LECTURE II.

THE REVEREND G. MCCLELLAN FISKE, D.D., Rector of S. Stephen's Church, Providence, R. I.

THE LORD'S SUPPER.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

IN approaching this august subject, gentlemen, on which I have been invited to address you, let me, first of all, affirm my sincere intention to speak in filial submission to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

And may the Holy Spirit guide and keep from error both in faith and life each one of us, who draws near to contemplate the venerable Sacrament of the Altar.

For that Sacrament is the most conspicuous practical feature of the Church. It is the highest act of worship. It is admittedly the most solemn ministration pertaining to the individual religious life, and it is, as Dean Church * suggests,

*“Oxford Movement,” p. 56.

"the foundation of ecclesiastical discipline and authority." Believing then that the Church has a reliable tradition concerning this great Sacrament, we will examine three distinguishing features of this tradition, viz:

I. The Sacrifice.

II. The Real Presence.

III. The Communion.

I. Worship is the instinct of a rational creature. It is the confession of his sense of the distance between himself and his Creator. He records his experience of the contrast in the outcry,*"O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord 'Thou art my God,' my goods are nothing unto Thee." He must fall down and adore.

Worship being the motion of a loving heart and an admiring mind in the presence of the Heart of hearts and the Mind of minds expresses itself in sacrifice. Who does not understand the feeling which exclaims, "What can we give to one we love?" The best things which we have must attest our homage, and then we must give ourselves. The Magi not only opened their treasures and offered precious gifts, but they fell down and worshipped. They would give not only gold and myrrh and incense, but they would give themselves.

This is the primary account of sacrifice. It is

* Ps. xvi. 2.

the worship of dependent beings wholly carried away by the fulness of their love. It is the giving of one's self. It is the principle of that worship which angels in Heaven offer, and it would seem that earth has never been without it, for, as a spiritual writer* says: "Of this we may be certain, when the prince of this world and the powers of evil first turned aside to seek their own glory instead of using God's gifts to the glory of the giver, then first did the joy of holy sacrifice cease, and the world which had been an altar became a desolation."

When

In the earth recalled from chaos the loving relation to God of its new inhabitant and master, man, was one of sacrifice. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil stood for that sacrifice which man made in maintaining union with God, for it told of the sacrifice of man's bodily appetite, of his will, and of his reason. sin came, bringing guilt and estrangement from God, sacrifice remained no longer the full and untarnished love of the innocent. It became the tearful worship of the penitent. Offerings, like the choicest fruits or the sweetest flowers, which should declare the joyous integrity of life, no longer would suffice. A penal element had entered into the essentials of a sacrifice. The spirit, torn in pain out of its material organism, must * Benson : 66 'Redemption."

return to the God who gave it. The real mystery of suffering and death is the mystery of Atonement. In whatever way man came to know the law that without shedding of blood there is no remission, he knew it, and the gravity of his offence, who would ignore it, is taught us by the doom of Cain. The long spiritual history of fallen man is traced by this scarlet thread of bloody sacrifices. The most prominent landmarks of the wanderings of the patriarchal days were the altars, in whose bleeding victims they called upon the name of the Lord.

When the Church of God began to have a settled habitation, its worship appears elaborated in a vast and complex system of manifold sacrifices expressive of the different sentiments and needs. of the human soul. But the whole array was tinged with blood. Tributes of praise and triumph and pious exultation rose to Heaven bedewed with blood.

Two of the grandest occasions of rejoicing that we read of, Noah's thanksgiving after the flood and Solomon's dedication of the Temple, were celebrated in rivers of sacrificial blood.

And yet along with this unbroken line of bloody sacrifice went another continuous variety of sacrifice in the offerings of bread and wine, “among the heathen races, as uniform and familiar a feature of sacrifice as it was among the Jews

themselves."* This seemed to say that sacrifice is not essentially and originally an affair of blood. It pointed to the Eucharistic phases of sacrifice, and very early the mysterious figure of Melchisedec, as King of Peace and Priest of God Most High, bringing forth bread and wine, looked forward to a tranquil day when the "Priest upon His Throne" should do His office and be still a Priest, though in doing it He bleeds and dies again no more forever.

Now for almost nineteen hundred years last past, the bulk of Christendom, those great Catholic bodies which have maintained an unbroken succession in faith, ministry, and sacraments, have regarded their chief service of worship, the Holy Eucharist, as a sacrifice. They have not hesitated to call it so. They have called their clergy, priests and the most honorable office of their priesthood has been held to be the consecration of the Body and Blood of Christ. The place of their ministering in that solemnity has been called everywhere the Altar. And their Liturgies have been full of sacrificial language. Midmost in this Altar-history stands the Cross. It marks an era in the course of sacrifice. the Cross bloodshed abruptly ceases.

With

What does this signify? Clearly this: Atone

* Medd: 66 The One Mediator," Lecture iv. Willis "Worship of the Old Covenant," viii., § 2; ix., § 2. +Appendix, Note I.