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There is a spiritual meaning in each of these three forms. The original form-that of the Lord's Prayer-was the most spiritual of all. The Western form, though excellent as bringing out the commemorative character of the Sacrament, is perhaps the most liable to fall into a mechanical observance. This has been reached in the fullest degree, in the opinion which has been entertained in the Roman Church that the words must be recited by the priest secretly, lest laymen overhearing them should indiscreetly repeat them over ordinary bread and wine, and thus inadvertently transform them into celestial substances. Such an incident, it was believed, had actually taken place in the case of some shepherds who thus changed their bread and wine in a field into flesh and blood, and were struck dead by a divine judgment.3

This is the summary of the celebration of the early Sacrament, so far as we can attach it to the framework furnished by Justin. But there are a few fragments of ancient worship, which, though we cannot exactly adjust their place, partly belong to the second century. Some have perished, and some continue. In the morning was an antistrophic hymn (perhaps the germ of the Te Deum') to Christ as God, and also the sixty-third Psalm. In the evening there was the hundred and forty-first Psalm.5 The evening hymn on bringing in the candles, as now in Mussulman countries, is a touching reminiscence of the custom in the Eastern Church. The Sursum corda' (Lift up your hearts) and the Holy, holy, holy,' were parts of the hymns of which we find traces in the accounts of all the old Liturgies. The "Gloria in excelsis' was sung at the beginning of the service. Down to the beginning of the eleventh century, it was (except on Easter Day) only said by Bishops.

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This survey brings before us the wide diversity and

institution have the effect of consecration is clear from the authorities quoted in Maskell, pp. cv, cvi, xcv.

* See the authorities quoted in Maskell, Preface, p. ciii.

Pliny, Ep. x. 97.

• Bunsen, Christianity and Mankind, ii. 51.

F

Maskell, p. 25.

yet unity of Christian worship. That so fragile an ordinance should have survived so many shocks, so many superstitions, so many centuries, is in itself a proof of the immense vitality of the religion which it represents-of the prophetic insight of its Founder.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE.

detail what is meant

Ir is proposed to bring out here in by Sacrifice in the Christian Church. In order to do this, we must endeavour to understand what is meant by it, first in the Jewish and Pagan dispensations, and secondly in the Christian dispensation.

I. We hardly think sufficiently what was the nature of an ancient sacrifice. Let us conceive the changes which would be necessary in any modern church in order to make it fit for such a ceremony. In the midst of an open court, so that the smoke of the fire and the odours of the slain animals might go up into the air, as from the hearths of our ancient baronial or collegiate halls, stood the Altar-a huge platform, detached from all around, and with steps approaching it from behind and from before, from the right and from the left. Around this structure, as in the shambles of a great city, were collected, bleating, lowing, bellowing, the oxen, sheep, and goats, in herds and flocks, which one by one. were led up to the altar, where with the rapid stroke of the sacrificer's knife, directed either by the king or priest, they received their death-wounds. Their dead carcases lay throughout the court, the pavement streaming with their blood, their quivering flesh placed on the altar to be burnt, the black columns of smoke going up to the sky, the remains afterwards consumed by the priests or worshippers who were gathered for the occasion as to an immense banquet.'

See an exhaustive account in Ewald's Alterthümer, pp. 29–84.

This was a Jewish sacrifice. This, with slight variation, was the form of heathen sacrifice also. This is still the form of sacrifice in the great Mahometan Sanctuary2 at Mecca. This except that the victims were not irrational animals, but human beings-was the dreadful spectacle presented in the sacred inclosure at Coomassie, in Ashantee, as it was in the Carthaginian and Phoenician temples of old time.

Substitution

II. All these sacrifices, in every shape or form, have long disappeared from the religions of the civilised world. Already, under the ancient dispensation, the voices of Psalmof new ideas. ist and Prophet had been lifted up against them. 'Sacrifice and meat-offering Thou wouldest not;' Thinkest thou that I will eat bull's flesh or drink the blood of goats?' 'I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of hegoats; I will not accept your burnt-offerings or your meatofferings, neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your

fat beasts.'

Has sacrifice then entirely ceased out of religious worship? And had those old sacrifices no spiritual meaning hid under their mechanical, their strange, must we not even say their revolting, forms?

In themselves they have entirely ceased. Of all the forms of ancient worship they are the most repugnant to our feelings of humane and of Divine religion. But there was in these, as in most of the ceremonies of the old world, a higher element which it has been the purpose of Christianity to bring out. In point of fact, the name of 'Sacrifice' has survived, after the form has perished.

Let us for a moment go back to the ancient sacrifices, and ask what was their object. It was, in one word, an endeavour, whether from remorse, or thankfulness, or fear, to approach the Unseen Divinity. It was an attempt to propitiate, to gratify, the Supreme Power, by giving up something dear to ourselves which was also dear to Him,-to feed, to nourish, as it were, the great God above by the same food by which we also are fed, to send messages to Him by the smoke, the sweet2 Burton's Pilgrimage to Mecca.

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smelling odour which went up from the animals which the sacrificer had slain or caused to be slain. The one purpose of every sacrifice prescribed in the first chapters of Leviticus3 is that it shall make a sweet savour unto the Lord.'

In the place of this gross, earthly conception of the approach of man to God, arose gradually three totally different ideas of approaching God, which have entirely superseded the old notion of priest and altar and victim and hecatomb and holocaust and incense, and to which, because of their taking the place of those ancient ceremonies, the name of sacrifice has in some degree been always applied.

Prayer and thanks

giving.

(1) The first is the elevation of the heart towards God in prayer and thanksgiving. In the ancient Jewish and Pagan public worship, there was, properly speaking, no prayer and no praise. Whatever devotion the people expressed was only through the dumb show of roasted flesh and ascending smoke and fragrance of incense. But the Psalmist and Prophets introduced the lofty spiritual thought, that there was something much more acceptable to the Divine nature, much more capable of penetrating the Sanctuary of the Unseen, than these outward things,—namely, the words and thoughts of the divine speech and intellect of man. To these reasonable utterances, accordingly, by a bold metaphor, the Prophets transferred the phrase which had hitherto been used for the slaughter of beasts at the altar. In the 141st Psalm, the Psalmist says, 'Let the lifting up of my hands in prayer be to Thee as the evening sacrifice;' that is, let the simple peaceful act of prayer take the place of the blood-stained animal, struggling in the hands of a butcher. In the 50th Psalm, after repudiating altogether the value of dead bulls and goats, the Psalmist says, 'Whosoever offereth,—whosoever brings up as a victim to God,— thankful hymns of praise, he it is that honoureth Me.' the 51st Psalm, after rejecting altogether burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin, the Psalmist says, the true sacrifice of God,' far more than this, 'is a broken and contrite heart.'

Lev. i. 13, 27, ii. 2, 12, iii. 8, 26.

In

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