
 
 1 F. W. Fabcr. - Ibid. 
 
LITURGIES. 143 
 
 And this Calendar, which places such solemn lessons 
 before us, as we go onward in life, is not the invention 
 of modem wisdom, but the growth of ages better than 
 our own, of ages of self-denial and holiness, when men 
 stood on a height of sanctity to which now we seem un- 
 able to attain. It was moulded into its form by men 
 who, in the words of Scripture, " in all their works 
 praised the Holy One most High with words of glory, 
 and with their whole heart sang songs ; who set singers 
 before the altar, that by their voices they might make 
 sweet melody, and daily sing praises in their £ongs ; and 
 beautified their feasts, and set in order the solemn times 
 until the end, that they might praise His holy name, and 
 that the Temple might sound from morning." * Thus 
 it is, that while our Service witnesseth for the wisdom 
 of ancient Christendom, and comes to us instinct with 
 the spirit of the Eitual of Western Europe in the olden 
 days, it also sanctifies the year with its holy times. 
 
 Again, the Service bears its witness against the pre- 
 vailing selfishness of the world. The first requisition 
 our Lord made of those whom He invited to become 
 His followers was, that they should deny themselves. 
 It was requiring the hardest struggle through which 
 the human heart could pass, thus to lay aside its own 
 will and the devotion to its own interests, and, with a 
 philanthropy which extends to a suffering world, to go 
 forth willing to sacrifice itself for the benefit of others. 
 In the earnestness of worldly strife we forget the chain 
 which binds us to those who share the same nature with 
 ourselves. It rusts and decays in the atmosphere of 
 this sordid world. 
 
 1 Eedes. xlvii. 3. 
 
144 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Now, it is the object of our faith to restore this, to 
 bid man come out from himself, to show him there are 
 other and higher interests than his own for which to 
 live, and a nobler field open to him than the following 
 out of his own private ends. It is to teach him to seek 
 not his own but others' good. 
 
 And this lesson is taught us through the medium of 
 its Services. Look at the very nature of its prayers, 
 how many of them are for others, how it looks through 
 the whole scale of humanity, and offers up its petitions 
 for all men everywhere. The Church directs us to 
 pray for those who rule over us in spiritual and in 
 temporal things ; for the sick and the afflicted ; for 
 travelers on the land and on the tossing sea ; for father- 
 less children and widows ; for those who are desolate 
 and oppressed ; and for all who in the weakness of their 
 nature are " sounding on their dim and perilous way." 
 Everything in her Services teaches us to look out of our- 
 selves to our risen Lord, or else to His poor and deso- 
 late children who are scattered abroad throughout this 
 evil world, that they may be saved through Christ for- 
 ever. 
 
 And so we might take the Services separately, and 
 show how each one is characterized by the spirit of 
 broad and Catholic love. The only prayer which our 
 Lord Himself taught us to use — that which bears His 
 name — is throughout in the plural number. And how 
 does the petition, " Thy Kingdom come," carry us be- 
 yond the bounds of our own particular Church or coun- 
 try, breaking down the narrow barriers of nationality, 
 and inspiring us with great thoughts of that happy 
 period pictured by the prophets, when every heart shall 
 
LITURGIES. 145 
 
 bow in love to the Prince of peace, and righteousness 
 mantle this renovated earth ! 
 
 Above all, in the blessed Sacrament of the Body 
 and Blood of Christ, how solemn the lesson we are 
 taught of our union, not only with our Lord, but with 
 all His true followers ! ¥e feel that we are alike 
 members of His mystical body, and, as St. Paul declares, 
 " we being many are one bread and one body ; for we 
 are all partakers of that one body." 1 We realize truly 
 the Communion of Saints, as we gather about that Altar 
 which has been the home of His children since He de- 
 parted from the earth, and will unite them all in one 
 holy fellowship, until He comes again to claim His 
 heritage. Who can be worldly, or uncharitable, or nar- 
 row himself down to paltry and selfish interests, when 
 the Heavens seem opened to him, and its magnificent 
 rewards are almost within his reach, as he joins with 
 Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of 
 Heaven, to laud and magnify the glorious name of Him 
 that sitteth upon the throne ! 
 
 And still more touchingly is this witness borne by 
 her commemoration of the dead. The world would 
 teach us to forget them, that the chain is broken which 
 bound us to those who have passed away, and when 
 ages have rolled between us, they have obliterated every 
 trace of union. But the Church tells us it is not so, 
 and in the Festival of All-Saints she shows we have 
 fellowship also with the dead. Like the men of Galilee, 
 after the Ascension, we still stand upon the mountain 
 and look upward toward Heaven, that we may see the 
 pathway of their glory. 
 
 1 1 Cor. x. in. 
 7 
 
146 TEE CEURGE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 And this is a feeling which to the Early Christians 
 was sanctioned by the living Apostle, whose words were 
 yet fresh in their hearing. St. Paul, in his Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, gives the long catalogue of those who had 
 died in the faith, and commends them to the converts 
 to whom he wrote as that " great cloud of witnesses " 
 who were surrounding their path, seeing how they ran 
 the race for Eternal life. And particularly he refers to 
 Abel, the first martyr, and declares that by the blood he 
 shed he still speaks to them. Four thousand years had 
 indeed passed since he went down to the tomb, its ear- 
 liest fruits in this world of sin, yet here we learn how 
 lasting is his memorial. With what an eternity of du- 
 ration his voice is gifted, as it is borne down upon the 
 breath of ages ! The Apostle speaks as if their interest 
 in his example had been as great as that of those who 
 lived in his own generation. 
 
 And such continued to be the feeling of the Early 
 Church toward the dead. In that first age of the faith, 
 as indeed it has been in every age, the reverence for 
 the departed was associated with all that was lofty and 
 elevated in man's character. Their union with them 
 was not a mere assertion to be repeated in the Creed, 
 but a real and tangible tie. And one thing which gave 
 an intensity to this feeling was the fact that it was an 
 age of martyrdom. This invested their remembrance 
 of the dead with an interest which can never be called 
 forth in times of peace and quietness. The living lis- 
 tened to the words which the departed had bequeathed 
 to them, with a more reverent awe, because they came 
 from those who had "fought the good fight,' 1 and been 
 faithful to the end, though they had to give their lives 
 or the faith. 
 
LITURGIES. 147 
 
 We can never indeed understand " the Church of 
 the Apostles," or imagine the feelings with which they 
 looked upon the dead, unless we realize the view they 
 took of martyrdom. It was to them a glorious privilege to 
 be " counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ's name." 
 The injunction — "When they persecute you in one 
 city, flee to another " — seemed to have no place in their 
 remembrance. Some, who had themselves suffered in 
 a fearful persecution, writing to St. Cyprian, refer to 
 the tragical endings of their friends as " the glorious, 
 we will not say, deaths, but immortalities of martyrs." 1 
 
 And this was the spirit of St. Cyprian himself, when, 
 as Bishop of Carthage, he was called to face danger and 
 death. When Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, had been 
 condemned to an exile which before long was to end in 
 martyrdom, St. Cyprian writes to him. Were those 
 words of sympathy which he sent across the Mediter- 
 ranean ? Nay, rather of congratulation for the sufferer 
 and triumph for himself, that he, too, was a member of 
 the persecuted Church : " We have been made acquaint- 
 ed, dearest brother, with the glorious testimonies of your 
 faith and courage, and have received with such exul- 
 tation the honor of your confession, that we count 
 ourselves also sharers and companions in merits and 
 praises." 2 
 
 And again in his Epistle to some who for a year 
 had been suffering in prison for the faith, St. Cyprian 
 thus runs the parallel between the seasons of the year 
 and their lives. We copy it entire, not only for the 
 tone which pervades it, but also for its singular elo- 
 quence : " Behold, the heavenly dignity in you is sealed 
 
 1 St. Cyp., Epis. xxv. 2 St. Gyp., Epis. lvi. 
 
148 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 by the brightness of a year's honor, and already, in the 
 continuance of its victorious glory, has passed over the 
 rolling circle of the returning year. The rising sun and 
 the waning moon enlightened the world ; but to you, 
 lie who made the sun and moon was a greater light in 
 your dungeon, and the brightness of Christ glowing in 
 your hearts and minds irradiated with that eternal and 
 brilliant light the gloom of the place of punishment, 
 which to others was so horrible and deadly. The win- 
 ter has passed through the vicissitudes of the months ; 
 but you, shut up in prison, were undergoing, instead of 
 the inclemencies of winter, the winter of persecution. 
 To the winter succeeded the mildness of spring, rejoic- 
 ing with roses, and crowned with flowers ; but to you 
 were present roses and flowers from the delights of 
 Paradise, and celestial garlands wreathed your brows. 
 Behold, the summer is fruitful with the fertility of the 
 harvest, and the thrashing-floor is filled with grain ; but 
 you who have sown glory, reap the fruit of glory, and, 
 placed in the Lord's thrashing-floor, behold the chaff 
 burned up with unquenchable fire ; you yourselves as 
 grains of wheat, winnowed with precious corn, now 
 purged and garnered, regard the dwelling-place of a 
 prison as your granary. Nor is there wanting to the 
 autumn spiritual grace for discharging the duties of the 
 season. The vintage is pressed out-of-doors, and the 
 grape which shall hereafter flow into the cups is trod- 
 den in the presses. You, rich bunches out of the Lord's 
 vineyard, and branches with fruit already ripe, trodden 
 by the tribulation of worldly pressure, fill your wine- 
 press in the torturing prison, and shed your blood in- 
 stead of wine ; brave to bear suffering, you will; 
 
LITURGIES. 149 
 
 drink the cup of martyrdom. Thus the year rolls on 
 with the Lord's servants ; thus are celebrated the vicissi- 
 tudes of the seasons with spiritual deserts, and with 
 celestial rewards." x 
 
 All this to us is only a distant picture, seen through 
 the dimness of fifteen hundred years, but to those then 
 living it was a fearful reality. The men of that gen- 
 eration realized, as we cannot, the heroic self-devotion 
 which marked the painful entrance of these combatants 
 into the mansions of their Father's glory. They knew, 
 too, that " the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the 
 Church." "We find, therefore, a glory gathered around 
 the memory of the martyrs which could never be claimed 
 for the heroes of this world's conflicts, and the Church 
 now remembers them in her most solemn anthem, when 
 she declares, " The noble army of martyrs praise 
 Thee ! " 
 
 In all the ancient Liturgies, indeed, there was a 
 prayer " commemorative of the faithful departed," 
 which, at the Eeformation, was omitted from our 
 Prayer-Book for fear it would give countenance, in the 
 minds of the uneducated, to the prayers for the dead 
 which formed one error of the Eoman Eitual. It was 
 in these words, and, as will be at once perceived, was 
 only an affectionate remembrance of those who had 
 slept in the faith: "¥e commend unto Thy mercy, O 
 Lord, all other Thy servants which are departed hence 
 from us with the sign of faith, and now do rest in the 
 sleep of peace. Grant unto them, we beseech Thee, 
 Thy mercy and everlasting peace, and that, at the day 
 of the general resurrection, we, and all they which be 
 
 1 St. Cyp., Epis. xv. 
 
150 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 of the mystical body of Thy Son, may altogether be set 
 at his right hand, and hear that His most joyful voice : 
 ' Come unto me, O ye that be blessed of my Father, 
 and possess the kingdom which is prepared for you from 
 the beginning of the world ! ' Grant this, O Father, for 
 Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and Advocate." 
 
 And how much in accordance with every feeling 
 of our nature is this witness of the Church to our union 
 with the dead ! It recognizes a tie binding us to them 
 of which we cannot, if we would, divest ourselves. In 
 our goings out and our comings in, when we rise and 
 when we lie down, everywhere the thoughtful mind 
 finds itself in immediate contact with those who have 
 already passed the threshold of the Infinite and entered 
 the unknown Eternity. 
 
 They speak to us by their works. We are surround- 
 ed by the evidences of their existence. Everything 
 which we have we owe to them. In science, and lit- 
 erature, and art, they prepared the way and wrought 
 out all their discoveries, and when the long course of 
 ages had perfected these, we came to enjoy them. " "We 
 reap that whereon we bestowed no labor : other men 
 labored, and we are entered into their labors." ' Our 
 own life here is but a span — too short to accomplish 
 much for ourselves — and well, therefore, is it for us, 
 that the dead have been before us and toiled for our 
 benefit. How different in this respect is our situation 
 from that of the first man who lived upon the earth ! 
 Around him all was in its primeval freshness, and he 
 saw no traces of other beings like himself. He inherit- 
 ed nothing, no records of experience, no beaten path in 
 
 1 John iv. 38. 
 
LITURGIES. 151 
 
 which he could tread, no footsteps to guide him, not 
 even a grave to show that others had preceded him in 
 the race of life. He stood alone. He was the first of 
 that long procession of human beings who were to be- 
 queath to us the result of all their efforts — how they 
 prospered and how they fell — their trials and successes 
 as life went on. 
 
 And that chain has gone on, each generation con- 
 tributing its share for the benefit of those who come 
 after, until it has reached our day. But is there riot 
 something sublime in this view of human life, this 
 union of the past and the future, this tie which links 
 men together in one mighty fellowship ? They who 
 went before us laid the foundation of that vast edifice, 
 which through ages has been gradually rising in power 
 and strength ; and when they were called away from 
 their labors, others of this common brotherhood who 
 succeeded them took up the implements of labor which 
 they had dropped, and built on where they had been 
 forced to leave off, until at length they too ceased from 
 their work. And thus the task came to us, that we 
 also might do our share. ¥e are to contribute our por- 
 tion toward the welfare of our race, that when we have 
 gone we may not have lived in vain for those who 
 come after. Thus it is, then, that from the distant past, 
 from the populous centuries that have gone, there 
 comes to us a solemn and mysterious sound, which is 
 their voice. The earth is filled with their memories, 
 and in each moment of busy, eager, craving life, we are 
 brought in contact with the records of the dead. "Well, 
 then, may they find a place in the devotions of the 
 Church ! 
 
152 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 But there are more tender and touching memories 
 than these. There are the memorials of those who are 
 not separated from us by distant ages, but who have 
 gone from our very midst. Peacefully are they sleep- 
 ing in the populous cities of the dead, for the sphere 
 of life is narrow compared with the mighty confines of 
 the dead. They need no care, for their spirits are with 
 God, and their bodies are committed to Him who cares 
 even for the dust of His saints. Winter storms sweep 
 above them, but they heed them not ; spring with its 
 flowers, and autumn with its golden pomp, pass by, 
 but they wake no consciousness in the silent sleepers 
 below. The sunbeams fall brightly upon their graves, 
 but they shall see no light until the last morning calls 
 them again from the dust ; and there they silently await 
 our coming. 
 
 But by how many ways do they speak to us ! One 
 by one they have passed away, and perhaps not until 
 they were gone forever did we realize their worth, or 
 feel that we had not prized them as we should ; then 
 there flowed back upon the mind remembered acts of 
 kindness and words of affection, until the very tones 
 seemed to linger in our hearing, and forms which now 
 are dust stood before us in all the well-known linea- 
 ments of life. Thus it is that the dead are united to 
 us by the chain of memory, which runs back to what 
 they once were, and they speak to us in our firesides 
 and in our chambers, so that we realize that, though 
 invisible, life itself is filled with their presence. The 
 world around, with all its familiar scenes, becomes con- 
 secrated by the memory of the dead. " The communion 
 of saints " gives a holy imaginativeness to our daily life. 
 
LITURGIES. 153 
 
 Is it not well, then, thus with reverence, when we 
 offer up our prayers in God's house, to remember the 
 dead % It is not a subject of mere speculation or of 
 sentiment alone ; it is one of practical use, which can 
 give a coloring to our daily life. The times are be- 
 coming intensely worldly. Day by day the crowds 
 around us seem to be waxing more earnest in the pur- 
 suit of wealth, and the sound of their exertions rises 
 up with ceaseless din. Is it not well, then, to avail 
 ourselves of any arguments which will break these 
 associations and connect us with the spiritual world % 
 And what can do it so effectually as this remembrance 
 of the dead % They are ever passing away, and there- 
 fore the appeal is constantly recurring. Year by year, 
 as familiar faces depart, comes to us the proof that 
 here we are only strangers and pilgrims. Our^ treasures 
 have gone before us, and thus time is ever strengthen- 
 ing the ties which bind us to the spiritual world. The 
 departed are remembered among the holiest associa- 
 tions of the past. " In memory of the dead " is the 
 highest consecration which language can give. They 
 are not dead to us, but are still near and familiar 
 friends. They are to us " a presence and a power ; " a 
 thousand things in the pilgrimage of life are touched 
 by our association with them, as if by a quickening 
 spirit, and we never go to the Altar of our Lord with- 
 out remembering them, when we " bless God's holy 
 name for all His servants departed this life in His 
 faith and fear, and beseech Him to give us grace so to 
 follow their good examples, that with them we may be 
 partakers of His heavenly kingdom." 
 
 For us, too, the very Burial Service has its solemn 
 
154 TEE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 comfort, as it sublimely refers forward to the hour 
 when Christ shall come again, and the slumbering dead 
 be raised to meet Him. And the elevating truths of 
 Scripture are gifted with a new meaning to our hearts, 
 when those hearts have been touched with sorrow. We 
 rejoice, as it lays open to us the precious glories which 
 await the just, and follow on its revelations as they rise, 
 steadily and calmly, clear as the angel's trumpet of 
 which they tell, until they merge into the sound of tri- 
 umph and of victory, and we hear echoing through our 
 desolate homes those cheering words of blessing and 
 encouragement : " I would not have you to be ignorant, 
 brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sor- 
 row not, even as others which have no hope. For if we 
 believe that Jesus died and rose again, even them also 
 which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." 
 
 "We see, then, how the Church by her Services takes 
 hold of this trait in our nature and uses it for our own 
 spiritual benefit. "We ask: "Where are the departed \ 
 Where are the confessors and martyrs of early days \ 
 "Where are the just who since their time have passed 
 away from the sight of earthly eyes? Is it possible 
 that we are no longer inhabitants of the same world, 
 but that each has to think of the other in a perfectly 
 different state of existence ? Is the link which bound 
 us together broken, or are they still conscious of what 
 we are doing here, and indulge in the confident antici- 
 pation that we shall after a time be added to their 
 society ? " The answer is : " They are still with the 
 Church, though invisible. They are k under the altar,' 
 and thence, as the Apostle shows us, 1 they raise their 
 1 Rev. vi. 9. 
 
LITURGIES. 155 
 
 voices to Him who is the God both of the dead and of 
 the living. ' They have gone nearer Christ than we 
 are. They see greater things than we see. They are 
 safe from the world, which we are not.' With them 
 the toils and sorrows of this world are over, and as they 
 look back upon them, now that they have secured their 
 bliss, they must realize in all its fullness the lesson con- 
 tained in that noble line of the poet — 
 
 1 The glory dies not and the grief is past.' n 
 
 Thus we have " come to the spirits of just men 
 made perfect," who, though absent in body, are yet 
 present in spirit. And when we worship in our earthly 
 temples, small is the company of the living compared 
 with the invisible congregation of the dead. They have 
 only passed before us, the first ranks of the Church, 
 united still to us their brethren. One by one the 
 Church commemorates the leaders in " the sacramental 
 host of God's elect," the Apostles of our Lord ; and of- 
 ten does she refer, as we have shown, to those who were 
 their followers. Thus it is that the Church opens our 
 sphere of vision even beyond the bounds of this world, 
 and teaches us, too, to overcome our selfishness. 
 
 We have had occasion, in these pages, in several in- 
 stances, to refer to that Great Eastern Church, of which, 
 with its sixty-five millions of souls, we know so little, 
 and about which we so often, from our ignorance, speak 
 so disparagingly. 1 In concluding these sketches, we 
 
 1 In a late speech by Canon Licldon, in London, he thus refers to the 
 Oriental Church : " The Eastern Church fares hardly at the hands of the 
 Europeans of the West. Rome cannot forgive the rejection of her au- 
 thority; those who are farthest from Rome cannot forgive the sacra- 
 mental characteristics of this ancient communion. Doubtless there are 
 
156 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 would give one more illustration from the liturgical 
 Services of that Oriental Church, to show the power 
 which these forms must exert in impressing the hearts 
 and minds of their people. "We wish to bring before 
 our readers a picture of the Rites and Services with 
 which, in those Eastern lands, they accompany the 
 burial of the dead, that they may see how this Ritual, 
 which has come down through more than a thousand 
 years, inculcates the most lofty truths of our faith. 1 
 
 .By their Services for the departed, Death is made 
 the teacher of the living, and compelled to bear with 
 him the tidings of his own defeat, proclaiming, wher- 
 ever he goes, that his sting has been taken from him. 
 Thus the child learns the awful truth of his future exist- 
 ence from the corpse of the parent, who, living, would 
 never have taught it to him ; and the dead infant, 
 whose feeble lips had not yet power to frame the first 
 faint stammering word, preaches with a terrible elo- 
 
 features in her system which we might wish to sec changed; but when 
 that Church has had freedom, she has shown her capacity for missionary 
 labor of the noblest kind. It might seem, too, as if God had assigned to 
 different parts of His great family the duty of illustrating different aspects 
 of the Christian life. Rome manifested the beauty and power of high 
 organization ; England maintained and exhibited the sacred rights of the 
 individual conscience ; Western Christendom, in its various forms, illus- 
 trated the active and creative side of Christianity, its progress and its ag- 
 gressiveness ; to the Eastern Church has been confided the duty of show- 
 ing by persistent endurance the excellence of the passive virtues. For 
 four hundred years it might be said by them, • Therefore we both labor 
 and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the 
 Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe.' " 
 
 1 For the graphic view of these Services the writer would acknowledge 
 his indebtedness to the Christian Remembrancer, April, 1850. Of course 
 these Services can only be seen in their fullness in lands in the East in 
 which the Greek Church is dominant. 
 
LITURGIES. 157 
 
 quence, to the men grown old in sin, of the life and the 
 judgment to come. 
 
 In those Eastern homes scarce is the last agony over 
 when the salutation of peace is heard upon the threshold, 
 and the servant of the Church appears to watch over her 
 departed child. Most often it is the priest himself who 
 has received the dying breath, and given the last abso- 
 lution ; but at least he has been there to anoint the ab- 
 solved penitent with holy oil, and celebrate on his behalf 
 the Eucharistic Sacrifice. And now the dead body, 
 made sacred by these rites, has become exclusively the 
 Church's care, and from the moment that the priest ap- 
 pears in presence of the corpse, the friends retire to per- 
 form the only work which yet remains for them, in 
 prayer and intercession. He enters, the neophyte pre- 
 ceding him with the cross, and standing, while he signs 
 the corpse with the threefold sign, he utters a brief 
 prayer. And, ever as he speaks, he fills the room with 
 clouds of fragrant incense, ascending up like the suppli- 
 cations of the Saints, that wait in their white robes till 
 their brethren shall be fulfilled. 
 
 But not long does he linger there, nor allow this 
 member of the great family of Christ — who now by 
 his death has entered into visible communion with the 
 Church triumphant — to remain among these strangers 
 of the earth. When himself has closed the eyes, and 
 sealed them with the sign of the Son of Man, until that 
 day when, opening at His call, they shall behold Christ 
 glorious in the heavens, he bids the people raise his 
 sleeping charge and bear it forth to the Church, the 
 antechamber of that grave which is the door of Heaven . 
 Thus, not above an hour or two after the moment of 
 
158 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 death, the corpse is carried to that holy place which is 
 now alone his home on earth ; and then it is that, by the 
 sure tokens of the sweet death-chant and the coming of 
 the Cross, the dwellers of the Eastern city know that 
 one is passing from among them to his rest. Yet truly 
 to their eyes it still must seem rather a march trium- 
 phant than a funeral-train, for there is no gloom, no dis- 
 mal pomp, no black pall, hiding, as it were, some sight 
 of shame ; but only that music glad with holy hope, and 
 the breath of flowers mingling with the sweeter incense, 
 and, ever caught up from voice to voice, the deep, exult- 
 ing cry : " Thou art the Resurrection ; Thou, O Christ ! " 
 Long before the procession comes in sight, through 
 the busy, crowded streets, they hear, floating through 
 the clear air, soft and wild as the music of a dream, the 
 low, faint murmur of a mournful harmony. It is a 
 strain peculiar as it is melodious, most strangely sweet 
 and sad, and so utterly unlike all other melodies that 
 none ever yet heard it and failed to recognize the glo- 
 rious old death-chant which for so many centuries has 
 been the lullaby with which the Eastern Christians have 
 sung their dead to sleep. It is a noble song of Victory 
 — the victory of the Cross over Death and Hell — the 
 triumph of the Holy One, who was dead and is alive, 
 over the corruption He was never suffered to behold. 
 It is ancient beyond all memory of man — a whisper 
 which has echoed down through the crash and turmoil 
 of the passing centuries, from those first days of purity, 
 when the one Church Catholic was still unrent by the 
 sore divisions of these last-afflicted times. Age after 
 age, while the great monarchies have been swept away, 
 leaving behind a scarce-remembered name, and genera- 
 
LITURGIES. 159 
 
 tions successively have rushed past that dark brink that 
 binds our mortal view, unchanging over the individual 
 dead, those time-honored words have uttered one sacred, 
 unfailing promise, as earnest to an ever-living hope. 
 And as the well-known strain of wailing sweetness 
 penetrates among the busy crowds, each one desists 
 with eager haste from his employment to listen to the 
 good tidings it conveys. Clear and distinct that an- 
 them of the Eesurrection is intoned by the deep voices 
 of the priests, in words so simple, and yet so powerful, 
 that the most ignorant among the people cannot fail to 
 gather and to understand the wondrous meaning ; while 
 answering back, in tones more pure and thrilling still, 
 the sweet voices of the youthful neophytes take up the 
 chorus, of which the burden is ever how man through 
 death attains to life eternal ! 
 
 Then, far and near, wherever those words of prom- 
 ise, like an angel's voice, are heard, each individual bows 
 his head, and signs himself on breast and brow with 
 the Holy Cross, which alone can be his passport to the 
 land of deathless joy, while, with earnest supplication, 
 as the truth of Eternity is thus palpably brought before 
 him, he utters the appointed ejaculation : " Lord, have 
 mercy upon us ! Christ, have mercy upon us ! " 
 
 So universally are these observances inculcated on 
 all who witness the journeying homeward of a corpse, 
 that the very little infants are seen with their tiny 
 hands striving to make the sacred sign, as yet so far be- 
 yond their comprehension, and murmuring with their 
 stammering lips the early-taught petition. 
 
 Then all reverently stand aside, with head uncov- 
 ered, as the funeral appears in the distance. The con- 
 
160 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 veying of the body to the church, which is the first 
 part of the ceremonial, is most often performed at sun- 
 set, for they love that the pale glory of the dying day 
 should rest upon the face where the light of life hath 
 faded ; and thus it mostly happens that the last sunbeam 
 flashes with its expiring radiance full upon the lofty 
 cross that first meets the eye as the procession comes in 
 sight. It is borne several paces in advance, carried up- 
 right by a young child, the youngest of the neophytes 
 — for the Eastern Church, with a touching humility, 
 ever appointed in all her offices that none should be 
 permitted to the high office of Cross-bearer save only 
 these little ones, of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 Their innocent hands alone shall presume to touch that 
 sacred token — holier in their innocence, as they believe, 
 than even those of the anointed priest ; for they think 
 that those tender lambs, newly washed in the baptismal 
 waters, have more than any others been made Kings 
 and Priests unto God and His Father. Three young 
 children, then, walk solemnly in front, the one clasping 
 the great cross within his folded arms, and bending down 
 his head behind it with humble reverence, so that at a 
 distance it seems self-impelled through the air, while, 
 on either side of him, his two companions bear the 
 symbols of the Holy Trinity, which are painted in signs 
 easily understood, on circular panels, elevated on long 
 poles. The three neophytes, according to invariable 
 rule, have their heads uncovered, so that their long, 
 flowing hair falls on their shoulders and veils the down- 
 cast eyes they never raise. It is a touching thing to see 
 them thus on the threshold of life marshaling with such 
 reverence and solemnity an elder brother to the tomb. 
 
LITURGIES. 161 
 
 Immediately behind them walk the priests, who, 
 from the first moment the mortal breath departed, have 
 come forward as guardians of that heir of immortality, 
 and have allowed no hand but theirs, the anointed of 
 the Lord, to minister unto his last necessity. So soon 
 as, by the mighty barrier of death, he was exiled from 
 his family, from the love of friends, and the sweet chari- 
 ties of home, then has the Church opened wide her 
 arms to receive him, and gathered him, like a jealous 
 mother, to her own loving care. 
 
 There are never less than three or four priests ac- 
 companying each funeral, for among the Eastern Chris- 
 tians the distinctions of rank and station cease with this 
 mortal life. These holy men walk abreast, heralding 
 the corpse, and wearing the flowing, priestly robes, which 
 they never quit on any occasion, with one hand swing- 
 ing to and fro the silver censor, and with the other 
 holding the book from which they chant the blessed 
 words of promise ; then treading closely in their steps, 
 even as it is meet all men should follow the leading of 
 anointed guides, the bearers of the dead advance. They 
 wear no mourning-dress, for they conceive not that is a 
 day of mourning, but, rather, one of triumph, and they 
 carry between them, by the aid of two long poles, an 
 open bier, covered only with a fair, white cloth. 
 
 And there, reposing calmly, with the sunlight on 
 his brow, the departed lies in holy rest, and ready to 
 meet the gaze of all. Never would they hide from the 
 eyes of men that countenance serene, but rather bid all 
 come to look with thankful hearts upon the face of the 
 dead, for they count him in all things a conqueror — 
 vanquisher over the mortal existence with all its pow- 
 
162 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 
 
 ers of agony, and over the last enemy, which shall be 
 destroyed with all its nameless dread. From the death- 
 struggle and the life-struggle comes he forth alike tri- 
 umphant ; the first shall appall, the last shall torture 
 him no more ; therefore, they place upon his brow the 
 conqueror's crown, and robe him in the fairest dress 
 he ever wore on gala-days, for what high festival in 
 all his past career was like to this ? "What was that 
 hour of deep rejoicing, when at the altar his young 
 bride took him by the hand, to walk with him the pil- 
 grimage of earth, compared to the far brighter moment 
 when death clasped him still more tenderly, to lead 
 him forth into the bliss of life eternal ? So shall no 
 mournful shroud be put upon him, but the gayest dress, 
 in token of festivity, with the laurel-wreath of victory. 
 His arms are crossed upon his breast in mute, submis- 
 sive faith, and clasped within them is the representa- 
 tion of our Lord upon the cross. As he is borne along, 
 all press with eager haste to look upon the countenance 
 of him who truly is even as they represent him, " Vic- 
 tor atque victima, atque ideo victor quia victima," and 
 generally they follow him upon his road, gazing still, 
 fascinated by the aspect of his rest. 
 
 All who desire it may accompany their departed 
 brother to the church, where the corpse is reverently 
 placed immediately before the holy doors, the feet 
 turned eastward and the cross held upright, ever placed 
 there carefully before the fixed, calm eyes, as though 
 the intensity of their gaze upon the holy symbol had 
 set them in that rigid stillness. The deacon then lights 
 the appointed number of tapers at the head and foot of 
 the bier, while every individual present receives one in 
 
LITURGIES. 1G3 
 
 his hand, so that although the sunshine streams through 
 the open door and windows, the church is yet full of 
 another softer radiance, in token that the Church of 
 Christ hath truly light within her, which is not that 
 of mortal day. The priests then range themselves 
 around the corpse, and if there be a Bishop present, as 
 often happens, he stands at the head, his hand upraised 
 in the appointed form, so that the Church's blessing 
 overshadows still that sacred dead, who seems to lie so 
 meek and tranquil, because of the holy power thus shed 
 upon him. The Service then commences with the 
 chanting of the Psalm Qui habitat (Psalm xci.) and 
 others, followed by prayers most beautiful and full of 
 consolation, ranging ever round the one sublime hope 
 of the rising of the flesh in glory, as though the Church 
 conceived that the very sight of that corpse could 
 awaken no other thought ; and ever at the close of each 
 the priest pauses for a moment, while the voices of the 
 deacons and the neophytes take up again the glad exult- 
 ing cry, " Thou art the Besurrection." 
 
 The lesson is then read, 1 beginning with the words, 
 " I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, con- 
 cerning them which are asleep," and terminating, " and 
 so shall we ever be with the Lord." When it is over 
 there is an interval of silence, although the deep ab- 
 straction of all present shows that the voice of the soul 
 is not hushed ; and then, at a signal from the priest, 
 the friends of the departed come forward one by one 
 to press the final kiss upon his lips, uttering at the same 
 moment a stated prayer, that the whole body of His 
 Church may soon be made partakers of His glorious 
 
 1 1 Thess. iv. 13-17. 
 
164 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 resurrection. And there is a deep wisdom in thus con- 
 necting the last expressions of mortal tenderness with 
 the aspiration after that holier love in which all shall 
 he one hereafter. The calm farewell thus ended, they 
 retire from before the altar, the words yet lingering on 
 their lips which speak of a blessed meeting with him 
 they are now quitting, where they shall part no more ; 
 the priest advances in front of the corpse and delivers 
 an oration ; that taken from the Homily ' of St. John 
 Chrysostom, which is chiefly used by the Eastern Church 
 on solemn occasions, is beautifully appropriate. 
 
 As the last words die away in the solemn tones of 
 the priest, there is a pause, and then, mingling in one 
 deep voice of triumph, once more the cry arises from 
 every individual present, so oft repeated as though they 
 could not cease to tell their joy : " Thou art the Resur- 
 rection ; Thou, O Christ ! " 
 
 This, for the present, terminates the ceremony. 
 The priest makes the sign of the cross, first over the 
 dead, then over the living, thus uniting them in the 
 common hope, and so departs from the church, fol- 
 lowed by the whole concourse of the people, leaving 
 the corpse alone lying beneath the altar— like the souls 
 that were bid to rest a little season— the lights burning 
 round it solemnly, and the incense still hanging over it 
 like a cloud of fragrance. Thus the dead rests for the 
 night, surrounded, as the ancient faith declares, with 
 the holy angels, who linger forever round the altar. 
 At sunrise the priests return for their charge, and the 
 train goes forth in the same order as before, and how- 
 ever great the distance from the church to the grave- 
 
 1 \oyos irapcuveTixos. 
 
LITURGIES. 165 
 
 yard, the priests cease not to chant the hymn of immor- 
 tality, and over the burning plains which often they 
 traverse, the sweet strain floats away in distant echoes, 
 making the desert joyful with hope. 
 
 In the larger cemeteries there is very often a small 
 chapel especially consecrated for the " Missa pro De- 
 functis," but this is not celebrated till thirty days after 
 the death. It is, therefore, to the spot of interment 
 that the train proceeds at once, where the priest takes 
 up his station at the head and the cross-bearer at the foot 
 of the grave, and ever as they approach, louder and loud- 
 er, not from the neophytes alone, but from all present, 
 swells the cry proclaiming that He is the resurrection. 
 But soon the voices are reverently hushed, while many 
 holy prayers are said, and at last the deacons, at a sign 
 from the priests, lower the corpse into the grave, which 
 is always very shallow ; then, while still upon the face 
 the last ray of earthly light is beaming, the last token 
 is ffiven of the human love which was the sunshine of 
 his soul. . The friend that in life lay nearest to that 
 still heart — most often the cherished wife that was the 
 faithful guardian of his happiness — draws near, and 
 kneels down on the very brink of his new couch, and 
 with a voice of passionate entreaty, into which is gath- 
 ered all the deep longing of the widowed soul, she 
 
 utters three times the word " Ella," come, and if he 
 answers not — if that most mournful appeal fails to win 
 him from his silent rest, then do they know that he is 
 dead indeed, and far beyond all reach of that poor, 
 impotent affection. She withdraws, the chief of those 
 who loved him on this earth, that the representative of 
 love divine may take her place. The priest gently cov- 
 
166 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 ers the quiet countenance with a white veil; next he 
 pours into the grave a little wine, in type of that which 
 he trusts the departed shall taste anew in the kingdom 
 of his Father ; and, finally, taking in his own anointed 
 hands as much of earth as they can hold, he strews it 
 on the dead body in the form of a cross, uttering aloud 
 these words, " The earth is the Lord's and the fullness 
 thereof ; the round world, and they that dwell therein." 
 
 And truly replete with a glorious and solemn mean- 
 ing is that sentence when uttered at such a moment. 
 For if the earth be the Lord's and " the fullness there- 
 of," full even to repletion is it with the bodies of the 
 dead, which thus are proclaimed to be His, which none 
 shall ever pluck out of His hand, but which from their 
 dwelling in the dust shall awake and sing, when the 
 earth shall cast out the dead. Having spoken these 
 words, the priest and deacons proceed to fill up the 
 grave; some of the nearest relatives alone being allowed 
 to assist in this sacred office, and that a hired hand 
 should have a share in it is wholly inadmissible. As 
 the form disappears under the earth, the friends press 
 forward, and each one says, as he gives his last look, 
 that which to his great and exceeding comfort his heart 
 believes, " It is well with thee, my brother! " Again, 
 over the grave the holy sign is made, responded to by 
 all around, and so they depart and leave him to his 
 rest. 
 
 But this is only for a season. Most unlike the chill 
 and systematic oblivion which seems to overspread the 
 memory of those departed from among ourselves, every 
 effort is made by the Eastern Christians to bind, as it 
 were, the living spirit to themselves more closely still 
 
LITURGIES. 167 
 
 by holiest links. Although he hath gone home a little 
 while before them, his name is on their lips in every 
 prayer, and anxiously do they look forward to the Feast 
 of the Commemoration, which takes place on the thir- 
 tieth day. Then, the Holy Eucharist is celebrated, and 
 afterward it is offered whenever the friends feel desir- 
 ous to renew so blessed a remembrance of him, not lost, 
 although to their eyes of flesh unseen, and they love on 
 such occasions to decorate the church with flowers, and 
 to fill it with lights and all things which most betoken 
 joy and gladness, so that many even of the little chil- 
 dren, who may never have seen the departed brother or 
 friend, are thus led specially to connect death only with 
 images of holy hope and rejoicing in the risen Lord ; 
 nor can they ever dread it as the enemy that shall shut 
 them out from the love of those to whom their own 
 hearts cling. For ever, on the anniversary of the de- 
 parture, the survivors fail not to repair to the grave 
 where they have hid their treasures, and there kneeling 
 down, they press a fond, clinging kiss upon the earth 
 that covers them, and whispering the well-remembered 
 and beloved name, they bid him have patience yet a 
 little till they come, and assure him, with many a soft, 
 endearing word, that he is not forgotten, but that faith- 
 fully they love him still. 
 
 Such is the lesson taught by this ancient Ritual. 
 Death is seen no longer as the King of Terrors arid the 
 destroying enemy, but himself the slave and laborer of 
 that Mercy which doth bless in life eternal; constrained 
 by the very power which seems to annihilate and kill, 
 to fit the children of the kingdom for an existence 
 which is never-ending joy, and with his own hand to 
 
168 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 lead them through the tomb where he hath no power to 
 hold them, as through an open portal, to the glory of 
 the never-fading day. Even as of old the captives were 
 compelled to tell out the great deeds of their conquer- 
 ors, so should this vanquished and stingless Death for- 
 ever proclaim aloud the victory of the resurrection. As 
 the herald of immortality he appears before men ; as the 
 gentle Messenger sent by the Lord of Life, to gather 
 with gentle pity into His merciful anus the poor wan- 
 derers exiled into this sad world of weeping, and safely 
 lead them homeward to their Father's house ! 
 
 How high and holy then is the doctrine taught by 
 the Eastern Church through its Burial Service ! It is 
 that the one holy office which Death should perform in 
 this world is, to sit, robed in garments of celestial white, 
 at the door of man's Universal Tomb, in likeness of 
 that glorious angel who once rolled back the stone from 
 the gate of the Sepulchre, and sat thereon. And to all 
 who come there seeking their beloved and weeping, as 
 she came and wept who loved much, this angelic Death, 
 in tones as sweet as was the voice of that bright Messen- 
 ger, says gently : " Why seek ye here the living among 
 the dead ? He is risen, and therefore all they that sleep 
 in Jesus will God bring with Him ! " 
 
V. 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 " The golden evening brightens in the west; 
 Soon, soon to faithful warriors eomes the rest ; 
 Sweet is the calm of Paradise the blest." 
 
 W: W. How. 
 
V. 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 We have thus endeavored to present our readers 
 with a picture of the Church of the Apostles in its doc- 
 trine, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers. Not, 
 indeed, merely to gratify curiosity have we thus un- 
 rolled the records of the past, and summoned up, over 
 the wastes of eighteen centuries, the testimony of these 
 ancient believers. Our object was to give, even in this 
 fragmentary form, a glimpse of the ancient Church, as 
 it stood before the world in its Unity, pure in doc- 
 trine, reverencing, in its ceaseless worship, the Sacra- 
 ments of its Lord, and ever sending up those holy words 
 of prayer which we have now inherited. 
 
 The picture carries with it its own solemn lesson. 
 Involuntarily we feel the contrast between those early 
 times of earnest faith, and the worldliness of these lat- 
 ter days. It requires no voice of an inspired prophet 
 to show how far we have wandered from the example 
 of those who stood nearest to the days of our Lord's 
 pilgrimage on earth. From our own times we gather 
 but little material to add to the sacred record of the 
 Acta Sanctorum. 
 
 There is a legend of the Eastern Church which, 
 fable as it is, may give a speaking warning to the fol- 
 
172 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 lowers of our Lord " through the ages all along." It 
 is the story of the seven Christian youths of Ephesus, 
 who in one of the later persecutions of the third cen- 
 tury fled from the city and took refuge in a cavern in 
 the neighboring mountains. There they fell asleep, 
 and by a miracle their slumber was prolonged till more 
 than a century had passed ; then they awoke, and un- 
 conscious of the flight of time, or that their sleep had 
 lasted beyond a single night, they cautiously returned 
 to the city. 
 
 But everything seemed changed. ISTew buildings 
 had arisen, and the whole aspect of the once familiar 
 streets was altered. The very air and manner of 
 the people were different ; and, feeling as if they 
 were walking in a dream, they secretly inquired 
 whether there were any Christians in the city. 
 " Christians ! " was the reply ; " why, we are all Chris- 
 tians." On the one side they were pointed to a splen- 
 did church, surmounted by the once despised Cross, 
 and on the other to schools founded to teach the doc- 
 trines of Jesus. What gladness filled their hearts as 
 they learned the mighty renovation which had swept 
 over the world, and heard that the faith had penetrated 
 even into Caesar's palace ! 
 
 But soon they learned the reality. It seemed to 
 them that with the apparent triumph of the cause the 
 spirit of the faith had departed. The self-denial and 
 holiness of the days they once knew were gone, and, 
 sorrowing, they exclaimed : " You have shown us many 
 edifices apparently devoted to the Christian faith, and 
 countless multitudes who have assumed that name; 
 but where, oh where, are the Christians \ " 
 
CONCLUSION. 173 
 
 And so they returned in sadness to their cave, and 
 He who " giveth His beloved sleep " wrapped them 
 once more in unconsciousness ; but it was that dream- 
 less slumber not to be broken until their Master should 
 come again. They went to rejoin again the confessors 
 and martyrs of their own age, with whom alone they 
 could sympathize in thought and feeling. 
 
 In this way it is that the legend brings before us 
 the plain and undeniable contrast between the Church 
 in the martyr days of Diocletian, and its successor 
 under the courtly favor of Theodosius. And so, in 
 this volume, we would show the wide difference be- 
 tween the Church of the third century and that of the 
 nineteenth. We would have our readers see how 
 much nobler was the life of those early days, which 
 was symbolized by the Cross, as those who bore the 
 Christian name were obliged to tread their path over 
 the thorn and brier, with bleeding feet and aching 
 heart, till life became one long sacrifice to Christian 
 duty. And if, now, all this is changed, and the world 
 smiles around us, so that the Christian life has ceased 
 outwardly to be a warfare and a conflict, but goes peace- 
 fully on, surrounded by all spiritual blessings, until it 
 merges quietly in the grave, we may well ask the ques- 
 tion, whether we have not lost some of the most ele- 
 vated traits of Christian discipline. 
 
 "We would have those, then, who have accompanied 
 us through these pages, to realize that there is a tie 
 which binds them to those early days which even the 
 intervening ages have not broken. Then the dead in 
 Christ will cheer them on their way, sweet voices speak 
 to them from within the veil, and the spirit of the Up- 
 
4 
 
 174 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 per Sanctuary be breathed into their hearts. Thus they 
 will be prepared for this holy fellowship, and when 
 earth to them is no more, they will find themselves 
 with the friends who had passed away before, once 
 more around them ; the pledges of their Lord fulfilled 
 to the utmost, and every want of their immortal being 
 satisfied ; for then they will be members of the Church 
 in Heaven. 
 
 And how glorious will be the change from the un- 
 certainty of this world to that bliss which, when once 
 it is gained, can be lost no more forever ! What rapt- 
 ure to the spirit, when the shore is reached, and it feels 
 that temptation and trial forever are passed, and the 
 long ages which stretch before it are to be marked only 
 by a bliss which it hath not entered into the heart of 
 man to imagine ! — 
 
 11 With what a bounding thrill 
 He'll feel the airs that never chill, 
 
 The strength that knows not years ! 
 No cloud in all the Heaven's sweet blue ; 
 No more of doubt, where all is true ; 
 Nor death to close the longing view ; 
 
 No dream of future tears ! 
 
 u The way is passed, and he can stand, 
 As if on Jordan's farther strand ; 
 As if, the palm-branch in his hand, 
 
 The chaplet on his brow, 
 A wanderer resting at his home, 
 A pilgrim at the holy dome, 
 To Zion's mountain he has come — 
 
 Eternity is now ! " 
 
 1 The late Bishop (Burgess) of Maine. 
 
 THE END. 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 i. 
 
 THE LENTEN FAST.— Eleventh Edition. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE DOUBLE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH.— Twenty-first Edition. 
 
 III. 
 THE' CHEISTMAS HOLYDAYS IN ROME.— Fourth Edition. 
 
 IV. 
 EAELY JESUIT MISSIONS IN NORTH AMEEICA.— Fourth Edition. 
 
 V. 
 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.— Seventh Edition. 
 
 VI. 
 EAELY CONFLICTS OF CHRISTIANITY.— Third Edition. 
 
 VII. 
 
 NEW YOEK IN THE OLDEN TIME. 
 (Only 350 copies, printed by G. P. Putnam & Co.) 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE UNNOTICED THINGS OF SCEIPTUEE.— Second Edition. 
 
 IX. 
 HISTORICAL SCENES IN THE OLD JESUIT MISSIONS. 
 
PRIMARY TRUTHS OF RELIGION. 
 
 By Right Rev. THOMAS M. CLARK, D. D., LL. D., 
 
 BISHOP OF EHODE ISLAND. 
 
 1 vol., 12mo. Price, $1.00. 
 
 From the Allgemeine Literarische Zeitung, Berlin : 
 
 " We find in this book of the Bishop of Bhode Island a contribution to 
 Christian apologetics of great interest and value. The book discusses, in fivo 
 parts, the problems of Theism, the fundamental principles of morals, revela- 
 tion, inspiration, and Christianity. The great questions pertaining to these 
 several heads Bishop Clark has most satisfactorily solved vrith a genuine 
 philosophical spirit, and on the basis of comprehensive studies. The work 
 gives evidence throughout of the author's familiarity with the fundamental 
 problems of the philosophy of religion. The Bishop is, without doubt, an 
 eloquent and original thinker; and his work, which, in its logical develop- 
 ment, is acute, and clear, and precise, will enchain the interest of the readers 
 for whom it has been written. As a short but exhaustive book for doubters, 
 we greet this production of one of the most distinguished members of the 
 American Episcopate, and wish for it an abiding success." 
 
 From the New York Express: 
 
 "The author of this valuable little work is a distinguished Bishop of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church, and has conferred a benefit on his co-religionists 
 and on earnest Christians generally, by the production of this estimable hand- 
 book of Orthodoxy. Avoiding dogmatic theology, he clearly and with great 
 eloquence presents the scriptural and historical evidences in favor of revealed 
 religion, meeting the cavils of objectors with calm and well-digested argu- 
 ments that will claim attention from even the most confirmed skeptics. The 
 chapters on the evidences of the great truths of Christianity are especially 
 worthy of commendation. Indeed, the whole work will prove an acceptable 
 addition to the controversial religious literature of the day. 1 ' 
 
 From the Providence Journal: 
 
 "We are late, quite beyond our intention, in calling attention to a volume 
 of about three hundred pages, recently issued by the Appletons, and written 
 by Bishop Clark. It may seem superfluous to do more than announce the 
 appearance of a work from an author so well known among us; but it is a 
 book of too great importance and value to be left to such chances of circula- 
 tion and reading as come simply from the weight of the Bishop's name. It 
 deserves to be read, and that very widely, and among nil classes of intelligent 
 people, not because ho wrote it, but because it puts into a portable, compact, 
 clear, and convincing shape the great truths on which our Christian faith rests. 
 We hardly know a more useful service to which Bishop Clark could have put 
 his hand. It is one for which he has peculiar, and, we may say, unusual quali- 
 fications. Few men, certainly few ecclesiastics, could deal" with religious skep- 
 ticism so boldly and yet so "fairly, with a vigorous faith in great principles, 
 and yet with a" liberal spirit and breadth of View. Few men in his position 
 could be so little trammelled by the timidities and conformities which might 
 prevent a free and fearless grapple with the questions now in debate between 
 Christianity and unbelief." 
 
 From the English Churchman and Clerical Journal, London: 
 "Bishop Clark has published this pithy treatise to meet the unsettled state 
 of mind of his own countrymen in relation to the 'fundamental principles of 
 faith and morals.' The language is admirably lucid and clear, and the mean- 
 ing of the writer is never buried under profound and technical phraseology, 
 too often used in such works. Clergymen will find it excellently fitted foi 
 teaching to thoughtful working-men in their parishes." 
 
 Wbw York: D. APPLETON & CO.. Pdbushkes. 5-19 & 551 Bioadwat. 
 
PRIMARY TRUTHS OF RELIGION. 
 
 From the Church Opinion, London : 
 
 " Bishop Clark's work is invaluable, as it is not written in a style above th« 
 capabilities of the general public, but, in words easy to be understood, refute* 
 the doctrines of Positivism." 
 
 From the New Englander : 
 
 " ; Primary Truths of Religion,' by Bishop Clark, of Ehode Island, is full 
 of seed-thoughts, which, like all good seed, are themselves the fruit of a ripe 
 growth of earnest reflection. In very simple statements, and with little 
 
 Earade of reasoning, the author has given the results of much careful think- 
 lg in respect to the great truths which are fundamental to the Christian 
 faith. He has not, like too many bishops, contented himself with repro- 
 ducing the received doctrines of the faith in oft-repeated platitudes, but has 
 used the English of cultivated men to express certain definite opinions of his 
 own. In short, he has produced a very readable, thoughtful, and useful vol- 
 ume, on the most important subjects, which is none the less useful because 
 it is condensed and brief.'" 
 
 From Old and New: 
 
 "We have long been impressed with the idea that the primary truths 
 of morals and religion should be taught far more frequently in our higher 
 schools of learning, and not be left for theological seminaries. Bishop Clark's 
 book would be an admirable manual for such instruction. Its style is simple 
 and clear ; its historical statements are accurate ; its spirit is of the broadest 
 Christian charity ; its tone toward all opponents is one of the utmost liber- 
 ality and fairness. For such a purpose as that, no less than for general read- 
 ing, we heartily commend it." 
 
 From a review in the Literary World, London : 
 
 "We welcome this book from the pen of an American Bishop. Dr. Clark 
 has done well in this volume on ' The Primary Truths of Religion.' With 
 clearness, conciseness, logical force, breadth of tone, wise discrimination, con- 
 vincing statement, he deal3 with fundamental facts. Indeed, the whole work 
 is one which may be put into the hand of any thoughtful, sincere unbeliever 
 in the great truths with which it deals. Its candor will awaken admiration, 
 and its reasoning lead to faith." 
 
 From the Bsoton Transcript: 
 
 "This clear and candid treatise is not dogmatic, but entirely true to its 
 title. The writer, in a plain and lucid style, addresses himself to the unsettled 
 condition of mind which prevails so extensively in regard to the doctrines 
 that underlie all our ' Systems of Divinity.' His answers to fundamental 
 questions are given in a catholic spirit that recognizes the fact that doubt is 
 not sinful in itself, and there is no little skepticism which is to be treated 
 with sympathetic and rational consideration." 
 
 From The Living Church : 
 
 " The book of the Bishop of Rhode Island is timely. It is of a kind whicl 
 the church needs. It is fair, honest, and open. It does not sneer at what i£ 
 does not understand. It addresses itself in simple and honest terms to hcn- 
 est and thoughtful men. It is calm and judicial. It states opposing views 
 with great fairness ; it takes up a position which must command respect, and 
 It states it in terms which are moderate, and show appreciation of the fore* 
 of opposing views." 
 
 newYoek: D. APPLETON & CO.. Publishers, 540 & 551 Broaivwa* 
 
The Recovery of Jerusalem. 
 
 Capt. WILSON, R. E., and Capt. WARREN, R. E., 
 Etc., Etc. 
 
 1 vol., Svo. Cloth. With Maps and Illustrations. 
 
 Trice, $3.50. 
 
 " This is a narrative of exploration and discovery in the City of Jeru- 
 salem and the Holy Land. It is a volume of unusual interest to the stu- 
 dent of antiquities, and throws much light upon what was already partially 
 known about the Holy City, and opens up many curious speculations and 
 suggestions about things that were entirely unknown until the excavations 
 and explorations commenced which the book faithfully records. The 
 maps and illustrations much enhance the interest, and aid in a thorough 
 understanding of the things described. It is a volume of over 400 pages, 
 8vo., bound in cloth, and altogether beautifully presented." — Springfield 
 Republican. 
 
 Christ in Modern Life. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED AT ST. JAMES'S CHAPEL. 
 
 By Rev. STOPFORD A. BROOKE. 
 
 1 vol., 12mo, Cloth Price, $2.00. 
 
 The main thought which underlies this volume is, that the ideas 
 which Christ made manifest on earth are capable of endless expansion, to 
 suit the wants of men in every age ; and that they do expand, developing 
 into new forms of larger import and wider application, in a direct pro- 
 portion to that progress of mankind, of which they are both root and 
 sap. If we look long and earnestly enough, we shall find in them the ex- 
 planation and solution not only of our religious, but even of our politi- 
 cal and social problems. All that is herein said is rested upon the truth 
 that in Christ was Life, and that this Life, in the thoughts and acts which 
 flowed from it, was, and is, and always will be, the light of the race 
 of man. 
 
 D. APPLETON & 00, Publishers, New York, 
 
Musings over the " Christian Year" 
 
 AND 
 
 "Lyra Innocentium." 
 
 By CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE. 
 
 Together with a Few Gleanings of Recollections of the Rev. John 
 Keble, gathered by Several Friends. 
 
 One small thick i2mo. Printed on tinted paper. Price, $2.00. 
 
 " The ' Christian Year,' by Rev. John Keble, has found a place in the 
 hearts of pious Churchmen, second only to that of the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' 
 among Christians generally. It consists of poems on all the church-days 
 of the year, in which the deepest thoughts of a saint, a poet, a scholar, 
 and a pastor, when stirred with the strongest feelings both of Christian 
 and of man, find expression ; and these ' Musings ' of Miss Yonge will 
 interest every admirer of that famous work. In a series of annotations 
 on these poems, Miss Yonge has sought to seize and express the subtle 
 meaning of the poet, and explain a few difficulties in their arrangement 
 and allusions. Nearly one-third of the book is occupied with recollections 
 of Rev. John Keble, in which is presented with singular distinctness 
 the life of one of the saintliest men of modern times. The style of Miss 
 Yonge is one of charming purity and simplicity, and the entire volume 
 as a book of devotion will be read with profit by all Christians." — Church 
 Journal. 
 
 " All the principal religious festivals of the year are appropriately al- 
 luded to in this volume, with suitable reflections thereon. The book par- 
 takes more of a series of sermons than any thing else, although prayers 
 are occasionally introduced. All whose religious views coincide with 
 those expressed in the work will find it interesting and instructive." — 
 Rochester Democrat. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., 
 
 549 & 551 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 
 
A thoughtful and valuable contribution to the best religious literature 
 of the day. 
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 
 
 A Scries of Sunday Lectures on the Relation of Natural and Revealed 
 Religion, or the Truths revealed in Nature and Scripture. 
 
 By JOSEPH LE CONTE, 
 
 PROFESSOB OF GEOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY IN THE UNrVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 \2mo, cloth. Price, $150. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PBJSSS. 
 
 " This work is chiefly remarkable as a conscientious effort to reconcile 
 the revelations of Science with those of Scripture, and will be very use- 
 ful to teachers of the different Sunday-schools." — Detroit Union. 
 
 "It will be seen, by this resume of the topics, that Prof. Le Conte 
 grapples with some of the gravest questions which agitate the thinking 
 world. He treats of them all with dignity and fairness, and in a man- 
 ner so clear, persuasive, and eloquent, as to engage the undivided at- 
 tention of the reader. We commend the book cordially to the regard 
 of all who are interested in whatever pertains to the discussion of these 
 grave questions, and especially to those who desire to examine closely 
 the strong foundations on which the Christian faith is reared." — Boston 
 Journal. 
 
 "A reverent student of Nature and religion is the best-qualified man 
 to instruct others in their harmony. The author at first intended his 
 work for a Bible-class, but, as it grew under his hands, it seemed well to 
 give it form in a neat volume. The lectures are from a decidedly re- 
 ligious stand-point, and as such present a new method of treatment." 
 — Philadelphia Age. 
 
 "This volume is made up of lectures delivered to his pupils, and is 
 written with much clearness of thought and unusual clearness of ex- 
 pression, although the author's English is not always above reproach. 
 It is partly a treatise on natural theology and partly a defense of the 
 Bible against the assaults of modern science. In the latter aspect the 
 author's method is an eminently wise one. He accepts whatever sci- 
 ence has proved, and he also accepts the divine origin of the Bible. 
 Where the two seem to conflict he prefers to await the reconciliaticn, 
 which is inevitable if both are true, rather than to waste time and words 
 in inventing ingenious and doubtful theories to force them into seeming 
 accord. Both as a theologian and a man of science, Prof. Le Conte's 
 opinions are entitled to respectful attention, and there are few who will 
 not recognize his book as a thoughtful and valuable contribution to the 
 best religious literature of the day." — New York World. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y.