they are real or allegorical, but if allegorical they would not have been introduced unless they might have been real. "Irene, da calida - Agape, misce mi" (Peace, give me the hot water-- Love, mix it for me). It was also, in connection with the dead, a likeness of the funeral feast, such as existed in pagan households, the family meeting annually to a repast, in the cella memoriæ, with couches, coverlets, and dresses provided.2

This combination of a repast and a religious rite is already familiar by the practice of the religious world amongst the Jews. There were the meals of the priests, who, coming up from their homes in the country for the Temple service, lived together like fellows of a college, and dined at a common table, with the strictness of etiquette which became their position, always washing before sitting down, blessing the bread and wine, and uttering thanks after the close. These common meals were usually on festivals or Sabbaths. The schools of the Pharisees carried out the imitation of this in their ordinary life, adding the same care to preserve the likeness of a meal in the Temple. In order to avoid breaking the Sabbath by going or carrying provisions more than 2,000 cubits on the Sabbath, they invented a plan of depositing their provisions at intervals of 2,000 cubits, so as to create imaginary houses, from each of which they could lawfully go. The Essenes always took their meals in common with the same object.1

Gradually the repast was parted from the religious act. The repast became more and more secular, the religious act more and more sacred. Already in the Apostolic age the Apostle's stern rebuke had commenced the separation. From century to century the breach widened.

1 Renan, St. Paul, 266.

2 Smith's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, "Cellæ Memoriæ," p. 387. 8 Derenbourg, Palestine, 142-401; Geiger, Urschrift, 123.

4 Ibid. 142.

The two remained for a time together, but distinct, the meal immediately preceding or succeeding the sacrament. Then the ministers alone, instead of the congregation, took the charge of distributing the elements. Then by the second century the daily administration ceased, and was confined to Sundays and festivals. Then the meal came to be known by the distinct name of agape. Even the Apostolical description of "the Lord's Supper" was regarded as belonging to a meal, altogether distinct from the sacrament. Finally the meal itself fell under suspicion. Augustine and Ambrose condemned the thing itself, as the Apostle had condemned its excesses, and in the fifth century 1 that which had been the original form of the Eucharist was forbidden as profane by the councils of Carthage and Laodicea. It was the parallel to the gradual extinction of the bath in baptism.2

But of this social, festive characteristic of the Eucharistic meal many vestiges long continued, and some continue still.

1. The name of the Lord's Supper was too closely connected with the original institution to be allowed altogether to perish. To this we will return for another reason presently. But even the other names of the ordinance have reference to the social gatherings. The word in the Eastern Church is either oúvagis (synaxis), a coming together, or (as in Russian) obednia, a feast. Collecta is in the Latin Church a translation of synaxis, and "collect" for the prayer used in the Communion Service is probably derived from the whole service. It was

1 Renan's St. Paul, 262; Bingham's Antiquities, xv. 7.

2 An exactly analogous process may be seen in the usage of the Church of Scotland. Originally there was no religious service at a Scottish funeral, only a meal with a grace at the dead man's house. The meal has gradually dwindled away to a glass of wine and a few morsels of biscuit; the grace has swelled into a chapter, a prayer, a blessing, and contains the germ of the whole funeral service of the Church of England.

"oratio ad collectam ;" then by way of abbreviation the prayer itself came to be called "collect." Communion is a word which conveys the same import. It is joint participation. The word mass or missa is often derived from the accidental phrase at the end of the service, "Ita missa1 est," as if the heathen sacrifices had been called "Ilicet." But it is at least an ingenious explanation that it is a phrase taken from the food placed on the table— missus 2- or possibly from the table itself mensa― and thence perpetuating itself in the old English word "mess of pottage,' "" soldier's mess "3 and in the solemn words for feasts, as Christmas for the Feast of the Nativity, Michaelmas for the Feast of St. Michael, and the like. In that case "the mass would be an example of a word which has come to convey an absolutely different, if not an exactly opposite, impression from that which it originally expressed.

2. Besides the name there are fragments of the ancient usage preserved in various churches.

At Milan an old man and an old woman bring up to the altar the pitcher and the loaves, as representing the ancient gifts of the church.

In England the sacred elements are provided not by the minister, but by the parish.

In the East always, and in the West occasionally, there is the distribution amongst the congregation of the bread, from which the consecrated food is taken under the name of "eulogia "—"blessed bread." Eulogia is in fact another name for Eucharistia.

There lingered in the fifth century the practice of invoking the name of Christ whenever they drank,5 and

1 The first certain use of the word is in Ambrose (Sermon 34).

2 Missus is 66

a course (Capitolinus in Pertinax, c. 12; Lampridius in Elagabalus, c. 30), as in the French mets, entremets.

3 Crabb Robinson, in Archæologia, xxvi. 242-53.

4 Bona, Rer. Lit. i. 10.

5 Greg. Naz. Hist. iv. 84; Sozomen, Hist. i. 17.

Gregory of Tours describes the act of eating and drinking together as a kind of sacred pledge or benediction.1

The order in the Church of England and in the Roman basilicas is that the priest is not to communicate alone.

The practice in the Eastern and Roman Catholic Church of the priest communicating daily is a relic of the time when it was a daily event. It had been gradually restricted to the first day of the week, but traces of its continuance on other days are never altogether absent. It is now continued partly as a form, partly perhaps from a sense of its necessity. But the practice has its root in the original intention of its being the daily meal.2

II. Another part of the original idea, both as derived from the first institution and also from this festive social character, was that it was an evening meal. Such was evidently the case at Corinth and

Its evening character.

at Troas.

This also is still preserved in its name, "Supper," deîπvov, Cœna, la Sainte Cène, Abendmahl. The deivov (supper) of the Greeks was especially contrasted with the aporov (dinner, lunch), or midday meal, as being in the evening, usually after sunset, corresponding to the Homeric Sópavov. The coena of the Romans was not quite so late, but was certainly in the afternoon. The word "supper" in English has never had any other meaning. Of this usage, one trace is the use of candles, lighted or unlighted. Partly it may have originated in the necessity of illuminating the darkness of the catacombs, but probably its chief origin is their introduction at the evening Eucharist. The practice of the nightly Communion lingered till the fifth century in the neighborhood of Alexandria,3 and in the Thebaid, and in North Africa on Maundy 1 Hist. vi. 5, viii. 2.

2 This is proved from the passages cited in Freeman's Principles of Divine Service, i. 180-90, of which the object is to show the reverse.

Cyprian, Ep. 63; Socrates, v. 22; Sozomen, iv. 22; Augustine, Ep. 118.

Thursday, but as a general rule it was changed in the second century to an early hour in the morning,1 perhaps to avoid possible scandals and thus what had been an accidental deviation from the original intention has become a sacred regulation, which by some Christians is regarded as absolutely inviolable.2

III. The posture of the guests at the sacred meal must have been kneeling, standing, sitting, or recumbent.

Of

these four positions no single Church practices The posture. that which certainly was the original one. It

is quite certain that at the original institution, the couches or divans were spread round the upper chamber, as in all Eastern-it may be said, in all Roman houses; and on these the guests lay reclined, three on each couch. This posture, which probably continued throughout the Apostolic age, is now observed nowhere.3 Even the famous pictures which bring it before us have almost all shrunk from the ancient reality. They dare not be so bold as the truth. One painter only - Poussin - has ventured to delineate the event as it actually occurred.4

The next posture is sitting, and is the nearest approach in spirit, though not in form, to the original practice of reclining. It has since disappeared everywhere with two exceptions. The Presbyterian Churches receive the Communion sitting, by way of return to the old practice. The Pope for many centuries also received it sitting, probably by way of direct continuation from ancient

1 Plin. Ep. x. 97; Const. Apost. ii. 39; Tertullian, De Fugâ in Pers. 14; De Cor. 3; Minutius Felix, 8. There were still nocturnal masses till the time ef Pius V. (Bona, i. 211).

2 It is a curious fact that the practice of "evening communions" in the Church of England is said to have been originated by the High Church party, to whom it has now become the most offensive of all deviations from the ordinary usage.

8 The words ἀνεκεῖτο

ἀνακειμένων — ·åveideσe (Matt. xxvi. 4; Mark xiv. 13; Luke xxii. 14; John xiii. 23, 28) are decisive.

4 There is also a quite modern representation of the same kind in the altar piece of a church in Darlington.