principle in the Gospels, our first impression may be that the place
it holds there is less than that which is given to it in the teaching
and practice of the Church: that it is by a disproportionate growth
that the doctrine of Sacraments has gained so much space and so great
prominence in Catholic theology. But the impression certainly ought
not to be lasting. For it is due to our forgetfulness of the
conditions under which Christianity came into the world: the
characteristics and habits of religious thought with which it had to
deal. We can draw no reasonable inference from the brevity or length
with which a truth is enunciated in the Gospels until we have inquired
what were the previous convictions of those to whom our Lord spoke:
what preparation had in that particular regard been made for His
teaching. We ought to look for some difference in the manner of
revelation corresponding to the difference of need when a wholly new
principle of thought has to be borne into unready minds, and when a
fresh direction has to be given to an expectation already alert and
confident, a new light to be thrown on the true worth and meaning of
an existing belief about God's ways towards men. Amplitude and
iteration would indeed have been necessary for any teaching which was
to dislodge the Sacramental principle out of the minds of those among
whom our Lord came--to preclude them from seeking the mercy of God
through visible means. But if the Divine purpose was not to destroy
but to fulfil; not to discredit as mere misapprehensions the
convictions men had received, but to raise and purify them by
disclosing the response which God had prepared for them: to disengage
them from that which had been partial, preparatory, transient, and to
fasten them on their true satisfaction: then we might reverently
expect that the method of this teaching would probably be such as in
the New Testament is shewn to us in regard to the doctrine of
Sacraments.
(1) For, in the first place, we find abundant and pervading signs that
the general principle is taken up into Christianity and earned on as a
characteristic note of its plan and work. The regular communication of
its prerogative and characteristic gift through outward means: the
embodiment of grace in ordinances: the designation of visible agents,
acts, and substances, to be the instruments and vehicles of Divine
virtue:--this principle is so intimately and essentially woven into
the texture of Christianity that it cannot be got out without
destroying the whole fabric. As our Saviour gradually sets forth the
outlines of His design for the redemption of the world, at point after
point the Sacramental principle is affirmed, and material instruments
are designated for the achievement of His work. 'He proclaims Himself
the Founder of a world-wide and imperishable Society,' 'the Kingdom of
Heaven' or 'the Kingdom of God[386];' and while the claims and
energies of this kingdom penetrate the hidden depths of life, so that
it is indeed 'a moral empire,' and 'a realm of souls,' yet none the
less is it openly to take its place in human history. It is not an
unsubstantial haze of vague spirituality, precarious and indistinct,
hovering or said to hover half way between earth and sky, with no
precise attachment to either. At once, it is the kingdom of Heaven,
and it is to have all the apparel of a visible society: it touches
this earth with a definite and inclusive hold; it ennobles material
conditions by a frank acceptance. As in the Incarnation, so also in
the preparation of the Church to be the ever-present witness to
Christ, the guardian of His truth, and the home of His people, the
principle was sustained that, in the redemption of the world, God
would be pleased to take the instruments of His work out of that world
which He was renewing: that the quickening Spirit would not repel or
destroy the material order, but would assume, pervade, and use it.
(2) And, in the second place, the particular expressions of the
general principle thus reaffirmed were authoritatively appointed: the
approved anticipation of men was left in no uncertainty as to its
response and sanction; men were told plainly what were the outward and
visible signs which God had chosen in this world to be the means
whereby His inward and spiritual grace should be received. It is
difficult indeed to imagine any way in which more weight and
incisiveness could have been given to the appointment of the two great
Sacraments than in the way which Christ was pleased to use:--any way
in which Baptism and the Eucharist could have been more firmly and
impressively designated as the vital and distinctive acts of the
Christian Church. We can hardly wonder at their pre-eminence in
Christian thought and life when we remember how they were fastened
upon the consciousness of the Church. Their antecedents lay in that
long mysterious course of history which Almighty God had led on
through the strange discipline of the changeful centuries to the
coming of Christ. And then, there had been in Christ's teaching
certain utterances which seemed to have a peculiar character: which
were plainly of essential importance, concerning things necessary for
all His disciples, bearing on the primary conditions of their life:
and yet utterances which were left unexplained, however men might be
troubled, offended, overstrained, discouraged by them: left as though
their explanation was impossible, until the occurrence of events which
could not be forestalled[387]. But such utterances, if they could not
be understood, could still less be forgotten: they lived in the
memory, they haunted the imagination, they sustained expectancy: they
were as a prophetic conviction in the mind, strong, deep, fragmentary,
and unsatisfied. Who can measure the consilient force with which, in
moments of intensest thought and feeling, moments when all the
besetting conditions seemed quick with some imminent disclosure, the
Divine commands, meeting, illuminating, establishing those former
utterances, would be riveted upon the hearts of men and clenched for
ever into the faith and practice of the Church, with a dominance never
to be forgotten or infringed, as a very primal law of life? In the
unique, controlling awe of His impending agony and crucifixion:--in
the heralded majesty of His appearance to the disciples upon the
mountain where He had appointed them, and with the proclamation of the
absolute authority given to Him in heaven and in earth: so did our
Lord enact the ordinances to which His earlier words had pointed, and
in which at length their meaning was made clear: so did He institute
His two great Sacraments: so did He disentangle the Sacramental
principle from all that had been temporary, accidental, disciplinary,
accommodated, in its past embodiment, and determine what should be the
form of its two main expressions, for all ages and for all men in His
Church 'until His coming again,' 'even unto the end of the world.'
It may be in place here briefly to suggest a few thoughts with regard
to that which was secured by this authoritative designation of the
outward sign in each great Sacrament, beyond all that could have been
attained by the general enunciation of the Sacramental principle.
Much might be said--and much more, doubtless, be still left
unsaid--about the especial fitness of the very elements thus chosen
from the material world to be the vehicles of saving grace:--for the
water and the bread and wine are called to their place in the Divine
work with deep and far-reaching associations already belonging to
them. Again, the very simplicity and commonness of the elements taken
into God's nearest service may have been a part of the reason why they
were appointed: for in no other way could the minds of men have been
more surely and permanently hindered from many of the mistakes to
which in the past they had been prone: in no other way could the
Sacramental principle have been more perfectly disengaged from the
misconceptions which had confused its purity: in no other way could
men have been more plainly taught that in no expense of this world's
goods, in no labour of their own hands, in no virtue of the material
elements, but only in the sustained energy of His will, who took and
penetrated and employed them, lay the efficacy of the Sacrament. The
very plainness of the element hallowed in the Sacrament was to urge up
men's thoughts from it to Him. But, above all, the decisive
appointment of particular signs and acts may seem to have been
necessary in order that the Sacraments might take their places as acts
emanating from, upheld by, and characteristic of the Church's
corporate life, and not merely concerned with the spiritual welfare of
the individual. So S. Paul appeals to Baptism and to the Eucharist as
both effecting and involving the communion of saints[388]. By
Sacraments men are to be taken out of the narrowness and isolation of
their own lives, out of all engrossing preoccupation with their own
state, into the ample air, the generous gladness, the unselfish hope
of the City of God: they are to escape from all daily pettiness, all
morbid self-interest, all preposterous conviction of their own
importance, into a fellowship which spans all ages and all lands. By
Baptism and the Eucharist the communion of saints is extended and
sustained: they are the distinctive acts of the Body of Christ: and as
such He designated their essential form, to abide unaltered through
all that changed around them. And even those who stand aloof from them
and from the faith on which they rest, may feel the unmatched
greatness of an act that has held its place in human life through all
the revolutions of more than 1800 years: an act that in its essential
characteristics is to-day what it was when imperial Rome was venerated
as eternal: an act that is every day renewed, with some measure, at
least, of the same faith and hope and love, in every land where Christ
is owned.
(3) The Sacramental principle had been most plainly adopted by our
Lord: the spiritual forces with which He would renew the face of the
earth were to be exerted through material instruments: and He Himself
had secured the principle from uncertainty or vagueness or
individualism in its expression by appointing, with the utmost weight
and penetration of His authority, the definite form of two great
ordinances, which were to begin and to advance the supernatural life
of His members, to extend the range of His Church, and to maintain its
unity. In the acts and letters of His apostles we see how His teaching
and bidding had been understood: how promptly and decisively His
Church declared its life, its work, its mission, to be Sacramental.
The meaning and emphasis of His commandment appear in the obedience of
those to whom it was given: in the first words of authoritative
counsel uttered by an apostle: in the first act of the Spirit-bearing
Body: and thenceforward in the characteristic habits of the Christian
life[389].
From the first the prominence of Sacraments and Sacramental rites is
constant. In the teaching of later ages their prominence may have been
relatively greater, in contrast with the poverty of faith and life in
those who insisted on their power while they forgot their meaning; but
absolutely it would be hard to devise a higher place for them than
that which they hold in S. Paul's Epistles. To be living a life
received, nourished, and characterised by Baptism and by the
Eucharist--this is the distinctive note of a Christian--thus does he
differ from other men. The Sacrament by which he became a member of
Christ's body must determine throughout the two distinctive qualities
of his inner life: its severance from all forms of worldliness, all
dependence on natural advantages, or natural strength, all confidence
in the satisfaction of external rules; and its unfailing newness, as
issuing from Him who, being raised from the dead, dieth no more, and
as carrying through all its activities the air and light of
heaven[390]. And the Sacrament which continually renews in him the
presence of his Lord, meeting with unstinted wealth the demands of
work and growth, assuring and advancing the dominance of the new
manhood in him: this in like manner must determine the sustained
simplicity of his bearing towards those who with him are members of
the one Body, quickened and informed by the one Life[391]. That men
may receive eternal life through Jesus Christ: this is the end of all
labours in His name: to this all else is tributary and conducive: and
there is no hesitation as to the visible means by which God will
effect this end in all those who have 'faith to be healed.' And in
this sense it may perhaps be said that in Christianity even doctrine
holds not indeed a subordinate but (that which involves nothing but
dignity) a subservient place; since it is the strength and glory of
Christian doctrine that it essentially 'leads on to something
higher--to the sacramental participation in the atoning sacrifice of
Christ[392].'
IV. Thus then there appears at the beginning the dominance of that
note which has sounded on through all succeeding ages; thus may we
trace from the first days the dispensation of Divine energy through
agents and acts and efficacious symbols gathered out of this visible
world. It remains to be shewn with what reason it can be alleged that
herein the Church evinces its recognition of the complexity of human
nature, and guards the truth, that in the entirety of his being man
has to do with God, the Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier of his soul and
body. Along three lines of thought this may in some degree appear; and
if the evidence that can be indicated is recognised as in any measure
real, it would be unphilosophic to set it aside because it may be
fragmentary and inconclusive: since fragments are all that in such a
matter we are likely as yet to see.
(1) First, then, there is a profound far-reaching import in the bare
fact that material and visible means are thus hallowed to effect the
work of God, to bear His unseen grace. For it must not be thought that
in this Sacramental union of the visible and the invisible we have
only an interesting parallel to the twofold nature of man, a neat and
curious symmetry, a striking bit of symbolism or accommodation. Nor is
the deepest significance of the Sacramental principle brought out when
it is said quite truly that 'it has pleased God to bind His invisible
operations to outward and visible methods,' 'lest that which is thus
invisible should for that reason be disbelieved or counterfeited or in
any of the various ways in which human incredulity or human enthusiasm
might do it wrong, abused to the injury of man[393].' We may see in
this aspect of the system that it has indeed secondary advantages of
the highest worth; but its surpassing glory is in its primary and
essential character, as the regular employment of visible means for
the achievement of Divine mysteries. For thus our whole estimate of
this world is affected. Its simplest objects have their kindred, as it
were, in the court, in the very presence chamber of the Most High; and
actions such as we see in it day after day have been advanced to a
supreme distinction.
And so through Sacramental elements and acts Christianity maintains
its strong inclusive hold upon the whole of life. The consecration of
material elements to be the vehicles of Divine grace keeps up on earth
that vindication and defence of the material against the insults of
sham spiritualism which was achieved for ever by the Incarnation and
Ascension of Jesus Christ. We seem to see the material world rising
from height to height; pierced, indeed, and, as it were, surprised at
every stage by strange hints of a destiny beyond all likelihood; yet
only gradually laying aside the inertness of its lower forms,
gradually seeming to yield itself, not merely to the external
fashioning of spirit, but also to its inner and transforming
occupation: till in humanity it comes within sight of that which God
has been preparing for it, even the reception of His own image and
likeness. And yet this is but the beginning: and though sin delays the
end, and holds back the crown of all, it is but for a time; in due
season there is made known that absolutely highest honour to which God
has been leading on the work of His hands, even that in its highest
type it should be taken into God; that the Eternal Word should be made
man, and from a human mother receive our nature, so that a material
body should be His body; His in birth, and growth, and death; His in
all its relations with the visible world; His for suffering, for
weariness, for tears, for hunger; His upon the cross and in the tomb;
His to rise with; and, at length, His at the right hand of God. Thus
was the visible received up into glory; thus was the forecast of
spiritual capacity in the material perfectly realized; and by the body
of the ascended Saviour, an entrance for the whole being of man into
the realm of spirit is assured. 'There is a spiritual body[394]:' no
part of the material order can be quite untouched by the light that
issues from those astounding words, and from the triumph they record.
And that truth, that triumph, that possibility of unhindered
inter-penetration between the spiritual and the material is
pre-eminently attested upon earth by the two great Sacraments of the
Christian Church. In those mysteries where water is sanctified to the
washing away of sin, and where material substances are made spiritual
food, there is a continual witness of the victory that has been won, a
real earnest of that which shall hereafter be achieved, a vivid
declaration that the barrier between the spiritual and the material is
not absolute or eternal.
Nor is this deep truth without practical and far-reaching consequences
in human life. For immediately it thus appears that the unreal
spirituality which consists in a barren and boastful disparagement of
ritual observance or of outward acts[395], of earthly relationships or
of secular life, of natural feelings or of bodily health, clashes with
Christian teaching as sharply as it does with human nature and with
common sense. And then, in perfect accordance with this principle, the
spiritual energy of the Church is sacramentally conveyed for the
hallowing of stage after stage in the due order of a human life, as
body, soul, and spirit are advanced towards the end for which they
were created. Not only in the initial act whereby all are bidden to
enter into the kingdom of God, and, at the dawn of consciousness, the
onset of evil is forestalled by the cleansing and regenerating work of
God the Holy Ghost--not only in the ever-needed, ever-ready mystery of
glory whereby, amidst the stains and sorrows of the world, all may
again and again be 'filled with the very essence of restoration and of
life[396];' but at other moments too, when the soul of man rises up
towards God in the divinely-quickened venture of faith, the strength
of the Most High is perfected in human weakness, and in Sacramental
acts the things that are not seen enter into the history of the things
that are seen. It is most unfortunate that the associations of
controversy should hinder men from frankly and thankfully recognising
the wide range of Sacramental action in Christian life. The dispute as
to the number of the Sacraments is indeed 'a question of a name[397];'
and it ought to have been acknowledged all along that the name was
being used with different and shifting meanings. That men knew that it
did not designate an essentially distinct class of exactly equivalent
units is shewn on all sides; S. Thomas Aquinas seems to doubt, at
least, whether there are not more than seven Sacraments, divides the
seven into groups with very important notes of difference, and decides
that the Eucharist is 'Sacramentorum omnium potissimum[398]:' Calvin
was not unwilling that the laying on of hands should be called a
Sacrament, though he would not reckon it 'inter ordinaria
Sacramenta[399];' the Council of Trent has an anathema for anyone who
says that the seven Sacraments are so equal that none is more worthy
than another[400]: Richard Baxter distinguishes between 'three sorts
of Sacraments;' in the second sense of the name, in which it is taken
to mean 'any solemn _Investiture_ of a person by ministerial delivery,
in a state of Church-privileges, or some special gospel-mercy,' he
grants 'that there are five Sacraments--Baptism, Confirmation,
Absolution, the Lord's Supper and Ordination;' and elsewhere he
declares that 'they that peremptorily say without distinguishing that
there are but two Sacraments in all, do but harden them (the Papists)
by the unwarrantable narrowing of the word[401].' There is indeed no
reason why anyone should hesitate to mark the Love of God meeting in
Sacramental ordinances the need of man at point after point in the
course of his probation. Differences in the manner of appointment or
in the range of application may involve no difference at all in the
reality of the power exercised and the grace conveyed. And so we may
see the Spirit-bearing Church, with whole-hearted recognition of all
the elements and wants of human life, proffering to men through
visible means the manifold gifts of grace needed for their progress
and welfare in the way until they reach the Country. As temptation
grows more complex and severe, and the soul begins to realize the
warfare that it has to wage, the Personal indwelling of the Holy
Ghost, vouchsafed by the laying on of hands, completes the preparation
of Christ's soldier: as the desolating sense of failure threatens to
unnerve the will and to take such hold upon the soul that it is not
able to look up, the authoritative message of forgiveness brings again
the strength of purity and the light of hope, and recalls the
scattered forces of the inner life to expel the encroaching evil and
to regain whatever had been lost. For special vocations there are
special means of grace; by ordination God vouchsafes to guilty men the
glory of the priesthood: and in Christian marriage He confers the
grace that hallows human love to be the brightness and the safeguard
of an earthly home, and the earnest of the home in Heaven. And thus in
the manifold employment of the Sacramental principle there again
appears that characteristic excellence of Christianity which is
secured in the very nature of Sacraments: namely, its recognition of
the whole problem with which it claims to deal. It speaks to us as we
are: there is no true need of which it will not take account: it will
lead us without loss to the realization of our entire being.