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 Christ1 as God, and also the sixty-third Psalm. In the evening there was the hundred and fortyfirst Psalm. 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.3

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This survey brings before us the wide diversity and 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.

1 Pliny, Ep. x. 97.

2 Bunsen, ii. 50.

8 Maskell, p. 25.

CHAPTER IV.

THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE.

IT is proposed to bring out in more detail what is meant by Sacrifice in the Christian Church. In order to do this, we must first 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 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 odors 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, and 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.1

1 See an exhaustive account of the matter in Ewald's Alterthumer, pp. 29–84.

This

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 Sanctuary1 at Mecca. 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.

II. All these sacrifices, in every shape or form, have long disappeared from the religions of the civilized world. Substitution Already, under the ancient dispensation, the of new ideas. voices of Psalmist 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 he-goats;" “I will not accept your burnt-offerings or your meat-offerings, 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 endeavor, whether from remorse, or thankfulness, or fear, to approach the Unseen Divinity. It was an attempt to

1 Burton's Pilgrimage to Mecca.

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 sweet-smelling odor which went up from the animals which the sacrificer had slain or caused to be slain. The one purpose which is given after every sacrifice in the first chapter of Leviticus is that it "shall make a sweet savor unto the Lord."

Now, 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

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 devo- thankstion 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

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

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 as 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 honoreth Me." In 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." This was a mighty change, and it has gone on growing ever since. The psalms of the Psalmists, the prayers of the Prophets, took the place of the dead animals which the priests had slain. The worship of the Synagogue, which consisted only of prayer and praise, superseded the worship of the Temple, which consisted almost entirely of slaughtering and burning; and the worship of the Christian Church, which consisted also only of prayer and praise, superseded both Temple and Synagogue. As it has sometimes been said that the invention of printing inflicted a deathblow on mediæval architecture, so much more did the discovery, the revelation, of prayer and praise, kill the old institution of sacrifice.

It would have seemed strange to an old Jewish or Pagan worshipper to be told that the Deity would be more intimately approached by a word or a series of words, invisible to sense or touch, than by the tangible, material shapes of fat oxen or carefully reared sheep. Yet so it is; and however much modern thought may disparage the use of articulate prayer, yet there is no one who will not say that the marvellous faculty of expressing the various shades of mental feeling in the grandest forms of human speech is not an immense advance on the irrational, inarticulate, mechanical work which made the place of worship a vast slaughter-house.