ORIGINES EUCHARISTICAE.*

Trim belief in the Real Presence, whether in the form of Transub- stantiation or of some theory indistinguishable from it, has been so long in possession in the older Churches that its survival does not surprise M. We take it, in a sense, for granted, as a belief which is held by many excellent people ; and it does not occur to us to wonder that this should be so. But, when we carry our thoughts back to the Upper Chamber, and apply the • (1) The Last Supper : Its S its the Upper Room. By Robert H. Kennett, D.D. Cimbridge : He er. .12s. Eucharist and Sacrifice. By F. Crawford Barkitt, D.D. Same publlaber. IL. net.) standards of the later Church to the Last Supper—which we cannot avoid doing, for nothing which takes place in the later Eucharist can fail to have taken place at the first—we find ourselves in the presence of a seemingly self-contradictory and purposeless series of marvels so staggering to faith, and so alien to Hebrew religious conceptions, that we are driven to reconsider the position as a whole, and to ask ourselves whether it is conceivable that our Lord's words were, or were intended to be, understood by those who heard them in the sense of the

modern Church :—

" Ciburn turbae duodenee, Se dat suis manibus."

Is this, in any literal sense, thinkable ? In the case of the actually present Christ, can any but a figurative meaning be attached to the words of which these lines are a paraphrase ?

And, if not, what precisely is the figure which underlies them ! These are the questions raised by Professor Kennett, the impor- tance of whose paper bears no proportion to its size.

The treatise fills an unexpected and unrealized gap in the otherwise exhaustive discussion of the Eucharist by ecclesiastical writers. For in these discussions

" the rationale of the Institution, the meaning which the mysterious reference to a Body and Blood would bear to the assembled disciples, these things are passed over."

And the question is not a merely speculative one. The result of the absence of any clear ideas with regard to it is that " the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper has little meaning for a very large number of people who belong to the Reformed Churches, and who are by no means irreligious. The phraseology of the Sacrament bears no relation to ordinary modes of thought. The words of institution, if literally interpreted, appear to state what is self-evidently impossible ; if they are understood as metaphor, the metaphor scorns to bear no relation to fact. Not only, therefore, have we no need to be afraid to inquire what moaning the Saviour's words would have conveyed to us, if as devout Jews we could have been present in the Upper Room ; it is our bounden duty to do so. In God's service we must put away intellectual indolence as well as faithless timidity. That attitude of mind which would shirk inquiry is not faith, but credulity."

The key to Professor Kennett's argument is his acceptance of the testimony of the Fourth Gospel against the identification of the Laat Supper and the Passover. It took place before, probably on the night before, that festival ; and the words put into our Lord's mouth by St. Luke (xxii. 15) contrast His desire with its non-fulfilment : what He wished was not to be. The metaphors of the Body and the Blood are, then, an anticipation of the Passover Lamb which He was not to eat with His disciples on earth ;" for I say unto you I will not eat it till it be fulfilled in the Kingdom of God." In a striking paraphrase (pp. 35-38) the writer develops this thought, which is reinforced by the author of the Fourth Gospel, who " in making much of the lesson of the feet washing, and in ignoring the Blessing of the Bread and of the Wine, must have acted deliberately. He has put a Sacrament of Service in the place of the Sacrament of the Bread and the Wine." The mystery religions which played so great a part in the development of the sacramental theory and praxis of the later Church were as foreign as the Decrees of Trent to the thought of those who were gathered together in the Upper Chamber. And

" it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that what our Saviour said to His disciples on that memorable night was meant to be intelligible to them then and there. They could not perceive its full significance any more than they could perceive tho full meaning of the injunction which their Master had previously given them, After this manner pray ye, Our Father which art in heaven.' It was, however, suciontly intelligible to them. . . . There can be little doubt that in the development of Christianity among the Gentiles many ideas of pagan origin were grafted on to the teaching of Christ. Such ideas may in themselves be true or erroneous, but they cannot alter the original meaning of that which was taught by the Founder of Christianity Himself."

Professor Burkitt's paper is based on two sayings of St. Augus- tine : " This is the Sacrifice of Christians—' the many one body in Christ' " ; and, " The mystery of yourselves is placed on the Lord's Table ; the mystery of yourselves you receive." He brings out the relation of Christian worship to the worship of the ancient world. Used in connexion with the former, the

metaphor of Sacrifice may seem an unhappy one. For the altar, Jewish or Gentile, was literally a slaughterhouse, the stench of which was relieved by the use of incense—the trade in which declined, it is said, with the decline of animal sacrifice— and against whir. hlhe best minds of antiquity protested. But these were the few: sacrifice was then what prayer is now—the feria

actually taken by worship ; and the need for "something very like a Sacrifice " if " it was not exactly a Sacrifice " was empha- sized by the problem of post-baptismal sin. Professor Burkitt gives reasons for preferring the Roman Canon to the Anaphora, published (1900) in the Verona Fragments, " out of which many other Eastern Anaphoras have been expanded " :—

" In the West, the forms of Christian devotion and worship were subjected to a process of legalistic rationalism, which (given the premises from which it starts) is irresistible, while at the same time it is also intolerably prosy. My main object in this paper has been to point out that mediaeval rationalism, a process which may be said to have begun with Leo the Great, had at least the merits of its defects . . . and to show that the great formula of mediaeval worship was less infected by the magical element in historic Christianity than Protestants often imagine."

The English rite, in rejecting Transubstantiation, transforms the notion of Sacrifice—" I had almost said transubstantiating it." Its Sacrifice is this :- " that the congregation, having confessed, been shriven, having ' assisted ' at a due consecration of the bread and wine, and finally having received their own portion, do then and them offer unto God themselves, their souls and bodies, to be a reason- able sacrifice. By what has gone before, so far as ritual both of words and actions can effect anything at all, the congregation have been hallowed into the Body of Christ. It is a difficult .,onception ; but perfectly Augustinian. . . . Lot us be quite rare that we understand Cranmer's theory of the Eucharistic Sacrifice before we reject it. Tho English Order appears to me to be a very skilful adaptation of the old forms to the new theory : it can only be rationally condemned after rejecting the theory."

There are tendencies at work in Cambridge which make such reflections as those embodied in these important treatises opportune. There is a disposition to-day to exalt the ministry of the Sacraments above that of the Word ; and to lay the accent in religion on certain symbolic rites and formulas which have come down to us from the past, and have been retained in the Churches. But the ministry of the Word comes before that of the Sacraments, and is prior to it both in thought and in fact. It is only in so far as the latter embodies the former that it ceases to be a dumb ceremony, and presents us with " an effectual sign."