Some Essentials of Religion Part 6

Our Lord is present with us in the Eucharist for certain very definite and specific purposes and we must now proceed to enquire what those purposes are. We shall be on safe ground if we say that Our Lord as the great Head is present with the members of the Church which is His Body to do those things which He did or commanded to be done at the last supper.

Why then did Our Lord at the Last Supper inst.i.tute and ordain the Sacrament of the Holy Communion and command it to be celebrated and observed by His Church until His coming again?

THE CONTINUAL REMEMBRANCE.

It was ordained for the continual remembrance of the Sacrifice of the death of Christ, a commemoration of Our Saviour's meritorious Cross and Pa.s.sion. This commemoration is made before G.o.d, before ourselves, before the world.

(_a_) It is a commemoration of the Saviour's death before G.o.d. The whole service of Holy Communion as celebrated in the Church of England, with the exception of certain exhortations and invitations, consists of prayers addressed, as all prayer must be, to G.o.d. The most important of these prayers is the one which we call the prayer of consecration.

In this prayer the Celebrant, as the commissioned leader and mouthpiece of the Congregation, commemorates before G.o.d that which Our Lord did in the upper room as the Pa.s.sover feast on the same night in which He was betrayed.

Before G.o.d in this prayer commemoration is made of His gift of His only begotten Son to suffer death for our redemption, before G.o.d commemoration is made of that which Christ did for us upon the Cross, before G.o.d the inst.i.tution of this Sacrament of perpetual memory is recalled, before G.o.d the very acts and words of Our Saviour Christ in inst.i.tuting and ordaining this Holy Sacrament are solemnly rehea.r.s.ed and enacted. It is impossible for any Priest of the Church of England to celebrate the Holy Communion, or for any member of the Church of England to take part in the celebration of this Holy Sacrament, without making before G.o.d the most solemn commemoration of the death of Christ and His all sufficient Sacrifice which it is possible for the mind of man to conceive. And in so doing we are at one with the Historic Churches in all ages. If it be objected that G.o.d needs no such reminding of what Christ did, then the objection is equally valid against all mention of Christ's holy name in prayer as the ground and basis whereby we trust such prayer will be accepted and answered by G.o.d. The commemoration before G.o.d in the Eucharist is but the doing in act by the whole body of the faithful of that which each individual Christian does when he says, at the close of his prayers, "Grant this for Jesus Christ's sake," or, "through the merits of Christ Jesus Thy Son Our Lord."

It is the doing in act, and by use of those very elements and words and actions which Jesus has Himself commanded, of that which we do when in the Litany we supplicate, "By the mystery of Thy Holy Incarnation; by Thy Holy Nativity and Circ.u.mcision, by Thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation, by Thine Agony and b.l.o.o.d.y Sweat; by Thy Cross and Pa.s.sion; by Thy Precious Death and Burial; by Thy Glorious Resurrection and Ascension and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord deliver us."

This aspect of the Eucharist is perfectly expressed in Canon Bright's well known hymn, a hymn which by many not of Dr. Bright's School is regarded as their favourite hymn, and which has commended to them the truth of the commemoration before G.o.d, in a way that might not have been possible had the same form of words been cast in a prose setting.

And now, O Father, mindful of the Love That bought us, once for all, on Calvary's Tree, And having with us Him that pleads above We here present, we here spread forth to Thee That only offering perfect in Thine eyes The one true pure, immortal Sacrifice.

Look, Father, look on His anointed face And only look on us as found in Him Look not on our misusings of Thy grace, Our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim For lo! between our sins and their reward We set the Pa.s.sion of Thy Son Our Lord.

Our Blessed Lord is therefore present as the Head of the Church which is His Body, as the great High Priest to enable us in union with Him to plead His Sacrifice, which is the sole ground of our approach to and acceptance with G.o.d. In that which has been called the Companion hymn to Dr. Bright's, part of which I have quoted just above, the Saintly Bishop Bickersteth expressed the same great truth from his standpoint as an Evangelical Churchman.

O Holy Father, who in tender love Didst give Thine only Son for us to die, The while He pleads at Thy right hand above We in One Spirit now with faith draw nigh, And, as we eat this Bread and drink this Wine, Plead His once offered Sacrifice Divine.

(_b_) But not only is the commemoration of the Lord's death made before G.o.d, it is also made before and amongst ourselves. The breaking of the Bread, the blessing of the Cup with the use of Our Saviour's words do remind us in the most solemn manner of the cost of our redemption and the great love wherewith He loved us and gave Himself for us.

The more we ponder G.o.d's amazing love in Redemption, the more wonderful does it appear and the deeper and more ardent becomes our love whereby we love Him who first loved us.

Perhaps the chiefest essential in the Christian life is that we should have a living faith in G.o.d's mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of His death, and nothing helps us to secure this essential so much as the due and devout observance of the Lord's Supper ordained by Our Blessed Master Himself in the same night in which He was betrayed and on the very eve of His tremendous death and Sacrifice.

(_c_) There is a third aspect of the commemoration which must not be overlooked. The Eucharist is a means of proclaiming or preaching the Lord's death before the world until His coming again. "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till He come" (1 Corinthians, XI. 26). There is not s.p.a.ce at my disposal to do more than merely call attention to the evidential value of the Holy Eucharist to the truth of Christianity and to the Gospel history. But its constant celebration week by week is a fact, a fact which even the world must take note of, a fact which proclaims as no other inst.i.tution of religion does that Jesus died and rose again. And He, Who has promised to be present where two or three are gathered together in His Name, He, Who has pledged His presence to His Church in the proclamation of the Gospel, is ever mindful of His promise when His followers meet together at His table, and amongst themselves and before the world proclaim and herald the death of Him Who died to be the Saviour of all mankind.

THE SPIRITUAL FOOD OF HIS BODY AND BLOOD.

The Holy Communion was ordained, and Our Blessed Lord is present in that Holy Sacrament, in order that He, the true Bread from Heaven, may feed us with the Spiritual food of His Body and Blood. In the language of the Prayer Book itself "it is our duty to render most humble and hearty thanks to Almighty G.o.d our Heavenly Father, for that He hath given His Son Our Saviour Jesus Christ, not only to die for us, but also to be our Spiritual food and sustenance in (this) Holy Sacrament."

Whilst our Catechism a.s.serts that "The inward part or thing signified in the Lord's Supper is the body and Blood of Christ which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper."

The seeker after the truth must read and compare very carefully the following pa.s.sages of Holy Scripture. St. John VI., the whole Chapter; St. Matthew, XXVI. 26-30; St. Mark XIV. 22-26; St. Luke XXII, 15-21; 1 Corinthians X. 15-22; 1 Corinthians, XI. 23-end.

If this be done there will remain no doubt but that Our Blessed Lord proclaims Himself to be the Bread of Life, the food of man's spiritual nature and being, which needs food quite as much as his physical and mental nature and being; that He ordained the Holy Communion to be the means and channel whereby we receive His flesh and blood, that is His very perfect life and nature, according to His promise as recorded in St. John VI. verses 48-58; and that St. Paul so understood its purpose and meaning.

Realizing that we are moving in the realm of the Spiritual and meditating upon the words of the Incarnate G.o.d, the very truth who can neither deceive or be deceived, we will not ask with the unbelieving Jews how can this man give us his flesh to eat, we will leave all questions as to the manner how where Christ Himself has left them, and with a most thankful heart will make the words of Hooker, the great Elizabethan Divine, our own, "What these elements are in themselves it skilleth not, it is enough that to me which take them they are the body and blood of Christ, His promise in witness hereof sufficeth, His word He knoweth which way to accomplish; why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful Communicant but this, O My G.o.d thou art true, O My Soul, thou art happy."

THE REASONABLE, HOLY AND LIVING SACRIFICE OF DISCIPLESHIP.

There is another purpose why Our Blessed Lord is present with us in Holy Communion. He is present as the Great Head of the Church, in order that we His members with Him and in Him may offer ourselves a living Sacrifice holy, acceptable unto G.o.d, which is our reasonable service (Romans XII. 1). We have sadly forgotten the real essential meaning of worship. What is worship? Surely self oblation. It is the offering of ourselves, our bodies, souls and spirits, our talents, our gifts, all we have and all we are to G.o.d for service. But this is just what we poor sinners cannot do of ourselves, it if only _in Christ_ that we can give ourselves to serve G.o.d and humanity. And so Our Blessed Lord comes to us as the Head of the Church which is His Body, the living organism in which He lives and through which He carries on His work. He comes and pleads on our behalf the merits of His atoning death and Sacrifice once offered, He comes and applies to us the saving efficacy of His atonement, He feeds us with His Body and Blood, making us one with Himself so that He dwells in us and we dwell in Him, so that we are one with Him and He one with us; and then, in Him, in union with His eternal oblation of Himself, He offers and presents us, His Body, as living Sacrifices to the eternal Father, and sends us forth to do service for Him and our brethren, not in our own strength and power but in His to whom all power in Heaven and earth has been given.

The present era in the history of the Church and the world is one which calls for great power if Christ is to be brought to a distracted disorganized sin-laden, sin-weary world,--and if the world is to be brought to Christ its one and only possible helper and Saviour, its Saviour from present and future evils in the age that now is as well as in the ages to come. That power is in Christ and is made over to His followers when in simple faith they come to Him in a receptive att.i.tude and with the determination to use it. The fundamental importance of the Holy Communion is, that it stands forth preeminently as the princ.i.p.al channel through which this power is bestowed.

May all those who bear His name and desire to do Him service realize what an inexhaustible treasury of Divine strength and power the Master has provided for us in this Sacrament of His Love. Just a few words in conclusion as to our use of it.

It is food, therefore, it must be received frequently and with regularity. It is food, therefore it presupposes life and at least a degree of health in those who take it. A corpse cannot receive food, the sick have no desire for it. The Holy Communion is for those who are Baptized and have received the life of the Risen Lord. It is for those who have been forgiven and who long to show their grat.i.tude by becoming strong through the a.s.similation of Christ the Bread of Life to do Him service and perform His will.

It is food, therefore not a Spiritual luxury for good people, but the ordinary necessary food for us all, poor weak pardoned sinners, G.o.d's Children reconciled in Christ, who are trying to become good and to love Him who first loved us.

The realization of our own nothingness and the all sufficiency of Christ is the condition of heart and soul requisite for a good Communion. Repentance for the fact that it should be so with us, faith that He will supply all our needs, because He alone can and because He so wills, is the att.i.tude of those who would really know what this Sacrament was meant to be and can be to those who come to Him "as sick to the Physician of Life, as unclean to the Fountain of Mercy, as blind to the Light of Eternal Splendour, as needy to the Lord of Heaven and earth, as naked to the King of Glory, as lost sheep to the Good Shepherd, as fallen creatures to their Creator, as desolate to the kind Comforter, as miserable to the Pitier, as guilty to the Bestower of pardon, as sinful to the Justifier, as hardened to the Infuser of Grace."

VII.

IMMORTALITY

By The Rev. Canon Cody, D.D., LL.D., Toronto.

IF A MAN DIE SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?

This question is as old as the race. Men cannot let it alone. It exercises a strange fascination. One generation, immersed in pleasure or in business, may think that _this_ world is quite enough and may push the question aside: but the next generation will ask with increased intensity: "If a man die, shall he live again?" At one period of his life a man may care little for a question that carries him beyond the horizon of the present; but by and by no question comes to him with more poignant urgency.

The question will not rest, because death will not let us alone. As long as death breaks into our family circles, the problem will recur.

Death came with his legions during the War and compelled a fresh answer to his challenge. No one who can think or feel is able to look unmoved on the face of death: he must ask "Shall he live again?"

It is pa.s.sing strange that this should remain to any degree an open question. Why have not men reached a decisive answer? As a matter of fact, the history of nations and religions shows that man's tendency is to answer "Yes, he will live again." The natural inclination of man everywhere is to believe, not in his extinction, but in his survival.

The Christian doctrine of immortality implies vastly more than the mere survival of personality after death. It involves a _quality_ rather than a _quant.i.ty_ of life. Let us first, however, gather the manifold rays of light from various quarters that illuminate a future life of any kind. Some of them may be only candle lights; but their combination will reveal a trend towards immortality. It will appear that it is less difficult to believe that a man will live again than to believe he will be extinguished by death.

WHAT HISTORY SAYS.

I. A survey of human history discovers some candle lights on the problem of survival. These lights are certain well-established facts.

1.--All peoples and tribes, in all ages and of all grades of intelligence have conceived a life beyond death. Isolated exceptions are so rare that they may be accounted for by the loss, through degeneration, of an instinctive idea. This belief built the Pyramids of Egypt, reared the great Etruscan tombs, led men to embalm their dead, placed food and utensils within the tomb for use beyond, slaughtered the horses of the dead warrior and burned the widow on the husband's pyre. There is a deep-rooted and universal feeling that the spirit of man is distinct from, and superior to, the body, and survives the body. The universal fact of mortality has suggested the universal belief in immortality. This is all the more remarkable in face of the lack of immortality in nature. Nature presents the aspect of an indefinite series of things succeeding one another. It would seem that the human mind is so constructed that it tends in the direction of belief in the survival of personality. This may be but a _candle_ light; yet it is a _light_.

2.--This belief in immortality persists. Various fancies and superst.i.tions have been outgrown and cast aside in the progress of the ages. Many conceptions of the past have proved unworthy to survive.

But this belief has a stronger grip on the modern world than it ever had in the past. While advance in knowledge reveals an interdependence of soul and body, it accentuates their distinction. To-day progress is interpreted to mean the triumph of the spirit and is marked by an increasing consciousness of the reality of the self which knows and wills and feels. A belief which thus survives must surely have in it something of the vitality of truth.

3.--This belief develops and waxes strong as life itself develops and climbs higher. The higher a man is in the scale of being, the wider his thoughts, the deeper his affections, the n.o.bler his life; the more likely is he to believe that the soul lives on. The more fleshly, selfish and materialistic is the life, the harder it is to be sure of immortality. Thousands may live in the slime, with the beasts, and may not have a steadfast hope in a life beyond; but the great-minded and great-hearted men of the race are surest of life everlasting. Tennyson once said to Bishop Lightfoot: "The cardinal point of Christianity is the life after death." Tennyson is supremely the poet of immortality.

It is his master thought; and herein he is typical of the greatest minds in human history. This belief, universal and persistent, is most vigorous in the hearts of the supreme men of our civilization.

4.--This belief, however vague may be the ideas in its context, exercises a real influence on life. It energises men. It nerves them to struggle and achieve. It enlarges their view. It inspires them for vaster enterprises. It enables them to do hard things and to persevere to the end.