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but by the spiritual vision of faith-is one of the precious privileges attached to the partaking of Christ in His Holy Sacrament. By it, as by a new and living way, which He has consecrated for us, we are enabled to enter into the Holiest of Holies, into Heaven itself, into the glorious Presence of Him Who, there enthroned at the right hand of the Father,' ceaseth not to make intercession for us,2 while feeding us here below with the Bread of Life, the substance of His own spiritual Body, His glorified Humanity, until He shall have perfected us likewise; to the end that they who are now dwelling in his glorious Presence should not be made perfect without us. Then cometh the end, when He shall have accomplished the number of His elect, who shall in that day rise in His likeness, seeing Him as He is, and sharing His eternal glory."

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All this, so full of mystery, because involving the deep things of God, so full of glory to God, so full of blessedness to man, is-by a process, so far as anything so mysterious can be, perfectly intelligible-by means of a regular chain of inward spiritual operations, evolved, if the expression may be permitted, out of "the power of Christ's Resurrection," which is the power of "God manifest in the flesh, and raised up into glory.' ." That power has by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself been embodied in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion, as a power of spiritual Life, to work in His Church, until His purpose, the purpose of His Father in Him, should be accomplished.

But the power being there is one thing; the recognition, the apprehension of it, the laying hold on it by faith, quite another thing. To do this is to man's nature, to the human mind, constituted as it is by nature, an impossibility. To enable man's mind to discern and to apprehend it, to dispose man's will to embrace it, to lay hold on it, is the work not of the human mind, nor of the human will. It is the Father that draws men unto Christ and brings them under the power of His Resurrection, it is the

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Holy Ghost that "taketh the things of Christ and showeth them unto us." Without the aid of the Holy Ghost, given unto us that He might guide us into all Truth, and sanctify3 us by the Truth as an inner Life, the mystery of Christ's Resurrection and of its operation in effecting the purpose of God's love in the souls of men, would be for ever unintelligible to the human mind; without the Father's love, Who sent His Son into the world to the "end that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,” that purpose would have no existence.

To expect that the time will ever come when all men, or even all those to whom that purpose is revealed, shall embrace the offer of God's love, would indeed be a vain expectation, con trary to the facts of history and the declarations of prophecy, which is the history of the future written aforetime. We are taught by Holy Scripture that the working of the mystery of ini quity is coeval with the working of the mystery of godliness; that no sooner had the latter begun to work than the former was also set in motion; that while this present world lasts the conflict between Christ and Satan will continue; that as in the Person of Christ Himself, so in His Body mystical, the Church, it must be fought out to the bitter end; the victory remaining for a short season apparently with Satan, but ultimately, by the final and utter overthrow of Satan, with Christ and His Church. We are forewarned of a great apostasy from the faith among those to whom the Truth of God, the Gospel of His salvation, has been made known, as it will be to all mankind before the end comes; an apostasy so extensive that when the Son of Man cometh He will hardly find faith on the earth; "1 and that, unless the time during which the mystery of iniquity shall be permitted to prevail were "shortened," even His elect should be unable to "endure unto the end."3

How the prediction of this prospective defection from the Faith, this temporary obscuration,

1 St. John xvi. 14. 2 St. John xvi. 13.

8 St. John xvii. 17, 19. 2 Thess. ii. 13. Tit. iii. 5. 1 Pet. 4 St. John iii. 15. 1 John iv. 9, 10.

2 Heb. vii. 25.

8 Heb. xi, 40.

i. 2.

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Bo great as to amount to an almost total eclipse, of the light of God's Truth, is to be reconciled with the equally distinct and positive prediction of the final triumph of Christ and His Churchthe partial and transient success of the mystery of iniquity with the complete and permanent success of the mystery of godliness-time alone, the legitimate interpreter of prophecy, can show. The study of the prophetic Scriptures can do no more than indicate certain landmarks in the future history of the Church and the world: the details cannot and will not be understood until the events by which prophecy will be fulfilled shall take place. The answer of the Lord Jesus to His Apostles, when they sought to obtain from Him a clearer declaration of God's purpose, may well satisfy all inquiries into the order in which that purpose is to be developed : "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power."4 Our business is, not curiously to scrutinize God's work, but to ascertain and to execute the work which He has given us to do. As to that we can have no doubt. So long as there is any part of the world to which the knowledge of the Gospel has not penetrated, it is the duty of the Church to evangelize it. And Bo long as the Church is divided, her efforts to evangelize the world cannot be successful. The Unity of the Church is a precedent condition of her doing the work assigned to her by her Divine Head. To labour for that Unity, therefore, is, not less than to labour for the spread of the Gospel, the Church's duty." Heresies and schisms, indeed, there must be, and will be to the end of time; and, in regard to these, the duty of the Church is, not by compromises to minimize the differences between truth and error, till at last they shall cease to be distinguishable from each other, but on the contrary, by setting those differences in a clear light, to " contend earnestly for " the Truth, "the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints."6 In order to be successful in that conflict, no less than in the conflict against ignorance of the Gospel, the Church must be united within herself. Unity within herself can only be the result of the Unity of her members, individually and collectively, with Christ, and in Christ with one another. And Unity with Christ can be attained only in the way ordained by Christ Himself, in the Mystery of His Most Blessed Body and Blood. Thus we are brought back to 4 Acts i. 7. See Appendix, Note M.

6 Jude 3.

the point from which we started. "Eucharistic Restoration"—that is, the restoration within the Church of the power of Christ's resurrection, as a living power operating and manifesting itself in all her members-is the one and only remedy for the Church's comparative inefficiency, for her manifold failings and shortcomings in every direction. To this point, then, let all our efforts be directed. Difficulties, obstructions, arising from the incrustations which have accumulated around that Holy Mystery, no doubt there will be. But these, it becomes our special duty, as members of a Reformed Branch of the Church Catholic, to search out, with a view to their removal. In working to this end, we shall have the encouragement of knowing that our efforts are tending towards the fulfilment of that Divine purpose, for which our Blessed Saviour, at His last Supper with His disciples, prayed so earnestly to His Heavenly Fatherthe Unity and Purity of His Church.

May that Divine Grace which was bestowed by Our Lord Jesus Christ on His own Church on the day of Pentecost-the Gift of the Holy Ghost to guide her into all Truth-be ever with us, and still preserve us from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from contempt of His Holy Word and Commandments, and all departure from the pure faith of His Apostolic Church. And may we more and more realize the great blessing of mystical union with our Divine Lord in His own Ordinance, as members of His Body, the Church :-that in partaking of the Sacrament of His Body given, and His Blood shed for us, we may draw nearer one to another in spiritual communion and fellowship, "endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,"-"having nourishment ministered," and being "knit together," so may we "increase with the INCREASE OF GOD."

Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

Glory be to God on high, and in earth peace, good will towards men. We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.

O Lord, the only-begotten Son Jesu Christ; O Lord God. Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us..., Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.

For Thou only art holy; Thou only art the Lord; Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

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APPENDIX.

THE MEMORIAL OR REMEMBRANCE" BEFORE GOD

A SACRIFICIAL ACT OF WORSHIP.

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[We are indebted to the Rev. Canon Trevor for the following valuable remarks on the Memorial Sacrifice" in reference to the subject of this Treatise-ED.]

It is a common opinion that a Remembrance or Memorial can only be designed to preserve the event in the recollection of man, since God can neither forget nor be reminded. But this is certainly opposed to the constant use of Holy Scripture. God says of the rainbow (Gen. ix. 6), "I will look upon the bow and remember my covenant."

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Under the law, the shewbread was never seen by the people at all, being presented and consumed in the Holy Place, to which none but priests were admitted. It was" shown" to the Lord, and not to man. (Comp. 1 Cor. xi. 26). Now this bread-or rather the frankincense which was put upon it—is called " a memorial even an offering made by fire unto the Lord." (Lev. xxiv. 7.) This is the description of a sacrifice in the strictest sense. The Septuagint here has the precise expression which our Blessed Lord used of the Eucharist is áváμvnov, translated in the New Testament "in remembrance." Hence the Eucharistic Remembrance is before God, and is a Sacrifice. The word "Memorial occurs again in Lev. ii. 2, 9, 16, v. 12, vi. 15, and Numbers v. 26, where the Septuagint has μvnμóovvov but the Hebrew word in all these places is the same as in Lev. xxiv. 7.9 It follows that in the Greek the noun μvnμoovvov is equivalent to the phrase siç ȧváμvnow. In Numbers v. 15, we have the full expression "an offering of memorial bringing iniquity to remembrance”—θυσία μνημοσύνου αναμιμνήσκουσα àμapriav. Here, again, the memorial is a sacrifice (Ovola), and its object is not to remind man but God. Of the two human parties, one was in ignorance and the other quite conscious of the truth, but suspected of concealing it. The Sacrifice was an appeal to the Omniscient to remember and disclose the fact. So in 1 Kings xvii. 18, "Art thou come to call my sin to remembrance (with God) and to slay my son?" This language is doubtless anthropo-morphical, but it is the language of prayer, both under the Old and New Testaments. The Psalms abound in appeals to God to remember His mercies, and to forget and blot out our transgressions. Our Blessed Lord has no scruple in exhorting us to perseverance in prayer by the thought that "God will avenge His own elect though He bear long with them." (Luke xviii. 7). And the Apostle in like manner says "Let your requests be made known unto God." The whole idea of supplication and inter

9 Heb. askarah from the root "to remember." In Proop's Hebrew and Spanish Bible (a great authority), this word when used of the sacrifices, is always translated sahumerio (a smoke) and memoria, when denoting a remembrance to men, as in Ex. iii. 15; and Zech. vi. 17.

cession is to put God in mind of us and of our brethren. Do we not also pray, "Remember not our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers"?

Now what prayer does in word it was the office of Sacrifice to do in act: hence memorial sacrifices, or sacrifices of remembrance, were primarily and properly to remind God, and only secondarily became memorials or monuments to men. In Numbers 1. 9, it is promised that on blowing an alarm with the trumpet, "Ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies." The sound is to come up before God, and remind Him of the promise, and His people's need. And in the next verse the trumpet is to be sounded in like manner over the Sacrifices "for a memorial before God." Indeed, all the Levitical rites and sacrifices, especially those in the Holy Place, were primarily liturgical offerings to God, and because of that, symbolical lessons to the people. Of this kind, was the "remembrance" of sin referred to in Heb. x. 3, the only other place in the New Testament where the Eucharistic word àváμv noɩç is found. The reference is not to the sinner's recollection of his transgressions, but to the liturgical remembrance of the sin-offering made before the mercy seat, by the bringing in its blood within the veil. The necessity for the yearly repetition of this sacrifice showed the continuance of sin, though temporarily pardoned, and pointed to a better Sacrifice to come. It should be borne in mind that eating and drinking are not per se, either commemorative or religious actions; they become so only when we eat and drink the Memorial Sacrifice. The Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received in the Lord's Supper, because the Bread which we eat and the Cup of which we drink are tha sacrificial μνημόσυνα—εἰς τὴν áváμvnov-of the Sacrifice of his Death. It is remarkable that the sacrificial word is not recorded by St. Matthew and St. Mark, as if to the Jewish mind it would be necessarily implied in the command to eat and drink His Body and Blood; a thing only possible through a liturgical medium, such as they were familiar with. St. Luke and the Apostle of the Gentiles supply the name, establishing the parallel with the Peace Offerings of the law.

That the Sacrificial Act applies to the whole service, is shown by Thorndike-Vol. IV. p. 119, (Anglo-Cath. Libr). "Breaking, pouring forth, distributing, eating, drinking, are all parts of the Sacrifice: as the whole action is that Sacrifice, by which the covenant of grace is renewed, restored, and established against the interruption of our failures."

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"But whenever it obtained the name, this would naturally soon come to be regarded as the chief, and at length perhaps as the only, reason why the whole rite should be termed 'the oblation'; for this is the most sacred and essential notion of an offering connected with it." These words seem to me to add greatly to the positive force of the comparatively negative testimony of the early Fathers brought forward in this treatise. Whenever the commemoration of Christ's death came to be looked upon as an "oblation or offering of His Body and Blood," the thought of any other offerings - whether those of our Own prayers and praises, or, still more, the mere material offering of bread and wine as the first-fruits of God's creation-was of necessity overshadowed and soon lost to sight. It could not but be so. The less could not hold its place by the side of that which, if true, would be incomparably greater.

The fact, therefore, that in the writings of the earliest Fathers, and in what appears to be the earliest type of the ancient Liturgies, (as in holy Scripture itself,) these offerings are kept prominently in view, and the expression "offering of the Body and Blood of Christ" nowhere appears-proves that the idea contained in these last words, not only failed to find expression in their writings, but must absolutely have been foreign to their thoughts.

NOTE C.-Pp. 391 and 392.

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DISTINCTION BETWEEN ALTAR AND TABLE." It is true that in some passages in the Old Testament (Ezek. xli. 22) and Rabbinical writers (Lightfoot on 1 Cor. x. 21), the two terms Altar and Table, are used as identical in meaning, but not in all. Girdlestone (Old Testament synonyms, p. 309, note) says, "The table, however, served a different purpose from the altar. The animal was slain and cut up on the table, but its blood was sprinkled, its fat burnt, and in the case of the 'olah (Burnt-offering), all the pieces were burnt on the altar," and he refers in proof of this to Ezek. xl. 39-43.

If the distinction is here made between the altar on which the victim was offered, and the table on which it had been slain, so might there well be a like distinction-and so in 1 Cor. x. there seems plainly to be,-between it and the table on which the victim was eaten.

NOTE D.-P. 392.

THE ALTAR OF THE CROSS.

I had at first written "the Altar is the Cross:" so Bengel, i. l.-so among recent commentators, Ashwell, in the S.P.C.K. commentary. But as it has been suggested that the Cross finds its type rather in the wood borne by Isaac than the altar on which he was offered-and that Matt. xxiii. 18, forbids us to count that the Altar, which is less in dignity than the GiftI have altered the expression to that in the text, to

leave it open to the interpretation adopted by Hammond (on Heb. xiii. 10), Lightfoot (Vol. vii. p. 243), and others, that Christ Himself is at once Priest, Victim, and Altar. The only point I would urge is that—as it seems to me while the "eating" refers to the Lord's Supper, the “altar" refers to that on which we then spiritually feed-the actual sacrifice of Christ, when he died upon the Cross. It is to this sacrifice the Apostle has all along been referring as the one Sacrifice, and the fulfilment of every kind of Jewish sacrifice (Heb. 1.8); it is this sacrifice, not its commemoration, of which he speaks in verse 12; it is by this interpretation that we best see the force of the Apostle's argument in setting forth the superiority of the Christian to the Jewish Dispensation. Under the Law the sinoffering might not be eaten, for it could not take away sin, and therefore, bearing sin, remained itself pol. luted. But our great Sin-offering-the Lord Jesus Christ-has so perfectly taken away sin, that all sentence of sin is absolutely removed from Him, and thus He becomes also our Peace-offering, whereof we may "eat" to our soul's healing and peace.

It may be well just to add that the argument from verse 15 stands by itself, whatever interpretation may be given to the word "altar" in verse 10.

[Since the above was written we have been favoured with the following remarks on the subject from the Rev. J. F. Isaacson, Rector of Freshwater, which we gladly insert here, with his permission.-ED.]

As regards the question in Note D, I would remark that Vitringa's observation on Is. vi. 6-" Altare in sacris Deum figurat, cui quid traditur et devovetur ab illo veluti consumendum,"-suggests the true light in which we should regard the Cross, viz., as representing God the Father, to whom "Christ offered Himself without spot by the everlasting Spirit,"-as St. Paul declares in express terms in Heb. ix. 14, and as is mystically signified in Levit. xiv. 5, where it is written in the Sept.-Σφάξουσι τὸ ὀρνίθιον τὸ ἓν εἰς ἀγγεῖον ὀστράκινον ἐφ ̓ ὕδατι ζῶντι. In this wonderful passage the whole scene of the Crucifixion is set, as it were, before our eyes: "the earthen vessel resting upon living water" exhibits the Lord Jesus, while hanging on the Cross, as resting on the Father, and accepted by Him, to whom He was giving Himself as the one all-sufficient Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, See Wordsworth's note, in loco cit.

NOTE E.-P. 392.

(Also by the Rev. J. F. Isaacson).
"WHICH IS TO BE GIVEN," &c.

I venture to suggest that attention should be drawn to the incorrectness of the received reading of the expressions, τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν διδόμενον, τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν iKxVvóμevov: "which is to be given,"-" which is to be poured out" would more accurately express the force of the participle in the two cases, as may be seen from the following passages taken from the Old and New

Testament respectively, in all which the present tense is used. 1. Deut. iv. 22. "I am to die, (árolvńokw,) and not cross over," (diaßaivo). 2. 1 Cor. xv. 12: “is to be no resurrection,” ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν οὐκ ἐστιν. 3. Ib. verse 35: "to be raised," kyɛipovraι ;—“are they to come," oxovrat. When the Lord spoke the words now under consideration, the body was on the point of being given, and the blood was on the point of being shed; and this the present participle expresses most exactly. In Levit. xiv. the participle ó kalapilóμevos is rendered by our translators "he that is to be cleansed" no fewer than seven times, viz., in vv. 11, 14, 17, 19, 25, 28, 31.

NOTES TO SECTION 3.

NOTE F.-P. 402.

66 CONTINUING DAILY." προσκαρτεροῦντες, the same word as that rendered in v. 24—“ continuing steadfastly." In its connection with iv ru lep it conveys more than a mere "stedfast continuance" in the same practice; it calls attention to the fact that while "continuing stedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship," they continued no less stedfastly in their attendance upon the temple worship, to which, as a Divine Institution, they paid the same reverence as before, even though they had learned that it was a mere type and figure of that truer and more spiritual worship which they offered in their own Assembly-room. As the temple worship was a daily—kal' μipar-worship, it was meet that the true spiritual worship it prefigured should likewise be offered daily. Attendance in the temple daily was an act of homage to Him Who had placed His Name there, and ordained its worship. The Breaking of the Bread daily "at home" was a realization of that spiritual worship of God through Christ, which the other prefigured. The type and the anti-type were thus concurrent in the daily observance.

NOTE G.-P. 402.

"FROM HOUSE TO HOUSE" (AT HOME.) Kar' olkov, at home, in contradistinction to the temple, which was the olxos common to all worshippersὁ οἰκὸς μου οἶκος προσευχῆς κληθήσεται-St. Matt. xxi. 13; St. John ii. 16. Those that believed in Christ, worshipped God through Christ, had an oleos of their own, consecrated to the new, the spiritual worship. It was in this olkos that they were assembled on the Lord's Day when the Holy Ghost was poured out upon them. Observe the analogous consecration of the "house" built by Solomon, at the dedication of which "the Cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister, because of the Cloud; for the Glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord"-1 Kings viii. 10, 11. Even so, in visible manifestation of the Divine Presence, the "sound as of a rushing mighty wind," which "suddenly descended from Heaven, filled all the 'house' where

they were sitting, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire." There was, however, this difference, that whereas at that former consecration the Divine Presence precluded the presence of the ministering priests, at this Pentecostal consecration the Divine Presence rested upon each of the Apostles, the ministers of the new, the spiritual covenant. "It sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues"-the ministration of the Spirit -"as the Spirit gave them utterance"-Acts ii. 2-4. The building thus consecrated continued to be, equally with the temple, the scene of the Apostles' teaching— see Acts v. 42. Note also the difference between kar οἶκον in both these places, and κατ' οίκους in Acts xx. 20, which is rightly rendered from "house to house"-i.e., in the different houses in which assemblies for Christian worship were wont to be held in Gentile cities. Compare Rom. xvi. 5; 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Col. iv. 15; Philem. 2. Tradition has, with great probability, identified the olkos at Jerusalem with the building in one apartment -κατάλυμα, ἀνώγεινof which the institution of the Holy Eucharist took place-St. Mark xiv. 14, 15; St. Luke xxii. 11, 12-in which the Lord Jesus appeared to the Apostles after His resurrection-St. John xx. 19, 26—and to which they resorted after His ascension-Acts i. 13, where it is termed rò vπεршοv. Compare on this subject the Bishop of Lincoln's Annotations on Acts i. 13; and ii. 2, 46.

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áyaλíaσis is but feebly and inadequately rendered by "gladness." Its proper sense is " exultation," "exceeding joyousness," such as would hardly be the result of a meal taken in common. Not only do the words ἀγαλλιάω, ἀγαλλιάσις, convey the idea of s more than ordinary, an exceeding degree of joy, but they point to a religious element in the occasion and the character of the joy. Compare St. Luke i. 14, 44, 47; x. 21; St. John viii. 56; Acts ii. 26; Heb. i. 9; St. Jude 24; Rev. xix. 7. The high privilege of being permitted to feed on Christ spiritually, and thereby to become united to Him, One with Him, was, indeed, what no common meal could have been, a subject of exultation.

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