between God and man, which is negotiated by the Sacrifice of Christ; and when that system falls to the ground, the Eucharist must of necessity fall with it.

In the clause which we have now considered, our Liturgy seems to place us at a point of view high above the course of Time, at which we may contemplate human history at its beginning and its close, and see the origin and the issue of the great scheme of Salvation. In the centre of human history is planted the Cross, the alone meritorious cause of every blessing which has reached our race. But this Cross we see to have been first devised in the counsels of Eternity,-devised, long ages before it was erected, by the tender mercy of Our Heavenly Father. This accursed (and yet blessed) Tree is seen bearing its beautiful fruits in the experience of man along the course of ages, until the number of the elect is accomplished, and the last saved soul is gathered into the garner of God. Meanwhile Hope and Memory, both of them under the sanction of Divine Ordinances, lead up to this central point, the Cross, and find life and vigour there. Hope is nourished by the sacrifices of the Jewish ritual, ordained of God to foreshadow the full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction which Christ made upon the Tree. Memory is nourished by the Sacraments of the Gospel, ordained to represent after the fact the very event, which the sacrifices had before represented more obscurely.

Reader, is this Death our one point of sight, as it is God's? Do we live in it in any true sense; derive from it strength against temptation, energy for renewed efforts, hope in difficulties, comfort in troubles? Is it a real spring of moral action within us, the strongest in

centive to holiness, the most effectual dissuasive from sin? O God, make us to know the fellowship of Thy Son's sufferings, to feel the power of His death, mortifying in us all our evil and corrupt affections, and crucifying us to the world and to sin; so that, when He shall appear, we, who have been already planted together with Him in the likeness of His death, may be also in the likeness of His resurrection.

LECTURE V.

OF THE CONSECRATION OF THE ELEMENTS, AND THE OBLATION.

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"For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the Word of God and Prayer.”—1 TIM. iv. 4, 5.

THE Body of the Prayer of Consecration consists of three members. First: the history of the Institution is recited; and the very actions employed by Our Lord on the occasion are repeated in the course of this recital, the vessels containing either element being taken into the hands of the Priest, the Bread being broken by him, and, finally, his hand being laid upon the Bread and Cup, as a sign that they are now blessed and hallowed. Secondly with the Bread and Wine, thus invested with a new significance, a solemn Memorial of the Death of Christ is made before God. The elements are offered to Him in the first instance (and this is called the oblation) before we receive them back from Him, blessed and sanctified to the highest spiritual use. And this oblation we con

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ceive to be (if not an essential, yet) a very beautiful and significant part of the great Ritual. We conceive that it brings out in high relief this feature of the Holy Sacrament, that it is a memorial of the Sacrifice of Christ made in the ears of God, no less than in those of the Church. We thus plead in act before Him what we plead verbally, when we say at the end of each Prayer, through Jesus Christ onr Lord." The Intercession of Christ above keeps alive in Heaven the memory of His Sacrifice; and the making of this memorial upon Earth is a note which vibrates in unison with that Intercession. True it is, of course, that to speak of recalling the past to God's memory is to use language in which He is accommodated to our understandings; but as He Himself condescends to use such language in Holy Scripture, it is our wisdom to accept it with simplicity,. as conveying to us the most accurate notions of the Truth which we are capable of receiving. Thirdly: when we are about to receive the elements back from God, we make an Invocation over them (a form used in the earliest times by the whole of the Eastern, and a great part of the Western Church), praying Him to "bless and sanctify with His Word and Holy Spirit these His "gifts and creatures of Bread and Wine," so that they may be the means of conveying to us the inward spiritual grace of the Sacrament, to the strengthening and refreshing of our souls; "that we, receiving them according to Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's Holy institution, in remembrance of His Death and Passion, may be partakers of His most Blessed Body and Blood."

Now both the recital of the words of Institution, and a Prayer of this general purport, have, from the earliest ages of the Church's History, been considered essential

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to a valid consecration. The Roman Church in this, as in so many other points, deviates from Primitive Antiquity, maintaining that Consecration is effected by a mere repetition of the words, "This is My Body," "This is My Blood." And as it is not unfrequently the case that extremes meet, so we shall find here that sundry Protestant sects, who have gone as far as possible from Rome both in doctrine and discipline, hold the recital of the words of Institution to be the only requisite. Our Church holds closer both to primitive practice, and to the example of Our Lord. She uses a Prayer of Consecration," implying surely by the very title that Prayer is essential; and after reciting the history and words of the Institution, invokes the Holy Spirit, and addresses to our Heavenly Father a fervent petition for the great blessing of the Ordinance. St. Paul says, in reference to our ordinary reception of food, that "every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God" (that is, by some passage of Holy Scripture introduced into the Grace before Meat) " and prayer." And our Church holds, as the early Church did, that this Heavenly Food must be sanctified in the same manner, not only by reciting from the Scriptures the very words of Institution, but also by thanksgiving for God's tender mercy, and Christ's all-sufficient Sacrifice, and by prayer, that this Ordinance, which echoes on the Sacrifice to the end of Time, may be an effectual instrument of communicating the virtue of it to our souls. And a close study "of Our Lord's practice in instituting the Holy Supper leads us to the same conclusion. The Evangelists expressly say that He gave thanks, before He used the words, "This is My Body," "This is My Blood of the

New Testament,”—addressing Himself to God over the Bread and over the Cup in the first instance, before He gave them to the disciples as His Body and Blood.

The sum and substance of what has been said is, that an address to God, in the form of Prayer and Thanksgiving, has from the earliest times been regarded, and justly regarded, as essential to Consecration.

To some, no doubt, the point will seem a very unimportant one, more especially if they are unfamiliar with the history of Liturgical controversy. But under questions which present to an ordinary mind the appearance of being mere subtleties,—not worth the raising, and certainly not worth the controverting,-there occasionally lie hid great principles, which are at issue; and we believe that it is so in the present instance. The whole history of the Lord's Supper, culminating as it does in the error of Transubstantiation, shows a sad tendency in the human mind to localize and materialize the blessing of the Ordinance,-I mean by localizing and materializing the blessing, the placing it entirely in the outward visible sign, the imagining some mysterious charm,—a virtue half-physical, half-spiritual,-to reside in the crumbs of Bread, and in the drops of Wine. The Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation is quite as open to this charge as the bolder and more unreasonable error of the Church of Rome. And there can be no doubt that many members of our own Communion, in the views they take of the subject, attach the blessing far too little to the Ordinance itself, and far too exclusively to the sensible, material vehicle of the Ordinance. The mysterious operation upon the Bread and Wine, by which they are sanctified for their high significance and office, engrosses in their minds the whole field of view;