[355] _ad Eph._ ii. iii. vi. xx; _ad Trall._ vii. xiii; _ad Phil._ iv.
vii; _ad Smyrn._ viii. ix.
[356] Irenaeus, _adv. Haer._, cp. esp. I. 10, II. 9, III. 1, 2, 3, 5,
12, 24.
[357] _Praescript. adv. Haereticos_; cp. esp. 3, 6, 15-21.
[358] Tertullian. _Praescr._ 9: 'Quaerendum est donec invenias, et
credendum ubi inveneris.'
[359] Hawkins' _Sermons on the Church_, p. 77.
[360] Rev. C. Gore, _Roman Catholic Claims_, p. 51.
[361] _Commonitorium_ ix. and xxiii.
[362] Bacon, Essay on _Truth_.
[363] S. John ii. 19-21.
[364] From a striking and bold article by Prof. Milligan, in the
_Expositor_, March, 1889.
[365] 1 S. Peter ii. 9; Rev. i. 6; Heb. x. 19. Justin Martyr, _Dialog.
c. Tryph._ 116; Irenaeus iv. 8; Origen, _Hom. vi. in Lev._ 5. For
other instances, cp. Seeberg, _ubi sopra_, or Gore, _Church and the
Ministry_, pp. 87-90.
[366] Eph. iii. 21 (R.V.); Rev. iv. 11, v. 11-14; 1 Cor. xi. 26.
[367] Cf. the striking account of the true Christian sacrifice in
S. Aug. _De Civ. Dei_, x. 6: 'Profecto efficitur ut tota ipsa redempta
civitas, hoc est congregatio societasque sanctorum universale
sacrificium offeratur Deo per sacerdotem magnum, qui etiam se ipsum
obtulit in passione pro nobis, ut tanti capitis corpus essemus.... Hoc
est sacrificium Christianorum, _multi unum corpus in Christo_. Quod
etiam sacramento altaris fidelibus noto frequentat ecclesia, ut ei
demonstretur, quod in ea re, quam offert, ipsa offeratur.'
[368] Acts xiii. 1.
[369] 1 Cor. xi-xiv.; cp. 1 Tim. ii.
[370] Clem, _ad Cor._ 1. esp. 40-45.
[371] _Contra Adv. Leg. et Proph._ xx. 39.
[372] Παῤῥησιαστὴς διὰ τὴν εὐγένειαν, Plutarch. _Vitae x Orat._ 7.
[373] The Dean of S. Paul's, _Advent Sermons_, p. 73.
[374] Wordsworth, _The Recluse_.
[375] Cp. Socrates iii. 16 Τὸ γὰρ καλὸν, ἔνθα ἂν ᾖ, ἴδιον τῆς ἀληθείας
ἐστίν. S. Aug. _de doctr. Chr._ ii. 18: 'quisquis bonus verusque
Christianus est, Domini sui esse intellegat ubique invenerit
veritatem.'
[376] Butler's _Analogy_, Pt. ii. ch. 1.
X.
_SACRAMENTS._
FRANCIS PAGET.
It is the characteristic distinction of some men's work that they are
resolute to take into just account all the elements and conditions of
the matter with which they deal. They will not purchase simplicity at
the expense of facts; they will not, by any act of arbitrary exclusion
or unreal abstraction, give up even the most distant hope of some real
attainment for the sake of securing a present appearance of
completeness. They recognise and insist upon all the complexity of
that at which they look; they may see many traits in it to which they
can assign no definite place or meaning, but they will not ignore or
disparage these; they will not forget them, even though for a while
they may have to defer the closer study of them; they will dutifully
bear them in mind, and carry them along through all their work; they
will let them tell with full weight in qualifying, deferring, or
precluding the formation of any theory about that of which these
traits, trivial or important, explained or unexplained, are a genuine
part. It is difficult to find a name for this rare and distinctive
excellence. But it is that which more than any other quality gives
permanence and fruitfulness to work: for even the fragmentary and
loosely ordered outcome of such thought is wont to prove germinant and
quickening as time goes on. Patience, honesty, reverence, and
unselfishness, are virtues which appear congenial with such a
character of mind; and the high, undaunted faith which is the secret
of its strength and the assurance of its great reward has been told by
Mr. Browning in _A Grammarian's Funeral_:--
Was it not great? did not he throw on God
(He loves the burthen)--
God's task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthen[377]?
It will be the chief aim of this essay to shew that in the embodiment
and presentation of Christianity by the Church of Christ there may be
seen an excellence analogous, at least, to this distinctive
characteristic of the work that all approve as best and truest upon
earth; that in contrast with many religious systems, attaining a high
degree of moral beauty and spiritual fervour, the historic Church
meets human life in full front; that it has been taught and enabled,
in its ministry of Sacraments, to deal with the entirety of man's
nature, not slighting, or excluding, or despairing of any true part of
his being. But it is necessary at the outset to define, in general and
provisional terms, the nature and the principle of that element in the
Church's faith and life which is here under consideration, and in
which especially this amplitude and catholicity of dealing with human
nature is to be sought. By the Sacramental system, then, is meant the
regular use of sensible objects, agents, and acts as being the means
or instruments of Divine energies, 'the vehicles of saving and
sanctifying power[378].' The underlying belief, the basal and
characteristic principle of this system, may be thus stated. As the
inmost being of man rises to the realization of its true life, to the
knowledge and apprehension of God and of itself, in the act of faith,
and as He whose Spirit quickened it for that act, greets its venture
with fresh gifts of light and strength, it is His will that these
gifts should be conveyed by means or organs taken from this world, and
addressed to human senses. His Holy Spirit bears into the faithful
soul the communication of its risen Lord's renewing manhood; and for
the conveyance of that unseen gift He takes things and acts that can
be seen, and words that can be heard; His way is viewless as the wind;
but He comes and works by means of which the senses are aware; and His
hidden energy accepts a visible order and outward implements for the
achievement of its purpose.
The limits of this essay preclude the discussion of the larger
questions which beset the terms of these definitions. Previous essays
have dealt with those truths which are necessarily involved in any
declaration of belief about the Christian Sacraments. The Being of
God, the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, the Atonement, the
Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, the Person and Mission of the
Holy Ghost, these are indeed implied in the Sacramental system of the
Church, not simply as component and essential parts of the same
building, nor as mere logical data, but rather as the activities of
the bodily life are pre-supposed in the exertion of the body's
strength. But these cannot here be spoken of: it is from preceding
pages of this book that thoughts and convictions must be gathered,
without which much that is here said will seem either unsubstantial,
or merely technical. It must be owned that the severance of any
subject from its context entails not only incompleteness, but also a
certain disproportion and obscurity in its treatment; since the lines
of thought which run out into the context are lines down which light
comes, light that is lost if they are closed. Indeed anything like a
full presentation or a formal defence of a detached part of Christian
teaching and practice seems intrinsically very difficult, and within
the limits of an essay impossible. There are, however, two questions
which must be asked concerning each several part of the whole
structure, and in regard to which something may here be said. The
first is: Does this part match with its surroundings in Christianity;
is it a harmonious and congenial element in the whole order, in the
great body of doctrine to which it claims to belong? The second is:
Does it match with the surroundings on which it claims to act, with
its environment in human life; is it apt for the purpose to which it
is addressed and the conditions among which it comes? It is here
proposed, as has been said, to consider in regard to the Sacramental
system the second especially of these two questions: but its
consideration will involve some thoughts which may perhaps be a
sufficient answer to the first. And thus something may also be gained
beyond the range of the present inquiry; for it seems fair to hold
that any part of Christian teaching in regard to which both these
questions can be answered in the affirmative, has a strong tendency at
all events to commend the claim of the whole scheme with which it is
inwoven and essentially continuous. For the perfection of inner
coherence in a structure whose main lines, at least, were projected in
the world under circumstances which preclude the thought of scientific
or artificial elaboration, and the perfection of adaptation, not to
the wishes and tastes of men, nor to the arrangements of society, but
to the deepest, fullest, surest truth of humanity; these are
characteristics which we should expect to find in a revelation from
God to man, and be surprised to find elsewhere.
I. Probably there come to most men who have got beyond the happy
confidence of youth, and the unhappy confidence of self-satisfaction,
times at which they seem to themselves to be living in a somewhat
perplexed and dimly lighted world, with tasks for which their strength
is insufficient, among problems which they cannot solve. And
Christianity is held out to them, or has been received by them, as a
way of life under these circumstances, as a method and a means of
living rightly; a system which does not indeed take all the perplexity
out of the world, or all the difficulties out of their course, but
which will give them light and strength enough to keep in the right
track, to use their time well, to take their proper place, and do
their proper work, and so to move towards the realization of all the
many parts and possibilities of their nature; a goal which may seem to
grow both larger and more distant the more one thinks about it.
Christianity professes to be that Divine word, which was faintly
surmised of old[379], and in due time was sent forth to bear men
wisely and surely through this world. Plainly one of the first and
fairest questions which may be asked in regard to it is, whether it
shews a perfect understanding of the nature with which it claims to
deal, and the life which it claims to guide.
Now when we set ourselves to think what we are for whom a possible and
satisfactory way of life is sought, what that nature is, whose right
principles and conditions of development are to be determined, one of
the first things which we discern is an apparently invincible
complexity. The life we have to order is a twofold life, it moves
through a twofold course of experience: the facts, the activities in
which we are conscious of it, are of two kinds; and men ordinarily
distinguish them as bodily and spiritual. Some such distinction is
recognised and understood by the simplest of us: it is imbedded beyond
possibility of expulsion in all language: stubbornly and successfully
it resists all efforts to abolish it. We know for ourselves that
either of the two groups of facts may stand out in clearer light, in
keener consciousness, at certain times: we may even for a while, a
little while, lose sight of either of them and seem to be wholly
occupied with the other: but presently the neglected facts will
re-assert their rights: neither the one group nor the other may long
be set aside without risk of the Nemesis which avenges slighted
truths:--the Nemesis of disproportion and disease. We may confuse our
sense of the distinction; we may shift or blur or bend whatever line
had seemed to mark it: we may insist on the qualifying phenomena which
forbid us to think of any barrier as impenetrable; but we cannot so
exalt or push forward either realm as utterly to extrude, absorb, or
annihilate the other: we cannot, with consistency or sanity, live as
though our life were merely spiritual or merely bodily. It is as
impossible steadily to regard the spirit as a mere function or product
of the body, as it is to treat the body with entire indifference, as a
casually adjacent fragment of the external world. But further, as the
distinction of the two elements in our being seems insuperable, so
does their union seem essential to the integrity of our life. Any
abstraction of one element, as though it could detach itself from the
other and live on its own resources, is felt to be unreal and
destructive of our proper nature. So it has been finely said,
'Materialism itself has here done valuable service in correcting the
exaggeration of a one-sided spiritualism. It is common, but erroneous,
to speak of man's body as being related to his spirit only as is the
casket to the jewel which it contains. But, as a matter of fact, the
personal spirit of man strikes its roots far and deep into the
encompassing frame of sense, with which, from the first moment of its
existence, it has been so intimately associated.... The spirit can
indeed exist independently of the body, but this independent existence
is not its emancipation from a prison-house of matter and sense; it is
a temporary and abnormal divorce from the companion whose presence is
needed to complete its life[380].' If we try to imagine our life in
abstraction from the body we can only think of it as incomplete and
isolated; as impoverished, deficient, and expectant. And certainly in
our present state, in the interval between what we call birth and
death, the severance of the two elements is inconceivable: they are
knit together in incessant and indissoluble communion. In no activity,
no experience of either, can the other be utterly discarded: 'for each
action and reaction passing between them is a fibre of that which
forms their mutual bond[381].' Even into those energies of which men
speak as purely spiritual, the bodily life will find its way, will
send its help or hindrance: sickness, hunger, weariness, and desire:
these are but some of its messengers to the spirit, messengers who
will not always be denied. And in every conscious action of the bodily
life the presence of the spirit is to be discerned. The merely animal
fulfilment of merely animal demands, devoid of moral quality, is only
possible within that dark tract of instinct which lies below the range
of our consciousness. When once desire is consciously directed to its
object, (wherever the desire has originated and whatever be the nature
of the object,) a moral quality appears, a moral issue is determined:
and the act of the body becomes an event in the life of the
spirit[382]. The blind life of brute creatures is as far out of our
reach as is the pure energy of angels: we can never let the body
simply go its own way; for in the essential complexity of our being,
another sense is ever waiting upon the conscious exercise of those
five senses that we share with lower animals:--the sense of duty and
of sin.
Thus complex are we,--we who crave more light and strength, who want
to find the conditions of our health and growth, who lift up our eyes
unto the hills from whence cometh our help. It would be interesting to
consider from how many different points of view the complexity has
been recognised, resented, slandered, or ignored; and how steadily it
has held its own. It may need some exercise of faith (that is to say,
of reasonable patience amidst half-lights and fragments) to keep the
truth before one, and to allow it its just bearing upon thought and
conduct, without exaggeration, or self-deception, or one-sidedness;
but there is neither health of body nor peace of mind in trifling with
it.
To us, then, being thus complex, Christianity presents a plan, a
principle, a rule of life. And that primary and inevitable question
which has been already indicated may therefore take this definite
form:--Does the scheme proposed to us acknowledge this our complexity?
does it provide for us in the entirety of our nature, with all that we
feel to be essential to our completeness? or must a part of our being
be huddled out of sight as we enter the precinct of the Church?
II. (1) Certainly the whole history and character of the Christian
Revelation would encourage us to hope that its bearing upon life would
be as broad as the whole of human nature; and that no true part of our
being would be excluded from its light, refused its welcome, or driven
from its feast. When we consider how Christianity came into the world,
it would seem strange and disappointing if its hold on human life were
partial and not inclusive: if, for instance, the body found no place
prepared, no help or hope provided for it. This was excellently said
by Alexander Knox: 'The gospel commenced in an accommodation to man's
animal exigencies which was as admirable as it was gracious; and which
the hosts of heaven contemplated with delight and wonder. The
Incarnation of the co-eternal Son, through which S. John was enabled
to declare what he and his fellow Apostles "had seen with their eyes,
what they had looked upon, and their hands had handled, of the Word of
Life," was in the first instance, so to consult human nature in its
animal and sensitive capacity, as to give the strongest pledge that a
dispensation thus introduced would, in every subordinate provision,
manifest the same spirit and operate on the same principle. For could
it be thought that the first wonderful accommodation of Godhead to the
sensitive apprehensions of man should be wholly temporary? and that
though that mystery of godliness was ever to be regarded as the vital
source of all spiritual benefits and blessings, no continuance of this
wise and gracious condescension should be manifested in the means,
whereby its results were to be perpetuated, and made effectual[383]?'
It would be possible to follow this mode of thought to a remoter
point, and to mark in the revealed relation of the Eternal Word to the
whole creation a sure ground for believing that whensoever, in the
fulness of time, God should be pleased to bring the world, through its
highest type, into union with Himself, the access to that union would
be as wide as the fulness of the nature in which He made man at the
beginning: that the attractive and uplifting bands of love would hold
and draw to Him every true element of that nature. But it is enough
for our present purpose to look steadily at the Advent and the Life of
Christ: to see how carefully and tenderly every fragment of the form
He takes is disentangled from the deforming evil which He could not
take: how perfect are the lineaments of the humanity He wears, how
freely and clearly all that is characteristic of our nature is
displayed in His most holy life; where 'the hiding of His power,' the
restraining of the beams of Deity[384] leaves room for the disclosure
in Him of whatever weakness and limitation properly belongs to us.
Surely it would be strange if the grace and truth which came among us
thus, proved partial or restricted in their later dealing with our
manhood: if any tract of our life were unvisited by their light and
blessing: if anything which He took were slighted in His kingdom,
forgotten in His ministry, precluded from His worship. The Incarnation
was indeed in itself a great earnest of the recognition which would be
accorded in the Christian life to the whole of our complex nature. But
there are, more particularly, two points in the coming and work of our
Lord which seem peculiarly intended to foreshow some abiding elevation
of the material and visible to share the honour of the spiritual
element in our life. They are so familiar to us that it may not be
easy to do full justice to their significance.
(2) For it does seem deeply significant that when the Word was made
flesh and dwelt among us, He took up the lines of a history replete
with forecasts of the consecration of material things: He met the
truest aspirations of a people trained to unhesitating exultation in a
visible worship, encouraged by manifold experience to look for the
blessings of Divine goodness through sensible means, accustomed and
commanded to seek for God's especial presence in an appointed place
and amidst sights on which their eyes would rest with thankful
confidence. That Church and nation 'of whom as concerning the flesh
Christ came,' must have seemed indeed irrevocably and essentially
committed to the principle that when man is brought near to God it is
with the entirety of his manhood: that God is to be glorified alike in
the body and in the spirit: and that His mercy really is over all His
works. Doubtless barriers were to be broken down, when the time of
prophecy and training passed on into the freedom of realization:
limitations were to be taken away, distinctions abrogated by Him in
Whom is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor
female: but religion would surely have grown in reality _narrower_ and
not wider, if the body had been dismissed from its duty and gladness
in the light of God's countenance, if the spirit alone had been bidden
to draw near, to worship, to taste and see how gracious the Lord is.
Through all the amplitude of the Christian dispensation, there would
have been a sense of loss, of impoverishment, of expectation
encouraged and unsatisfied, had this been so; for in the preparatory
system of Judaism, whatever had been lacking, still the whole nature
of man had felt the Hand of God and heard His Voice. It would have
seemed strange if with the wider extension of God's light to all the
world there had been a narrowing of its range in the life of each
several man[385].
(3) And then, again, it is to be marked that our Lord Himself by
repeated acts sustained and emphasized this acceptance of the visible
as the organ or vehicle of the Divine. His blessing was given by the
visible laying on of hands, and His miracles were wrought not by the
bare silent energy of His Almighty will, not even in many cases by the
mere utterance of His word, but through the employment of acts or
objects, impressive to the bodily element in man, and declaring the
consecration of the material for the work of God. Alike in the
blessings bestowed and in the manner of their bestowal men must have
felt that there was with Him no disparagement of the body, no
forgetfulness of its need, no lack of care for its welfare, its
honour, or its hope. Perhaps it may even be that had we watched the
scene in the Galilean town as the sun was setting, and in the cool of
the evening they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them
unto Him; as He moved about among those wasted, suffering forms, and
on one after another laid His hands and healed them; it may even be
that what would have struck us first of all would have been the
bringing in of a better hope for the bodily life of man and the
replenishing of a familiar act, a common gesture, with a grace and
power that it had but vaguely hinted at before.
We have, then, (1) in the Incarnation of the Son of God, (2) in the
essential character of the history ordered as an especial preparation
for His coming, and (3) in certain conspicuous features of His
ministry on earth, a strong encouragement to expect that in the life
thus brought into the world, in the way thus opened out, there would
be evinced a large-hearted care for the whole nature of men: that no
unreal abstraction would be demanded, and no part of humanity be
disinherited: that in the choice of its means, in the scope of its
beneficence, and in the delineation of its aim, Christianity would
deal with us as we are, and prove that God has not made us thus for
nought. An endeavour will be made to shew how this great hope is
greeted in the Sacramental system, and uplifted and led on towards the
end of all true hope. But it seems necessary first to adduce the
grounds for saying that that system has been from the beginning an
integral part of Christianity.