and Blood,' taken by themselves, might easily suggest the idea of an impersonal or quasi-impersonal Imeans of grace,' an almost magical food of souls. The communion prayers of S. Thomas Aquinas, S. Bonaventura, Heinrich Suso, and Thomas à Kempis repeatedly strike a more emphatically personal note: the sacraments are henceforward interpreted with growing emphasis as points of personal contact with Jesus Christ, and the worship of the faithful is directed not to the elements regarded as mysterious embodiments of supernatural potency, but to Jesus. 'Lo, thou art here present unto me upon the altar, O God, my God, holy of holies, creator of men and lord of angels,' writes à Kempis. 'Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,' writes S. Thomas Aquinas.

The cultus of Jesus in the sacrament culminates, from one point of view, in the modern practice of 'visits' to the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the Tabernacle, for the purpose of quiet prayer and contemplation, converse and spiritual communion with the Divine-human Christ, symbolised, expressed, and as it were incarnate in the Eucharistic Host. It is a shallowly rationalistic criticism which fails to appreciate the spiritual significance and beauty of such a cultus, which-once granted a belief in the Real Presence, or even, short of that, the recognition of the sacrament as a suggestive symbol of the Real Presence-is in itself simply one among many developments of an essentially evangelical idea, that, namely, of the relation of personal love and devotion between the Christian and his Lord. The same may be said of the modern Roman practice

of Benediction, of which the essence is simply a silent gesture of blessing made with the reserved Host over the kneeling congregation, in token that Christ bestows His benediction upon those present. It is obvious that neither of these forms of devotion can be excluded from the reunited Church of the future, equally obvious that they will not appeal in the same degree to all varieties of temperament. As adopted in certain parishes of the Church of England to-day they are commonly regarded as exotic, and the Bishops have attempted to prohibit them, sometimes on the ground of theological arguments of doubtful cogency. The effect is to invest them in the minds and thoughts of controversialists with a higher degree of importance than they intrinsically deserve. They are simple and natural, but on the other hand wholly dispensable, forms of devotion, congenial to those who are mystically attracted by the idea of the sacramental presence of the Christ. The attempt to prevent their gradual adoption in 'advanced' Anglican circles will doubtless eventually fail. They will probably never become universal or even normal within Anglicanism; but interpreted, as they can be, in terms of a less rigidly scholastic sacramental theology than that of modern Rome, and safeguarded from narrow superstition by the free play of criticism, they will, it may be hoped, one day cease to be involved in the unedifying atmosphere of controversy, and be regulated, rather than forbidden, by Anglican episcopal authority. If there is any substance behind the fear which is sometimes expressed that belief in the perpetual presence

of Jesus in the sacrament is liable to give rise to the idea that He is to be found nowhere else, the proper remedy would seem to lie in careful teaching, rather than in the attempt to suppress devotional instincts, however exotic they may at present appear to perhaps the majority of English minds.

Sacramental and institutional religion is a normal and in general a necessary means to the indispensable end of all religion which is genuinely Christian, namely the increase of love towards God and towards man. It fails of its purpose whenever it fails to minister to the one thing that is ultimately needful. A religion of the sanctuary or of the sacristy, in so far as it ever fails to make men Christlike, is in virtue of that failure self-condemned. Not without

1

reason does Heiler draw attention to the saying ascribed to Jesus when His disciples were accused of breaking the Sabbath by plucking corn-Toû iepoû μεῖζόν ἐστιν ὧδε. 'Here is something greater than the Temple,' 1 of greater importance than any precept of institutional religion, for it is a question of human need. The same lesson is taught by the parable of the Good Samaritan, and by the whole trend of Jesus' teaching. The love of man, on the level of supernatural heroism, is not effectively possible except on the basis of the love of God and in the power of the Divine Spirit of all Love. The love of God is the first and the great Commandment. Nevertheless, if any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this

1 Matt. xii. 6. The true reading appears to be as above.

commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.' It is only in proportion as sacramental worship and liturgical prayer bear fruit in the development of Christian character, as the worshippers derive from them the motive-power and spiritual capacity in some degree to break their own bodies and to give their lives in service to their brethren, that they correspond wholly to the spirit of the Jesus of history.

Let me quote or adapt the closing words of Heiler's chapter on the liturgical mystery of the Eucharist.

In the mean and narrow dwellings of the workers of a great city [he writes], where inspired disciples of Jesus give themselves in service to those who are destitute and disinherited, forgotten and despised, God may be even closer than in the choir of a glorious minster, wherein devout monks offer without ceasing to the eternal One the sacrifice of praise: μeîčov Toû ἱεροῦ ἐστιν ὧδε. The Catholic liturgy is a wondrous achievement, of which one can never grow weary: nay, more than that, it is a revelation of the eternal God, who is the eternal Beauty and Holiness. And yet in the simplest service of love which a man renders to his brother there is a revelation even purer and more immediate of the Eternal, whose inmost heart is pure Mercy and Loving-kindness. For in the latter case the presence of God is manifested alike in the lover and the loved, in the sufferer and in him that ministers to suffering, in him that receives and also in him that gives. Concealed and unrecognised, the eternal God dwells and works here in the midst of men, and reveals His deepest secret: and he that beholds Him here may well kneel reverently, and with even deeper devotion and inner reality, if that were possible, than in the Catholic cultus of the mysteries, exclaim: Adoro te devote, latens Deitas. For 'here there is something greater than the Temple.' 2

1 1 John iv. 20-21.

2 Op. cit.,

p.

434

CHAPTER VII

EVANGELICAL CATHOLICISM

THE mind of the younger generation is directed towards the future. It is dissatisfied with the immediate past, and with very much in the religion of the immediate past. It is particularly dissatisfied with sectarianism, with party cries and catchwords. Consciously or unconsciously, the younger generation seeks, like its predecessors, a faith by which to live: and despite all impatience with traditional ways of stating Christianity, despite all reaction against the Church and against the institutions of the Church, it is nevertheless disposed to suspect that truth is somehow to be found in Jesus. But there is a disposition also to wonder whether other religions too may not contain some element of truth. There is distrust of the validity of the old type of missionary apologetic which simply isolates the Gospel from all other elements in the religious outlook and practice of mankind. The younger generation does not believe in monopolies of truth.

There is a love of short cuts, a love of novelty, a great deal of intellectual haste and of spiritual shallowness. There is often a quite unjustified and unphilosophical distrust of orthodoxy and of