The Real Presence.
"JENNIE," said I, "I don't believe in Mr. Work's sermon this
morning, do you?"
"I don't think I do, John; but to be candid I did not hear a great
deal of it."
It was Sunday evening. Harry was asleep in his room. The baby, sung
to her sweet slumbers pressed against her mother's heart, had been
lain down at last in her little cradle. Jennie, her evening work
finished, had come down into the library and was sitting on the
lounge beside me.
"I was not so fortunate," said I. "Blessed are those who having ears
hear not--sometimes. I listened, and took the other side. My church
was converted into a court-room, I into an advocate. If I believed
Mr. Work's doctrine was sound Protestantism I should turn Roman
Catholic. Its teaching is the warmer, cheerier, more helpful of the
two."
Then I took up the open book that lay on my library table and read
from Father Hyacinthe's discourses the following paragraph--from an
address delivered on the first communion of a converted Protestant
to the Roman Catholic Church:
"Where (in Protestantism) is that real Presence which flows from the
sacrament as from a hidden spring, like a river of peace, upon the
true Catholic, all the day long, gladdening and fertilizing all his
life? This Immanuel--God with us--awaited you in our Church, and in
that sacrament which so powerfully attracted you, even when you but
half believed it. In your own worship, as in the ancient synagogue,
you found naught but types and shadows; they spoke to you of
reality, but did not contain it; they awakened your thirst, but did
not quench it; weak and empty rudiments which have no longer the
right to rest, since the veil of the temple has been rent asunder
and eternal realities been revealed."
"Yes, Jennie," said I. "If I thought Father Hyacinthe were right, I
should turn Roman Catholic. And Mr. Work this morning confirmed him.
He took away the substance. He left us only a type, a shadow."
The sermon was on the words--"Do this in remembrance of me." It was a
doctrinal sermon. I am not sure that it might not have been a useful
one--in the sixteenth century. It was a sermon against Romanism and
Lutheranism and High Church episcopacy. The minister told us what
were the various doctrines of the communion. He analyzed them and
dismissed them one after another. He showed very conclusively, to us
Protestants, that the Romanists are wrong, to us Presbyterians that
the Episcopalians are wrong, to us who are open Communionists that
the close Communionists are wrong. As there does not happen to be
either Romanist, Episcopalian, or close Communionist in our
congregation, I cannot say how efficacious his arguments would have
been if addressed to any one who was in previous doubt as to his
conclusions. Then he proceeded to expound what he termed the
rational and Scriptural doctrine of communion. It is, he told us,
simply a memorial service. It simply commemorates the past. "As,"
said he, "every year, the nation gathers to strew flowers upon the
graves of its patriot soldiers, so this day the Christian Church
gathers to strew with flowers of love and praise the grave of the
Captain of our salvation. As in the one act all differences are
forgotten, and the nation is one in the sacred presence of death, so
in the other, creeds and doctrines vanish, and the Church of Christ
appears at the foot of Calvary as one in Christ Jesus."
Mr. Wheaton asked me, as we came out of church, if the sermon was
not a magnificent one. I evaded the question. I was obliged to
confess to myself that it was unsatisfactory. If I were obliged to
choose between the Protestantism of Mr. Work and the Romanism of
Father Hyacinthe, I am afraid I should choose the latter.
"But," said Jennie, "Mr. Work's sermon was not true Protestant
doctrine, John. There is a Real Presence in the communion. Only it
is in the heart, not in the head, in us, not in the symbols that we
eat. Did you not feel the Real Presence when Father Hyatt in the
afternoon broke and blessed the bread? Did you not see the living
Christ in his radiant face and hear the living Christ in his
touching words, and his more touching silence?"
Yes! I did. Father Hyatt had disproved the morning's sermon, though
he said never a word about it.
Father Hyatt is an old, old man. He has long since retired from
active service, having worn out his best days here at Wheathedge, in
years now long gone by. A little money left him by a parishioner,
and a few annual gifts from old friends among his former people, are
his means of support. His hair is white as snow. His hands are thin,
his body bent, his voice weak, his eyesight dim, his ears but half
fulfil their office; his mind even shows signs of the weakness and
wanderings of old age; but his heart is young, and I verily believe
he looks forward to the hour of his release with hopes as high and
expectations as ardent as those with which, in college, he
anticipated the hour of his graduation. This was the man, patriarch
of the Church, who has lived to see the children he baptized grow
up, go forth into the world, many die and be buried; who has
baptized the second and even the third generation, and has seen
Wheathedge grow from a cross-road to a flourishing village; who this
afternoon, perhaps for the last time--I could not help thinking so as
I sat in church--interpreted to us the love of Christ as it is
uttered to our hearts in this most sacred and hallowed of all
services. Very simply, very gently, quite unconsciously, he refuted
the cheerless doctrine of the morning sermon, and pointed us to the
Protestant doctrine of the Real Presence. Do you ask me what he
said? Nothing. It was by his silence that he spoke.
A few tender, loving, reverential words as he broke the bread. Three
minutes of silver speech, the rest of his part of the service a
golden silence. But those few words were radiant with the presence
and the love of a risen, a living Saviour. It was not of the Christ
that died, but of the Christ that now lives, and intercedes, and
guides, and preserves, and saves, he spoke, with voice feeble with
old age, but strong with love. And as he spoke, it seemed to me, I
think it seemed to all of us, that the Christ he loved so much and
served so faithfully was close at hand, near and ready to bless us
all, not with a sacred memory only, but with a Real Presence, the
more real because unseen.
"Yes, Jennie," said I after we had sat for a few minutes in silence
recalling that sacred hour, "Yes, Jennie, there was a Real Presence
in Father Hyatt's breaking and blessing of the bread. But what do
you say of the disquisition of Mr. Work on transubstantiation which
followed it?"
"I didn't hear it, John. Was it really about transubstantiation?
Perhaps I ought to have listened--but I could not, I did not want to.
A higher, holier voice was speaking to me. I was absorbed in that. I
was thinking how of old time Christ appeared in the breaking of
bread to the disciples whose eyes were holden. And to-night, John,
as I have been rocking baby to sleep I have been reading Tennyson's
Holy Grail, and thinking how often, in our modern life, Calabad and
Percivale kneel at the same shrine, and how often what is but a
memorial service to the one affords a beatific vision of a living
and life-giving Lord to the other."
And Jennie repeated in a low soft voice a verse from that strange
poem, whose meaning, I sometimes think, is but half understood even
by its admirers:
"And at the sacring of the Mass, I saw
The holy elements alone: but he
'Saw ye no more? I, Galahad, saw the Grail,
The Holy Grail, descend upon the shrine:
I saw the fiery face as of a child
That smote itself into the bread, and went,
And hither am I come; and never yet
Hath what thy sister taught me first to see
This holy thing, failed from my side?'"
"Ah! yes, John, Father Hyacinthe is mistaken, and Mr. Work is
mistaken too. There is more in our communion than can be explained.
The reason is a great deal, a great deal, but it is not everything.
And there are experiences which it can neither understand nor
interpret. Baby is not only up-stairs, John; he is in my heart of
hearts. And you are never away from home, husband mine, though often
in the city, but are always with me. And my Saviour he is not far
away, he is not in the heaven that we must bring him down, nor in
the past that we must summon him from centuries long gone by. He is
in our hearts, John. Do I believe in the Real Presence? Do I not
know that there is a Real Presence? And neither priest nor pastor
can take it from me."
"I wish you could have administered the communion this afternoon,
Jennie," said I, "instead of Mr. Work."
"I wish some good friend of Mr. Work would advise him not to talk at
the communion," said Jennie.
"Write him a note," said I.
Jennie shook her head. "No," said she. "It would only do harm. But I
wish ministers knew and felt that at the communion table there is a
Real Presence that makes many words unfitting. When we are on the
mount of Transfiguration, we do not care much for Peter, James or
John. And so, dear, I recommend you to do as I do--if the minister
must give us a doctrinal disquisition, or a learned argument, or an
elaborate arabesque of fancy work, or an impassioned appeal, let him
go his way and do not heed him. I want silence that I may commune
with the Real Presence. If the minister does not give it me, I take
it."
Jennie is right, I am sure. What we laymen want at the communion
service, from our pastors, is chiefly silence. Only a few and simple
words; the fewer and simpler the better. Oh! you who are privileged
to distribute to us the emblems of Christ's love, believe me that
the communion never reaches its highest end, save when you interpret
it to us, not merely as a flower-strewn grave of a dead past, but as
a Mount of Transfiguration whereon we talk with a living, an
ascended Saviour. Believe me too, we want at that table no other
message than that which a voice from on high whispers in our hearts:
"This is my beloved Son, hear ye him!"